https://blue.feedland.org/?river=http://data.feedland.org/blue/feeds/roybennett.xml Sun, 04 May 2025 18:47:25 GMT feedland v0.6.43 https://cyber.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html Sun, 04 May 2025 18:47:24 GMT http://rpc.rsscloud.io:5337/pleaseNotify Sun, May 4, 2025 2:47 PM EDT <p>A thread on why indy seems to be going nowhere and calls to come together don`t appear to make any difference, despite much noise by a few incredibly hard working individuals. If you study existing indy groupings you are looking at a rough total of less than 50 - 60 people spread between Alba, ISP, Salvo, BIS, NSP, with under 500 - 1000 activist between them, most of the top tier know each other and thier is a history of conflict. To expect such an incredibly tiny group to shift the dial on Indy in a nation of 5.5 Million people is to ignore the scale of the challenge, expecting less than 1000 people to run the nation, fund raise, campaign for office, and also campaign for independence is like expecting a mouse to push an elephant out of the way, its taken the SNP 95 years of relentless campaigning just to get independence taken seriously in the last 15 years, with the tiny level of resources they have available it may take another 50 years to build enough momentum to achieve it, the final yards are always the hardest. </p> <p>The SNP is down to about the same size of all the other groups put together in their back office, plus thier MSP`s, so less than 100 full time paid staff. The over worn phrase &quot;come together&quot; ignores the wider reality that the independence movement is woefully under resourced, raising at my best guess less than £1- £1.2 million a year (including the SNP) for all its needs, which is far below what needed, the big unionist parties raise tens of millions in comparison. </p> <p>Instead of focussing endlessly on strategies, undeliverable calls to the international community, UN, UDI, etc, it needs to get real about creating a single, solidly funded, highly professional, incredibly well organised, slick campaigning organisation (a supercharged Believe in Scotland, if you will) with millions behind it, with a large well trained staff to drive and recruit an activist force of thousands of pro indy campaigners, with a proper campaign manager, phased approach and board of trustees driving a massive well coordinated campaign. With permanently staffed stands at every football ground, train, bus station, airport, shopping centre, market, billboards, tv adverts, media pieces, street campaigns, etc etc . But instead of that, we have a Hodge podge of well meaning passionate groups, often led by varying degrees of skills, passion, professionalism, and colourful personalities, all following thier own agendas even though they are doing fantastic work. All the while scrabbling for crumbs of funding whilst disjointedly making noise to create publicity and appear credible and relevant. At the same time being utterly invisible to 80 - 90% of the population. Whilst this analysis will likely be unpopular it doesn`t make it untrue, the Achilles heel of indy is that it is too focussed on its destination and not focussed enough on building a robust vehicle to get to it, its got the cart before the horse. Its no good striving for Indy if you starve to death en route, this the SNP viscerally understands, staying alive and well provisioned is the first priority, the journey then takes care of itself. So instead of strategizing we need to be organising, a first step is to build a donor bank of 10000 supporters who would invest £10 a month each, raising £1.2 million in the first year, this builds a team to repeat the exercise but with 100,000 supporters doing the same raising £12 Million and you are off to a campaigning start, 3 years of that creates an unstoppable non political momentum driven by a non political campaigning organisation, that builds an army of support to push the SNP/Greens/etc forward in Scotgov with an undeniable mandate to negotiate with UK govt on Scotlands behalf. That the independence movement hasn`t been able to identify and take such a fundamental step beyond the SNP and BiS is perhaps telling of a much deeper issue in indy groups, the one of being unable to put one`s personal need for attention / control / publicity aside in preference to being an anonymous unseen part of a bigger machine built to deliver independence for us all irrespective of political views.</p> Sun, 04 May 2025 18:47:25 GMT https://blue.feedland.org/?item=789220 https://blue.feedland.org/?item=789220 A thread on why indy seems to be going nowhere and calls to come together don\`t appear to make any difference, despite much noise by a few incredibly hard working individuals. If you study existing indy groupings you are looking at a rough total of less than 50 - 60 people spread between Alba, ISP, Salvo, BIS, NSP, with under 500 - 1000 activist between them, most of the top tier know each other and thier is a history of conflict. To expect such an incredibly tiny group to shift the dial on Indy in a nation of 5.5 Million people is to ignore the scale of the challenge, expecting less than 1000 people to run the nation, fund raise, campaign for office, and also campaign for independence is like expecting a mouse to push an elephant out of the way, its taken the SNP 95 years of relentless campaigning just to get independence taken seriously in the last 15 years, with the tiny level of resources they have available it may take another 50 years to build enough momentum to achieve it, the final yards are always the hardest. The SNP is down to about the same size of all the other groups put together in their back office, plus thier MSP\`s, so less than 100 full time paid staff. The over worn phrase "come together" ignores the wider reality that the independence movement is woefully under resourced, raising at my best guess less than £1- £1.2 million a year (including the SNP) for all its needs, which is far below what needed, the big unionist parties raise tens of millions in comparison. Instead of focussing endlessly on strategies, undeliverable calls to the international community, UN, UDI, etc, it needs to get real about creating a single, solidly funded, highly professional, incredibly well organised, slick campaigning organisation (a supercharged Believe in Scotland, if you will) with millions behind it, with a large well trained staff to drive and recruit an activist force of thousands of pro indy campaigners, with a proper campaign manager, phased approach and board of trustees driving a massive well coordinated campaign. With permanently staffed stands at every football ground, train, bus station, airport, shopping centre, market, billboards, tv adverts, media pieces, street campaigns, etc etc . But instead of that, we have a Hodge podge of well meaning passionate groups, often led by varying degrees of skills, passion, professionalism, and colourful personalities, all following thier own agendas even though they are doing fantastic work. All the while scrabbling for crumbs of funding whilst disjointedly making noise to create publicity and appear credible and relevant. At the same time being utterly invisible to 80 - 90% of the population. Whilst this analysis will likely be unpopular it doesn\`t make it untrue, the Achilles heel of indy is that it is too focussed on its destination and not focussed enough on building a robust vehicle to get to it, its got the cart before the horse. Its no good striving for Indy if you starve to death en route, this the SNP viscerally understands, staying alive and well provisioned is the first priority, the journey then takes care of itself. So instead of strategizing we need to be organising, a first step is to build a donor bank of 10000 supporters who would invest £10 a month each, raising £1.2 million in the first year, this builds a team to repeat the exercise but with 100,000 supporters doing the same raising £12 Million and you are off to a campaigning start, 3 years of that creates an unstoppable non political momentum driven by a non political campaigning organisation, that builds an army of support to push the SNP/Greens/etc forward in Scotgov with an undeniable mandate to negotiate with UK govt on Scotlands behalf. That the independence movement hasn\`t been able to identify and take such a fundamental step beyond the SNP and BiS is perhaps telling of a much deeper issue in indy groups, the one of being unable to put one\`s personal need for attention / control / publicity aside in preference to being an anonymous unseen part of a bigger machine built to deliver independence for us all irrespective of political views. <p>A thread on why indy seems to be going nowhere and calls to come together don`t appear to make any difference, despite much noise by a few incredibly hard working individuals. If you study existing indy groupings you are looking at a rough total of less than 50 - 60 people spread between Alba, ISP, Salvo, BIS, NSP, with under 500 - 1000 activist between them, most of the top tier know each other and thier is a history of conflict. To expect such an incredibly tiny group to shift the dial on Indy in a nation of 5.5 Million people is to ignore the scale of the challenge, expecting less than 1000 people to run the nation, fund raise, campaign for office, and also campaign for independence is like expecting a mouse to push an elephant out of the way, its taken the SNP 95 years of relentless campaigning just to get independence taken seriously in the last 15 years, with the tiny level of resources they have available it may take another 50 years to build enough momentum to achieve it, the final yards are always the hardest.</p> <p>The SNP is down to about the same size of all the other groups put together in their back office, plus thier MSP`s, so less than 100 full time paid staff. The over worn phrase &quot;come together&quot; ignores the wider reality that the independence movement is woefully under resourced, raising at my best guess less than £1- £1.2 million a year (including the SNP) for all its needs, which is far below what needed, the big unionist parties raise tens of millions in comparison.</p> <p>Instead of focussing endlessly on strategies, undeliverable calls to the international community, UN, UDI, etc, it needs to get real about creating a single, solidly funded, highly professional, incredibly well organised, slick campaigning organisation (a supercharged Believe in Scotland, if you will) with millions behind it, with a large well trained staff to drive and recruit an activist force of thousands of pro indy campaigners, with a proper campaign manager, phased approach and board of trustees driving a massive well coordinated campaign. With permanently staffed stands at every football ground, train, bus station, airport, shopping centre, market, billboards, tv adverts, media pieces, street campaigns, etc etc . But instead of that, we have a Hodge podge of well meaning passionate groups, often led by varying degrees of skills, passion, professionalism, and colourful personalities, all following thier own agendas even though they are doing fantastic work. All the while scrabbling for crumbs of funding whilst disjointedly making noise to create publicity and appear credible and relevant. At the same time being utterly invisible to 80 - 90% of the population. Whilst this analysis will likely be unpopular it doesn`t make it untrue, the Achilles heel of indy is that it is too focussed on its destination and not focussed enough on building a robust vehicle to get to it, its got the cart before the horse. Its no good striving for Indy if you starve to death en route, this the SNP viscerally understands, staying alive and well provisioned is the first priority, the journey then takes care of itself. So instead of strategizing we need to be organising, a first step is to build a donor bank of 10000 supporters who would invest £10 a month each, raising £1.2 million in the first year, this builds a team to repeat the exercise but with 100,000 supporters doing the same raising £12 Million and you are off to a campaigning start, 3 years of that creates an unstoppable non political momentum driven by a non political campaigning organisation, that builds an army of support to push the SNP/Greens/etc forward in Scotgov with an undeniable mandate to negotiate with UK govt on Scotlands behalf. That the independence movement hasn`t been able to identify and take such a fundamental step beyond the SNP and BiS is perhaps telling of a much deeper issue in indy groups, the one of being unable to put one`s personal need for attention / control / publicity aside in preference to being an anonymous unseen part of a bigger machine built to deliver independence for us all irrespective of political views.</p> Sun, 04 May 2025 18:46:12 GMT https://blue.feedland.org/?item=789219 https://blue.feedland.org/?item=789219 A thread on why indy seems to be going nowhere and calls to come together don\`t appear to make any difference, despite much noise by a few incredibly hard working individuals. If you study existing indy groupings you are looking at a rough total of less than 50 - 60 people spread between Alba, ISP, Salvo, BIS, NSP, with under 500 - 1000 activist between them, most of the top tier know each other and thier is a history of conflict. To expect such an incredibly tiny group to shift the dial on Indy in a nation of 5.5 Million people is to ignore the scale of the challenge, expecting less than 1000 people to run the nation, fund raise, campaign for office, and also campaign for independence is like expecting a mouse to push an elephant out of the way, its taken the SNP 95 years of relentless campaigning just to get independence taken seriously in the last 15 years, with the tiny level of resources they have available it may take another 50 years to build enough momentum to achieve it, the final yards are always the hardest. The SNP is down to about the same size of all the other groups put together in their back office, plus thier MSP\`s, so less than 100 full time paid staff. The over worn phrase "come together" ignores the wider reality that the independence movement is woefully under resourced, raising at my best guess less than £1- £1.2 million a year (including the SNP) for all its needs, which is far below what needed, the big unionist parties raise tens of millions in comparison. Instead of focussing endlessly on strategies, undeliverable calls to the international community, UN, UDI, etc, it needs to get real about creating a single, solidly funded, highly professional, incredibly well organised, slick campaigning organisation (a supercharged Believe in Scotland, if you will) with millions behind it, with a large well trained staff to drive and recruit an activist force of thousands of pro indy campaigners, with a proper campaign manager, phased approach and board of trustees driving a massive well coordinated campaign. With permanently staffed stands at every football ground, train, bus station, airport, shopping centre, market, billboards, tv adverts, media pieces, street campaigns, etc etc . But instead of that, we have a Hodge podge of well meaning passionate groups, often led by varying degrees of skills, passion, professionalism, and colourful personalities, all following thier own agendas even though they are doing fantastic work. All the while scrabbling for crumbs of funding whilst disjointedly making noise to create publicity and appear credible and relevant. At the same time being utterly invisible to 80 - 90% of the population. Whilst this analysis will likely be unpopular it doesn\`t make it untrue, the Achilles heel of indy is that it is too focussed on its destination and not focussed enough on building a robust vehicle to get to it, its got the cart before the horse. Its no good striving for Indy if you starve to death en route, this the SNP viscerally understands, staying alive and well provisioned is the first priority, the journey then takes care of itself. So instead of strategizing we need to be organising, a first step is to build a donor bank of 10000 supporters who would invest £10 a month each, raising £1.2 million in the first year, this builds a team to repeat the exercise but with 100,000 supporters doing the same raising £12 Million and you are off to a campaigning start, 3 years of that creates an unstoppable non political momentum driven by a non political campaigning organisation, that builds an army of support to push the SNP/Greens/etc forward in Scotgov with an undeniable mandate to negotiate with UK govt on Scotlands behalf. That the independence movement hasn\`t been able to identify and take such a fundamental step beyond the SNP and BiS is perhaps telling of a much deeper issue in indy groups, the one of being unable to put one\`s personal need for attention / control / publicity aside in preference to being an anonymous unseen part of a bigger machine built to deliver independence for us all irrespective of political views.