An election is a funny thing, be that a general, local or leadership election. They are all a lot of work, a lot of action and a lot of time.
It weighs heaviest on those who take part as volunteers. You see the volunteers are not paid. They have no real skin in the game other than the love for the activity they’re partaking in. These people sacrifice many many hours of personal and home life in the pursuit of a dream that is bigger than they are, in the pursuit of a country that is better, and more in line with the vision they have for the future.
However, it does not come without a cost. It does need to be said that the volunteers of any election do so with great personal sacrifice. The sacrifice of time, effort and missed opportunities from those special moments that you enjoy, just by being around people you love.
It is with that note, that we mention this blog has taken some personal time from some of the core contributors, following the SNP leadership election.
It is also the case that Scottish politics has been such a rollercoaster in the last little while it has been difficult to stay up-to-date and up-to-the-minute, leaving us unable to provide a contribution that meets the high bar we set.
We do live in exciting times and politics does move at high speed. However, it is now time the story continues and our contributions once again increase, we begin looking at the next chapters of what will be – the delivery of Scottish independence.
Thank you ever so much to all of our loyal support. Let’s roll.
Every now and then something kinda cool comes along and piques interest.
We’re nearing the tenth anniversary of the first Independence referendum, and we’re now in a position to say not only has the First Minister who led the movement there moved on, but so has his successor, Nicola Sturgeon. A generation has definitively, in every conceivable fashion, now passed.
There have been some big ideas in the SNP leadership race, but some have been wandering around the movement for a long while. One is the establishment of a campaign vehicle, an organisation built from the ground up.
ViveEcosse attended some of the formation meetings and while it’s taken a while to get where we are, there are some very interesting things to report.
The ‘Movement for Scottish Independence’ is now alive!
Political parties are already registered entities so will exist regardless – instead, this is for everyone else – an umbrella organisation to help with the logistics of being a full member of the electoral process.
Already there are a ton of Yes Groups, the Scottish Independence Convention and the influential Common Weal think tank leading the way.
It’s one we are proud to stand under – and the campaign is just getting warmed up. As always we’re advocates of wider doors and longer tables, so we hope to see you all in MSI too.
Taking a brief moment to pause and look back at November’s figures for the site, where we finally got round to giving it the full attention it rightly deserves, and the output it generates.
The purpose of ViveEcosse is to give a blogging platform relating to Scottish Independence to those who don’t really blog but have a voice or a topic they want to talk about. We hope first time contributors will jump back in and regularly contribute but sometimes it is a ‘message in a bottle’. Thank you to this months contributors.
While I’m in Paris on holiday, in a city and culture of holding government to account, with strong preservation of political and speech freedoms – it seems apt to share how successful November has been.
On the ‘Voices for Independence’ most popular list, we managed to crack into the top 10, placing 8th on the list for the last four weeks:
We also are sharing our internal stats, which have slightly different ways of recording, so we’re going to go with our server level ones. One set for our secure site (the vast majority come in this way) and our non secure site (older devices, some vpns) – we attempt to push all to the secure.
Secure SiteNon secure site
WordPress throws them all together for us.
WP Statistics
Thanks for joining us folks! More great content in December.
In an increasingly digital world, where are the affordable tools to help build strong political parties? If democracy depends on choice and representation – why are there almost no tools on the shelf to help establish parties?
Each party requires a plethora of tools to try and build its campaign engine – many cost eye watering amounts individually but are required to build party machines that win.
If you’re a new party – there genuinely isn’t much available. If you have low income or subscription value – there potentially is nothing.
ViveEcosse is about trying to kick forward progress in Scottish Politics. We’ve already created the open-source-esqueIndy X, and we’re supporting many other groups bring their own events to life.
Our second project? Owing to the technical backgrounds of two ViveEcosse founders, is to create Thistle.
Thistle is a Scottish Political Party management and campaign engine.
The Vive Ecosse Team is developing Thistle due to the lack of serious alternatives able to fit the requirement of a modern Scottish Political Party.
That all sounds kind of technical, so here’s a brief idea of what it does.
Party Management: Membership (multiple levels), Supporters (multiple levels), Gamification, Email, Support Desk
Party Policy: Policy submission, Policy curation, Policy development , Policy Index
Party Discipline: Reporting, Cautions, Warnings, Suspension, Exclusion, Expulsion, Appeals, Member handbook
Party Internal Elections: Term Management, Candidate biography, Vote Capture, Results & Reporting
VoterID: Support + Opposition Tracking, Questions, Canvassing, Data Capture, Data reporting, Self Identification, Targeting
Get Out The Vote: Reporting, Feedback
Electoral Tracking: Poll Tracking, Party Candidate Tracking, Opposition Candidate Tracking
Campaign Team Management: Todo lists, Contact lists, Chat, Notes, HQ Updates, Teams
We previously built the Party Policy and Campaign Team Management modules for another purpose, but due to never being used, we have them ready to go for our initial release.
Next week we hope to bring the development roadmap out and have some stuff to showcase. Thistle has its own page. If you’re interested in following along into the details.
If you have any ideas that aren’t mentioned above – that you think ought to be in the system – pop them in the comments and lets see what we can make among ourselves.
