Category Archives: Greater Glasgow

P4Indy Goes Live!!

This is me, Marlene, on IndyLive Radio last week. I was a bit nervous about doing it but Norrie was very good at getting the ball rolling and keeping it rolling! Once I got into my stride, I really enjoyed it. I asked Val Gauld, our Glasgow Twitter person, along as well. As you can see she was tweeting as I was speaking. She joined in the chat, too.

Norrie asked me about how P4Indy got set up. Then I had lots of time to tell his listeners about our AGM, about our push to help new P4Indy groups get off the ground and the funding we have for doing that, about the street stalls we run in and around Scotland, and about the Warblers, our concert party.

I also talked about the low numbers, only about 1 in 4, of over 65s who supported Yes in the 2014 campaign, some of the factors involved in that, and how we might engage with those. It does seem from recent polling done at the end of 2018 that more of our age group are coming round to Yes and it’s more like 1 in 3 support independence. Still some way to go and as I said to Norrie, it’s to help push that figure up that I joined P4Indy.

The hardest question Norrie asked me was what song track I wanted to play as we took a wee break from speaking. I’m not much of a pop music fan but I lived through the 60s and 70s so I settled for a Beatles’ track. I suspect Norrie was humouring my very old choice! After that I got to present that week’s community announcements from The National. And I got to announce the “Walloper of the Week Award” which last week went to Labour MP Paul Sweeney for his rather over the top response to ScotGov’s wee video about us being open and welcoming country. He thought it was “smarmy, saccharine, bourgeois tripe”. If you want to find out what else the man said and what responses he got, look here.

They call their studio The Broomcupboard! Aye, it is pretty wee. I liked it but it must be hard for Norrie and Kevin to work there all the time. Kevin showed me a bigger space in the same building that he hoped to be able to move to. And I hear that has now gone ahead. These guys are working on a shoestring when it comes to funding. If you can help them with a few spare pounds, please do. This is their website: IndyLive Radio

Glasgow Group are Now Tweeting

Maybe it’s all the excitement about setting up The Warblers – Glasgow P4Indy music group – now we’ve also started tweeting!! Our first tweet was from in George Square, Glasgow, at the Hope Over Fear Rally last weekend.

Sheena, one of our stalwarts at the stall, wrote this about being at the Rally:

“Despite a miserable rainy morning we decided to go for it & the sun shone. Mary, Neil & dug. Heather, Valerie & myself. Rather gusty winds but the atmosphere was happy and positive – which cheered me. There was a big range of age groups including many 50+ men & women from all over central Scotland. And further afield. One American lad over on a visit asked if we were celebrating our Independence Day! People were very generous with donations and went off with our Saltire earrings, flags, and leaflets. The painted stones Heather had made were popular with children (these were made to hold down our leaflets in the wind)! Apparently we have been viewed by over 50,000 people – courtesy of Valerie our Twitter expert.”

https://twitter.com/P4IndyGlasgow/status/1109913451529453570

That tweet now has 867 likes, 69 replies and 407 retweets. That’s a very encouraging start. The more we raise P4Indy’s profile, the more people see what we are doing to encourage older folk to engage with the Yes Movement.

An hour after our first tweet, we had 100 followers. Overnight that grew to about 1000. We’ve had lots of appreciative tweets and mentions. Five days on and our Twitter feed has 1740 followers. There’s obviously a good few folk out there who appreciate what were doing in Pensioners 4 Indy! Some of them were speaking to us this morning in Argyle Street at our regular Thursday spot from midday.

If you’re a Tweeter, follow us @P4IndyGlasgow for P4Indy news, updates from our website, photos, and news from around the Yes Campaign. There is also @P4Indy which is the Twitter feed for our National Group P4Indy.

WordClouds for Independence

Last month the Glasgow P4Indy had a visit from Bill Mills talking to us about Reframing. This month we wanted to explore his ideas from different angles so we created a workshop format looking at the values we associate with an independent Scotland. We did two workshops – one about values we as Yes voters associate with independence; and another about values which led No voters to reject independence.

Of course we’re Yes voters so we might not be correct in the values we think influenced No voters! But we’ve got experience of talking to No voters in our family, in meetings, on buses, and at our stalls. it was interesting to see what came out of this. We could understand why people were / are influenced by these things.

We’ve put the results of these workshops into word clouds.

Values & Ideas We Associate with Becoming Independent:

Values & Ideas We Think Led People to Vote No:

These are not definitive results. We could do the same workshop with a different group of people and get a different word cloud. But we think there would be a big overlap with what we came up with.

This is not in any way to denigrate the values we placed in the No cloud. Actually there is overlap between the two clouds. Some are sort of mirror images of each other. There is definitely a relatedness between the two and we think being more aware of that relatedness is helpful.

No

strong government
wanting to remain in EU
family ties
stability, continuity
not abandoning people

Yes

getting who we vote for
internationalism
sense of community
belonging
social inclusion

After going through this, we had a better sense of where our values and thinking overlaps with No voters. Of course there’s not a neat match. But it did suggest things that could help us in reframing our conversations.. Ways in which we might reframe our own thinking. And ways in which we might manage to suggest new frames for their thinking.

It’s not easy to change frames. This is definitely a work in progress!

Warblers In Action for Burns Week

A couple of months back I wrote about the Glasgow P4Indy group’s choir – The P4Indy Warblers. In December we were practising carols and hoping to be able to sing in pensioners’ sheltered housing complexes or in residential homes. We didn’t manage to get any gigs for our carol singing 😟. But we thought maybe we could get some for Burns week.

So we kept on practising together and moved on to Burns songs. We even practised a few Burns poems. We had one appearance lined up at the Maryhill Women’s Centre to sing, recite and play for their Burns Lunch on the 22 Jan. Then suddenly we found ourselves with another two requests for later on that week, one in Carntyne and one in Dennistoun. It was a busy singing week and throat sweeties were a necessity!

We took photos and shot some video footage. I’ve put it together in a short video. Here it is:

We really enjoyed those gigs. We were a bit rough round the edges but we had very forgiving audiences! And we’ll be carrying on practising together. We have other appearances lined up over the next few months. We could do with more people in the singing group….. so if you can sing a bit, or play a bit, or recite a bit…. get in touch using the Contact Page.

Glasgow Group Kicks Off 2019 with Reframing Works…

Ever had a simple argument put to you even though there is no evidence to support it? Ever wondered why you had clear facts rejected? Facts alone do not change people’s opinions. What is going on here? How you we deal with these situations?

Reframing is a technique which shows us how to to put our point across without reinforcing other people’s existing preconceptions. In many cases presenting clear facts actually reinforces people’s existing misconceptions. How we reframe establishment propaganda is perhaps the biggest single challenge facing us in working for self-determination for Scotland.

So this month, our Greater Glasgow Group has invited Bill Mills to come and talk to us. The session will introduce the concepts of Framing and Reframing, and relate them to the current situation in Scotland. Followed by Q&A.

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