As I explained last year, I really am reliant on the success of the annual general fundraisers to keep Scot Goes Pop going, at least in the sense of being a blog that is updated frequently and provides comprehensive coverage of Scottish opinion polls. That’s perhaps even more the case now than it was six, seven or eight years ago, because a couple of my other income streams (one of which had nothing whatever to do with writing or with politics) dried up as a result of the pandemic and so far haven’t restarted. So for that reason, although the poll fundraiser I launched towards the end of 2023 is still well short of its target, I’m going to have to launch the 2024 general fundraiser now and concentrate on that for the time being. I will get the poll done as soon as humanly possible, and if by any chance the general fundraiser eventually hits its full target, I’ll set aside some of the funds from that to top up what has already been raised for the poll. Doubtless the general fundraiser will be another slowburner due to the cost-of-living crisis, so please bear with me as I continue to promote the fundraiser link at the bottom of some/most blogposts over the coming days and weeks (and possibly months) – it’ll probably take a fair bit of persistence.
Here is my pitch from the new GoFundMe page I’ve set up –
Hi, my name is James Kelly and for sixteen years I’ve been writing Scot Goes Pop, consistently one of the most popular pro-independence blogs in Scotland. With its distinct focus on opinion polls (although not to the exclusion of other subjects), it has been able to challenge the conventional narratives about polls that are mostly set by the unionist media.
During the 2014 referendum campaign, I was able to demonstrate that the position was nowhere near as hopeless for the Yes side as was often portrayed by the media, and just after the referendum was over, I was faster than anyone in the mainstream media (I think literally) to spot and point out the extraordinary swing that was occurring from Labour to the SNP.
With your help, Scot Goes Pop has also commissioned several opinion polls of its own from reputable polling firms affiliated to the British Polling Council. Some of these were genuinely landmark polls, for example our poll in June 2020 was the first in the famous long unbroken sequence of Yes-majority polls that lasted for around a year, while the 56% for Yes in our November 2020 poll was the highest ever Yes vote in a Panelbase poll, and one of the highest ever in any type of poll.
In 2021, I also started a ‘Scot Goes Popcast’ to accompany the blog, in which (among other things) I interviewed a number of fascinating guests including the former First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond. There have been numerous spin-offs from the blog – I’ve been a monthly columnist for iScot magazine since 2017 and I’ve written extensive poll analysis for The National newspaper since 2015. I’ve been interviewed for TV and radio, including for BBC Breakfast, BBC Radio Five Live, Al Jazeera, the Bauer radio network and CTV News (Canada).
This is general election year, with the most likely date for polling day being October or November. That means the number of published Scottish opinion polls is likely to steadily increase as the year progresses (with perhaps a little lull in the summer). With your help I hope to be able to provide Scot Goes Pop’s usual standard of coverage of the coming vote, which will be a genuine political crossroads for Scotland as a whole and for the independence movement in particular. The funds raised will help give me the flexibility to drop everything (circumstances permitting!) and post analysis whenever a new poll comes out. It will also help cover various miscellaneous “running costs”, such as the small monthly fee for podcast hosting. And if the full target is reached, I will put some of the funds towards commissioning a new poll. Any donations, whether large or small, will be tremendously helpful.
You can learn a bit more about Scot Goes Pop from the promotional video below.
Alternatively, direct payments can be made to my Paypal account. In many ways this is preferable, because the payment is usually processed instantly and fees can be eliminated entirely depending on which option you select from the menu. My Paypal email address is:
jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk
A small number of people prefer direct bank transfer. If you’d like to donate that way, please email me directly via my contact email address, and I’ll send you the details. My contact email address is different from my Paypal address and can be found on my Twitter profile or in the sidebar of this blog (desktop version only).
