AFFG's Biggest-Ever Stand for the Union

On behalf of the Directors and Team at A Force For Good, we would like to thank the 50 AFFG supporters who turned up to make a stand for the Union at the SNP/Scottish Nationalist march in Glasgow on Saturday 4 May 2019. We'd also like to thank around another 30 people who turned up to show support for the UK – in all 80 of us!

That's a good showing of unionists, considering that when AFFG first did this two years ago – at the AUOB march on 3 June 2017 in Glasgow – there were 12 of us!

So, we are growing, we're getting bigger and better and more effective – so much so that we need more Marshals to help organise our Thin Red Line! If anyone reading this is happy to step up, we can show you what's involved.

As usual, on the day, we also counted the marchers head-by-head in order to reveal their over-inflated nonsense about their numbers. They claimed "100,000". We counted 8,796.

Our Counting Protocol is detailed in the article we wrote about it: 8,796 on Glasgow AUOB March, 4-5-19.

Strange Police Estimates Again...

Police Scotland have been quoted throughout the media as saying "between 30,000 and 35,000 were at Glasgow Green at the end of the march" (See for example, The Times Scotland, 7-5-19, p.2).

We wrote about this last year, and we asked why Police Scotland had over-estimated the marches in Dumfries, and also at the Glasgow march on 5 May 2018. At the latter march they also estimated "35,000" – even though this was several times the likely figure. (This was before AFFG realised we had to count them ourselves!)

This year, we filmed the count from two angles. Our head-by-head count revealed a grand total of 8,796.

Our second camera revealed that the march took exactly 91 minutes to pass our point at the corner of George Square (albeit with frequent hold-ups), and showed that the marchers were exiting the choke-point at the building works outside Queen Street Station at roughly 90-100 a minute. Therefore, this also ties approximately around the 9K ballpark figure. So why can't the Police do something really simple like that? If they don't want to do a head-by-head count, then all they have to do, in order to get a reasonably accurate figure is to measure the overall time it takes to pass a given point and take a few 1 minute averages, and then multiply appropriately. Unfortunately, without fail, all the newspapers on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday either reported the crazy "100,000" figure, or they spoke about "tens of thousands" or they quoted the Police saying "between 30,000 and 35,000 were at Glasgow Green". What we'd like to know is how are the Police making such a massive error?

There is no way that an additional 26K people joined the march between George Square and Glasgow Green! The problem for us is that these figures are political. It is hard for us to promote our correct figure on social media when we are confronted with the Scottish Nationalists coming back with this "official Police estimate" of around 4 times ours! Like it or not, if the Police are getting these figures wrong by such a large margin, then they are – although not intentionally – just helping the Scottish Nationalist political agenda; which aims to give the impression of a much greater movement than exists in real life. We are working to ensure that the correct department of Police Scotland will know in future that we are actually counting the marchers head-by-head, and that we're coming up with – and widely publicising – vastly different figures.

AUOB's Money Collection "Not as [Fantastical] as we Hoped" (£5,568)

Here's another way that proves we are in the correct ballpark.

The donations collected by AUOB on the day were nowhere near the figure expected from 30,000 people, let alone 100,000 people!

According to their Facebook page on the night of 7-5-19, the collection from all the people on the march "was not as fantastic [fantastical?] as we hoped".

The 'All Under One Banner' folk always weave a tangled web for themselves every time they open their mouths and tell another of their tall tales! So it's no surprise to see that they're now disappointed at only raising £5,568 at their imaginary "100,000" march.

That would work out at less than 6p per person. Indeed, it wasn't even that because – as we see – the money raised is "inclusive of monies given from most of the stalls" and "a donation from the Burger and Ice Cream vans".

So they didn't even raise the lofty sum of 6p per person!

But of course, we at AFFG counted them via two cameras and we know the figure was 8,796. When we realise that is the number, then the amount which AUOB raised works out at 62p per person. That is not extravagant, but it is what we would expect they would raise from around a 9K turnout. It's a respectable amount.

Anyway, enough about AUOB's fundraising efforts.

The fact is, we Unionists also need to raise funds, and so far, the Scottish Nationalists are much better at it than we are!

So please contribute to our Crowdfunder to enable us to continue our summer 2019 activism at these events. It's a way of showing that you appreciate what we do. It doesn't have to be much; you can do so anonymously; and it will only take 2 minutes of your time here> DONATE TO OUR SUMMER ACTIVISM