by Rab Bruce’s Spider

A few days ago, I met up with some old friends. They have a variety of career backgrounds and political views, ranging from ardent Yessers, through non-committal uncertains, to keen Brexiteers and died-in-the –wool Unionists. On this occasion, however, we were meeting up to celebrate personal landmarks for a couple of the gang, so I had been well warned to stay off the topic of politics. I managed to stick to that, although I had to bite my tongue a couple of times when the conversation strayed towards current affairs.

However, while the time was not right for a passionate debate, a few comments made by some of the others struck me as very revealing.

One of the group has been living in Bulgaria for a while. He mentioned that he had visited a local bar to watch some sporting event on television, and that the bulk of the audience were British Ex-pats. Note, they were not immigrants, but ex-pats.

There was some brief discussion of financial issues, with it being noted that the Bulgarian Lev is pegged to the Euro in preparation for Bulgaria converting to using the Euro. Another of the group stated that this was because every country which signed up to join the EU since the early 1990s must agree to join the Euro. No mention was made of places like Sweden, Poland or the Czech Republic which still have little, if any, intention of joining the Euro, and know perfectly well that they cannot be forced to do so.

A third comment was made when we were trying to work out a date, and reference was made to "The SNP Referendum" as having taken place at around the same time as the event we were trying to recollect. It was not The Scottish Independence Referendum, but the SNP Referendum.

I should say that all of these comments were made by people who are educated and articulate, as well as being generally well-informed, yet these throwaway comments reveal just how much their attitudes and opinions have been influenced by the media they consume.

I am sure that, if challenged, they would have acknowledged the bias inherent in their comments, so I’m not going to make too big a thing of the discussion. However, what these remarks do confirm is that, if and when Indyref2 does come along, our greatest enemy will be the media which shapes people’s opinions this way. We will have a lot of persuading to do.

As a postscript, it was also interesting that the most ardent Unionist in the group expressed dismay at the prospect of Boris Johnson becoming Prime Minister. It still won’t be enough to change her mind on Scottish independence because she loathes the SNP and everything they do or stand for, but perhaps there may be a slight chink in her devotion which might just make her understand why more and more Scots are moving to Yes.