A hilarious episode of Fawlty Towers had John Cleese as Basil Fawlty, owner of the worst hotel in the world, anxious not to insult some German guests by "not mentioning the war". Of course this leads to the blurting out of dozens of war-fixated insults by the bold Basil.
Today it has been revealed that our Nationalist brethren have been advised: "don't mention independence".
The Nats have endorsed and abandoned the Euro, then the Pound, they have been Republican and then Monarchists, anti-Trident but pro-Nato, proudly Scottish and then whynotBritish?... but .... how the hell can the Nationalist Party, the party which has lived for eighty years on the claim for "independence", not mention "independence"?
If the Scottish Nationalist Party is too timid to argue for "independence", what is the justification for their existence? What do the stand for? What are they working towards? Why do they bother? And why, if they have abandoned the very reason for their existence, should anyone vote for them or their referendum?
The campaign for a vote for "independence" has got off to a rotten start, and it has just got a lot worse....
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55 minutes ago
I understood it to be about how folks react to semantics. The argument being the use use of the phrase "Independent Scotland" is preferable to the word "independence" based upon folks reactions.
ReplyDeleteAnd the phrase "status quo" is preferable to either.... why don't they just use that instead....?
DeleteWhat's the difference between the the two words? I could understand the yes camp not using "separation" and "divorce" although that is what we are talking about it. Truth be told the "yes" campaign hasn't got off to great start. Love the blog by the way...
ReplyDeleteWell done, Councillor. You've managed to pick up on a story the Herald ran in *January*, and which was weeks old even then. Do keep sending us postcards from the cutting edge, eh?
ReplyDeleteAnd it was published here...
Deletehttp://scottishpol.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/dont-mention-independence.html
And it's still hilarious...
I do believe that they've had direct tangible results resulting in interactive narratives prototyping voter communication interfaces which identified 'independence' as a non denominational sequitur resulting in biased feedback.
ReplyDeleteEither that or what we have is an instance of inferring compositional hierarchies from strings of deconstructed ideological cross purposes.
But, you're right, I just think they're running feart.
I know another phrase.Err! snp Bullsh't seems appropriate here.
ReplyDeleteanyways the inexorable movement of Alex Salmonds snp is towards an Independent Scotland within and fully part of the United Kingdom.
Witness the Question Time performance recently when Alex Neil claimed "Of course we can be British is Scotland is Independent". Eh? Let’s not pretend the SNP don’t know what they are doing, here. The incessant muddying of the waters is a very clever tactic to ensure they maximise the "yes" vote. Make it as ambiguous as possible as to what exactly independence is, so more people are likely to vote for it.
ReplyDeleteIf more people think they are voting for “independent within the uk” = “devo-max” they will vote “yes” when in fact they are voting for a secession from the UK. It’s all clever politicking and another example of a populist party that’s prepared to do *anything* to get their end result. So much for the party that claims to care more about Scotland that any other party.