SNP MSPs told to stop using term "independence", secret meeting provokes anger as MSPs are to be ‘taught’, why are SNP MSPs so incapable?

Dear All

If you are a regular reader to this blog and thousands are, then you will have read my continual analysis that in the Scottish National Party there is a genuine and serious lack of talent.

Now, it has come into the public domain, that SNP MSPs have been urged to drop the word “independence”.

The reason is because the concept is off-putting to voters.

Instead they are directed to talk about of an “independent” Scotland.

It seems that in the Scottish National Party things are now so bad that even SNP MSPs have to be taught how to speak and are to be censored.

Is that how First Minister Alex Salmond thinks that independence can be won?

It won’t be won by censoring free speech because people will see through it immediately; it is a stupid idea and an immature idea.

DON’T MENTION THE WAR!

That is the classic example.

I thought that Alex Salmond was clever once, now I do not, things are so bad that they think ‘tricks’ will work on the minds of the ordinary working class voters.

They don’t, that is a myth that the Alex Salmond middle class clique will find out soon enough when poll after poll shows that support for independence isn’t moving, then the panic will set in.

The dramatic shift has already been adopted by Alex Salmond and others at the top of the SNP who are getting the strategy of the independence campaign wrong.

It started badly at the infamous ‘Declaration of Cineworld’ and will continue right to the bitter end.

The disastrous strategy was rolled out to most of the party’s untalented MSPs at a secret meeting at Holyrood last Wednesday.

Imagine effectively being told that you are by default incapable of articulating the cause of independence, and they people are supposed to be ‘the best’.

So, what is the theory?

The theory is that being “independent-minded” is a positive personal quality voters like, whereas “independence” as a concept for Scotland is associated in voters’ minds with risk.

I wonder what idiot said that and why Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon bought into it, they must be truly gullible to fall for that one.

It gets better; the advice was handed down by positive-psychology consultant Claire Howell, a long-term adviser to the SNP, who also drilled MSPs in the American marketing techniques that will be used to promote a Yes vote in the 2014 referendum.

This is so funny, positive-psychology, joke, bad joke but lets see 2014 if I am right, clearly Howell doesn’t understand the thought processes of ordinary working class people.

To return to the lack of talent in the Scottish National Party, SNP bosses have also circulated a campaign training manual based on text that appears to have been cut-and-pasted from US marketing websites.

Cut and paste without the benefit of learning will spectacularly explode in the faces of those people foolish enough to articulate this, with out fail.

Some MSPs it is said have reacted enthusiastically to Howell’s talk.

However it appears from reports that others were left angered and amazed, with junior minister Alasdair Allan openly objecting to dropping the word independence.

Former children’s minister Adam Ingram is also understood to have been unimpressed.

And George Laird is unimpressed also.

One senior SNP source said the political ideas behind independence seemed to be getting lost in a deluge of “marketing gobbledygook”.

The most effective case for independence is telling the truth, not trying to spin a story that they don’t wholeheartedly understand.

The SNP source said:

“It was about persuading people, and there’s a good reason for doing that. But voters admire you if you believe in something and show a bit of passion. That forum wasn’t really about the cause, it was marketing speak. She [Howell] was basically talking marketing tactics. This is becoming a bit of a guddle.”

The truth not being good enough, is it because the public might start looking closely at the people behind Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon and asking questions?

It appears that the SNP under Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership don’t like free speech unless it is their version of free speech.

Launching the Yes Scotland campaign last month, the First Minister failed to say the word “independence” at all in his speech, day one and already backtracking, I think many will see the road more clearly now, it is the road to devo max.

Green MSP Patrick Harvie mentioned “independence” three times in his launch speech.

The website of Yes Scotland, the SNP-backed campaign for a Yes vote, also emphasises the word independent, with sections called “Becoming independent” and “Being independent”.

Osama Bin Laden signed up to Yes Scotland.

The pro-Union parties said the SNP’s “desperate” contortions over language showed it was afraid of its own key policy, because it knew voters were hostile.

And of course at present the senior SNP are trying to twist my words to portray me as homophobe because in the SNP it is okay to run a hate campaign acting in a ‘personal capacity’ like Humza Yousaf’s wife Gail Lythgoe but when you exercise free speech on a human rights blog that they don’t like it, you can be victimised and harassed for that.

Howell previously advised SNP members not to use “freedom” in the referendum, because of its association with the violent Mel Gibson film Braveheart.

Clown, she is a clown, so easily influenced by a production from Icon Productions.

Howell and SNP ‘strategists’ Angus Robertson MP and MSP Derek Mackay advised using upbeat terms such as “transformational”, “exciting” and “historic” when talking to voters about independence.

Labour MSP Patricia Ferguson, Scottish Labour’s constitutional spokesperson, said:

“It seems the SNP is finally realising what everyone else knows – most Scots reject their core policy of independence. Now they are desperately trying to repackage a bill of goods that people don’t want, and this latest attempt will fool no-one. Instead of spending his time listening to advertising gurus, Alex Salmond should start being honest with the people of Scotland.”

Willie Rennie, the Scottish LibDem leader, added:

“Would the SNP advisers call a spade a spade, or a soil-dividing implement because it sounds less offensive to worms? No matter how much the SNP resort to 1984-style Newspeak to make their plans sound more palatable, the voters will see right through them. Instead of playing with words the SNP should simply answer the voters’ questions."

The last word on this strategy should come from those SNP MSPs, who feel angered and amazed, how embarrassing to be brought into a secret meeting and told you are incapable of articulating something you have believed in all your live.

I would opine that anger will grow.

Independence can’t be won by tricks, spin, wee balloons, flag waving and all the low grade crap that the SNP thinks will turn people.

It can only be won by substance and so far, we have seen precious little substance coming from Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon.

Independence in 2014 is dead, if Alex Salmond has the balls, then I will stick up £500 of my own money, if he will give me odds of 100/1.

If I win, the entire sum of my winnings goes to a charity, if he wins, he can do what he likes with my cash but I want a signed document of the agreement for both of us to sign in front of witnesses so the bet is formally recognised.

And George Laird is always right.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University