This week the Dundee Tele conducted a poll to ascertain the views of the people of Dundee and district on how they voted two years ago on the 18th September 2014 in the independence referendum.
The propose of the poll was to see if there had been any change of heart in voters from two years ago ,till today and the result was very satisfying ,to say the least .
More than 7,000 people took the poll and out of that 5,978 said they voted yes making the vote for Yes ,89% as against 12% who would vote No again. A truly spectacular outcome.
However being realistic I suppose there would naturally be a larger amount of people wanting change would actually vote as against the people who have no real reason to vote because their position is the status quo, but the real significance is in the percentage of people who have decided to change their minds and who would vote yes in the event of another referendum.
The number of people who took the poll and voted no the last time was 851 , of these people there was 686 who would still vote no in another referendum, which means that there were 165 people who have changed their minds which means that there is a shift in voting intentions of just over 19% to yes .
This swing has came about through a natural shift mainly at dissatisfaction with how the Tories and Labour colluded and conspired to deprive us of our independence together with the attitude coming from Westminster in connection with things like “English votes for English laws” and the out come of the “Smith commission” on additional powers for the Scottish Parliament which in effect made us unpaid tax collectors. So in other words there has been a very definite shift in opinion towards yes without much actual input from the SNP as we still do not have any guidance on the issues we lost the last referendum on. Therefore ,one can only imagine what would happen during another campaign with all of these questions answered.
Perhaps ,in the euphoria which will no doubt follow the results of this poll , the most significant positive element of this exercise might escape some and that is the attitude of a DC Thomson news paper , The Tele , in reporting this poll in the fair way they did . Up to now DC Thomson have always been looked upon as a stridently Unionist publisher and ,goodness knows I have had my share of being on the wrong end of their reporting , on several occasions leading to an exchange of letters with the editor of the Courier in which I stated my opinion that Dundee had at one time been the City of Jute ,Jam and Journalism. We had lost the Jute and the Jam and I was of the opinion at the time, that we were about to loose the Journalism.
The Courier and the Tele lost a lot of their circulation soon after the referendum and since then have been battling to get this back. They have tried various things among which was employing Alex Salmond to do a Weekly column. I would like to think that they have now begun to listen to the ordinary people of Dundee and this latest piece on the polling they have carried out together with the fair reporting and coverage they gave to the recent attempt by the Yes Bus team to organise an independence related rally in the city Square, a rally that was disgracefully thwarted by the SNP led Dundee Council, leads me to believe that they are now reflecting the views of the majority of Dundee folk.
I think this possible change of heart in DC Thomson’s is far more important than the actual results of the poll itself . We in the yes movement are not asking for and favours or special treatment from the press , only a level playing field to compete on ., We have the arguments and we have the moral right to pursue independence for our country. Whether it is next year or the following year we stand ready to continue on that road to independence. It will make that journey more pleasant if we have the ear of our local media outlets.
So a good article today in the Tele and as I said before ,Dundee was once the city of Jute ,Jam and Journalism we lost the Jute and the Jam but there is hope for the journalism and perhaps it is time for the Yes family to show that we hold no grudges and once again start reading our local papers .
Our road
Bob Costello 