New low for BBC as they abuse Scottish World Cup coverage as a licence fee enforcement opportunity

An audio podcast version of the above video can be heard HERE, and will soon be available on Apple Podcasts HERE.

Other recent videos: 

New low for BBC as they abuse Scottish World Cup coverage as a licence fee enforcement opportunity

Of course Good Morning Britain should apologise for its anti-Scottish chauvinism - but it won't

Sparkling YouGov subsample puts spring in SNP's step as crucial by-elections approach

BOMBSHELL as French Government reveals there was Israeli interference in the Scottish election

An audio podcast version of the above video can be heard HERE, and will soon be available on Apple Podcasts HERE.

Other recent videos: 

Of course Good Morning Britain should apologise for its anti-Scottish chauvinism - but it won't

Sparkling YouGov subsample puts spring in SNP's step as crucial by-elections approach

BIG BOOST for independence support in pre-election YouGov poll that no-one seemed to notice

If you'd like to help support my YouTube channel, I've set up a new Ko-Fi page.

Of course Good Morning Britain should apologise for its anti-Scottish chauvinism - but it won't

An audio podcast version of the above video can be heard HERE, and will soon be available on Apple Podcasts HERE.

Other recent videos: 

Sparkling YouGov subsample puts spring in SNP's step as crucial by-elections approach

BIG BOOST for independence support in pre-election YouGov poll that no-one seemed to notice

If this Makerfield by-election poll is accurate, it's the end of the road for Keir Starmer as PM

If you'd like to help support my YouTube channel, I've set up a new Ko-Fi page.

Sparkling YouGov subsample puts spring in SNP's step as crucial by-elections approach

An audio podcast version of the above video can be heard HERE, and will soon be available on Apple Podcasts HERE.

Other recent videos: 

BIG BOOST for independence support in pre-election YouGov poll that no-one seemed to notice

If this Makerfield by-election poll is accurate, it's the end of the road for Keir Starmer as PM

RUPERT LOWE could be the midwife of Scottish independence, just as Mrs Thatcher was for devolution

If you'd like to help support my YouTube channel, I've set up a new Ko-Fi page.

The Scot Goes Popcast is now available on Apple Podcasts

I hope this will be of some use to someone, because it's taken me days of torture to get to this point.  Apple may be one of the largest companies in the world, but its website is a baffling, bug-ridden mess.  Five long years after my first failed attempt, I finally seem to have navigated all of the exotic obstacles and got the Scot Goes Popcast onto Apple Podcasts, and you can find it HERE.  And before anyone asks, it's already on Spotify and has been since 2021.  It suddenly seems to be on quite a few other podcast platforms as well, although in most cases I'm not entirely sure that was my own doing.

Just to be clear about what the Popcast actually is, it's basically audio versions of some of my YouTube videos from the last year or so (not all of them), plus the back catalogue from 2021-22 when I was making a conventional podcast intended primarily for audio, although I later stuck the majority of the episodes on YouTube anyway.  In most of those, I was interviewing guests, including the likes of Tim Rideout, Alex Salmond and Len Pennie.  

Bear in mind that in contrast to the YouTube videos, I will not be receiving any passive advertising revenues from the audio-only uploads, so putting the Popcast on Apple could in a sense end up being harmful if it diverts any traffic away from my YouTube channel.  So if you'd like to help keep the content I produce sustainable, just a reminder that I now have a Ko-Fi page, where you can either set up a small recurring monthly subscription, or make a one-off donation.  

Thank you to the several people who urged me to keep trying with Apple - it would have been annoying to be defeated by the glitches.

BIG BOOST for independence support in pre-election YouGov poll that no-one seemed to notice

An audio podcast version of the above video can be heard HERE. 

Other recent videos: 

If this Makerfield by-election poll is accurate, it's the end of the road for Keir Starmer as PM

RUPERT LOWE could be the midwife of Scottish independence, just as Mrs Thatcher was for devolution

ONE-FIFTH of Reform UK voters in Scotland would vote Yes to independence, says new Norstat poll

If you'd like to help support my YouTube channel, I've set up a new Ko-Fi page.

An examination of the latest Hullaba-Stew

Never one to resist an exercise in utter futility, the controversial Somerset-based "Stew" blogger has attempted to resuscitate a correspondence with the Chief Constable and the Crown Office that has clearly already been closed.  What is perhaps more disturbing is that he has issued a fairly clear threat to get his readers and their money directly involved in the futility by crowdfunding a judicial review bid - which would likely be a repeat of the "Wings Of Justice" calamity when Stew's readers were coaxed into chucking eye-watering amounts of cash down a bottomless pit in pursuit of a hopeless vanity-driven defamation case against Kezia Dugdale.  That said, it was for the most part good independence supporters who had their money wasted on the Dugdale case, whereas the dwindling ranks of Stew Devotees that remain now are far more likely to be neo-unionists and soft fascists, so perhaps it won't be quite so harmful this time if tens of thousands of pounds are sucked into the black hole of Loyalty To The Great One.

You don't actually need to be any sort of legal expert to understand why Stew is completely wasting his time here - just elementary logic and basic common sense is enough to tell you that he's arguing on an obviously false premise.  He claims that it is "chronologically impossible" for the police to have already investigated the implications of John Swinney's recent statement about how the ringfenced indyref funds were spent, because Operation Branchform concluded before that statement was made.  But here's the thing - it's absolutely *not* "chronologically impossible", indeed it's overwhelmingly likely, that either Mr Swinney or others of seniority within the SNP will have earlier made an identical statement in private to the police.  Of course the police will have asked where the money went, and of course that question will have been answered.  If that answer was investigated to the police's satisfaction, there plainly doesn't need to be a repeat of the investigation simply because Mr Swinney has repeated the answer in public.

Why would the police have been satisfied with the answer?  Probably because it touches on such a grey area.  If you fundraise for an independence referendum, is it reasonable to spend some of that money by doing preliminary/preparatory campaigning for independence years in advance of any referendum being called?  It might well be, but that's in the eye of the beholder.  It's not clear-cut.  The question the police may have been asking themselves is whether a court could be sure that any reasonable person would definitely take the opposite view, and of course that certainty was never going to be there.

For what it's worth, my own personal view is that Mr Swinney would have been better advised to answer the question about the funds by saying that all of the relevant decisions were made by the previous leadership and that it wasn't for him to second-guess them - all he could answer to was the current financial situation and how funds would be spent from now on.  He didn't need to assume responsibility for decisions he didn't actually take - but even having done that, I don't think it's going to do much long-term harm to either himself or the SNP, because it looks increasingly unlikely that any legal complications will occur.

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Catch up with my recent YouTube videos: 

If this Makerfield by-election poll is accurate, it's the end of the road for Keir Starmer as PM

RUPERT LOWE could be the midwife of Scottish independence, just as Mrs Thatcher was for devolution

ONE-FIFTH of Reform UK voters in Scotland would vote Yes to independence, says new Norstat poll

ASTOUNDING poll surge for SNP: how Stew's "Accidental Clouseau" moment may have SAVED party he hates

If you'd like to help support my YouTube channel or this blog, I've set up a new Ko-Fi page.

Dark times for Stew as the full realisation dawns of just how *much* he's accidentally helped the SNP - so should the rest of us ease his pain by saying "thank you" with a Stew Statue?

Please go gently with the controversial Somerset-based "Stew" blogger if you run into him, things seem to have really got on top of him over the last 36 hours and he's now rather overcome with emotion.  If he calls you a **** (again), don't take it too much to heart, it's just the hurt and the distress speaking.  

It all started yesterday afternoon when he announced on social media that he was going to break a "major story" on Wings at 6pm.  I actually took a look at the appointed hour, and I was naturally expecting something so earth-shattering that it would be on a par with Watergate, but instead it just turned out to be a preposterous letter Stew himself had written to the Chief Constable and the Crown Office demanding that a criminal investigation be launched into the SNP's use of the ring-fenced indyref funds.  He delusionally seemed to believe that would be more than enough to produce the desired effect.  But, alas, with timing worthy of Frank Spencer, Stew published the letter just minutes after the news broke that the police had already decided that no new investigation would take place following a similar complaint from Sean Clerkin.  So it was already obvious that Stew's own demands were going to receive short shrift.

Today, Stew tried to preempt the setback he knew was coming by switching to full-on damage limitation mode, but I haven't seen him jump the shark to quite the same extent since the celebrated day on which he attempted to talk his way out of the humiliation of Reform UK mocking him for his loopy claim that they would grant Scotland an independence referendum.  His tactic this time was to try to reframe failure as success by setting up a fatuous "heads I win, tails you lose" false choice: either a) the police and the Crown Office would give in to his demands (he already knew that wasn't a runner), or b) he would somehow have proof that Scotland is a "banana republic".  Hmmm.  I suspect there are a few possibilities in between those two extremes that Stew hasn't considered, but that less excitable souls may wish to.

Only a few hours later, Stew's mini-tragedy was already complete - he had received brusque rejection letters from both the police and the Crown Office, and it has to be said that the latter weren't bothering to even try to sound polite about the whole thing.  The dismissive tone was of the "go away you utterly ridiculous man" variety.

Stew has been prancing around over the last ten days as if a reluctant world has been left with no choice but to belatedly acknowledge his genius and as if he can consequently now expect to be on the shortlist for a Pulitzer or something.  But it's all a rather desperate performance, because deep down he knows perfectly well that the tide has come in on him and left him stranded.  It's quite true that he played a role in bringing Peter Murrell's criminal behaviour to light, but that wasn't his objective at all, and he would in fact have been utterly horrified if he'd known that all he was going to achieve was to *save* the SNP from a rogue employee who otherwise might well have gone on to embezzle yet more huge sums from them and could eventually have left them completely ruined financially. Stew didn't even *suspect* that the SNP were the victims of an ongoing major crime - his interest was instead in the theory that the SNP's own collective use of the indyref fund money for general expenses constituted some sort of criminal act.  That was the only court case he wanted, and his objective was to see the SNP destroyed by it.  He's comprehensively failed on both counts.  Stew and certain others were doubtless sincere in their belief that what occurred with the ringfenced fund falls under the scope of criminal law, but the brutal truth is that it wasn't for them to interpret the law - and those that do have that task have now reached a very clear decision.  The SNP are certainly going through a deeply uncomfortable period, but that's only temporary and they can now rebuild and look to a brighter future, thanks in part to Stew doing his "Accidental Clouseau" and unmasking the embezzler before irreparable damage was done.

Try as we might, it really is going to be hard to dislike Stew if he keeps on unintentionally helping us quite as spectacularly as this.   He may feel like a broken man tonight, but frankly I think the rest of us should be considering a whipround to fund some kind of statue.

I'm not a legal expert, so I don't know what the chances of the SNP actually receiving this money are, but if they do get it, that will rather neatly answer the vexatious question being asked by the usual suspects: "how would they afford an independence referendum campaign now?" https://t.co/kWdT73sOtv

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) June 5, 2026

*  *  *

Catch up with my recent YouTube videos: 

If this Makerfield by-election poll is accurate, it's the end of the road for Keir Starmer as PM

RUPERT LOWE could be the midwife of Scottish independence, just as Mrs Thatcher was for devolution

ONE-FIFTH of Reform UK voters in Scotland would vote Yes to independence, says new Norstat poll

ASTOUNDING poll surge for SNP: how Stew's "Accidental Clouseau" moment may have SAVED party he hates

If you'd like to help support my YouTube channel or this blog, I've set up a new Ko-Fi page.

If this Makerfield by-election poll is accurate, it's the end of the road for Keir Starmer as Prime Minister

An audio podcast version of the above video can be heard HERE. 

Other recent videos: 

RUPERT LOWE could be the midwife of Scottish independence, just as Mrs Thatcher was for devolution

ONE-FIFTH of Reform UK voters in Scotland would vote Yes to independence, says new Norstat poll

ASTOUNDING poll surge for SNP: how Stew's "Accidental Clouseau" moment may have SAVED party he hates

If you'd like to help support my YouTube channel, I've set up a new Ko-Fi page.

RUPERT LOWE, of all people, could be the unintentional midwife of Scottish independence, just as Mrs Thatcher was the midwife of devolution

An audio podcast version of the above video can be heard HERE. 

Other recent videos: 

ONE-FIFTH of Reform UK voters in Scotland would vote Yes to independence, says new Norstat poll

ASTOUNDING poll surge for SNP: how Stew's "Accidental Clouseau" moment may have SAVED party he hates

More polling reassurance for SNP as by-elections approach, while Greens reclaim second place GB-wide

If you'd like to help support my YouTube channel, I've set up a new Ko-Fi page.