Yes Dundee has launched a fundraiser to try to plaster buses in the city with pro-independence adverts but the company it is targeting said it will not accept any materials.
The campaign group hit back by claiming a contract has already been signed with an advertising agency and pointed to previous election campaign posters that have appeared on the city’s fleet.
Yes Dundee has raised more than £1,300 of the £5,000 it needs to place adverts on “dozens of National Express buses across Dundee in the weeks ahead of the independence referendum”.
The crowd-sourcing initiative only launched last Wednesday.
However, a spokeswoman for National Express told The Courier: “We have a long-standing company policy not to carry any political advertising on any of our UK bus fleet.”
It is understood an arrangement has been made for almost £8,000 worth of adverts to be carried over 39 separate buses across the city. Yes Dundee wants to raise £5,000 on the indiegogo site and the rest offline.
The donations will go into Yes Scotland’s central funding before being handed back to the local branch, so to comply with Electoral Commission rules, Yes Dundee said.
A spokesman for the group said: “Yes Dundee is a broad-based campaign but the SNP as a party has advertised on buses at the last two elections.
“Labour has also advertised, so I find it hard to understand why National Express would say they have a ‘long-standingpolicy’ against such advertising.”
A spokeswoman for Exterion Media, who handle bus advertising for a number of companies in Scotland, said there had been no contact from Yes Dundee but did say most of her clients would take such materials during the referendum.
The spokeswoman said: “We don’t normally take political adverts saying, for example, ‘vote SNP’ or ‘vote Labour’.
“However, when it comes to a one-off like the referendum, we have taken the view that the bus companies are happy to take campaign adverts, as long as we accept from both sides of the vote.”
The Courier can also reveal that the new fundraiser comes just weeks after Yes Dunfermline had to cancel a planned “Yes in the Glen” rally because it failed to receive enough money through online fundraising to enable the event to go ahead.