Monday 11 May 2015

Aims and Objectives


I have already said that I am going to continue blogging. I like writing and I like communicating ideas. We have important battles to fight in the future and indeed in the present.

This blog has a number of purposes.

1 To help protect and defend the UK

2 To defeat the aims and objectives of the Scottish National Party (SNP)

3 To provide a place where people from all sides can debate in a courteous and reasonable way.

I don’t have anything against people who support the SNP. I have no hatred in me at all for anyone, least of all for my fellow Scots. I disagree with them that is all. I use forceful argument and I attack ideas and assumptions, but I don’t attack people.
In the past few weeks I’ve been subjected to relentless personal attack. This has been quite hard. People who read this blog can help. You can leave supportive comments. You can tweet or retweet this blog. You can share it with friends and colleagues. This blog has grown from tiny beginnings and now is read by thousands every week. Help me to grow it and we will have a platform for putting forward our ideas.

If you would like to grow your own blog, do not hesitate to contact me. I will nearly always at the very least give you a tweet. I'm happy to give advice and help too. Maybe you have good ideas for me too. Let's share them. There is the possibility of going further. You could let me include one of my articles on your site, while I would consider letting you include one on mine. This helps both you and me by giving us back-links and additional ways to share what we are writing.

I have put in a huge amount of effort in writing this blog every week. You could support me by reading a few pages of one of my books. There are free preview pages. This might enable you to help me combat the negative trolling reviews I receive on Amazon because of my political opinions. A few positive, honest reviews would really be appreciated. Receiving just a little back makes a huge difference to my morale and contributes to my feeling that this blog is valued.  

As you no doubt have noticed this blog now has Adsense Google Ads plus Amazon Associates ads. I don't blog for money, I blog because I like writing and like people to read, but it is nice to earn just a little bit because of my writing. I hope you don't find the ads too intrusive. Who knows just like television maybe they are sometimes more interesting than the blog! 

I will occasionally include a non-political blog. This is partly because I want to write about more important things than Scottish nationalism. But also it is a way of growing the readership of the blog. Not everyone in the world is interested in Scottish politics. These articles will not be of interest to everyone. Sometimes they may get a bit technical. But please do have a look. Often they are more relevant than they might appear as they deal with ways of arguing.

Our battle is going to be difficult, but we can win if we are strong and united. I follow these principles.

1 Always do what your opponent least wants.
2 Don’t make concessions to nationalism.
3 Try to reverse the direction in which nationalism is taking us by making the UK more united.

We have a Pro UK government with an absolute majority. We can block the SNP for the next five years. There is nothing they can do about this.

We must do all we can to prevent the SNP gaining an overall majority at Holyrood.  

We must work towards reversing the gains the SNP made at the UK parliament.

The SNP will do all they can to win concessions that will gradually lead them towards independence. Resist these.

It is crucial that we understand the mentality of our opponent. They now want independence at any cost. No concession will make them cease to want their goal, but they will be content to accept such concessions as a step along the way. Even if we could show that something like Full Fiscal Autonomy (FFA) or indeed independence would make Scotland poorer, they would still want it and see it as well worth it. But unfortunately many independence supporters would continue to believe that FFA or independence would make them wealthier. They only believe their own sources of information now. So please don't even think of offering FFA, it would lead almost immediately to independence. I have thought very hard about this point. The only thing I fear now is FFA. 

We need to put forward a positive view of Britain and we need to come up with a fair, equal and lasting constitutional settlement that will secure the unity of our country forever. There are many possibilities. Personally I like the idea of devolving power to county level and beyond. This bypasses nationalism by bypassing national parliaments. Let the real power lie with Aberdeenshire not Edinburgh. But just as we devolve so must we unite. No country can survive long if its people lose their sense of unity. The encouragement of people from other parts of the UK will be decisive in securing Scotland remains a part of our country. If our fellow Brits turn against us because of the SNP, the SNP will have already won its battle. Don't let that happen. 

There is likely to be a referendum on the EU. This must not be allowed to undermine the UK still further. I intend to show soon how we can make this issue work to our advantage.

Be optimistic. Morale must be high as we have a long difficult battle ahead. Help me to develop our social media presence and we will have a better chance of seeing off those who want to destroy our country.

Best wishes,

Effie Deans