wi' Wallace untold

In seeking to post this around facebook, it was astonishing to discover the Scottish Lib Dems now have no public page, and the UK ones still after a day had no mention of Jim Wallace's passing. even as a former Deputy PM, in the first Scottish government, he shared in an ordinary grassroots experience of street campaigning in the Brexit ref 10 years ago.

His passing removes a witness to how ordinary Remain campaigners got messed around by our own side in the Brexit ref. In the polling day flyering at Edinburgh Haymarket station. I was in it, we were completely left to do it when we were in numbers, in the morning peak. Then, when numbers reduced and a couple of us stuck at it after our colleagues had finished, we got targetted by the station manager then the police, who claimed completely different activity boundaries than our own organisers had told us.

After which our organisers when told about it would not challenge the police's action, and nor would the Lib Dem from their nearby office who was flyering beside me and who favoured respectability even when pushed around instead of arguing jurisdictions to defend the election activity info our organisers had brought us there by telling us. Then Jim Wallace was there in the evening peak and was allowed unbothered to do it in a place where the morning police had not allowed us to do it.

Our (ex)organisers never answered any communication from me ever again after our polling day activity was over, and despite all the controversy around whether the ref was held fairly, I could never get anyone to take up + make use of this story about Jim Wallace.

Wallace and foul-it

Jim Wallace says today 2 thoughts rather at odds.

He says, the referendum needs to be decisive, hence fair enough that the losing side can't cry foul. Said he remembers 1979 when the 40% rule was a foul and left the position unsettled. Good, he is right.

Then he says, for clarity we will have the same electorate as for the last Scottish election. Which means, not giving votes at 16. Excluding a population group who have more future life ahead of them to vote on than any of the present voters have. A group whose franchise is supported supposedly by his own party the Lib Dems as well as by the government calling the vote.

That will be a foul and will guarantee that foul is cried whatever the result! We know it's cynical bowing to the Tories. It is also a contradiction, and self defeating for him with his own admission on future record that any foul on fair play means an indecisive unsettled outcome.