Just Saying...

Thanks to YES Scotland's Future for sharing my original post, I never expected such detailed replies. It appears that we all think the same but there seems to be no plan or strategy to get our points across.

I work in retail and talk to loads of folk about politics and independence. Mentioning SNP normally generates the usual "I hate the SNP" or "Sturgeon gets on my tits banging on about independence all the time" We've all had those conversations. Something had to change to engage people more. It took a while to work it out but I couldn't believe how easy the solution was. I simply changed my approach and removed SNP from my conversations.

Where I used to say something like "did you know the SNP froze council tax for 10 years" I now say something like "Did you know that council tax in Scotland was frozen for 10 years between 2007 and 2017 whereas in England it was only frozen for 5 years between 2010 and 2015 AND in Scotland Council tax has only risen between 3% and 6% over the last 11 years whereas in England over the last 5 years it rose by 12% in Newcastle and 38% in Lambeth" This changes the conversation to a proper conversation where they want to know more, no more hating It's really that simple.

So I got to thinking why "Better Together" won. The answer is simple as well, they weren't Tories, Labour, Lib Dem etc, they were "Better Together" whereas the "YES" campaign was either SNP or Alex Salmond but mostly Alex Salmond. He wasn't being grilled by the Tories, Labour, Lib Dems on a daily basis he was grilled by "Better Together" a different face every day vs Alex Salmond except on live debates where it was basically every party vs SNP, he never stood a chance. "YES" never had army of faces to take over so Alex Salmond became the villain. That was the image that was portrayed throughout the campaign and "YES" lost.

This time "YES" has to be "YES", not SNP, not Nicola Sturgeon. It has to be an army of "YES" spokespeople. Eliminate SNP and Nicola Sturgeon as much as we can and "YES" will win. Don't let "Better Together" dictate the agenda. So who are "YES"? I have no idea and neither does anyone else I know . I should know considering how much time I spend talking about it. I could research it but I do have a life as well so if anyone knows, you can comment on here. Either way this is a problem that needs fixed pretty damn quick. It can't be everyone else vs Sturgeon this time.

I read something somewhere about setting up a code of conduct for "YES" pages but I can't find it so if anyone has any info on how that is going then please let us know.

We don't have time to waste so if anyone has any suggestions to add either to the article or this post then please join in.

Another thing to remember we aren't only dealing with Pro Unionists in Scotland. Pro Unionists from the rest of the UK are also getting involved. There are approximately 53 million people in the UK over the age of 16 ( source ) that all have an opinion BUT not a vote. What's my point you may ask? Well "YES" only got 1.6m votes which is pretty impressive considering the amount of voices with opinions and resources to take us on.

Why is this important now you may ask? Well, I have tried to find out more about some of the "personal" pro union pages and their respective websites and found out they have paid to keep registrant details private. There's nothing wrong with that, it's perfectly legal BUT why would you pay to hide your identity for a personal site. (Background info : I am a web developer with over 20 years experience and never once has anyone requested registrant privacy, so for an individual to to do this for a personal site is very odd indeed) Are some of these pages being funded to flood Facebook? who knows but it's something to consider going forward.

Let's find a way to working together so we're ready when the tine finally comes.