That's one New Year's Resolution sorted out...

Like most people, I tend to fail miserably at keeping my New Year's Resolutions (with the notable exception of 2009, when I made two very bold ones and somehow managed to fulfil them both, albeit it took me until September). But I certainly don't have to look very far for a task to set myself in 2012, and that's to keep as far away from PoliticalBetting.com as humanly possible. I drifted back there just before Christmas for the first time in a good few months, and you might have thought that the long break would have meant that I wasn't quite as much of a marked man as before - but not a bit of it. No, all I have to do is turn up and mention the word 'Scotland' or 'independence', and the usual suspects descend on me like a pack of wolves, just like I've never been away. On Thursday I was accused of bigotry for making the blindingly obvious point that it would be profoundly foolish and grossly insensitive of David Cameron to break the decades-long convention of only appointing Scottish MPs to the post of Secretary of State for Scotland. When I clarified for the benefit of the poster in question that "Scottish MP" was shorthand for "MP representing a Scottish constituency", and not for "anyone who isn't English", I was effectively told that it wasn't up to me to decide what I meant!

And then of course there was the annual farce that is the Poster of the Year poll. Don't get me wrong, David Herdson is without doubt an infinitely worthier winner than last year's (albeit I certainly haven't forgotten his pompous and spectacularly ill-judged intervention in an exchange involving me during the summer), but the fact that the only two out-and-out left-wing posters involved in the poll finished last and second-last respectively tells its own story. The under-performance of the superb left-wing/Nationalist poster Mick Pork in the newcomers' poll was also very striking.

I was also somewhat startled to learn from Poster of the Year runner-up Richard Nabavi that "even James Kelly awarded me one star, in a rare show of cross-party generosity" (this was sarcasm, for the avoidance of doubt). The problem was that I hadn't actually revealed to anyone how I voted, and as Richard's information was accurate, I naturally drew the obvious conclusion that my vote had been selectively leaked by the site proprietors. After I complained about this, it transpired that there was an innocent (albeit much less obvious) explanation, but for my trouble I was then subjected to a torrent of inane drivel about my "paranoia" and "MI5 surveillance". And just to make the day complete, I once again had to put up with the site's resident bore "Neil", who paradoxically spends virtually all of his time telling everyone else how boring they are.

But the final straw came last night when I tried to respond to this truly jaw-dropping post by regular poster HD2 -

"An interesting point is why a site with such high average IQ posters (compared to many internet blogs) and which is run by a Liberal LD has such a perceived preponderance of right-of-centre posters!

Particularly as over the majority of the time the site has been running the UK has been under Socialist management, and at no time under Conservative, Libertarian, (sane?) management.....

Is it because we 'righties' have more time (team tim clearly have more than any of us, though) or is it simply that, as I strongly suspect:
a) intelligent people are in favour of individualism, not collectivism, which makes them 'right', not 'left' politically
b) the ACTUAL centre-ground of politics is well to the right of (eg) Cameron, so those on the Left perceive anyone to the right of (eg) Brown as being 'right-wing', when they are merely 'centrist'"

When I attempted to inject a tiny bit of sanity by pointing out that a rather simpler and more plausible explanation was a snowball effect (ie. a site with overwhelmingly right-wing posters tends to attract even more right-wing posters, and repel left-wing posters), my comment was swiftly deleted. Which eloquently illustrates another possible explanation for the dearth of left-wing posters at PB - a rather less-than-even-handed approach by the editors and moderators.

* * *

And that pretty much brings to a close another year of posts at Scot Goes Pop. See you in 2012 - always assuming I make it back in one piece from the Edinburgh street-party, which I'm going to for the first time!

Brazen : Westminster considers legislating to force the SNP to break its election pledges

I trust if the plan being touted in today's Scotsman ever sees the light of day, we'll hear no more from the unionist parties about "broken SNP promises" - because what is being suggested is that Westminster could literally legislate to force Alex Salmond to break his word on the timing of the independence referendum. It beggars belief - first they move heaven and earth to prevent a referendum being held in 2010 as planned by the SNP, and call that an SNP broken promise on the grounds that Salmond didn't go through the motions of putting a doomed bill to the vote. This time, after a dramatic mood-swing, they're pondering a clause in the Scotland Bill to force the referendum to be held earlier than was pledged. Well, we can accuse them of many things, but certainly not of consistency.

One intriguing point here is that if they do attempt to do this through the Scotland Bill, they'd still need legislative consent for the bill as a whole from Holyrood. They didn't show much sign of making the necessary compromises to get that consent before this latest revelation, and heaven only knows how much ground they'd have to give to get the new wheeze through.

* * *

I've just received an early Christmas present in my inbox -

"Jimmy, you are my long-awaited man!

Greetings my dear! I am a beautiful woman from Russia and I dream to meet you.

I am very energetic but within reasonable limits. But still there is a lack of one person in my life.

That is why I am here. I am waiting for my special man to come to my life. Doors to my soul are open for him. Look at my pictures...I will be waiting for you."

I'm so glad she gave me fair warning about only being energetic "within reasonable limits" - I'd have been bound to do something rash like enter her for the London Marathon otherwise.

* * *

If you enjoy voting in online polls, you might be interested to know that the superb Nationalist posters Mick Pork and TheUnionDivvie are among five people in the running for Political Betting's "Best Newcomer" of 2011. Naturally, given the nature of the site, it's a bit of an uphill struggle for them to get votes, so I thought a small plug might be in order! You can find the voting form here.

* * *

Last but not least, a very happy Christmas to you all!

Admin : Probing the psyche

Where does he find the time? No sooner has Admin been appointed by Johann Lamont to the vital role of Shadow Minister for Conducting a Review Into the Use of Modern Technology (looks like he'll be rivalling Wendy Alexander's old status as 'Minister for Everything'), than he's back at the Labour Hame grindstone, churning out yet more public-spirited citizen journalism. In his latest article, he poses the thought-provoking question -

"Does it matter that a prominent nationalist website doesn’t consider accuracy as important?"

Thought-provoking, I mean, in the sense that it provoked a few other questions to creep into my own thoughts. For example -

1. Does it matter that a right-wing politician joined a left-wing political party solely for the purposes of career advancement?

2. Given his stated concern about the supposed lack of journalistic standards at Newsnet Scotland, does it also concern him that his repeated use of the term "NewsNat Scotland" would have fallen foul of the Better Nation moderation rules had he submitted his piece as a comment there, let alone that it would have precluded the article's use in virtually any other serious publication?

3. What is the significance of his repeated use of the spelling "Yoonyoonist" when characterising the speech patterns of nationalists, given that it is a perfectly natural phonetic rendering of how anyone would pronounce the word? (Unless of course "Un-yun-ist" is preferred in the Harris household.) Could it, by any chance, betray his extraordinarily authoritarian mindset, ie. that he is incapable of seeing people who diverge from his own views as 'mature'? That his brain automatically converts their speech into 'baby-talk', and the only response he can imagine is to try to patronise them into submission? In a nutshell, does he have a deep subconscious need for others to see him as a father figure who they look to for guidance and chastisement? And should we fear for his well-being now that his own party have comprehensively rejected him for the father role, instead preferring him for the (admittedly mega) technology review role?

4. Does he have no sense of shame about going into apoplexy over hair-splitting examples of the "inaccuracy" of others, given that it's only a matter of weeks since he lied through his teeth that a nationalist banner outside the Royal Concert Hall had read "End English Rule", and given that we all know he'd never have half-heartedly acknowledged that gross inaccuracy unless he'd been supplied with incontrovertible photographic evidence? What conclusions are we entitled to draw about a politician who does lack such an appropriate sense of shame?

Mr Popular

Nobody does unintentional comedy quite like the Guardian these days...

"The least well-known Scottish leader in its history, Lamont defeated another lesser-known backbencher, Ken McIntosh, and popular Westminster backbencher Tom Harris, the MP for Glasgow South, to win. McIntosh won 40.3% and Harris 7.95% of the vote."

Call me peculiar, but I always thought elections were a rather good test of popularity. So let's recap : Tom Harris is "popular", but he's just taken a gubbing at the hands of "the least well-known Scottish Labour leader in history" and "another lesser-known backbencher". Heaven only knows what would have happened to him if he'd been unpopular.

Ah well. Scottish Labour's gain is the blogosphere's loss. Or something like that.

And I really do think the Guardian are grossly overstating the scale of the challenge facing Johann Lamont as leader. Surely it's high time the press picked up on the inspiring message of hope and renewal that Labour's electoral college has just decisively delivered, ie. "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

Scottish Labour persevere with their highly successful core vote strategy

Well, it would be massively over-the-top on this occasion to repeat what I said about the Tories a few weeks ago. Labour haven't made a historic error - not that choosing Johann Lamont wasn't an error, but it's hard to pretend that the alternative would have been much better. There was no-one on the ballot paper who could have matched Alex Salmond's charisma (and that includes Admin, in spite of his own high opinion of himself), and neither was there anyone who really "got it" about where Labour have been going wrong. Macintosh perhaps came closest with his idea of dropping the word 'unionist' from the party lexicon, but I doubt there would have been much in the way of substance to complement the change of language.

And the same problem holds true of Lamont. OK, no-one can accuse her of concealing the fact that she's going to continue to conspire with the Tories to obstruct the Scottish people's aspirations for a more powerful parliament, but on non-constitutional matters she actually talked the talk today. For instance -

"Our one test will be what is in the interest of the people of Scotland, not what's in the interest of ourselves."

"I will reach out to people across Scotland who maybe never thought of themselves to be Labour..."

Now, does anyone think for a moment she's the person to do that? She has "core vote strategy leader" written all over her - and that strategy certainly worked a treat back in May.

On whimsical moderation policies...

I've no wish to restart the mini-feud I had with James Mackenzie a few months ago, but given that a few posters here have recently suggested that Better Nation is moving towards a Labour Hame-style moderation policy, I was intrigued to spot this exchange in the most recent comments thread -

Holebender : You’ve just proved to me that you know nothing about the SNP or Alex Salmond.

James Mackenzie : You're wrong.

Davie Park : In response to Holebender’s assertion that;

“You’ve just proved to me that you know nothing about the SNP or Alex Salmond”.
you respond in modest fashion by citing one of your own opinion pieces to demonstrate that
“you’re wrong”.

The piece cited comprises your theories based on a personal judgement of the motivations of the SNP hierarchy.

For what it’s worth, I think that the SNP is a broad church that will, in all probability, have a limited life once independence is acheived. But to make the judgement that the preferred outcome of a referendum for the SNP and Salmond would be ‘Devo Max’, seems to me utterly fatuous. One would think, being a Greenie, that you’d understand conviction politics. Apparently not.

Incidentally, as the Greens are in favour of independence, I’d be delighted to hear your views on why independence would be good for Scotland, James.

James Mackenzie : To be honest, I’m not sure why I approved a comment containing that assertion. Ho hum. But I thought that explaining my own thinking might best be done by reference to my own thinking. Sorry if that’s hard to get your head around. And yes, good challenge at the end there. I’ll do that.

Indy : Your thinking is fundamentally flawed however by your lack of understanding of the SNP or its members. You should read James Mitchell’s survey stuff. That is actual evidence, not opinion.

James Mackenzie : My view is that the members are predominantly genuinely committed to independence rather than office, and that their other political views cover a spectrum broadly from the Tories to the Greens. Feel free to tell me what’s flawed there. I just think the top team love office more, and no survey data or interviews can prove or disprove that. It’s a hunch.

Also, a quick reminder of why other comments have been deleted.

At that point, James links to the Better Nation moderation policy, which reads as follows -

We love a good frank debate here, and we really appreciate your contribution.
However, we will always delete:

Anything we think is potentially libelous,
Anything which is purely insulting, or
Anything spectacularly off topic.

We may edit or delete where comments:

Are neither constructive nor original,
Are ad hominem or otherwise dickish,
Provide supporting evidence for the existence of Godwin’s Law,
Use phrases like “ZaNu Liebore” or “Scottish National Socialist Party”, or
Are longer than the post itself.

The decision of the editors is final. If a comment of yours is deleted and you want to post it on your own blog, do let us know and we’ll be happy to send it on.

Although my experience with the American gun enthusiasts in 2009 led me to the point where I will always defend to the death the right of individual bloggers to determine what comments are published on their own blogs, I've nevertheless become increasingly cynical about attempts to define hard-and-fast moderation policies, especially ones that include humorous or whimsical language, which is typically there to camouflage the catch-all clauses which basically cover "and any other comment we take a disliking to". Bear in mind that the primary purpose of spelling out a moderation policy is to provide a tool to bash people over the head with, ie. "it's your own fault, if only you'd followed these very simple rules your comment wouldn't have been deleted", so if that policy includes rules as meaninglessly non-specific and subjective as "neither constructive nor original" and "otherwise dickish", it pretty much defeats the whole point of the exercise.

There has quite literally never been a comment posted in the whole history of political blogs that could not have been perceived by somebody, somewhere as "unoriginal", "unconstructive" or "otherwise dickish". I'd be willing to bet that the bulk of any contentious deletions have been justified by those rules, rather than the more specific guidelines that few people could have any real complaint about.

Will be next, will be next, will be ne-ext...

Just as a quick follow-up to the previous post about the assault on the (alleged) fair-dodger, I was at Buchanan Street subway station in Glasgow earlier this evening, and a middle-class, well-spoken American woman cut in ahead of me at the ticket counter to complain that her ticket wasn't being recognised at the barriers. In an echo of the Scotrail incident, she was informed that it was a single ticket, and had already been used at Hillhead. But she stood her ground and animatedly insisted that she had paid for a return ticket. Now, naturally I'm deeply ashamed that I didn't do my civic duty at that point by rugby-tackling her to the ground and drawing at least a bit of blood, as any right-minded person would have done. (After all, if we tolerate this, then our children will be next.) What actually happened was that she was given the benefit of the doubt, and was handed another ticket without having to pay a penny.

So the Scotrail chap gets a close encounter with the platform at Linlithgow station for his trouble, while onlookers applaud, but the American woman gets a free ticket and no-one bats an eyelid. Why the difference? It's hard to escape the conclusion that what really matters to the summary justice brigade is what someone looks and sounds like, not whether they can actually prove that they paid for their ticket.

Exactly when did unprovoked acts of violence become perfectly OK?

I've just caught up with the controversy over the YouTube footage of the young man who was violently assaulted by a fellow passenger on a ScotRail train. The Yahoo headline "Fare-dodger claims he was the victim" is seemingly dripping with irony, but in all honesty, what doubt can there be in anyone's mind that he was indeed a victim? It doesn't matter how obnoxious he was being - an act of violence clearly outweighs fare-dodging and swearing. There were three villains in this piece, and the third was the conductor himself, who not only acted disgracefully by clearly giving his blessing to the assault (both before and afterwards), but was also partly responsible for the restlessness of the other passengers by falsely giving them the impression that the train would be delayed for a long spell if the young man didn't either pay up or leave.

I can only hope that the vigilante is tracked down and charged, and that the conductor is disciplined for his role in the incident.

Will Clegg go for the full house?

I was just having a think about the reasons why the average Liberal Democrat probably went into politics...

Sky high university tuition fees? Check.

The retention of a majoritarian voting system? Check.

Saying "no, no, no" to Europe? Check.

All Clegg needs to do now is back the reintroduction of capital punishment, and he'll have the full house. There's nothing like a politician who really makes a difference...

* * *

Thanks to Marcia for alerting me to this rather extraordinary Ipsos-Mori poll of Scottish Parliament constituency voting intentions -

SNP 51% (+2)
Labour 26% (-2)
Conservatives 12% (-1)
Liberal Democrats 8% (+1)

Intriguingly, Willie Rennie now has a richly-deserved negative personal rating, with 20% of respondents satisfied with his leadership, and 28% dissatisfied. However, I would imagine that has more to do with perceptions of his party, as I very much doubt that 28% (let alone 48%) of the adult population of Scotland actually know who Willie Rennie is.

Last chance to have your say on gay marriage...

I see that a certain long-deceased English Archbishop is trying to skew the outcome of the Scottish Government's consultation on gay marriage by urging his fellow zealots from south of the border to take part at the last minute (submissions close tomorrow). So to balance things up just slightly, here is a link to an online version of the consultation form, if you'd like to have your own voice heard.

I must admit one or two of the questions are slightly tricky - for instance "If Scotland should introduce same-sex marriage, do you consider that civil partnership should remain available?" I suppose the answer to that depends on whether the right to enter a civil partnership is extended to all couples, gay and straight, on an equal basis. If it is, then retaining civil partnerships might complement the option to marry rather neatly. But I doubt that's what the question is getting at.

And for anyone still harbouring any doubts on the broader subject, here is a useful pie-chart detailing the ramifications of allowing gay marriage, as helpfully provided by one of the more free-thinking members of Archbishop Cranmer's congregation.