Dear All
In politics when something has moved fast, it is generally to kill the story.
The Scottish Government consultation will now have all anonymous responses to the independence referendum discounted.
The U-turn by the SNP Government follows accusations that it was "rigging" the process.
Now the process is so discredited, this ‘fix’ will not do, the entire consultation is now tainted.
One of the problems in the Scottish National Party is the lack of people willing to do the work when it is necessary, everyone wants to go to the party but when it comes to clearing up, they are out of there.
And patting themselves on the back for their ‘cleverness’
For the Labour Party, this is a wonderful time, as they hail the move as a complete climb down.
Putting a brave face and trying to salvage its credibility the SNP administration said the 414 anonymous contributions received to date accounted for only 3.5% of the total, and would not be counted.
The questions remain; how many of the people responding have made multiple responses?
In true fake outrage a Government spokesman has called on Labour to apologise for scaremongering.
Labour had attacked the party on Sunday and pointed the finger at the so-called "cyber-Nats" who use the cloak of anonymity to do their ‘work’.
The Labour Party by accident was right to call for the process to be scrap, it allowed the SNP to do a fresh launch and gain ground.
In the end, the SNP plummet for the cheap fix, the sticking plaster over the gaping wound.
To add to the SNP’s U-turn came the news that the First Minister Alex Salmond has asked the ministerial standards advisers to rule on whether he had breached the ministerial code.
He has reported himself to ‘Labour’ Angiolini, formerly of the Crown Office who couldn’t find her ass with a map and a flashlight.
The incidents he is asking ‘rubber stamp’ to look at are the hosting lottery-winning SNP supporters and other donors for meals at his official Edinburgh residence, Bute House.
Parliamentary Business Secretary Bruce Crawford said:
"As the figures we have published demonstrate, there is absolutely no evidence of anonymous responses skewing the process quite the reverse but we can and will make the process stronger still by requiring all submissions to have personal identification details before they are taken into account. While anonymous contributions would always have been separately identified, we will now ensure that no anonymous submissions are included in the analysis at all. And, while there is no evidence of duplicate identical responses from the same person, we can and will ensure that any received are also excluded from the independent analysis so that their view is only represented once."
Crawford added:
"The Scottish Government's referendum consultation is gathering huge levels of public interest as we debate and discuss Scotland's future and the robustness of the process is demonstrated by the fact that the consultation will be subject to independent analysis. This stands in stark contrast to the much smaller UK Government consultation, which was not put to independent analysis. These changes address any conceivable concerns about the Scottish Government consultation while there still remain questions about the Westminster exercise."
Luckily for Crawford he made this as a statement, without the opposition questioning him live on tv.
10,000 out of a country of circa 5 million people isn’t a huge number; and do all the responders have UK IP addresses?
Questions, questions, questions, but no answers!
In true showmanship the Labour Party had earlier called for an emergency recall of the Scottish Parliament for only the third time in its history.
The Scottish National Party is in trouble, things have turned bad, the First Minster is under investigation; Party activists are unwilling to work for them.
All this trouble is of their own making, running the SNP as a middle class clique has led to the chickens now coming home to roost for Alex Salmond.
A while ago I was blogging on the SNP’s problems and when the slide for the Nationalists started, it would be like quicksilver.
George Laird was right again.
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
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