YouGov stood to have its reputation shattered if it continued to put out polls showing ten point leads for No, when Yes is very obviously headed for a majority.
Those massive YouGov leads for No were all part of the Unionist tactic of making independence appear both uniquely impossible to Scotland, as opposed to any other small nation state you can name, and an unattainable dream. Too poor, too wee, too stupid and politically isolated. YouGov are known in the trade as “You Can Have Any Result You Pay For Gov”. For months, James Kelly on the Scot Goes Pop blog has brilliantly analysed the methodologies they employed to give those large No leads – asking prior leading questions, a large preponderance of Labour voters in their panel, and the “Kellner Correction” – an assumption that lies or faulty memory about how people last voted, would penalise Labour unless corrected for statistically. The result was YouGov polls that were great reading for the No camp, but made no sense whatsever to anybody who had talked to voters.
My own view is that there has not been an extraordinary 12 point swing in a fortnight, as illustrated by YouGov’s last two polls. What there has been is a continuing stead swing and a realisation in YouGov that, having helped the No campaign for over a year by trying to make a Yes vote seem hopeless, to be over 12% out on this vital vote might damage YouGov’s share price fatally. So they have had to start publishing something close to the truth.
As I have been reporting, the truth has been very obvious to people on the ground for weeks. And the truth is not only that independence is coming, but that the entire political class, BBC and mainstream media has been rejected, and a new form of popular power, based on community democracy and social media, has taken over.
I received an invite from the National Library of Scotland to a post-referendum debrief at 9am on 19 September. Anybody sober at 9am on 19 September (unless having medical excuse) is not part of the New Scotland. But more crucially, the panel includes Henry McLeish and Michael Moore – and they want people to pay 35 pounds to listen to their words of wisdom.
They really haven’t got it yet. Nobody will ever care what Moore and McLeish and their like have to say again, and the kind of democracy we will have will not involve paying substantial sums to hear pearls of wisdom drop from troughers on a pedestal. Nor will members of the old political establishment have a future in that career. It was a good tactic for Alex Salmond to say that Darling and Carmichael will be on the negotiating team: the people will not allow it to happen.
There is at last some understanding that Yes will win: the penny has not yet dropped that this is a revolutionary moment, not a polite constitutional shuffle.
Great piece Craig.
Thank you for all your hard work and unfaltering belief in the viability of an independent Scotland.
Everything will be thrown at us from the Establishment from now until polling, time to hold on for the ride. 🙂
Thank you, revolutionary is the operative word in the whole post. Mebbe the Scots will have lead the rest of the EU on how to break free from the Great Satan and arrest its mounting impunity. Its scary the way Europe has simply folded to the intrigues of “Fu.. EU” Nuland & Co, there is no one left to speak the truth to power, all we have left are rogues and presstitutes.
Mr. Murray, first I have to say how much I admire you for your honesty and courage.
I chuckled at your comment it being a ‘good tactic for Alex Salmond to say that Darling and Carmichael will be on the negotiating team’. The idea that he meant it for even a second is amusing and certainly the people wouldn’t allow it if he did.
I believe that Scotland will achieve independence and sincerely hope that it is a first step in the same happening in many other nations.
From speaking at both a predominantly No and a Yes event this last week I’ve been struck by how much the currency has become a fetish (in the anthropological sense of something taking on a symbolical value beyond actual value) by an elite social class that signally fails to grasp what is going on. Currency is also being used as a weapon – but a boomerang as illustrated by the pound’s fall in today’s markets. The solution is simple. Don’t mess around with offering us all powers except defence and foreign affairs. It’s too late for that, and it only reveals the extent to which this is a bid to hold on to an imperial past that avoids the need to examine identit(ies) in the rUK. Instead, stabilise the markets by rapidly agreeing continued currency sharing in all but name and with due safeguards for the rUK economy. Signal the intention, if Scotland votes Yes, to bring about a just amicable settlement, one in which Scotland will willingly shoulder a fair share of the debt.
As I have been reporting, the truth has been very obvious to people on the ground for weeks.
This is also What i have been seeing…And a perfect example in Balloch Today, I was over to go to the Food festival, and to my surprise Darling was there… He was standing in front of maybe 25 or so people with their placards…Speaking to around 70 / 80 others…thing is, there were easily a few thousand folk milling around the food market… and Darling could get the attention of less than 100….He looks Surreal in the flesh
Then Later ( far from the Maddening Crowd ) in Drymen Pub the young Lady i was with informs me of the 7,000 poss job loses at Faslane..Like Eh…What, 7,000.???
Keep up the good work Craig
The games over.
Scotland will vote Yes.
And why not? Enough fear and lies,enough shite.
Anything that gets us oot of PaedoMinster…
An Englishman Swallows His Pride
You Scots are great and your country is beautiful.
There, I’ve said it.
Please don’t leave us and turn yourselves into foreigners.
We need you to keep us sane.
(just written on The Daily Telegraph – by me)
The Former British Ambassador – has made an ENORMOUS Difference.
I saw his Speech…
It just Blew Me Away…
He was Speaking The Truth…Very Eloquently
“Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIQ8VVn8AJA
Tony
Blimey even some of the girls who write The Headlines in The Daily Telegraph are Coming Onside
“CIA ‘tortured al-Qaeda suspects to the point of death by drowning them in water-filled baths'”
Craig Murray had already provided the photographic Evidence To His Employer’s The British Government – and His Working Friends at The Ministry..
CIA ‘tortured al-Qaeda suspects to the point of death by drowning them in water-filled baths’….but it was even worse than that…
THEY BOILED THEM TO DEATH
and I was just having my Tea…
it really put me off COOK IN POT
So They Fired Him.
He was only telling The Truth and Trying To Protect The British Government From Complicity in TORTURE…
So Let’s Line Them Up…starting with
ANTHONY CHARLES LYNTON BLAIR
JOHN WHITACKER STRAW
We are The PROSECUTION.
What is Your Defence?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF9spgagSHI
Craig Murray – Torture 1 of 7
Uploaded on Apr 28, 2009 (by me)
Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Provides Evidence on UK Government Complicity in Torture.
http://www.parliament.uk
UN Convention Against Torture
Joint Committee on Human Rights
Tony
The French Used Their Guillotines..But The Order Has Already Been Put in To Sheffield…No We Don’t Want Steel. Just 10 Very Large Cast IRON Cooking Pots…To Be Delivered To The Banks Of The Thames Right Outside The Houses of Parliament…
We will use Oldham Coal if Necessary to Heat Them Up.
Tony
Tony,
Thanks bro 🙂
My Lancashire Girlfriend…My Wife and I both Love Her To Bits…she’s a few years younger than us…when She was training to be a Nurse in Burnley in Lancashire..very young…During her couple of weeks holiday..she spent a few days with The Women of Geenham Common…she had absolutely no interest in politics…she just went to provide Free Medical Care, Help and Love To The Women of Greenham Common…
How nice is THAT?
I told You
God’s Chosen People Come From Lancashire
Tony
Despite all the old simplistic BBC led divisions and caricatures let me say thus:
In an indelependent Scotland youll ALL be welcome 🙂
Old n young,gender,colour,religion and ‘freaks’…no barriers
Youll ALL be welcome for sure.
We’re trying to build a better state;compassion,tolerance,wisdom,humanity…
What we got to lose?? 🙂 x
These Girls are Something Else…just in case you thought I was making it up..
“The women of Greenham Common taught a generation how to protest”
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/sep/02/greenham-common-women-taught-generation-protest
Tony
I ‘chime’ with the others.
You Gov is of course run by Peter Kellner, the other half of Lady Ashton, recently retired facilitator for the gangsters-in-charge and Brownite appointee.
Getting off the EU gravy train and getting on to the next one.
‘Nevertheless, a recent report by the EU’s auditors criticised her legacy – the European External Action Service – as riddled with bureaucratic in-fighting, red tape and missed meetings by Lady Ashton.’
‘Lady Ashton will not be under any pressure to find a new job too quickly. Generous “transitional allowances” mean that she will earn £400,000 at the taxpayer’s expense over next three years for doing nothing after her term at the end of 2014.’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/10971640/Farewell-Lady-Ashton-EUs-absent-foreign-minister-prepares-to-leave-for-good.html
The NO campaign seem to be bankrupt of idea’s.I had wondered about the accuracy of those polls as there should have been at least a blip toward yes in the past year and a half.
It was with great interest that I gave the British MSM the once over this morning only to read old threats regurgitated.False promises and more threats and a falling pound.
I think the only reason that Johann Lamont was given the job as Labour leader in Scotland was because she hated the SNP the most,and one of the biggest mistakes of the NO campaign has been to see the whole referendum issue as an SNP thing.
She blocked and voted against traditonal labour policies just because they came from the SNP.I’d been hoping and praying that Labour voters noticed the betrayal by their leaders and vote Yes.Seems like its happening.
The great irony has been Westminster’s lack of a plan B and I am sure part of the problem has been they’ve believed the false polls that they paid for.I am still curious about the poll that got buried.
Mary
Just to apprise you of a couple of facts you’re probably not aware of:
1/. As a proper reading of the Telegraph article and just a smidgeon of background knowledge should make clear, the meetings missed by Ashton are the regular weekly meetings of the Commission. She missed them because she wears the double hat of a member of the Commission and of EU foreign and security policy “chief”, the latter rôle requiring quite a bit of travel and thus absence from Brussels. It is, by the way, not uncommon for Commissioners to miss Commission meetings.
2/. She will be getting a so-called transitional allowance of ca. £130.000 a year for three years on leaving office (I believe that this allowance is degressive). What you fail to point out is that all retiring Commissioners get such an allowance, as a swift look at the Staff Regulations of EU officials would have told you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Disclaimer : I am not related to Baroness Ashton and do not and have never worked for her. Neither am I a particular admirer of hers. To be on the safe side I should also say that I have no connection with any Zionist organisation, the Bilderberg group, the Committtee of 300 or Amschel Rothschild (deceased).
The above post was submitted with the sole intention of educating Mary and correcting any malicious intention which might have been surmosed from her post.
or even surmised. 🙂
I saw the news about the 51% yes to 49% no poll on NHK – the Japanese channel. Nothing about it on CNN – though to be fair I don’t bother to watch CNN much – ‘half the news for twice the price’ as I believe Robert Fisk has it.
I fervently hope Scotland seizes this chance with both hands – nothing to lose and everything to gain. At the very least they’ll be ‘no worse apart’.
I’m half Scottish – maybe they let me have a Scottish passport??
“The watchword is only one, categorical and challenging for everyone. It already flies across and lights the hearts from the Alps to the Indian Ocean: Winning! And we will win, in order to finally give a long period of peace with justice to Italy, to Europe, to the world.”
“The struggle between the two worlds [Fascism and Democracy] can permit no compromises. The new cycle which begins with the ninth year of the Fascist regime places the alternative in even greater relief — either we or they, either their ideas or ours, either our State or theirs!”
My mother was an Italian Fascist; although she never quoted Mussolini directly, I sensed the smallness of her heart.
And when it’s over I hope the new government will take the BBC and Westminster to task for all the lies they told about independence and everything else for that matter.
“In his Reflections on Violence, Sorel says that parliamentary socialism, and its middle-class of bureaucrats and newspaper-intellectuals does not understand social science, economics, or any other matter important for good rule as well as the traditional liberal and capitalist elite that ruled before the mediocre middle-class became a powerful force in parliament. “How did these mediocre and silly people become so powerful?” Sorel asks. His theory on this is that the mediocre middle-class became powerful when the working-classes, people without property, were given the right to vote at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. Thus, the working classes now created a problem for themselves by creating a political elite that is more stupid and less competent than the people who had a monopoly of power before them. He proposed that this problem could be fixed only by a collective withdrawal and boycott of the parliamentary system by the workers. Thus, the workers must return to strikes and violence as their main political tool, so Sorel says. This gives the workers a sense of unity, a return to dignity, and weakens the dangerous and mediocre middle-class in their struggle for power, and their attack on capitalism.” [Georges Sorel]
H’s typos are the best bits of his ‘posts’.
Defending the indefensible there btw.
Most refreshing to see you’ve begun reading books Jimmy.
One does feel like quoting and imparting the wisdom one discovers on the journey into the world of books.So much nicer than the insults you let fly.
Well done!One down and many more to go.
Craig
You received an invitation. You were invited. Or is the ugly American habit of turning every verb into a noun part of the new Scotland too?
Incidentally, a couple of weeks ago I heard an announcement on my train that it was too long for the platform at the next station so the two last coaches would not be platformed here. Maybe you can have that in new Scotland too!
In any case it’s great to see you so enthusiastic about something again, but I have to say you are simply signing up to a whole lot of hurt as a non-independent European vassal state with a constitution that enshrines socialism for the rich and fuck all for the rest. Sorry to point that out again.
Oo-er Missus!
David Cameron’s wife, Samantha, ‘snubs’ the Queen by staying away from the Prime Minister’s traditional annual meeting with the monarch at Balmoral.
A No 10 official says it’s because it was Florence Cameron’s first week at school and ‘Mrs Cameron has a very tired daughter on her hands’.
There could be another reason for SamCam’s absence. The Queen and her Prime Minister have weighty, close-to-home matters to discuss.
Aides to the Queen let it be known that she had ‘a great deal of concern’ and was ‘horrified’ about Scotland breaking away. She was receiving daily updates at Balmoral.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2747226/PETER-McKAY-Oh-fly-wall-Balmoral.html
Further grammar correction coming forward again. What? No punctuation mistakes?
Pathetic.
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy
“The “iron law of oligarchy” states that all forms of organization, regardless of how democratic they may be at the start, will eventually and inevitably develop oligarchic tendencies, thus making true democracy practically and theoretically impossible, especially in large groups and complex organizations. The relative structural fluidity in a small-scale democracy succumbs to “social viscosity” in a large-scale organization. According to the “iron law,” democracy and large-scale organization are incompatible.”
An independent Scotland, based on the popular nuance of ‘unified Scottishness’, will seem like a break from the Bureaucratic Leviathan of the present UK, a problem we all face, north and south. But what independence will achieve is the ‘simplification of choices’, as post independent Scotland will broach no dissent that leads away from the ‘spirit’ of Scottishness.
This will imply that individualism becomes a ‘loose canon’ ideology, and one to be thwarted. Those who show the unified personality of Scottishness will inevitably rise through the ranks of the nascent Scottish Bureaucracy, and thus direct it towards their passions, which we should all see as National Socialism.
Mary
Why do you resent it so when other posters add to your store of knowledge?
Surely you should say thank you rather than drawing attention onto typos?
“I ‘chime’ with the others.”
________________
With apologies for the plagiarism, Mary, but I couldn’t resist:
Ding Dong! The Witch is alive!
Push-polling Lynton Crosby, Mr McTernan. Smears and fears, Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) Promises, Threats and Lies. There is nothing left except the ridiculous rumour that they’ll pretend to rescue the ‘Scottish hostage’ with the SAS and raise the spectre of ‘Tartan Terror’ separately in that court appeal they’ve been saving..
” And the truth is not only that independence is coming, but that the entire political class, BBC and mainstream media has been rejected, and a new form of popular power, based on community democracy and social media, has taken over.”
Hi Craig,
I really hope that is the case and I actually wish for a Yes victory. But then I read that that independent Scotland will keep the Queen. Not the best start to make an in-deepth clean-up of the political class.