SCOT GOES POP / PANELBASE POLL: An overwhelming majority of the Scottish public demand the devolution of broadcasting. And a stark message to the Royal Family - STOP INTERFERING in the independence debate...

You might remember that after the UK's latest calamity at the Eurovision Song Contest in May, I made two attempts to get a petition started on the UK Parliament website calling for Scotland to be given its own Eurovision entry with a view to restoring some national dignity.  Both attempts were rejected due to supposed technicalities (none of which actually made any sense), so I got around the problem by thinking much bigger, and submitting a petition calling for law-making powers over broadcasting to be devolved to the Scottish Parliament, with a Scottish Eurovision entry listed as one of the many benefits.  It's actually been a reasonably successful petition, attracting well over 2000 signatures, but perhaps inevitably it ran out of steam after a while. With only a few weeks left to go it's unlikely to reach the 10,000 signatures required to trigger a response from the UK Government, and is extremely unlikely to reach the 100,000 required to trigger a debate at Westminster.  (Although by all means prove me wrong - here's the link if you haven't signed yet.)

But am I deterred?  Pah.  Not a bit of it.  Here's what is probably a much more effective way of demonstrating how the people of Scotland feel about broadcasting - a question in our new Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll.  

Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll (a representative sample of 1001 over-16s in Scotland was interviewed by Panelbase between 20th and 26th October 2021)

Which parliament do you think should have law-making powers over Scottish broadcasting? 

The UK Parliament: 22% 

The Scottish Parliament: 65% 

With Don't Knows excluded - 

The UK Parliament: 25% 

The Scottish Parliament: 75% 

I have to say I think that's an absolutely sensational result.  I anticipated that there would be a majority for the Scottish Parliament to have control over broadcasting, but I thought it would be a fairly tight result along traditional Yes/No lines.  Instead, there is actually a plurality for Holyrood control among those who voted No in 2014, albeit by the narrow margin of 46% to 39%.  (Needless to say, Yes voters plump for Holyrood by the mammoth margin of 89% to 6%.)  What's more, 60% of both Labour and Liberal Democrat voters take the same view, along with a very healthy 30% of Tory voters.

This is, in fact, not really about independence or the independence movement - there is a genuine and overwhelming pan-Scotland demand for Home Rule of the Airwaves, encompassing unionists and Yes supporters alike.  This revelation will be something of a shock to anti-independence campaigners, who probably took it as read that Scots, or at the very least unionist Scots, would regard broadcasting and the BBC as one of the unifying points of Britishness that should 'obviously' remain subject to Westminster control.  

The reserving of broadcasting to Westminster is essentially about keeping a tight grip, and preventing Scotland from collectively thinking too much for itself.  It's one thing if that can be justified due to genuine support for the current set-up from the Scottish people. But with voters instead clearly eager for change, it starts to look much more like a form of colonialism.

It's also worth noting that the question asked in the poll was so simple and straightforward that I don't see how anyone can really call into question the credibility of the results.

Now let's turn to the Royal Family, a group of saintly individuals who are martyrs to centuries of tradition and to the sacred principles of constitutional monarchy, which require absolute neutrality on all matters of political controversy.  Except, of course, when there are uppity Jocks who need to be put in their place, in which case absolutely anything goes.  It was really striking that when Buckingham Palace reacted with fury after David Cameron let it be known that he'd asked the Queen to intervene in the 2014 indyref, they weren't angry because his claim wasn't true.  It was true.  They weren't embarrassed because they realised on reflection that it was extremely foolish for the Queen to betray her constitutional duties.  She had taken that course of action knowingly and would clearly do so again.  No, they were simply upset that they had been found out, and that half the population of Scotland were suddenly aware that their own Head of State was hostile towards them and their aspirations.

There was very little point in using the poll to ask people whether the Royal Family should stay out of politics, because the royals clearly take the view that they can meddle and try to influence public opinion to their hearts' content, and that as long as they keep up a public charade of neutrality they're still entitled to claim with a straight face to be scrupulously apolitical.  So instead I took a different tack and asked about whether it's all right for the royals to interfere indirectly. 

The former Prime Minister David Cameron revealed in a TV interview that he asked the Queen to intervene in the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 by "raising an eyebrow". After his request, the Queen was shown on news bulletins telling a member of the public that voters in the referendum should "think very carefully about the future". Which of the following statements is closest to your view? 

It is acceptable for the Royal Family to take sides in the Scottish independence debate, as long as they superficially appear to be remaining neutral: 29% 

It is not enough for the Royal Family to superficially appear to remain neutral - they have a duty not to take sides in the Scottish independence debate in any way: 52%

With Don't Knows excluded - 

It is acceptable for the Royal Family to take sides in the Scottish independence debate, as long as they superficially appear to be remaining neutral: 36% 

It is not enough for the Royal Family to superficially appear to remain neutral - they have a duty not to take sides in the Scottish independence debate in any way: 64%

It's a rather irritating and over-used expression, but it's appropriate in this case: "we see you". People have wised up to what the royals are doing, they know it's inappropriate and they want it to stop. Even from the point of view of sheer self-interest, it would actually make sense for the royals to end their meddling, because the prospect of independence is not necessarily an existential crisis for them - it's entirely conceivable that an indy Scotland would choose to retain the monarchy.  But that's much less likely to happen if 50% of voters come to regard the Queen, entirely accurately, as a political opponent.

In spite of the decisiveness of the poll result, there is one rather depressing detail - by a margin of 45% to 36%, people who voted No in 2014 think it's perfectly OK for the royals to interfere in the referendum debate, as long as they only do so with a nod and a wink. Which ironically means that those who believe in Britain the most are also the most cynically dismissive of British constitutional norms.

SCOT GOES POP POLLING FUNDRAISER: I hope you'll bear with me as I continue to heavily promote the new fundraiser, but as I've explained a few times, the crowdfunding for this current poll did not meet the full amount required, and I'm having to cover the shortfall with my own money.  So running any future Scot Goes Pop polling - on independence or other Scottish political issues - will be pretty much impossible unless we reach the £6500 target figure, or at least get very close to it.  At present we're more than 40% of the way towards the target, so a million thanks to everyone who has made donations so far.  I know times are really tough at the moment, but as I noted the other day, thousands of people read Scot Goes Pop every week, and if just 10% of those people were to donate just £10, the target figure would be reached straight away.  Of course some people can't donate for very good reasons, but one really helpful thing you can do is to share the fundraiser page and spread the word with your friends and family.

If you'd like to donate, please click HERE, or to read more about why it's so important for the pro-independence movement to occasionally crowdfund our own polls, click HERE.

VIDEO PREVIEW of Friday night's questions in the Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll

FUNDRAISER: If you think it's a good thing that not all public opinion polls are commissioned by anti-independence clients, please consider donating to the new Scot Goes Pop polling fundraiser - that will ensure that I'm not out of pocket for running this new poll, and will also allow me to commission another poll over the coming months.  To donate, please click HERE, or to read about why it's so important for the pro-independence movement to occasionally crowdfund our own polls, click HERE.

EXCLUSIVE SCOT GOES POP / PANELBASE POLL: Just 20% of people in Scotland, and only 29% of SNP voters, support gender self-ID

A few months ago, there was an opinion poll in the Republic of Ireland - a country that introduced gender self-identification six years ago - that provided comprehensive data about how people feel towards the change in the law and its consequences.  I was asked at the time whether I would consider commissioning a similar poll in Scotland, and although it's very different from the sort of polls I've taken on in the past, I started thinking it might not be a bad idea.  I've been frustrated in the past by the obvious skew in the polling questions that have been asked on the subject of reform of the Gender Recognition Act (very different skews depending on who was asking the questions), and I could see a way in which a more authoritative and credible poll, like the one in Ireland, could help to inform the debate going forward.  This issue has really opened up a schism in the independence movement, just as it has in many other progressive movements across the western world.  Although the two sides are not going to suddenly start agreeing with each other just because they know what the public think, a small step towards reaching a resolution would be to at least share a common understanding of what public opinion actually is, rather than to have two competing conceptions of "what the voters want" that are completely alien from each other.

The Scottish Government have repeatedly stressed that gender self-identification would not be a frivolous process - even though people would be making the decision for themselves without the involvement of medical gatekeepers, they would still be expected to make a serious, considered decision that will last for a lifetime.  There's no intention to open the floodgates to people making a mockery of the process by identifying as women on Tuesday, as men on Wednesday, and as women again on Thursday.  It's very important, therefore, that any poll question about self-ID reflects the serious nature of the government's proposal and does not caricature it in any way.  That's what I've tried to achieve with the wording of the key question on the principle of gender self-ID, and indeed after discussions with Panelbase my original wording was tweaked further to ensure maximum accuracy.

Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll (a representative sample of 1001 over-16s in Scotland was interviewed by Panelbase between 20th and 26th October 2021)

Gender dysphoria is a condition where a person feels a mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity. For example, this may mean that a biologically male individual feels strongly that they are female, or a biologically female individual feels strongly that they are male.  At present, most people who wish to legally change the sex or gender recorded on their birth certificate must first receive a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria, but it is not necessary for them to have undergone gender reassignment surgery.  The Scottish Government is committed to changing the law in Scotland within the next year to allow people to legally change their gender without a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria, provided they make a solemn declaration that they are living in their new gender and will continue to do so.   

In your opinion, who should be eligible to legally change the sex or gender recorded on their birth certificate?

Anyone who makes a solemn declaration that they are living in their new gender: 20%

Only people who have been medically diagnosed with gender dysphoria: 18%

Only people who have undergone gender reassignment surgery: 21%

No-one: 19%

Don't Know / Prefer not to answer: 22%

With a four-option question format, there was a theoretical chance that the order in which the options were presented to respondents could make a difference to the outcome, so to be on the safe side Panelbase used the above order for half of the sample, and the reverse order for the other half.  In the end there was only a small difference between the results in the two halves.

So in spite of the fact that the government's proposal has been fairly and accurately presented to respondents, it appears that only around one-fifth of the public actually support it - or one-quarter if Don't Knows are excluded. 58% of respondents, or around three-quarters after Don't Knows are stripped out, chose an option that precludes the possibility of self-ID.  

It's worth pointing out that even the current system governing legal changes of gender is slightly more radical than the centre of gravity in public opinion.  A total of 40% of respondents either think no-one should be allowed to legally change their gender, or that surgery should be a precondition.  That compares to a total of 38% who either support self-ID or think people who have a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria (ie. who may not necessarily have had surgery) should be eligible for a legal gender change.

There aren't really any major differences between male and female respondents on this question.  The closest thing there is to a significant difference is that only 17% of women believe that no-one should be able to legally change their gender, compared to 22% of men.  Unsurprisingly, however, there is a considerable generation gap, with 34% of under-35s supporting self-ID, compared to only 12% of over-55s.  Nevertheless, there is only minority backing for self-ID across all age groups.

Which party you vote for is strongly correlated with views on the GRA - much bigger minorities of SNP and Labour voters support self-ID (29% and 25% respectively) than is the case among Conservative and Liberal Democrat voters (7% and 4%). I must say I'm a bit stunned by the result among the Lib Dems, who you'd expect to be extremely liberal on social issues.  Maybe they're all Tories who voted tactically for Jo Swinson or Christine Jardine, or maybe the numbers are slightly suspect due to the fact that the subsample of Lib Dem voters is relatively small.  Once again, though, the bottom line is that only a minority of voters for each party support the proposed reform of the GRA.

Although the strong opposition to self-ID discovered by this poll is in line with the majority of polls that have been conducted in the past, it's not in line with all of them, and given the importance of this subject to a large number of people, it's incumbent on all of us to seriously consider the reasons for any contradiction.  In particular, there was a Savanta ComRes poll earlier this year which gave great heart to the proponents of change, because it appeared to show a plurality in favour of the principle of self-ID.  The reasons for the difference between the results of that poll and the new Panelbase poll are almost certainly bound up in the format and wording of the questions - it's unlikely that public opinion has changed so radically in the last few months.  The ComRes question arguably had quite a leading wording, because it downplayed the significance of self-ID by portraying it as merely a "streamlining" of existing procedures to make them less expensive, bureaucratic and intrusive for trans people.  There was a nod to opposition to change based on fears about women-only spaces, but the question was strangely vague about what those fears were.  It is, I would suggest, exceptionally difficult for poll respondents to say they oppose a change that they have just been informed is minor and intended to make people's lives easier.  For that reason, I'm confident that the Panelbase results are more credible and should be taken more seriously than the ComRes results.

The other big difference between the two polls is the four-option format of the Panelbase poll.  Although the ComRes poll wasn't quite binary choice, it did ask simply about support or opposition to self-ID, rather than offering other options as alternatives.  Some will perhaps argue that the Panelbase poll would have been improved if self-ID hadn't been the most radical option out of four - but that would have meant having an additional option of free-for-all self-ID without a solemn declaration, which would in my view have trivialised and distorted the position of self-ID proponents.

As I stated at the outset, I don't expect the Scottish Government to automatically change course because the public oppose their plans.  If you believe in something, there's a case to be made for leading public opinion rather than slavishly following it.  But they do need to be honest with themselves and with others that they are, as of this moment, running well ahead of where the public are ready to go, rather than persisting with the fiction that there is a huge public clamour for GRA reform.  This poll shows that there isn't even a clamour among the SNP's own voters.

UPDATE: Just by complete coincidence, I saw the Liberal Democrat blogger Caron Lindsay on Twitter this morning 'reminding' people that the "overwhelming majority of women" support self-ID.  Just for absolute clarity, this poll shows that 21% of women support self-ID, 56% of women favour the options that exclude self-ID, and the remainder are undecided or prefer not to answer.  As stated above, among Liberal Democrat voters, just 4% support self-ID, and 61% back one of the other options.

SCOT GOES POP POLLING FUNDRAISER: I hope you'll bear with me as I continue to heavily promote the new fundraiser, but as I've explained a few times, the crowdfunding for this current poll did not meet the full amount required, and I'm having to cover the shortfall with my own money.  So running any future Scot Goes Pop polling - on independence or other Scottish political issues - will be pretty much impossible unless we reach the £6500 target figure, or at least get very close to it.  At present we're around 40% of the way towards the target, so a million thanks to everyone who has made donations so far.  I know times are really tough at the moment, but as I noted the other day, thousands of people read Scot Goes Pop every week, and if just 10% of those people were to donate just £10, the target figure would be reached straight away.  Of course some people can't donate for very good reasons, but one really helpful thing you can do is to share the fundraiser page and spread the word with your friends and family.

If you'd like to donate, please click HERE, or to read more about why it's so important for the pro-independence movement to occasionally crowdfund our own polls, click HERE.

VIDEO PREVIEW of new Scot Goes Pop polling on GRA reform: do the people of Scotland support gender self-ID?

FUNDRAISER: If you think it's a good thing that not all public opinion polls are commissioned by anti-independence clients, please consider donating to the new Scot Goes Pop polling fundraiser - that will ensure that I'm not out of pocket for running this new poll, and will also allow me to commission another poll over the coming months.  To donate, please click HERE, or to read about why it's so important for the pro-independence movement to occasionally crowdfund our own polls, click HERE.

EXCLUSIVE SCOT GOES POP / PANELBASE POLL: The three pro-independence parties are on course to take 51% of the local election vote between them, with the SNP set for a record-breaking landslide

Earlier this evening I received the results of the new crowdfunded Scot Goes Pop poll, which has once again been conducted by Panelbase, a firm which is a member of (and follows the rules of) the British Polling Council.  As time is a bit short to get very much out tonight, I'm just going to give you a little appetiser for now, and I thought I'd begin with first preference voting intentions for next year's local council elections.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I'm aware this is the first proper voting intention poll for that set of elections from any polling firm, which makes the results particularly interesting.

Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll (a representative sample of 1001 over-16s in Scotland was interviewed by Panelbase between 20th and 26th October 2021)

Scottish local council elections first preference voting intentions:

SNP 45%

Conservatives 22%

Labour 21%

Liberal Democrats 6%

Greens 4%

Alba 2%

Based on what has happened in previous years, the SNP's high vote share should perhaps be treated with caution - they often tend to do a bit less well than expected in local elections.  Presumably that's partly because of the widespread intervention of independent candidates, and partly because of local factors, including the personal popularity of individual Tory and Labour councillors.  I seem to recall John Curtice confidently predicting, at a very late stage, that the SNP would take around 40% of the vote in the 2017 local elections, which he thought would be a somewhat underwhelming result.  In fact they only took 32%, which was unchanged from five years previously.  So, yes, if this new poll can be taken at face value, the SNP would be making an enormous 13% jump, which would undoubtedly win them a huge number of new councillors, and would probably see them seize outright majority control of certain councils - in spite of the STV voting system making that incredibly hard to achieve.

The Tories' share of the vote is three points down on what they achieved in 2017, while Labour are a trivial one point up, and the Lib Dems an equally trivial one point down.  The health warning that has to be put on the Greens' 4% share is that they traditionally haven't stood in all that many wards, so a significant proportion of the electorate may not even have the chance to vote for them.

As for Alba's 2% showing, that can be viewed in a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty sort of way. (Of course I have to declare a special interest at this point, because I'm an Alba member and was recently elected to the party's National Executive Committee.) As a completely 'new entry' Alba may be satisfied that they're actually registering support and are not all that far behind longer established parties like the Greens and the Lib Dems.  On 2% there clearly needs to be a degree of realism about their prospects next May, but they start with the big advantage of already having a significant number of incumbent councillors.  Capitalising on those people's personal vote and getting some or all of them re-elected is far from an impossible goal, even on a relatively modest share of the national vote.  And if that's achieved, priceless electoral credibility will follow.

It's worth noting, incidentally, that the three pro-independence parties in combination have 51% of the popular vote.

The poll also asked a second voting intention question about the local elections.  Because a preferential voting system will be used, in which voters can rank as many or as few candidates as they like, the poll asked respondents to list all of the parties they will be giving a preference to.  The results on that question will be of particular interest to Alba, who have never stood in an STV election before, and therefore have no idea how many transfers they can expect from other pro-indy parties.  I'll be releasing those results in a future blogpost.

FUNDRAISER: If you think it's a good thing that not all public opinion polls are commissioned by anti-independence clients, please consider donating to the new Scot Goes Pop polling fundraiser - that will ensure that I'm not out of pocket for running this new poll, and will also allow me to commission another poll over the coming months.  To donate, please click HERE, or to read about why it's so important for the pro-independence movement to occasionally crowdfund our own polls, click HERE.

CROWDFUNDER: Scot Goes Pop independence polling 2021-22

Click here to go straight to the fundraising page.

So as I said in my post earlier today, I think the time has now come to launch the new Scot Goes Pop fundraiser with a bit more 'fanfare' - because almost a week after I set it up, it's so far only reached around 18% of its target figure.  And when a crowdfunder is intended for the commissioning of opinion polls, the absolute worst thing of all to do is to leave it half-finished.  However, if you're one of the several dozen people who have already donated, please accept my grateful thanks and ignore the rest of this post!

The great news is that I'll be releasing the first results from the new Scot Goes Pop poll within the next two or three days, and it may well be as soon as tomorrow (Tuesday). I've already seen some of the provisional results and they look absolutely fascinating - there are four different sets of voting intention numbers, a few topical questions of interest to the whole independence movement, and a significant number of questions about GRA reform - which seek to authoritatively establish once and for all where the public stand on this thorniest of issues, and hopefully point the way towards a much-needed resolution.  But as I explained in a recent blogpost, the fundraising for the poll back in the summer turned into a bit of a nightmare - for complicated reasons I was going back and forth between trying to raise funds for two different polls, and I was having to keep the funds separate.  Neither set of funds really reached a sufficient level, although one came much closer than the other.  To cut a very long story short, I eventually decided to break the logjam by commissioning the first poll and covering the shortfall with my own money.

However, I'd obviously prefer to only lose that money temporarily, and more importantly I also need to complete the funding for the second poll - which, if we raise enough, will be a full-scale poll about independence and related matters, to be conducted at the optimum time for maximum impact at some point over the coming weeks or months.

Why is it so important to crowdfund our own polls now and again? The reality is that if we don't, there will still be polls published and they'll still be very influential - but all of the questions will be framed by people who are hostile to independence.  How frequently do you read it being stated as a fact that there is no public appetite for an independence referendum? Very often that's simply because of the way the poll question was worded, or because of the menu of options that was provided to respondents.  It's extremely valuable if, at least occasionally, the questions are asked from a slightly different angle, offering us an insight into the other side of the coin as far as public opinion is concerned.

Polls are extremely expensive, but I do believe that the ones commissioned by Scot Goes Pop so far have proved to be excellent value for money.  They've established again and again that there is majority support for pursuing a 'Plan B' on an independence mandate if the UK government remains intransigent.  They've shown that the public think that Brexit is sufficient justification to revisit the issue of independence.  They've demonstrated that the Scottish Government's handling of the pandemic has increased public confidence that an independent Scotland would be better governed than the United Kingdom. They've revealed that Scotland wants its own Olympic team - something that will have been a shock to Brit Nats who believe that "Team GB" is wildly popular throughout Our Precious Union.  And of course on the majority of occasions they've also shown majority support for independence itself.

But at the end of the day, I can only continue commissioning polls if the funding is there in full.  So if you'd like to ensure a future for polling commissioned by pro-independence clients, please do consider making a donation, whether large or small.  I know times are very tough, but thousands of people read Scot Goes Pop every week, and if just 10% of them were to donate just £10 each, the target figure would be reached straight away and the next poll would be guaranteed.

Of course not everyone will be able to donate, for very good reasons, but there's another really important thing you can do - which is to share the fundraiser page on social media and spread the word to your family and friends.  Hopefully as I release the results from the new poll over the coming days, it will be a very practical demonstration of the value and benefits of crowdfunding our own polling.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and thank you for your continued support.

Click here if you'd like to donate.

For anyone who prefers an alternative to GoFundMe, my Paypal email address is:

jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

VIDEO PREVIEW: First results from exclusive Scot Goes Pop opinion poll incoming TONIGHT

FUNDRAISER: If you think it's a good thing that not all public opinion polls are commissioned by anti-independence clients, please consider donating to the new Scot Goes Pop polling fundraiser - that will ensure that I'm not out of pocket for running this poll, and will also allow me to commission another poll over the coming months.  To donate, please click HERE, or to read about why it's so important for the pro-independence movement to occasionally crowdfund our own polls, click HERE.

YouGov average suggests SNP would make big gains - and win 93% of Scottish seats - in a new Westminster election

Click here for the Scot Goes Pop polling fundraiser (17% funded as of 2.30pm on Monday) - see bottom of blogpost for more details...

We're getting closer to the publication of the new full-scale Scot Goes Pop poll - I was given advance sight of some preliminary numbers this morning, and it's possible I may be able to release the first set of results tomorrow or Wednesday.  However, I haven't seen the voting intention numbers yet, which will be interesting, because unless another poll appears over the next 24-48 hours, it'll be the first full-scale Scottish voting intention poll for a good few weeks.  To whet your appetite, here is the next best thing - an average of the Scottish subsamples from the last four GB-wide YouGov polls.  YouGov, unlike other firms, appear to structure and weight their Scottish subsamples separately, so an average over time should produce figures at least in the same ball-park as a full-scale Scottish poll.

SNP 47.0%

Conservatives 22.8%

Labour 17.5%

Liberal Democrats 6.3%

Greens 4.3%

Seats projection (based on proposed new boundaries with a reduced number of Scottish seats): SNP 53 (+5), Conservatives 3 (-3), Labour 1 (-), Liberal Democrats 0 (-4)

So this is basically good news - the SNP's lead isn't quite as mind-bogglingly massive as it's been at certain times during the pandemic, but nevertheless there still appears to have been a clear swing from Tory to SNP since the December 2019 general election.  Although the effect on seats seems exaggerated given that the swing is a relatively modest 2%, it's worth noting that the new constituency map is actually working against the SNP on these numbers - based on the current boundaries they'd be grabbing an additional two seats, and would be essentially back to where they were in the 2015 super-landslide.

Labour, meanwhile, are actually slightly down on their historic low under Jeremy Corbyn at the 2019 election.  Luckily for us, they'll remain firmly in denial about their predicament and will continue to tell themselves that it's the voters who need to change, not Labour.

Scot Goes Pop polling fundraiser update (as of 2.30pm on Monday): £1086 raised out of £6500 target figure (17% funded).  The Scot Goes Pop poll you'll be seeing over the coming days is a relatively rare example of a credible full-scale opinion poll commissioned by a pro-independence client, with some questions that unionist parties would probably prefer had never been asked.  If you'd like to see me continue to commission these polls now and again, thus ensuring that it's not only anti-independence newspapers and pressure groups who frame the questions in the very influential polls that are published, your continued support will be absolutely vital - because polls are very expensive.  So please forgive me as I continue to heavily promote the current fundraiser, which as you can see has only reached 17% of its target so far.  I know from past experience that crowdfunders can very easily grind to a complete halt if a sense of momentum isn't kept up, and there really is very little point in a half-finished crowdfunder for an opinion poll. So I might publish a dedicated fundraiser blogpost later tonight, before I become too busy with publishing the results of the new poll.  A million thanks to everyone who has donated so far - I really appreciate it.  You can find the fundraiser page HERE, or if you'd rather not donate via GoFundMe, you can find an alternative HERE (scroll down the page after following the link).

The Scottish Government has a well-earned reputation for interacting like real people with the general public - it shouldn't throw that away now by being aloof and dogmatic on gender issues

People have been telling me for ages to listen to the series of Stephen Nolan podcasts about the highly unusual relationship that various public bodies have with the lobbying group Stonewall.  Ironically I haven't really had the time to do that until now because I've been so tied up over the last month with exploring options for getting the Scot Goes Pop poll on GRA reform off the ground - which, for reasons I'll never be able to publicly explain, has been one of the most stressful things I've done in a long time (although those reasons do relate to some of the issues covered by the podcasts). Anyway, I've finally had a chance to draw breath, and I listened in full to the episode about Stonewall's dealings with the various governments of the UK.  Roughly half of the episode is about the Scottish Government, and in particular its decision -  at Stonewall's urging - to stop using the word "mother" in documents relating to maternity and replace it with "pregnant person". The original replacement term was "pregnant woman", but even that wasn't satisfactory enough for Stonewall, who insisted on a gender-neutral term instead.

My first reaction was that this is all a bit comical and trivial, because it's merely about words (albeit slightly ludicrous words) rather than about substantive policy changes that affect people's lives.  But as anyone who has read Orwell knows, language shapes our experience of the world around us, particularly the way we categorise people and things.  A useful example that is sometimes cited is how the English and Welsh languages encode different perceptions of where one colour ends and another colour begins - with an equivalent Welsh word for 'green' encompassing what we as native English speakers would regard as shades of grey.  In a sense the word in each language actually creates the colour, at least as a broad category, rather than the other way around.  By the same token, if we become compelled to use the "cis" prefix before "man" or "woman" (another issue touched on by the Nolan episode), reality will become encoded by the words, and what we previously thought of as men and women will come to be understood instead as merely sub-categories of each gender.  That will affect people's real life behaviour and the way we interact with each other - which of course is the whole point of trying to reshape our language in the first place.

On the subject of Orwellian language, it was incredibly dispiriting to hear in the podcast that the Scottish Government had refused to be interviewed or to answer detailed questions, and instead simply sent the producers a very brief written statement full of ultra-politically correct buzz-phrases that bore only a tenuous relation to what was being asked.  This is obviously in keeping with the militant "it's not up for debate" stance on gender issues, but I think the Scottish Government would be well-advised to consider how they're suddenly putting up walls between themselves and the people they serve and represent.  Previously they've always been noted for breaking those barriers down, with Nicola Sturgeon being much-praised for being informal and accessible, and interacting like a real person on social media.  Much of that good work is now being put to the sword in the service of a dogma that most people simply cannot understand.  There was a golden opportunity for Christina McKelvie to go on the podcast as Equalities Minister and to have a real conversation, using plain language, to demystify what the Scottish Government is doing.  Instead, the government did the complete opposite and made itself look remote and aloof.

As for the BBC, which is also one of the public bodies that has a weird relationship with Stonewall, Stephen Nolan has made the point that it funded, supported and published the podcasts.  But this just makes me think about what a deeply peculiar organisation the BBC is.  It's somehow been subject to institutional capture from two groups that have nothing in common with each other - gender identity activists on the one hand, and Brexit hardliners on the other.  The BBC self-censors on gender to please one particular part of the trendy liberal left, but it also self-censors to please populist right-wingers by failing to report on Brexit as the root cause of many of the challenges the UK currently faces.  Shortages of goods and petrol are presented as bafflingly random acts of God, rather than events with a very simple cause-and-effect explanation.

And, yes, the BBC's all-time favourite subject is itself and it does very often engage in self-analysis and self-scrutiny.  But it's nevertheless curious how there is an unspoken understanding of the acceptable boundaries of that self-scrutiny.  It remains utterly unthinkable for there to be a BBC documentary or podcast series exploring the reasons behind the BBC's extraordinary behaviour in the crucial penultimate week of the independence referendum campaign.

Funding for Scot Goes Pop polling: During the summer, I crowdfunded for two polls - one on GRA reform and related gender issues, and one on independence and related issues.  Neither set of funding raised enough for the type of full-scale poll I ideally wanted to commission, although a substantial amount was raised for the GRA poll, and I was initially confident that it would be enough as long as I shopped around and limited the number of questions.  Unfortunately I was wrong, and it proved to be impossible to commission a more limited poll with a questionnaire that resembled the one I had intended.  In order to break the logjam, I've gone ahead and commissioned a comprehensive GRA poll from my first-choice firm (with a few topical political questions added on).  The results are anticipated over the coming week.  This is a much better option, but it's also more expensive, and I'm covering the shortfall from the crowdfunding with my own money.  Obviously I'd prefer to only lose that money temporarily, though, and I also still need to complete the funding for the independence poll, which I hope to run over the coming months.  In an effort to solve both problems, I've set up a new dedicated polling fundraiser which you can find HERE.  Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far. Running total as of lunchtime on Sunday: £875 raised out of £6500 target figure (13% funded).  You can also find an alternative payment method HERE (scroll down the post).