Three days ago, I made a call for donations to the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser in the hope of commissioning another opinion poll later in the year – anything donated in the next couple of weeks, up to a total of £5000, will be put towards the next poll. The response has been great so far, with around £600 raised, so thank you for that. However, I’ve paid the penalty in another way – I’ve been bombarded for 72 hours (and I use the word ‘bombarded’ advisedly) with unpleasant email messages from a certain individual.
Let me say something in all seriousness. People who have donated to Scot Goes Pop fundraisers over the years have been vitally important in keeping the blog going (and more recently in making it possible to commission opinion polls, which are very expensive and are usually the preserve of mainstream media outlets). But I simply cannot be expected to hand over editorial control to anyone who may have donated months or years ago. I know the vast majority of people are grown-up enough to understand that, and would never dream of thinking they should be able to dictate what I can and can’t say here. But apparently this principle does need to be spelt out for the benefit of a small minority, or at least for one person.
There’s no way that ‘crowdfunded editorial control’ could possibly work anyway. There will always be moments when a parting of the ways occurs – for example, in March 2020, the independence movement was split between people who were critical of the Scottish Government for putting lives at risk by staying in lockstep with Boris Johnson’s catastrophic herd immunity stategy, and people who wanted to remain loyal by saying that anything the Scottish Government had decided must be for the best. That division will have been reflected among people who had previously donated to the blog – so the only way to avoid offending donors would have been to say nothing or to blandly sit on the fence. But would that have made anyone happy? Of course it wouldn’t. People didn’t donate to pointlessly preserve a blog that says absolutely nothing and that stays neutral on all of the big issues. Quite the reverse. What most people want is a strong pro-indy new media that is truly free and forthright.
It’s the same story with the split between the SNP and Alba in March of this year. Most pro-indy voters may have stuck with the SNP, but if the Twitter polls I ran were any guide, readers of the blog were much more evenly split – indeed, probably the slightly greater number switched to Alba. No matter which way I’d jumped, then, I would have upset a substantial number of readers – but I did need to jump one way or the other. Sitting on the fence just wouldn’t have been credible.
Anyway, I know most people understand that perfectly well, and I thank you once again for your amazing support over the years. The current fundraiser can be found HERE.
