Quite a number of years ago now, I got into a mildly bizarre email debate with someone who shall remain nameless, but who is widely regarded in Scotland as bona fide journalistic royalty. Basically the discussion centred on whether or not Stuart Campbell of Wings Over Scotland can reasonably be classified as a "journalist", which is something he self-identifies as, and which his most ardent fans certainly regard him as (in fact they frequently gush that he's Scotland's greatest journalist). Even though I was no longer on good terms with Stew by then, it may surprise you to learn that I was actually the one defending him - I suppose he and I are both members of the informal "New Media Union", so we still have that in common if nothing else. The point I made was that even if you regard his political blogging as something that falls short of real journalism, he was in his past life published extremely extensively in the most traditional of formats (ie. print magazines) on the subject of video games. So in my view you had to regard him as a journalist, even if you qualify that by saying he is a video games journalist only.
But the person I was speaking to was adamant that "he is NOT a journalist". She kept repeating those words, without really fleshing out what exactly it was in her view that disqualified him. I suppose her unspoken message was that she if anyone knows what a journalist looks like, and I should just take her word for it that Stew doesn't fit the bill.
I think I would have to concede at this stage of the evening that she probably had a point. After all, one key characteristic that distinguishes professional journalists from enthusiastic amateurs is that they do tend to at least do some basic checking on the subject at hand before shooting their mouths off about it.
Stew has boasted in the past that he does not watch my videos, including the ones he has commented on at some length and mysteriously managed to produce screenshots from, because he claims he cannot bear to listen to me "droning on". It was previously unclear how literally that boast should be taken, but it's certainly not hard to believe it tonight, because with the tweet you see above he's walked rather deservedly into a trap of his own making. As anyone who actually watched the video he's commenting on will know, practically the exclusive subject of my commentary on Ash Regan's failed bill on prostitution law was how demonstrably wrong and toxic it is for Stew's fellow travellers to base their angry rhetoric on the wild assumption that any male who opposes the Nordic Model must by definition be a client of sex workers who is motivated by the ugliest of self-interest. Here is a quote of some of what I said in the video:
"There was one [comment retweeted by Stew] that said that this demonstrates that lots of MSPs must be paying to abuse women abroad or something like that, which is an absolutely despicable thing to say. And it's despicable probably because some people will take that literally and think that might be a fair point. Well, let's look at the facts. First of all, the Scottish Parliament is relatively gender balanced. It's I think about 55% male, 45% female. And the figures show consistently probably around about 10% or 11% of men at some point in their lives have paid for sex, which is obviously a significant number, but it does mean the vast majority of men, almost 90%, have not. So, it's reasonable to assume that probably around about 6% maybe of MSPs have at some point in their lives paid for sex. That's based on the figures also showing that only a very tiny percentage of women, maybe about 0.1% of women, have paid for sex at some point in their lives. So, you know, a parliament composed of 94% of people who don't have any sort of vested interest in this subject, there is no reason why a parliament like that wouldn't pass a bill if the case had been made. So there's no point lashing out and thinking there's some sort of dark motive when the case hasn't been made to the satisfaction of the 94% of people in that parliament who do not have that kind of vested interest."
Now, it may well be that Stew disagrees with the point I'm making there and genuinely believes that any man who opposes the Nordic Model is automatically a sexual predator and can be reasonably denounced as one. He may also truly believe that any man who then pushes back against that notion is further giving the game away in the Mandy Rice-Davies sense of "well, he would say that, wouldn't he?" If he does believe that, he's marking himself out as suffering from the same type of immaturity fused with mindless rage that once led a group of vigilantes to attack the home of a paediatrician, simply because of the first four letters of the job title. And OK, if that's the way Stew wants to live his life, that's up to him and it's not our place to try to talk him down.
But by failing to engage with my arguments and explain why he thought they were wrong, and by even failing to acknowledge that those arguments were made at all, and by instead posting a tweet that implied it hadn't yet occurred to anyone but him that men who express opposition to the Nordic Model may instantly be subject to these infantile suspicions, he might as well have just had "I haven't watched the video I am criticising or even read the transcript" (and thus by extension "I am not actually a journalist") tattooed on his forehead.
He has previous form on this, of course, because a few months ago he claimed without bothering to check (I suspect simply because his mate McEleny whispered it in his ear) that I was on the Alba NEC when support for the Nordic Model became party policy, when in fact that happened before I was elected to the NEC. Indeed I had made no secret whatsoever of my own position on the Nordic Model while that election was taking place.
I am extremely happy with the points I made in the video, and I would encourage anyone to watch it and make their own minds up. I'll embed the video once again below - the relevant section starts at around 6:34. It's a low bar, admittedly, but I certainly believe that what I said was somewhat more thoughtful, measured and considered than anything Stew or his fan club have managed in their shrieking comments about the subject over the last few hours.
Incidentally, I have reported the comment from "WSMMorag" as the unacceptable personal abuse that it undoubtedly is, and I have blocked her. Reporting pretty much anything to Twitter is a complete waste of time in the Elon Musk era, but I tend to feel in situations like these that at least going through the motions of making the report is a matter of basic self-respect.
Towards the end of this video, I also give my reaction to the Scottish Government's welcome announcement that they will not be supporting Ash Regan's private member's bill, which seeks to introduce the Nordic Model on prostitution law in Scotland. This should make it very unlikely that the bill, which would have been extremely harmful, will pass.
There aren't many outlets that report Scottish polling accurately and without unionist bias. If you value the service Scot Goes Pop provides, you currently have a thrilling opportunity to help with the stopgap fundraiser I am running to keep the lights on during the transitional period while I try to get sorted with a more sustainable funding model (ideally on YouTube but possibly on something like Substack).
If you'd like to donate, there are three main options:
PayPal donations can be made directly to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk
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A million thanks to everyone who has donated so far.
Incidentally, I recorded this video before I saw Campbell's latest "I luv Nige" fanboy blogpost, so the similarity of titles is just a coincidence - albeit an extremely telling coincidence in the circumstances.
There aren't many outlets that report Scottish polling accurately and without unionist bias. If you value the service Scot Goes Pop provides, you currently have a thrilling opportunity to help with the stopgap fundraiser I am running to keep the lights on during the transitional period while I try to get sorted with a more sustainable funding model (ideally on YouTube but possibly on something like Substack).
If you'd like to donate, there are three main options:
PayPal donations can be made directly to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk
For bank transfers, just drop me a quick line at icehouse.250@gmail.com and I'll send you the necessary details.
Card donations can be made at the GoFundMe crowdfunding page HERE.
A million thanks to everyone who has donated so far.
I will record a video about this poll at some point, but as I'm on a bus right now, I'll go retro and briefly give you the results in text form for the time being.
Should Scotland be an independent country?
Yes 47% (-)
No 53% (-)
Regular readers will instantly spot an obvious inconsistency here: the percentage changes in brackets (ie. showing no change at all) do not tally up with what we thought we knew about the most recent full-scale Scottish poll from YouGov, which showed Yes 49%, No 51%. That's because for at least the third time in the last year, we've just discovered that YouGov conducted a secret poll a few weeks ago, didn't publish the results, and are now expecting us to just accept that the percentage changes in the poll they've actually bothered to publish are whatever they tell us they are.
Not to put too fine a point on it: what the hell are they playing at? I'm not convinced that this behaviour is consistent with British Polling Council disclosure rules. At the very least they must be straying into a grey area, and they're undoubtedly treating the nation of Scotland with utter contempt. Everyone knows they wouldn't decide what to reveal and what not to reveal about GB-wide polls on a whim, as they seem to be regularly doing with their Scottish polls.
This revelation of course means that there was an additional independence poll in 2025 that we were previously unaware of. I don't think this will alter the fact that there was a Yes majority in an average of all polls conducted in 2025, but I'll doublecheck to be sure and let you know in the video.
Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:
SNP 34%
Reform UK 20%
Labour 15%
Conservatives 10%
Liberal Democrats 10%
Greens 9%
Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:
SNP 29%
Reform UK 20%
Labour 15%
Greens 12%
Conservatives 11%
Liberal Democrats 9%
Alba 1%
This is light-years short of the percentages the SNP would require to hit John Swinney's self-imposed target of a single-party overall SNP majority, but it's plenty enough for a pro-independence majority of seats comprised of the SNP and Greens in combination. So the SNP leadership are in the enviable position of to some extent being able to simply decide whether they succeed or fail in this election. If they stick to the Hail Mary single-party majority strategy, they will almost certainly fail and set the independence cause back several years. But if they adjust their language to make clear that a pro-indy majority composed of more than one party would constitute a mandate, they will probably succeed.
It goes without saying that this is yet another polling catastrophe for Alba, who would need to multiply their current support by five, six, seven or eight times to win any seats. Spoiler alert: they're not going to do that.
More details about this poll will follow later in the video.
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There aren't many outlets that report Scottish polling accurately and without unionist bias. If you value the service Scot Goes Pop provides, you currently have a thrilling opportunity to help with the stopgap fundraiser I am running to keep the lights on during the transitional period while I try to get sorted with a more sustainable funding model (ideally on YouTube but possibly on something like Substack).
If you'd like to donate, there are a few possible methods:
Bank transfer and direct PayPal donations both eliminate all processing fees. If you prefer bank transfer, please contact me by email at icehouse.250@gmail.com and I'll send you the necessary details. (I've been previously advised not to post my bank details publicly.)
PayPal donations can be made directly to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk
(Remember that fees are only eliminated with PayPal depending on the option you select from the menu.)
Or you can make a card donation at the GoFundMe crowdfunding page HERE. The payment processor GoFundMe uses does deduct a small fee, but it's relatively modest. A bigger issue may be that GoFundMe always ask to be tipped, and I think you have to manually adjust the tip amount down to zero to avoid that.
A million thanks to everyone who has donated so far.
Apart from the shocking membership fee news, which Alba members already know about (as long as they've been checking their emails closely enough), this video also contains the latest gossip from my occasional Alba source about Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh and the ranking of Alba list candidates.
Scot Goes Pop: The Final Fundraiser is underway (you can read more about why I anticipate it being the final one HERE) and it's already a bit over halfway towards its target figure of £1700. A million thanks to everyone who has donated so far. Card donations can be made at the GoFundMe page HERE, or if you prefer to cut out the middle-man, direct PayPal donations can be made to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk
Scot Goes Pop: The Final Fundraiser is underway (you can read more about why I anticipate it being the final one HERE) and it's already a bit over halfway towards its target figure of £1700. A million thanks to everyone who has donated so far. Card donations can be made at the GoFundMe page HERE, or if you prefer to cut out the middle-man, direct PayPal donations can be made to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk
Scot Goes Pop: The Final Fundraiser is underway (you can read more about why I anticipate it being the final one HERE) and it's already a bit over halfway towards its target figure of £1700. A million thanks to everyone who has donated so far. Card donations can be made at the GoFundMe page HERE, or if you prefer to cut out the middle-man, direct PayPal donations can be made to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk
Before anyone says anything, yes, I know I screwed up and randomly started referring to Norstat as "Panelbase" midway through the video. I haven't got time to re-record it at the moment, so just suspend disbelief and call it nostalgia. I've tried to rescue myself with the clarification in the title.
Scot Goes Pop: The Final Fundraiser is underway (you can read more about why I anticipate it being the final one HERE) and it's already a bit over halfway towards its target figure of £1700. A million thanks to everyone who has donated so far. Card donations can be made at the GoFundMe page HERE, or if you prefer to cut out the middle-man, direct PayPal donations can be made to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk
I made this video before the news broke about Donald Trump's comments on Diego Garcia, which has resulted in this bizarre commentary from Henry Zeffman on the BBC News website (it's possibly a transcribed version of what he said on-air):
"It is not clear that any world leader has quite found a reliable way to handle President Trump. But Starmer’s attempts to do so earned him plaudits across the political spectrum. Foreign affairs had been seen as one of the real positives of his time in Downing Street. That verdict may have to be revised. What a mess."
Laura Kuenssberg said something almost identical the other day, which creates the impression that it is practically the editorial line of the BBC that Starmer's handling of foreign affairs, and of Trump in particular, have "earned plaudits across the political spectrum". As the SNP are part of the political spectrum, could the BBC clarify precisely who in the SNP has praised Starmer on foreign affairs, and when? Who in the Green party did it? Who in the Corbyn/Sultana party did it? Etc, etc.
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Serious question: how can a foreign leader "veto" any decision made by the UK about UK sovereign territory? I thought Brexit was supposed to end "vassalage"? Why do you think it hasn't and why do you appear to be so happy about that? https://t.co/mqw7Wc4co5
Scot Goes Pop: The Final Fundraiser is underway (you can read more about why I anticipate it being the final one HERE) and it's already a bit over halfway towards its target figure of £1700. A million thanks to everyone who has donated so far. Card donations can be made at the GoFundMe page HERE, or if you prefer to cut out the middle-man, direct PayPal donations can be made to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk
