Scot Goes Pop Fundraiser 2023

Hi, I'm James Kelly, and for exactly 15 years (it all started on 3rd May 2008), I've been writing the pro-independence blog Scot Goes Pop. With your help, I hope to keep the blog shining bright over the coming months as a key part of the pro-independence alternative media.

Scotland needs a Yes media more than ever during these tricky times, and to a limited extent we do have one. However, given the circumstances, I'm not sure that a media that is slavishly loyal to the status quo of Yes politics can contribute as much as one that looks forward to a new vista in which pro-independence parties will have changed and reformed to rebuild public trust and to once again become credible vehicles for independence in the near-term. That's the type of media that I hope Scot Goes Pop can be part of.

And with your help it will also continue to provide the unique polling and election analysis service from a pro-independence perspective that it has been known for over the years. Countless inaccuracies and distortions in the unionist-oriented mainstream media about Scottish opinion poll results have only come to light or been corrected because Scot Goes Pop identified them. And there have even been eight full-scale Scottish opinion polls commissioned by Scot Goes Pop itself, most recently two in March of this year.

The existence of the blog has led to many spin-offs. I've written extensive polling and election analysis for The National, including daily constituency profiles during the 2019 general election campaign and the 2021 Scottish Parliament election campaign. I've been an iScot columnist since 2017, and for many years I was a columnist on both the TalkRadio website and the International Business Times. In the run-up to the 2014 independence referendum, I may well have been the most-read pro-independence blogger in Scotland, due to the good fortune of many of my IBTimes columns being syndicated on Yahoo. I've also been interviewed on TV and radio on numerous occasions, including on BBC Breakfast, BBC Radio Five Live, Al Jazeera, CTV News (Canada) and the Bauer radio network.

However, blogging is a very time-consuming process, especially during elections or other busy periods when there may be several polls a day to cover. Like all writers, I have to keep body and soul together while I write, and running a general fundraiser every year helps me to do that, while also giving me the flexibility to drop everything and write a blogpost whenever a new poll comes out. If the funds fall well short of the target, my aim will be to keep going for as many months as I can.

To get a better idea of what Scot Goes Pop is all about, please watch this short promo film that I made with Phantom Power.