Polling: 2017 General Election, Council Elections and Independence

[G51]

5 hours ago, cdisaaccie said:

The SNP try to convey many things through the media.

However most of the print media - and their online versions - ain't interested due to their unionist leaning owners so will & do straight up refuse to print press releases from SNP policitians & SNP led council administrations.

The BBC don't even pretend to hide their bias against the SNP at this point, Murdoch's Sky ain't much better & to a slightly lesser extent STV.

It's why social media is such a big tool for the party as the press in general are rabidly anti-SNP & anti-Indy.

Thankfully the influence of the MSM is on the wane.

It’s genuine madness to think that the establishment party in Scotland has no friends in the media. To claim that the press won’t report SNP press releases is even crazier.

[speckled tangerine]

1 hour ago, G51 said:

It’s genuine madness to think that the establishment party in Scotland has no friends in the media. To claim that the press won’t report SNP press releases is even crazier.

Okay, not many friends shall we say. Apart from overtly "Nat" supporters like Lesley Riddoch, Joyce Macmillan Iain McWhirter (at times) and Michael Stewart, I'm struggling. 

Compare the governing party here to the Conservatives down south in relation to the media. The tories have the Express, Mail, Telegraph, Times backing them for starters. The political editors at the BBC like Kuennsberg and Nick Robinson fawn over them and, in the case of the latter has a tory background. The BBC at board level is stuffed with friendly appointees. That's without GB news coming live soon. I can't see them being overly critical.

The governing party here has the National and ex footballers. There's no comparison. It's very, very hostile.

Edited March 23, 2021 by speckled tangerine
Typo

[effeffsee_the2nd]

1 hour ago, G51 said:

It’s genuine madness to think that the establishment party in Scotland has no friends in the media. To claim that the press won’t report SNP press releases is even crazier.

come on now that's very surface level assumption making.  The links between labour and the torries with their respective media friends and ally's have been built up over decades if not centauries and often involve several generations of the same family when it comes to owners and senior figures . The links between the conservative party and the daily mail have been in place for longer than the SNP have existed.  

The SNP were just a fringe party until devolution and are only now in their first spell in power, albeit quite a long one!   You can't forge the sort of media relationship that labour and tory have in 20 years, especially in a 20 years when media has went through a time of unprecedented change  

[sparky88]

1 hour ago, G51 said:

It’s genuine madness to think that the establishment party in Scotland has no friends in the media. To claim that the press won’t report SNP press releases is even crazier.

Followers of every single party believe the media is biased against them. It's quite possibly one of the defining traits of being a follower of a political party. 

[NotThePars]

7 hours ago, cdisaaccie said:

The SNP try to convey many things through the media.

However most of the print media - and their online versions - ain't interested due to their unionist leaning owners so will & do straight up refuse to print press releases from SNP policitians & SNP led council administrations.

The BBC don't even pretend to hide their bias against the SNP at this point, Murdoch's Sky ain't much better & to a slightly lesser extent STV.

It's why social media is such a big tool for the party as the press in general are rabidly anti-SNP & anti-Indy.

Thankfully the influence of the MSM is on the wane.

That's not an excuse to just start conceding the ability to set the parameters of a mandate to the media. You hear constantly about people arguing "Boris/ the media will only accept the mandate if it's an SNP majority nothing less!!!" and it's baffling that independence supporters are just willing to allow their opponents to completely set the terms of the debate especially when it sets those terms on a benchmark which relies on an electoral system which is explicitly designed to prevent what we allegedly need. 

2 hours ago, G51 said:

It’s genuine madness to think that the establishment party in Scotland has no friends in the media. To claim that the press won’t report SNP press releases is even crazier.

The SNP control multiple branches of government in this country and have by any accounts a massive membership base to push their message out. If they can't manage that and have no strategy to combat a supposedly hostile media then they deserve to lose every bit as much as Corbyn's Labour did. 

[GordonS]

4 hours ago, G51 said:

It’s genuine madness to think that the establishment party in Scotland has no friends in the media. To claim that the press won’t report SNP press releases is even crazier.

Just because they're the biggest party, it doesn't make them the establishment party. They've only been a large party for 10 years and those institutional links run deep. They're still very much outsiders at the senior levels of sectors such as the media, the legal profession, trade unions, business, the police, local government and education. I'm sure that's changing and will change more rapidly if things continue as they are, but they're still very much in third place among what you could call the establishment in Scotland.

2 hours ago, Pato said:

It's one thing to complain there aren't enough pro-independence columnists and another to say SNP policy & press releases about said policy doesn't get covered by the media. The former's maybe a bit more of a real thing than the latter in my opinion.

That said I think there's a fair few more people out there than you might think writing opinion in Scotland on the matter who are not hostile to the idea of independence. Laura Weddell, Andrew Tickell, Rory Scothorne, Jenny Constable, Eve Livingstone, Robert Somynne, Peter Geoghegan are just a few folk I can think of off the top of my head who range between supportive to neutral on independence.

Those are just columnists (and at least one is an ex-columnists at that). You need to look at editors, publishers and senior reporters.

Elizabeth Quigley was removed from political reporting by her bosses when she married John Swinney, but Kirsty Wark goes on family holidays with Jack McConnell. The SNP really are treated differently.

Also, the BBC still takes its cue from what's in the papers. 

[tirso]

Madness to think the London based media establishment aren't hostile to the SNP.  They're closer to achieving what sinn fein couldn't do in NI and a bigger feat at that.  Breaking the UK state.

Difference between Pacific Quay and London is striking in my opinion. 

There's a well of pro-independence opinion seeping through into the management of civic Scotland though.  It will have long term effects regardless of the result in May.  This is for the long haul.

[Baxter Parp]

It’s genuine madness to think that the establishment party in Scotland has no friends in the media. To claim that the press won’t report SNP press releases is even crazier.

It's genuine madness to think that the party which has only had any actual power for 14 years in the past 314 years is the establishment party. This is pish.

[GordonS]

13 minutes ago, Pato said:

Aye but ST was explicitly talking about opinion writers.

 

Ah, sorry, ok.

Quote

Of course there is an institutional bias but I don't think it's as jarring today as it might have been a decade ago. In any case as I continue to say on here, I don't want the media full of people sympathetic to the SNP. The relationship between the press and the government of the day should be a bit spiky, it forces the government to do better if the press keeps finding things they don't want to talk about and printing them on the front pages.

I don't want them to be sympathetic or hostile to any party. But they are. And I don't think their hostility to the SNP has anything to do with the democratic values of holding a government to account, it's just doing what their owner wants. The same papers that are the most vociferous against the SNP are cheerleaders for UK government despite the incredibly obvious range of matters that should be scrutinised.

The BBC are scared of the Conservatives, who have abandoned all pretence of an independent BBC and appointed a Tory as DG. It was he who created new guidelines for staff banning them from expressing support for Pride and BLM. Even the people who work there acknowledge BBC Scotland is a branch office.

[Ned Nederlander]

11 hours ago, sparky88 said:

Followers of every single party believe the media is biased against them. It's quite possibly one of the defining traits of being a follower of a political party. 

I could see that the media in Scotland was skewed in favour of the Union when I was a Tory voter - at the time I felt it was simply because the Union was 'right' and therefore it was virtually impossible to report it as anything else.

In 2014 some of the reporting was so skewed that it started to piss me off, I watched a debate or listened to an interview and then the subsequent report was so wide of the mark that it was almost a fabrication - it actually played a small part in me switching.

Edited March 23, 2021 by Ned Nederlander

[Ludo*1]

Can someone confirm if a 2nd vote for Greens in Dundee (East & West) will benefit them without hindering the SNP?

[Granny Danger]

18 minutes ago, Ludo*1 said:

Can someone confirm if a 2nd vote for Greens in Dundee (East & West) will benefit them without hindering the SNP?

Someone showed in the last few pages that the answer is yes.  I’ll be going SNP/Green.

[madwullie]

12 hours ago, Caledonian1 said:

Very true, however, the MSM sets the agenda and if a story gets traction then it is un-stoppable.  Many journalists have become incredibly lazy and will no longer go out and hunt down their own stories they will leave that to the likes of the Daily Mail and Daily Express and they will sheepishly follow on their coat-tails. These Holyrood and Hamilton Inquries have been classic examples - compare and contrast with Boris recently where he was proven by a High Court udge to have broken the law regarding Covid-19 contracts - hardly a peep and no calls that he should resign

If you only watched/listened to the BBC you would have been 100% certain that NS was guilty before yesterday. 

I don't know if it's the fault of the tories for crafting the narrative with their leaks and briefings, the BBC for breathlessly publishing the above as fact, or a mixture of both. 

[Hibee_Hibernian]

35 minutes ago, Ludo*1 said:

Can someone confirm if a 2nd vote for Greens in Dundee (East & West) will benefit them without hindering the SNP?

Basically unless you live in the Highland/islands or in the South voting for the SNP is a waste of time since they’ll have won all/almost all of the constituencies that are in the list area which makes it very hard for the SNP to get seats via the list vote. The Greens will be taking list seats that would otherwise end up going to Labour or the Tories so you’d be strengthening the SNP’s position if anything

[Guest Bob Mahelp]

It's easy to believe that UK politics over the last century has been a duopoly, and that the Labour party are an integral part of the 'establishment'.

It hasn't been, and they're not. 

A Labour government is a very rare thing. The Conservatives are THE party of government in the UK, and the majority of  political values and everyday decisions that have effected our lives have been determined over the last 100 years in greater part by the forces of conservatism. 

The status quo in the UK.....the 'establishment' if you want..... is conservative, and it's no surprise that an organ of the state such as the BBC runs in parallel lines with that. Not all their staff are pro-Tory, but the organisation itself is inherently conservative (small c). It's not, and never has been, a radical institution, and it struggles enormously to keep up with the dynamics with a United Kingdom that has changed out of sight in the last generation. 

They simply couldn't cope with the referendum in 2014, and almost 100 years of in-built conservatism meant that they leant towards the staus quo as a default position. I believe they've improved in the last 7 years, but much of their political coverage still sways towards the 'establishment' view. 

And no matter how long the SNP are in power, they'll never become the 'establishment'. Never. 

 

[EH75]

6 minutes ago, Bob Mahelp said:

It's easy to believe that UK politics over the last century has been a duopoly, and that the Labour party are an integral part of the 'establishment'.

It hasn't been, and they're not. 

 

You only have to look at the portrayal in most of the media of Jeremy Corbyn as some sort of reincarnation of Joseph Stalin for evidence of this. 

[vikingTON]

The British state's post-war consensus from the NHS to nuclear weapons was literally determined by the Labour Party. New Labour were as comfortable working within and being represented by the establishment in the UK as their successors. 

But aye you keep pretending to be plucky wee outsiders running against the system. 

[Donathan]

11 minutes ago, Bob Mahelp said:

It's easy to believe that UK politics over the last century has been a duopoly, and that the Labour party are an integral part of the 'establishment'.

It hasn't been, and they're not. 

A Labour government is a very rare thing. The Conservatives are THE party of government in the UK, and the majority of  political values and everyday decisions that have effected our lives have been determined over the last 100 years in greater part by the forces of conservatism. 

The status quo in the UK.....the 'establishment' if you want..... is conservative, and it's no surprise that an organ of the state such as the BBC runs in parallel lines with that. Not all their staff are pro-Tory, but the organisation itself is inherently conservative (small c). It's not, and never has been, a radical institution, and it struggles enormously to keep up with the dynamics with a United Kingdom that has changed out of sight in the last generation. 

They simply couldn't cope with the referendum in 2014, and almost 100 years of in-built conservatism meant that they leant towards the staus quo as a default position. I believe they've improved in the last 7 years, but much of their political coverage still sways towards the 'establishment' view. 

And no matter how long the SNP are in power, they'll never become the 'establishment'. Never. 

 

This. At least since the late 70s. I'm not old enough to know about the Harold Wilson era but new Labour was more about the UK being fed up of the Tories and Blair presenting an alternative that could be reconciled with the MSM and middle England than voters genuinely choosing a centre-left alternative.

 

Labour will get back in again but it won't really be off the back of their own doing, they just need to wait it out until the voters get fed up of the Conservatives again. I think the pandemic came early enough in this parliament that it'll be forgotten about by the next election and Boris will get another stomping majority.

[Guest Bob Mahelp]

9 minutes ago, EH75 said:

You only have to look at the portrayal in most of the media of Jeremy Corbyn as some sort of reincarnation of Joseph Stalin for evidence of this. 

Labour under Corbyn were a threat to the status quo of British politics. That is, he would have formed a left-wing, almost socialist government...and we've had nothing like that since Wilson for a short time in the 60's. 

Blair led a Labour government which in general was a Tory-lite administration.....and therefore no threat to almost 4 generations of British social conservatism. 

 

Edited March 23, 2021 by Bob Mahelp

[Baxter Parp]

20 minutes ago, Bob Mahelp said:

A Labour government is a very rare thing.

And a certain disappointment.