A lot of it I don’t engage with too much but I generally attend constituency (Parliament) and ward meetings (Council) and I do think there is huge value in door-knocking/reaching out to voters.
Without wishing to compete with the above, we are fairly central in London and get weekly emails to attend whatever the leadership is doing at that point - this week it was Corbyn’s big speech (seemed about 150 activists formed that audience). You feel a little like camera/media fodder but some like it:
Calling the BBC “biased in favour of independence” is like calling UKIP pro-EU. It’s so ridiculously opposed to reality it’s difficult to see where you’re coming from. You know where Ruth Davidson used to work?
BBC Scotland has its own identity, albeit within the BBC framework, and gets regional funding. Some of that goes on local news and, like other regions, it runs alongside UK-centric reporting.
It’s obv. subject to the overarching BBC Charter and so the usual rules regarding matters like accuracy of reporting and impartiality apply and are reasonably keenly overseen:
“sampling” does not just apply to polling. It is relevant whenever a choice is to be made as to analyse or not.
In this case the events you wish to scrutinise have already had your bias applied. In your own words…
Bolding mine. An unbiased view would be to to take a random sample of independence articles from the BBC without considering up front whether they are negative or not.
Just curious: were there metal detectors and the like that you needed to pass through in order to get into the hall? In the US, they would have blocked the roads along the entire route the President took. It’s amazing to me that you were able to drive that closely to an event the PM spoke.
If enough people treat as “other”, particularly with hostility, people they define as English, then it is. Hasn’t anyone explained the social construction of “race” to you?
The security theatre that attends the President of the United States everywhere he goes is part of the pomp of the office. The UK Prime Minister does have a fairly attentive security detail, but it’s much more low-key. It certainly wouldn’t extent to metal detectors at an election meeting in a village hall.
Not that I could see. Bags were inspected but otherwise security was discreet. There wasn’t even much of a visible police presence until afterwards. But make no mistake: just because the security was discreet doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. I clocked a couple of people looking uncomfortable in civvies, and I expect there were a few of the boys from Arbroath lurking nearby.
I think we should get away from the 19th century mindset of only a few races, since historically the term was used for much more than this and the term isn’t even accurate anyway.
In discussions where the primary purpose is to discuss the term “race”, then perhaps. But to use this as a nitpick to attempt to invalidate an accusation of anti-ethnicism does not bring anything to the discussion IMO, not only because it involves giving too much credence to classical racists, but it also implies that racism is somehow worse than anti-ethnicism.
I’d label that closer to Them-ism. Scots & English are certainly able to nurture a group grudge against the other because they’re a Them. I have a hard time buying that as “racism” as the term is commonly used at least on this side of the pond.
The recent unpleasantness in Northern Ireland also isn’t racism (as we use the word). Even though it certainly was socioeconomic group-ism. And was sorta, just barely if you squint right, ethnic group-ism. And straight up no-kidding no-doubt-about-it raw sectarianism in all its ghastly glory.
YMMV. English is funny that way even within a single country. Much less two or three.