My number one mega-fan in the Wee Ginger Dug comments section, "Hamish100" (who famously couldn't run away fast enough when I offered him a chance to debate me openly on the podcast) has complained about my brief explanation yesterday that I wasn't blogging about Alba NEC meetings due to confidentiality rules. I must say that I don't quite follow the point he's making - as I understand it, NEC meetings in the SNP are governed by similar confidentiality rules, and even if someone says or does something totally outrageous in an SNP NEC meeting, we only ever find out about it if it's leaked to Iain Lawson.
But whatever Hamish's problem is (he doesn't seem too sure himself), you won't be surprised to hear he thinks it's yet another reason for SNP supporters to help get unionists elected in the council elections in May -
"Vote SNP, or Scottish Greens . Don't put a number against anyone else seems a reasonable approach so I have been told"
So you've been told? By who? By someone high up in the SNP, perhaps? Make no mistake, this destructive anti-Alba tribalism carries the very real risk of needlessly getting Labour or Tory councillors elected. Alba will be standing in a large number of wards, often with credible candidates who have a high profile locally. They have every chance of being elected - if they get transfers from the surplus votes of SNP candidates who are sure to be returned to office.
In May, I will have no hesitation in asking Alba supporters to help the independence cause by giving their second, third and fourth preference votes to SNP and Green candidates. If some people in the SNP can't bring themselves to return the favour, my question to them is simple: at what point did independence cease to be your priority, and why?
Elsewhere on the same thread, the Torrid Threesome of Hamish, Alec "LOL" Lomax and Grizebard criticise "divorced from reality" blogs for discussing gender self-ID rather than Ukraine. They think this is evidence that the writers of those blogs are "parasites on the movement with other motives in mind". So let me get this straight, chaps. The Scottish Government, through their own free choice, introduce gender self-ID legislation in the middle of the worst European war since 1945, and that is apparently NOT evidence that the Scottish Government are "divorced from reality", and "parasites on the Yes movement" who have "other motives in mind". But if anyone dares to COMMENT on what the Scottish Government have done in the middle of the war, that's somehow a different story?
Er, how does that work?
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Source: Beware the siren voices of tribalism that could help to elect unionist councillors in May (//)