Some thoughts on Peter Murrell's betrayal of SNP members

So just some miscellaneous thoughts about today's news that Peter Murrell has pleaded guilty to embezzling a six-figure amount from the SNP - 

* Speaking as someone who is used to living on a shoestring budget, I have no sympathy for Murrell whatsoever.  It's actually the smaller 'petty' purchases that anger me the most - to waste thousands of pounds of other people's money on a single fountain pen, something that can be of no possible practical benefit to you, is absolutely obscene.  That seems to confirm that Murrell was to a large extent motivated by vanity and a preposterous playboy self-image.

* The SNP and its members were the victims of this crime.  That's not spin, that's a fact.  Murrell did not steal from the public purse, he stole from the SNP, and the money he stole had been raised from SNP members for the purposes of making Scotland an independent country.  The supposedly righteous anger of unionist politicians over this matter rings extremely hollow, given that the political impact of Murrell's selfish, cynical actions was to slow or stall the progress towards independence - something unionist parties were only too thrilled about.

* The way the SNP have recovered from this event has been truly remarkable.  Our old friend Stew is trying to make out it has left the independence movement a "broken shell", which he obviously wants to be true, but the events of the last few weeks tell a completely different story.  The SNP leadership under John Swinney have restored the trust of party members sufficiently that the pre-election fundraiser succeeded beyond all expectations - and make no mistake, without that restored trust and without the funds that flowed from it, we wouldn't be sitting here now with the highest number of pro-independence MSPs in history.  Once we get past the negative headlines of today, which unfortunately we've known were coming for a long time, both the SNP and the wider independence movement will actually be in pretty good shape.

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Catch up on my latest YouTube video below...

Ignore the Brit Nat propaganda: what was the REAL vote share for pro-independence parties at the 2026 Holyrood election?

If you enjoy Scot Goes Pop's polling and election coverage so much that you start to feel an inexplicable urge to buy me a hot chocolate or a ham-and-cheese toastie, donations are very welcome.  There are three main options: 
a) you can donate by card HERE 
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c) you can make a donation by bank transfer - for the necessary details, please drop me a line at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com

Another update on the Great Scot Goes Pop Video-Blogging Experiment

For two-and-a-half months between late February and early May, I was so wrapped up in writing the 73 daily constituency profiles for The National that a) I had much less time to make YouTube videos, so I did fewer, and b) I pretty much stopped keeping track of my progress in turning the videos into a sustainable alternative funding model.  I've since been doing some catch-up on that, and the latest stats are fairly grim.  The bottom line is that, as things stand, it's just not working.  And there's no point in anyone saying "I told you so", because as I said at the outset last year, I went into this experiment with my eyes wide open - I had checked what the average earnings per 1000 views were in the UK, and at that average level it would have just about worked.  However, I also knew that individual YouTube channels can fall anywhere on a very wide range on either side of that average, depending on their subject-matter and the demographics of their viewers, and the only way I was ever going to find out where my own channel would slot in was by giving it a proper go for a few months.  

Yup, you've guessed it, it turns out that videos about Scottish politics slot in pretty much at the absolute lowest end of the earnings range.  It's puzzling in a way, because my videos are disproportionately viewed by males over the age of 55, and if anything I'd have thought that would be a relatively higher-income group that advertisers would be only too keen to target, but apparently it doesn't work that way.  So I'm now not entirely sure of the best way forward, and I'm going to have to mull it over a bit.  

In theory, YouTube could still be made to work, but to do that I'd have to think big - on the current rate of return, I'd have to average 10,000-20,000 views per video.  So far my most popular individual video has around 7000 views, and obviously the average is much lower than that.  Is it even feasible to get up to the required level with a channel about Scottish politics?  I genuinely don't know.  I've found a small number of political channels that have pulled it off, including ones that just seem to be run by ordinary blokes like me rather than by celebrity commentators, but crucially they all have a UK-wide focus.  If anyone knows of a specifically Scottish political YouTube channel that receives a large number of views, please do let me know, because that would be important information to factor in.

It's also theoretically possible to square the circle by making a YouTube income via sponsorships (which are generally much more lucrative than the regular earnings anyway), but in practice there's a Catch-22, because apparently channels require average views of at least 10,000 per video to attract sponsors in the first place.  So it seems there's no way of getting around it - that's the daunting level of popularity my channel would need to reach.  

Basically I'm going to have to decide whether to double down on the YouTube idea and go all-out in trying to make the channel go truly galactic, or whether I should declare it a failed experiment and try something radically different, such as Substack or a similar site.  I'm reluctant to do the latter, because it would probably involve putting at least a minority of material behind a paywall, which I'd really rather not do.  Or I could just try to keep this blog going in the way I've been doing over the last few years, but you've seen what that's involved - I've just barely stayed afloat, but only with near-constant, in-your-face fundraising, which I am so tired of having to do, and I know you must be equally tired of seeing the reminders of the fundraisers at the bottom of each blogpost.  

For the time being, though, please bear with me because I simply have no choice but to keep plugging away at the fundraising for at least a few more weeks.  As I've mentioned a few times, I've been due to receive a substantial payment for freelance work at some point in May or June, and once that comes in I should be able to take a much-needed complete break from fundraising for at least a few months, but as of today there's still no sign of it even being in the pipeline.  So your patience is much appreciated as I continue to promote the fundraiser at the end of each post in the following manner...

If you enjoyed Scot Goes Pop's 2026 election coverage so much that you started to feel an inexplicable urge to buy me a hot chocolate or a ham-and-cheese toastie, donations are very welcome.  There are three main options: 
a) you can donate by card HERE 
b) you can make a direct PayPal donation to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

c) you can make a donation by bank transfer - for the necessary details, please drop me a line at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com

First Makerfield by-election poll shows Andy Burnham could be in TROUBLE

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Catch up with last Wednesday's award-winning blogpost: "S*** just got real, lads. The famously always wrong blogger "Stew", who said there was "zero chance, barring nuclear war or an alien invasion" of the Holyrood election producing a pro-indy majority, and who said betting on Angus Robertson to win Edinburgh Central was "free money", has now said there is "NO chance" of victory in a 2029 de facto referendum. Looks like it's ON."

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If you enjoyed Scot Goes Pop's 2026 election coverage so much that you started to feel an inexplicable urge to buy me a hot chocolate or a ham-and-cheese toastie, donations are very welcome.  There are three main options: 
a) you can donate by card HERE 
b) you can make a direct PayPal donation to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

c) you can make a donation by bank transfer - for the necessary details, please drop me a line at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com

* Salmond always went out of his way when he made the 'once in a generation' comment to stress that he was merely expressing a "personal view".  Check every interview in which he made the comment and you'll find exactly the same disclaimer.  He made clear that he wasn't intending to bind his successors and that it was democratically impossible for him to do so.

The biggest problem for British Nationalist propagandists like Fiona Bruce who triumphantly trot out the "once in a generation" excuse is that a generation has essentially *already passed*

Fiona Bruce claimed in her position as Question Time host on Thursday night that the 2014 independence referendum result had settled the issue for "twenty or thirty years".  That is an outrageous comment that once again demonstrates that the BBC, as the state broadcaster of the United Kingdom, is institutionally incapable of reporting on the Scottish independence debate objectively or impartially.  The BBC would actually do its viewers a much greater service if it would just drop the preposterous pretence of neutrality and instead openly own its unrelenting hostility to the principle of Scotland choosing its own governments.  If you're hellbent on being Fox News, then be Fox News, but for pity's sake be honest about it so that the people in Scotland who are legally compelled by the United Kingdom government to fund you, on pain of court action and possible imprisonment, know exactly where they stand.

What Bruce was praying in aid, of course, was Alex Salmond's occasional statements in the run-up to 2014 that independence referendums were only likely to be held once in a generation.  However, there are numerous problems for her and others who go down that road - 

* Whenever he made the "generation" comment, Salmond always went out of his way to stress that he was merely expressing a "personal view".  Check every interview in which the comment was made and you'll find exactly the same disclaimer. In other words it wasn't a statement of SNP policy or even of the Scottish Government's position, and it wasn't intended to bind his successors as First Minister or SNP leader.  Indeed, he frequently made the point that it would be democratically impossible for him to bind his successors.

* If it had been the view of the Scottish Government and the UK Government that the 2014 referendum was supposed to settle the issue for a defined period of time, as Bruce alleges, that would have been set out in the Edinburgh Agreement between the two governments or in the legislation paving the way for the referendum.  Bruce will search in vain for any such undertaking.

* It's extremely odd for Bruce and her fellow British Nationalist commentators to suggest that the losing side in a referendum gets to determine the meaning of the result.  Even if she genuinely thinks that Alex Salmond promised that the result would settle the matter for a generation (which he didn't), politicians are generally only held to their promises if they win the vote.  Salmond instead lost the vote "decisively" (the BBC used that word so often on 19th September 2014 that it was obvious an edict had gone out from on high), so what the hell does it matter what he said during the campaign?  It's the promises made by the No side that determine the meaning of the result - and No campaigners did not promise 'once in a generation'.  They instead promised "The Vow", a near-federal system, continued membership of the European Union, HS2 in Scotland, economic stability, and no Boris Johnson in Downing Street.  That's what No voters were voting in favour of, and as all of these promises and more were broken, it's scarcely unnatural that many people who now realise they were voting on a false prospectus wish to revisit their decision, and fully expect not to be denied that inalienable democratic right.  (They certainly don't expect to be denied that right on the ludicrous basis that "the losing side in the referendum, you know, the side you voted against, made comments that we think should be interpreted as a promise that you will not be allowed to change your mind".)

* Perhaps most importantly, Salmond did not actually leave scope for people like Bruce to use their imaginations and define the highly ambiguous term "a generation" in any way that they pleased.  He was absolutely explicit by what he meant and provided examples.  Those examples were: a) the eighteen-year gap between the 1979 and 1997 devolution referendums in Scotland and Wales, b) the seventeen-year gap between the 1997 devolution referendum and the 2014 independence referendum, and c) the fifteen-year gap between the 1980 and 1995 sovereignty referendums in Quebec.

Twelve years have already passed since 2014, and crucially, John Swinney is not proposing a second indyref this year - 2028 is generally cited as his target date, by which time fourteen years will have passed.  That's almost identical to the fifteen-year gap in Quebec offered by Salmond as one of the key examples of what he meant by "a generation".

Sorry, Fiona, but your favourite little get-out clause has already passed its sell-by date.  "Once in a generation", RIP.

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Catch up with last Wednesday's 'critics' choice' blogpost: "S*** just got real, lads. The famously always wrong blogger "Stew", who said there was "zero chance, barring nuclear war or an alien invasion" of the Holyrood election producing a pro-indy majority, and who said betting on Angus Robertson to win Edinburgh Central was "free money", has now said there is "NO chance" of victory in a 2029 de facto referendum. Looks like it's ON."

*  *  *

If you enjoyed Scot Goes Pop's 2026 election coverage so much that you started to feel an inexplicable urge to buy me a hot chocolate or a ham-and-cheese toastie, donations are very welcome.  There are three main options: 
a) you can donate by card HERE 
b) you can make a direct PayPal donation to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

c) you can make a donation by bank transfer - for the necessary details, please drop me a line at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com

* Salmond always went out of his way when he made the 'once in a generation' comment to stress that he was merely expressing a "personal view".  Check every interview in which he made the comment and you'll find exactly the same disclaimer.  He made clear that he wasn't intending to bind his successors and that it was democratically impossible for him to do so.

A blogpost in which, in an act of sheer madness, I express a brief personal view on the Celtic v Hearts controversy

Given the fanaticism of Scottish football supporters, it's not really possible to gently dip one's toe in the water of the controversy over the Celtic v Hearts league decider, but nevertheless that's what I tried to do the other day on Twitter, because I felt that Ewen Murray had directly contradicted himself on the subject.  He said that he had no truck with the allegations that the game had been effectively abandoned, because it was clearly over and Celtic had won.  But he then said that the game only ended when it did because of the pitch invasion.  I didn't see how both of those claims could be true - if the referee had curtailed the game specifically for that reason, it clearly hadn't come to a proper end, and at least technically there was still an open question over whether Celtic had won.

Predictably I was then assailed by an army of tribalistic Celtic supporters who were adamant that anyone who thought that there was even an issue here was an idiot.  Their doctrine was that everything had ended completely normally - a goal was scored, celebrations followed which would not normally result in added stoppage time, and thus the small amount of remaining time was used up naturally and the referee quite properly blew the final whistle without restarting play.  One thing that has become clear from the SFA's release of more information is that those claims are completely untrue.  The referee had not deemed time to be up because of the goal celebrations and instead a sort of purgatory period followed while he tried to work out what to do next.  He only ended the game prematurely because Hearts were supposedly in agreement that he could do that in order to protect their players' safety.

The SFA are therefore hiding behind the rule that states the referee's decision is final, and also behind the consent given by Hearts.  I've no idea whether that defence would stand up in a court of law, but it certainly doesn't pass the fairness test, because Hearts should never have been put in the position of having to choose between their players' safety and getting the chance to see the match through to its proper finish.  And does absolutely anything go in terms of when and why a referee can declare a game over?  Could he stop a game after 70 minutes and award the win to the side that were ahead at that point, without any comebacks at all?  Surely that doesn't stack up.

It might well have been an absurdity to abandon the game and award Hearts a 3-0 win, but I'd have thought the fairest outcome would have been to complete the game somehow after a delay, or to order a replay.  

Incidentally, as you'd probably expect of someone with my surname, I wanted Celtic to win, so I have no axe to grind here, other than a desire for sporting fairness.

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Catch up with last Wednesday's critically-acclaimed blogpost: "S*** just got real, lads. The famously always wrong blogger "Stew", who said there was "zero chance, barring nuclear war or an alien invasion" of the Holyrood election producing a pro-indy majority, and who said betting on Angus Robertson to win Edinburgh Central was "free money", has now said there is "NO chance" of victory in a 2029 de facto referendum. Looks like it's ON."

*  *  *

If you enjoyed Scot Goes Pop's 2026 election coverage so much that you started to feel an inexplicable urge to buy me a hot chocolate or a ham-and-cheese toastie, donations are very welcome.  There are three main options: 
a) you can donate by card HERE 
b) you can make a direct PayPal donation to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

c) you can make a donation by bank transfer - for the necessary details, please drop me a line at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com

BOMBSHELL polling suggests Andy Burnham will NEVER be "King" of the UK's True North - Scotland

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Catch up with last Wednesday's critically-acclaimed blogpost: "S*** just got real, lads. The famously always wrong blogger "Stew", who said there was "zero chance, barring nuclear war or an alien invasion" of the Holyrood election producing a pro-indy majority, and who said betting on Angus Robertson to win Edinburgh Central was "free money", has now said there is "NO chance" of victory in a 2029 de facto referendum. Looks like it's ON."

*  *  *

If you enjoyed Scot Goes Pop's 2026 election coverage so much that you started to feel an inexplicable urge to buy me a hot chocolate or a ham-and-cheese toastie, donations are very welcome.  There are three main options: 
a) you can donate by card HERE 
b) you can make a direct PayPal donation to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

c) you can make a donation by bank transfer - for the necessary details, please drop me a line at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com

For one post only: a KC amnesty

Someone suggested yesterday that I should start publishing KC's comments again, because it would boost the overall posting rate by motivating others to "take him down".  Believe it or not, KC does still attempt to post here multiple times a day, even though essentially he now has an audience of just one (me).  Quite where such dedication and spare time comes from is one of the great mysteries of the modern world.

Just to demonstrate to yesterday's poster why allowing KC to post again would be a terrible idea in the long run, I'm going to offer an amnesty for this post only.  Any comments from KC on this specific post will be published, unless it's one of his occasional sweary posts or something that would cause legal problems.  Spoiler alert: any comments he makes will almost certainly be about one of the following - 

a) "confirmed sightings of Nessie"

b) "a de facto referendum would be good but I'd prefer a plebiscite election LOL"

c) "Give this independence nonsense up you fools!!!!"

d) "great to see support for independence creeping above 10%" 

e) "it must be true that independence support is above 50% because this is a GOLD STANDARD POLLSTER"

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In other news, my morning didn't go to plan (to put it mildly) so here I am sitting on a selection of trams and trolley buses in the Riverside Museum instead.

Optimism grows that John Swinney will keep his promise to give the people of Scotland a vote on independence

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Catch up with last Wednesday's critically-acclaimed blogpost: "S*** just got real, lads. The famously always wrong blogger "Stew", who said there was "zero chance, barring nuclear war or an alien invasion" of the Holyrood election producing a pro-indy majority, and who said betting on Angus Robertson to win Edinburgh Central was "free money", has now said there is "NO chance" of victory in a 2029 de facto referendum. Looks like it's ON."

*  *  *

If you enjoyed Scot Goes Pop's 2026 election coverage so much that you started to feel an inexplicable urge to buy me a hot chocolate or a ham-and-cheese toastie, donations are very welcome.  There are three main options: 
a) you can donate by card HERE 
b) you can make a direct PayPal donation to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

c) you can make a donation by bank transfer - for the necessary details, please drop me a line at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com

The Welsh language double-edged sword for the new Plaid Cymru government

There's been some social media chatter in recent days suggesting that the new Cabinet of the Plaid Cymru government in Wales is composed exclusively of fluent Welsh speakers and will be conducting its business in Welsh.  That sounded like one of those claims that might turn out to be untrue on closer inspection, so I did some digging, but I certainly can't find anything that contradicts the suggestion that all the Cabinet ministers speak Welsh.  Apparently the first public meeting was bilingual, and the indications are that future closed meetings will probably be in Welsh only.

If correct, that's plainly an astonishing moment of triumph for Welsh language and culture.  Centuries of systematic London-ordered attempts to eradicate the language and to assimilate the nation have reached their end point with a democratically elected Wales-only government conducting its business in Welsh, without any artificial steps having been required to achieve that.  However, unusual circumstances certainly have been required to get there, and I do slightly worry about the future dangers for Plaid Cymru in a country that remains overwhelmingly English speaking.

Decades ago, I heard someone say that the fact that Scottish nationalism was an English-speaking phenomenon gave the SNP a huge advantage as compared to their Welsh sister party.  I initially thought that was a very odd thing to say, but when I thought about it for five minutes I realised it was obviously true, because the SNP don't have to get over the hurdle that Plaid historically have faced of trying to convince the majority population that they are not a party that belongs only to the minority language group.  Plaid have finally cleared that hurdle by becoming seen as the only viable progressive alternative to Reform, but the concern might be that once their government loses some of its early popularity, people might revert to thinking that Plaid is not, after all, for "people like us" and Labour might start to gain some attraction again.  

Hopefully Plaid have some sort of strategy in place to counter any damaging signals that are being inadvertently sent out.  They could probably do with explaining whether it is feasible for a monolingual English speaker to become a senior Plaid Cymru minister in the future without first having to learn Welsh fluently as a sort of 'entrance exam', and what the practical arrangements would be if that happens.  

We talk about culture wars in Scotland, but the straight choice between Plaid and Reform that Wales has just made was absolutely monumental in cultural terms.  Reform would have been happy enough to eradicate the Welsh language, while Plaid conducts government business through it.

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Catch up with Wednesday night's blogpost: "S*** just got real, lads. The famously always wrong blogger "Stew", who said there was "zero chance, barring nuclear war or an alien invasion" of the Holyrood election producing a pro-indy majority, and who said betting on Angus Robertson to win Edinburgh Central was "free money", has now said there is "NO chance" of victory in a 2029 de facto referendum. Looks like it's ON."

*  *  *

If you enjoyed Scot Goes Pop's 2026 election coverage so much that you started to feel an inexplicable urge to buy me a hot chocolate or a ham-and-cheese toastie, donations are very welcome.  There are three main options: 
a) you can donate by card HERE 
b) you can make a direct PayPal donation to my PayPal email address, which is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

c) you can make a donation by bank transfer - for the necessary details, please drop me a line at my contact email address, which is: icehouse.250@gmail.com