Scottish National Party members found among list of names signed up to rival Alba Party after website whoopsie Alex Salmond's Alba Party has got off to a rocky start after a coding error on its website appeared to expose the names of those signed up. First reported by Scotland's The Herald On Sunday, the names of more than 4,000 people who had signed up to attend events were inadvertently made public. While the newspaper gleefully …
"Those ID values were sequential, so simply changing the number on a link to an online event showed the person whose name corresponds with that ID as the referrer on the page"
As in the movie - "You should get your head examined" "I did. They sent it back with with the note 'contents missing'"
> I would definitely Back the Scottish People's Front... but I'm not sufficiently Scottish.
I think I would find it an affront to be asked to back the Scottish People's Front by the Front's backers, but not taken aback to be asked to front a Scottish People's Back party. Or have I got that back to front?
Perhaps they'd be kind enough to divide themselves up a little, so everyone could have their own Scotland? I believe it's traditional to suggest starting with West Lothian, but I'm sure it would be better if it was left to the individuals on the ground, as it were, to decide.
This post has been deleted by its author
It has been universally agreed that the most useful, noble and intelligent people on the entire internet are those that point out other people's spelling mistakes without adding anything else of note to the discussion. They even have a special society, the Tucking Fwats.
So, without further ado:
lolz, you wrote Sottish, you wrote Sottish, you meant Scottish, like, literally, your mum.
Let the upvotes commence.
(*It isn't, and I do of course).
I presume Alba will fix this with a cutesy logo, a website redesign including happy smiling cartoon people of all colours and creeds and a meaningless statement along the lines of "hoots mon! will ye nae be worryin' about our security! Wee Hamish has it all in hoond!", just like Nurserycam ("your beautiful baby, on the internet forever!") are aiming to do.
Alba's first mistake was to name themselves after a purveyor of ratty old clock radios, and yes, Scottish people speak exactly like this. All of them.
As a Scotsman myself, I find it strange that I have never heard anyone use that variation...
I can understand on the Isles that the accents change heavily, or that an Aberdonian differs from a Glaswegian.... But the large majority do not use that phrase..
Reminds me of a slogan during the 1988 US Presidential Election, on a T-shirt worn by a female Republican supporter:
My heart is for Bush, but my bush is for Hart
Bush - George H.W. Bush
Hart - Gary Hart
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Donna_Rice_and_Gary_Hart.jpg
"sow confusion among the SNP"
Not a hard task, lets be honest. The faithful are mostly just your standard issue dim nationalists (not the same as patriots) yet unlike english nationalists who generally quite rightly get slated, the SNP get a free pass with the BBC and other media organisations for [reasons] despite their quite obvious anti-english attitudes. Any organisation that is unashamably xenophobic against its near neighbour and is still dining out on injustices from 500 years ago really needs to take a good look at itself in the mirror.
Which anti-English attitudes?
I keep hearing claims of Anglophobia, but with no specific allegations.
Are there anglophobes in Scotland? Yes.
Are some of them members of the SNP? No doubt.
Are they anything other than fringe elements? As far as I know, no.
Charging English students tuition fees while Scots and EU citizens got it for free for starters. Then theres the whole english = tories meme Krankie keeps pushing. Also the Westminster doesnt understand scotland BS despite having many scots there but apparently Brussels does despite having none.
Oh, and the bit I love is the empire was all down to the English stance which was apparently nothing to do with any clean living scotsmen despite 1 in 3 slavers in Jamaica being Scottish plus the scots heading off to Canada en mass to help slaughter the indigenous peoples. And theres plenty more under the radar implicit xenophobia designed to brainwash the gullible into voting SNP to "free" scotland from the nasty english. If anything we need freeing from the duplicitous money grabbing whingers north of the border who refuse to accept history,
@Boltar, you seem to be working from an as yet-to-be-vindicated assumption that you are the adult in the room, yet the argument you put forth contains the following language
"Krankie"
"BS"
"brainwash the gullible"
"duplicitous money grabbing whingers"
"refuse to accept history"
and approximately zero, as far as I can see in terms of actual content that can be sensibly engaged with by any rational opponent. Do you want to have another go?
No actual content or you don't want to admit there was any because it doesn't follow your narrative? Why not start off with this cupcake and see how you get on:
https://www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/article/section/history-of-slavery/scotland-and-slavery/
Fairly sure it is British nationalism which gets the free pass.
In the 2014 referendum, the population of Scotland was enfranchised to decide on their future. Not Scots. Anyone, regardless of whether they were Scottish, English, Polish or anything else, as long as they were stably resident in the country and should therefore have a say in its future. If the Scottish independence movement is xenophobic, they sure have a strange way of showing it.
In the Brexit referendum on the other hand millions of people resident denied a vote on the future of the country where they were stably resident and a lot of people who had not even lived in the country for up to 15 years and little stake in its future enfranchised.
Still, the kind of trite misrepresentation and hectoring condescension you exhibit continues to fuel support for independence, so feel free to continue.
It is nice to know who you are getting into beds with. Anything less has one encountering an Almighty Invisible Resource ....a Superlative Sleeping Partner with Light Years of Quantum Communication Experience in Brokering Virtually Augmented Imagination ProgramMING.
To paraphrase Tom Hanks, and a legitimate question to ask for a sensible answer, given the implied subject matter ..... "Langley, is that there a problem?"
You appear to be holding four aces, El Reg, an exclusive hand dealt to you for you that you never before believed even remotely possible, but here we all are seeding future fare. :-) That puts y'all here on El Reg in a most enviable leading position whenever tuned in to Almighty Invisible Resources with Future Guaranteed Virtually Immaculate Source Supply to Muster and Deploy in the Foreign Fields of Alien Terrain.
Now that is One Almighty Core Ore Source Vein to Freely Tap into and partake of the Flow of Info and Intel enabling one to unlock all manner of Heavenly Padlocked Gates.. As may imagine, that very much opens up a whole host of Adam and Eve Gardens of Eden with Delights made IMPossible not to share in order to fully enjoy and luxuriate in the much appreciated reward of more rewards and awards to favour and savour and flavour and beta test sample live in the Palaces of Places Chosen.
And methinks for now, that be more than enough to enjoy . Too much of anything good or bad is never a great thing so just taking lots of great bits of everything leads one onto and into SMARTR SWIFT Courses. I Kid U Not.
IANAL but expectations of privacy etc seem to work for certain members of the upper echelons. In any case I suppose it's hard to extrapolate purpose to subscriptions to anything. It might be a case of keeping your friends close and your enemies even closer.
I googled on Alba and found this "ALBA Group - The recycling company". Any connection ? ^^
And congrats to Scotland for their gallant victory on Friday evening - This 6 Nations championship was high on emotion this year
Some members of the only party for scottish independence interested in an alternative party for scottish independence shocker
Maybe not the way those members wanted to let the cat out of the bag, bur hardly surprising. Much as I find both sides merely popcorn fodder, this particular nugget is not where I'd anchor the story.
I agree that the news that some SNP members are moving to Alba isn't huge news. I assume that it's a condition of membership of the SNP that you aren't a member of another political party. If by some chance it isn't then the story is even smaller.
It's a bit embarrassing that the membership details have leaked though.
I'm sure some joined the mailing list just to do opposition research but I'm afraid Alba will just split off existing SNP members rather than attracting new members from unionist parties. The SNP tends to take voters from left and centre (Labour and LibDem), Alba could be really useful if it attracted the right wing Tory voter to the cause.
But it does put a lot of pressure on the named SNP members. Either they go back to the colleagues and claim "curiosity" while swearing blind they are loyal (and serve their time under a cloud of suspicion), or they jump ship.
Everything points to a routine cock up. But it's one that might push waverers to jump.
Yes, badly (NHS, education, unemployment, drugs - all worse since the SNP came to power) and with westminster still holding the reins in the form of the majority of tax income so Wee Jimmy and her cult have to tow the line. With independence they'd be off the leash and free to turn Scotland into a cold facsimile of Cuba.
Not sure about that myself.
I give the SNP one term post-independence before they collapse and end up reforming into something entirely different.
The SNP currently has several strands of appeal
1. Single-issue voters -- independence or bust
2. Perception of Scottish chapters of UK big 3 parties as "branch offices" representing the party over constituents
3. People who like SNP policies.
Group 3 has expanded significantly based on how the SNP have governed in 3 consecutive parliaments, but without groups 1 and 2, they'll be unable to command a majority.
That means that in the event of independence, there will be a rapid restructuring of the Labour, Conservative and LibDem parties north of the border, and a resurgence of Scottish Labour voting.
>I don't think Scotland needs another independence party
It does - because of the weird mix of FPTP and PR - although arguably the Scottish Greens would have served as well as Alba....main thing is that what's left of labour and conservatives are removed. Many will hold their nose and give Alba their second vote.
The Greens looked OK when Harper was their public face, but there are too many elements of eco-militancy rising to the surface as they get bigger for them to get broad public acceptance.
Plus, it's the power of Salmond (like him or loathe him) that's likely to get significant numbers following a 2nd-vote-tactical strategy.
The new party's web site is a .org address but it's usual for there to be a .scot address too. As of the weekend, and right now as I type, trying to access albaparty.scot redirects to.... snp.org.
A quick whois and the entire issue goes deeper down a rabbit hole. The .scot domain is registered with Ionos, while the official .org domain is registered with Namecheap.
They'll have to get their act together by quite a lot more if there is any chance of my placing* them on the voting papers come May, as this does not inspire confidence.
* - The voting system allows this here rather than just an X.
Curious. I had originally thought that Alba was being set up in direct competition with the SNP, but it seems that Alba is only aiming for regional seats, so won't affect the constituency vote. If I understand the system correctly, the SNP would not get many regional seats because the calculations reduce the impact of the regional vote for that party depending on how many constituency seats it wins.
If the SNP is for 'Independence' and Alba is explicitly set up for 'Independence', then the result is a significant increase in the 'Independence' vote with no (or little) impact on overall SNP seats.
I'm left feeling that Alba and the SNP are actually colluding, not conflicting, which might explain the issue with respect to "albaparty.scot". It seems like a con, to be honest.
Of course, I may be totally misunderstanding the voting method, so the above conclusions could be bollocks.
> If I understand the system correctly,
Yes, your supposition is possible, as the Unionist parties tend to depend on the "list" vote, with very few being elected on the constituency vote. Alba may split the list vote, or dilute it, although the SNP slogan for this election is "both votes SNP" to try to achieve that majority.
While the voting system was designed to prevent any party achieving an outright majority, it's got to be said that when you cast your vote, you can be sure it's not necessarily a wasted one, should your choice not cross the line first. I find PR, even this flawed version, satisfying as a result.
Alba may split the list vote, or dilute it, although the SNP slogan for this election is "both votes SNP" to try to achieve that majority.
The SNP slogan is utter bollocks and the SNP know this. Or should know this. Votes for Alba - which will not be standing in the consitituency elections - cannot possibly split or dilute the pro-independence vote. In fact those votes could actually increase the number of pro-independence MSPs. Which is why the unionist parties are howling with rage.
The PR system for the Scottish Parliament is *designed* to produce coalition governments. The rationale for that is to end up with a mix of parties in parliament that's roughly in proportion to how people voted across the country. The arithmetic of this system means "both votes SNP" is pointless. And a lie because it probably can't deliver an outright SNP majority in Holyrood - unless nobody votes for any other party.
Check out the d'Hondt system if you want to know the gory details.
The SNP is saying "both votes SNP" because they don't want Salmond to become an MSP. That would make life deeply awkward for the SNP's leadership.
"I'm left feeling that Alba and the SNP are actually colluding".
Why? One party is led by Salmond and the other by Sturgeon. There's no chance of these mortal enemies colluding about anything. If the SNP and Alba somehow form a supermajority at the May elections, the next parliament in Holyrood will be very, very entertaining.
If Alba is meant to refer to the gaelic word for Scotland if would be nice if they could pronounce it properly.
This makes 3 pro-independence parties to match up against the 3 pro-union parties. So no doubt the media will give both views equal time/space during the campaign (snarf).
The ISP membership voted to withdraw candidates from the May election.
Whatever. You seem to have ignored the Green Party. Which is pro-independence and actually has MSPs. In fact the SNP needs Green Party support in Holyrood to pass legislation and vote down motions of no confidence.
"The new party's web site is a .org address but it's usual for there to be a .scot address too."
I understand that the .scot address has been acquired by a well-known SNP trouble-maker. The wee shithead did the same with domains relating the Independence for Scotland Party.
"I understand that the .scot address has been acquired by a well-known SNP trouble-maker. The wee shithead did the same with domains relating the Independence for Scotland Party."
And absolutely fair play to them for being quick off the mark and doing that!
The first rule of domain management is to register domains in all of the (proper) TLDs that you think you'll need. For a party whose main policy is Scottish independence, for the Alba Party to have failed to have registered the corresponding .scot domain is yet another sure sign of being total numpties!
(Although, having said that, if you think Nominet have been turning the pricing screws of late, the prices for .scot domains really are a complete rip-off in comparison.)
"A spokesperson for Information Commissioner's Office told us: "As a public body the ICO has to consider its responsibilities during the pre-election period. Our regulatory work continues as usual but we will not be commenting publicly on every issue raised during the Parliament Election""
During the pre-election period?
Of course, political parties culd literally break the law for the Purdah period and the ICO will sit back and say nothing.
Given that First Past the Post is still a thing, this would appear to be a cleverly organised plot by the opposition to split the vote and seize further control. They've done it before in England & Wales (UKIP basically being a Tory plant to steal Red voters, anyone?)
Britain's democracy is dead because of the stupid FPTP laws. Voting tactically in opposition to who you don't want to win is a pretty well known thing, and broken. A similar set of rules that got Trump elected despite losing the popular vote; and has kept Trudeau in power too.
The irony is one of the better governments we've had in recent years the media took a dump on (the Coalition); despite lunatics in each party being kept in check and forced to find common centre ground to do stuff. Positive changes like the raising of the tax allowance came out of that.
I am an utter stuck record on this subject and I make no apologies for complaining about it. The system has to change, we have to make votes matter. Please look up the campaign of the same name.
Your comment about a plot to split the vote is wildly wrong. Scotland uses PR to elect its parliament.
Salmond's new party is not standing in the constituency election. Which uses FPTP. Alba can't possibly split the vote there because it's not offering any candidates to vote for. Alba is standing in the top-up vote. Which doesn't use FPTP. It allocates seats based on tne number of votes, modulo some weighting to take account of the seats each party won in the constituency vote. Which means there's not really a pro-independence vote to be split there either.
But the aim of the Alba Party is obviously that Scotland wouldn't be electing MPs to the rUK parliament in the future, so that point could be moot!
(Should there not be a majority of pro-independence MSPs in the next Scottish Parliament, and then no forthcoming referendum, UDI, whatever, I would image that Alba, if they have any sense, wouldn't stand in the next UK Parliament election, apart from perhaps in a few seats where they think they have candidates with particular personal following and a very good chance of winning those seats, precisely to avoid splitting the vote. It's a sad indictment of UK-level politics that tactical voting is always required, because of the lack of any form of PR.)
(Different AC)
People of a certain age will recall Alba, the manufacturer of 'hifi' (really, quite lo-fi) equipment, walkmans, radio cassettes, radio clocks etc. They were pretty big in the 80s. You couldn't walk into a Dixons without seeing a wall full myriad of Alba twin-cassette (with soft eject), hi-speed dubbing, 3 waveband tuner, with graphic equaliser and turntable with rumble filter (copied from Amstrad) systems. All for £99.99.
Like these (SFW)
Is the new Alba party any relation?
Once upon a time (rather a long time ago), Alba, Bush, etc, were "proper" radio brands, but seemed to have a rather convoluted history and did gradually drop to the low-end. Eventually the brands did indeed get bought up by Argos.
Closely followed by a "Night of the long knives" then a modern day "Reichstag Fire" to justify a big law enforcement power grab....
Then again the fanaticism of many SNP supporters (see r/scotland to see what I mean) reminds me more of the DPRK aka North Korea.....slavish devotion to "The Party" and extreme vitriol towards anyone who questions the benevolence of the party....
I wonder how soon after Indy that portraits of "the Leader" are mandated alongside statues...parhaps Nicola will manage 19 holes in 1 at her first attempt at golf and Ben Nevis to weep in her honour...
"Closely followed by a "Night of the long knives" then a modern day "Reichstag Fire" to justify a big law enforcement power grab....Then again the fanaticism of many SNP supporters (see r/scotland to see what I mean) reminds me more of the DPRK aka North Korea.....slavish devotion to "The Party" and extreme vitriol towards anyone who questions the benevolence of the party....
I wonder how soon after Indy that portraits of "the Leader" are mandated alongside statues...parhaps Nicola will manage 19 holes in 1 at her first attempt at golf and Ben Nevis to weep in her honour..."
To be honest, it's the current UK Government that really much more terrifies me about all of the above, with sudden fetishistic creepy flagshagging, over-the-top police reactions to peaceful vigils, vile hateful othering of foreigners, etc. (Yes, there sadly is some worrying and nasty anti-English, anti-foreigner sentiment among some Scottish nationalists, but, as far as I am aware it is thankfully a very small minority, and hopefully kept that way.)
I'm no particular fan of the SNP (and not really of independence), but when your neighbours go rogue you can kind of see that Primal Scream (yes, I know it's not their quote originally) maybe had a point:
"Just what is it that you want to do?
We wanna be free
We wanna be free to do what we wanna do
And we wanna get loaded
And we wanna have a good time"
(I don't doubt that some SNP members show slavish devotion, but, to be honest, I see that reflected in far too many centre-left political discussions online. The amount of vitriol thrown between some members of parties which have more in common than separates them is often incredible, it's possibly even worse than football fans!)
953,587 list votes = 4 SNP list MSPs.
960,141 list votes = 45 Labour and Tory list MSPs.
It makes sense for pro-independence voters to vote for another pro-independence party as their second vote, rather than both votes for the SNP. Albeit they could have already done this with the Greens.
The SNP was always going to split post independence because it's such a broad church; left wing, centrists and right wing supporters. Personally I'd prefer an ethical independent pro-independence candidate, but strategically it's best that the split as such as it is came now. Former Scottish secretary David Mundell said unionists should oppose Alba as a threat to the union by 'gaming the system', and that is correct. But the system was rigged by design as the stats I listed prove, so it's rational to game it.
It's not an original idea by Salmond -
https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/gaming-scottish-proportional-electoral-system-bad-democracy-2917748
This is why I dislike PR. There’s nothing wrong with it - apart from all its supporters banging on about how much better it is. Whichever of a million different flavours that they prefer... all electoral systems are unfair, just in different ways.
I agree with the Patrician. It should be one man, one vote. I’ll volunteer to be the man, and I cast my vote for myself.
My first policy is that supermarkets must sell sorbet as well as ice cream. And at fair prices. And bacon sandwiches must be available in all workplaces. Along with decent tea.
I’m entirely in agreement with Churchill that democracy is way better than anything else. My problem is with the PR is fairer crowd. PR creates as many problems as it solves. One of the good points of our first past the post system is the negative one, that it can be used to kick the bastards out, if enough voters decide to gang up on one party.
One big advantage of PR is that it encourages small parties and allows the expression of different points of view. The problem is that this often forces post election deals to build governments, which gives excessive powers to those small parties. And so long as the numbers add up, they might continue to get invited into government and there’s no way for other voters to get rid of them.
PR might not be perfect but it's still better than FPTP. Why should we put up with a status quo that we know is broken?
Of course, the garbage AV proposal that was voted on publically was deliberately contrived to make it the worst possible implementation of PR imaginable. And now everyone and his dog defends FPTP over PR because of that one borked implementation.
On flavours of PR, MMPR is probably most amenable to UK voters; one vote; no stupid ranking system. Still have a named candidate for your region. But the split of parliament goes by qty of votes. Retains the (few) advantages of FPTP while bringing in meaningful results of voting for, in England at least, non Red-or-Blue members.
It's not really proper PR though. It's the Additional Member System, or Mixed Member PR. We don't get a say in who the candidate is though, and I feel we should.
But the first past the post part of the election is flawed too. My local SNP MSP is utterly useless, a scandal in waiting, but the alternative is a terrible Tory so I'm forced to vote for him. As Robert Heinlein said, I think, there is always someone to vote against.
By far the best candidate at the last election was a local poet standing for Labour, full of integrity and intelligence, but I couldn't vote for her or Tory boy may have got in.
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