the scottish independence referendum

not the right place to discuss this, but there is a few very good things about the clarity act.

I don't feel I have enough knowledge about politics and economics to vote responsibly.

gtfo then

suppose you'll have to abide by the decisions of far less responsible people then

Just out of interest, have there been any polls of what the English would like the result of the referendum to be?

Depends how you ask the question (or when you ask it, possibly)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/9015374/Britain-divided-over-Scottish-independence.html
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/mar/01/english-welsh-majority-against-scots-independence

I'd love to bottle the pompous complacency amongst UK colleagues, some family and acquaintances - a mix of unthought dislike of, or contempt for Scots yoked with strong feelings Scotland should NOT be independent - and spray it over Scotland on the day of voting. Not that it doesn't come across clear as day anyway, but just to be *sure*.

Give me RAG's honest doubt and confusion over cheap rhetoric like this:

Narrow win for the no team then probably. A win for the bourgeoisie, the squares, the scared, the conformed. In other words: a win for people who wouldn't in their life make a true difference for Scotland anyway.

I'm voting Yes in part because I can afford to - no kids, no mortgage, enough family and work ties to London that if it all goes tits up, I can re-locate relatively easily. But there are plenty of working families here who have very legitimate worries and concerns about their future, the future of their children and of their country. It's simple-minded to pretend or believe that there aren't merits to both the Yes and No positions. That's why I have a lot of respect for the undecideds in this case, and mistrust the utterly certain on both sides of the debate.

It feels to me like the weeks before the 1992 General Election

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROKXlvYMKQc

A Hertfordshire radio station has banned all Scottish music until after the independence referendum.

BOB FM says it is going "Scot Free" by removing artists like Paolo Nutini and Primal Scream from its playlist until after 18 September.

Better Together said it was "not the biggest issue" affecting Scotland.

A Yes Scotland spokesman said the "sound of celebration" after a Yes vote will be heard "as far as the Home Counties."

On Wednesday morning, breakfast show host Graham Mack interrupted '500 Miles' by The Proclaimers to announce the ban on Scottish music.

He said: "I've had enough of this! You'll walk 500 hundred miles, but you don't want anything to do with England? After all we've done for you!

"From now on, this radio station is banning anything Scottish, that includes music by ALL Scottish artists! Until further notice, BOB fm is now Scot Free!"

The station also created a new logo featuring the union flag without the Scottish blue.

A spokesman for Yes Scotland said: "The sound of celebration after a Yes vote next Thursday will be heard, even as far as the Home Counties, and will be music to our ears."

A spokesman for Better Together said: "In a week where major banks have said they plan to move business to England, this is probably not the biggest issue affecting people in Scotland."

Haven't Primal Scream suffered enough this week?

That reminds me, has Boab Gillespie had anything to say on the referendum? He's usually not short of opinions.

“I can’t look in terms of Scotland. It’s bigger than that,” he said.

“People in Liverpool have been hammered, Manchester and Southampton. All over.

“Everybody has been hammered, not just the Scottish.

“We can’t be nationalistic about it. Nationalism has never done it for me. It leads to fascism.

“Ultimately, someone like Alex Salmond manipulates people’s national pride and insecurities but he is obviously a power-mad kind of guy.”

I expected he'd be a No

swastika ayes basically

Not very rebellious there, eh Boab?

LOL (xp)

“Everybody has been hammered, not just the Scottish.

Aye, yer right there, Boab, we're no' the only boozers on the planet efter a'

“People in Liverpool have been hammered, Manchester and Southampton. All over.

He's right enough. I've been in the pub with him and Mani.

Is it bad to not really listen to people saying that other places are being hard done by as well? They're not the ones getting to make this choice. I'll happily support them when they get themselves the chance to do something, and I would like it if they could applaud Scotland for making the most of the opportunity put in front of them rather than going "b-b-b-but what about us?".

Re Gillespie's witterings, I don't think this is really about nationalism, it's about self-determination. Pretty sure we're going to wake up a nation of fascists next Friday morning if Scotland says yes. Power-mad Alex Salmond offered to step down if it would help, which isn't really a sign of a future dictator now, is it? http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/salmond-i-would-quit-if-it-meant-a-yes-vote-1-3514731

http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/lookandlearn-preview/M/M014/M014390-08.jpg

I can see how old-school left-wingers who believe in the solidarity and unity of the British working class (however you define that these days) would favour a no vote fwiw, but I don't think that's what Bobby G's getting at there. In any case since when has Bobby Gillespie ever talked sense about politics?

Like, probably the most positive outcome in the event of a No vote would be for that energy to join with other left-leaning groups across the country to push for a change in the status quo that benefits the whole of the UK. Whether that would happen is a different matter, especially with the Labour Party getting in the way (either by glomming onto it and taking it over or actively standing in the way.)

Right, but there won't be a country for it to be across?

I can see how old-school left-wingers who believe in the solidarity and unity of the British working class (however you define that these days) would favour a no vote fwiw, but I don't think that's what Bobby G's getting at there.

I think that is what he's getting at.

Yes, and I'm mistaking 'No' for 'Yes', like some kind of spanner.

Bob's from a serious Old Labour background, his Dad was not so much an Old Labour dinosaur as, uh, whatever came before the dinosaurs.

Bobby's dad lost the 1988 Govan bi-election to Jim Sillars (who abandoned Labour to join the Nats in the early 80s).

Indeed and he was one of the most inept candidates I've ever seen in my life... and that's by Scottish Labour standards, and that's as low as you can go frankly.

I can see how old-school left-wingers who believe in the solidarity and unity of the British working class (however you define that these days) would favour a no vote fwiw

Judging by my Yes leaning FB friends, and one (ex?) ILXor is most vocal in this respect, this is completely arse about and a Yes vote is the only option for the proper left wing as anyone voting No is clearly "a Tory".

I have seen a smattering of this kind of thing from the Yes campaign and it drives me pretty nuts, even though I understand how strong feelings are:

http://www.facebook.com/375717285904621/posts/398295893646760

The station also created a new logo featuring the union flag without the Scottish blue.

― paolo, Friday, September 12, 2014 4:43 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh no are they gonna have to change the flag

Pretty sure we're going to wake up a nation of fascists next Friday morning if Scotland says yes

There's a "not" missing here, I assume?

i guess the downside to voting Fuck the UK is you have to share a bed with nitwits like Jacobyte MacLachlainn Lvss

Ha, shit, aye.

^ also my journey to a yes vote in three words

I can see how old-school left-wingers who believe in the solidarity and unity of the British working class (however you define that these days) would favour a no vote fwiw

I can *see* it, I just think it requires a bigger leap of faith even than the idea of independent-Scotland-as-socialist-beacon

socialism is internationalist or it's nothing, within that context independent nation-states are an irrelevance imo but tactical lulz are worth something

lol timing of boris johnson's selection. has salmond mentioned him yet.

#ayefacts

fun to see farage arguing so vigorously against scottish independence

https://gs1.wac.edgecastcdn.net/8019B6/data.tumblr.com/1c896b21226115bf3eaf71a5d60369e1/tumblr_nbqwkgCkGb1qznhs5o1_500.jpg

impartial BBC currently speculating on the Queen's opinion

i feeling is that yes will win and that it won't be a marginal victory. my prediction is that yes will win by 56% to 44%.

my*

Other way round I'd say

too close to call, would be "fun"

literal dead heat would be pure joeks

Scottish equiv. of hanging chads - hingin' chads, i suppose. Didn't they make a complete bollocks of the last elections to the Scottish Parliament?

I'm coming round to the idea that a yes vote for Scotland could be a serious win for the Conservatives. Mark Millar (the comics guy) posted on his FB about how he was now undecided and leaning towards no (while, coincidentally, still being painted as a definite yes) and he made a seemingly ludicrous assertion:

But again, can we please stop this dumbed down notion that independence would mean NO MORE TORIES? Or that Scotland never gets the government we voted for and this is why we need to cut ourselves off from Westminster? First of all, Scotland has had the government it voted for over thirteen of the past seventeen years. Two of the last three British Prime Ministers have been Scottish. Even the Thatcher years, a time not traditionally associated with right wing votes in Scotland, the Conservative share of the vote was within a whisker of Labour’s in both 1979 and 1983. Looking back over the forties, fifties and much of the sixties Scotland OVERWHELMINGLY backed the Conservatives and Conservative support here is rock solid all the way back to the Whig-era in the middle of the nineteenth century. The notion that Scotland is any less right wing than England is a complete fallacy.

So I did the sort of thing I usually do, and checked the facts. And although he overplays the hand more than a little he's not wrong in principle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Scotland#UK_Parliament.2C_Westminster

1945: Lab 47.9% of vote, 52% of seats; Con 40.3% of votes, 38% of seats
1950: Lab 46.2% of vote, 52% of seats; Con 44.8% of vote, 44% of seats
1951: Lab 47.9% of vote, 49% of seats; Con 48.6% of votes, 49% of seats
1955: Lab 46.7% of vote, 48% of seats; Con 50.1% of vote, 51% of seats
1959: Lab 46.7% of vote, 54% of seats; Con 47.3% of votes, 44% of seats
1964: Lab 48.7% of vote, 61% of seats; Con 40.6% of vote, 34% of seats
1966: Lab 49.9% of vote, 65% of seats; Con 37.6% of votes, 28% of seats
1970: Lab 44.5% of vote, 62% of seats; Con 38% of vote, 33% of seats
1974 #1: Lab 36.6% of vote, 56% of seats; Con 32.9% of votes, 30% of seats
1974 #2: Lab 36.6% of vote, 58% of seats; Con 24.7% of vote, 23% of seats
1979: Lab 41.6% of vote, 62% of seats; Con 31.4% of votes, 31% of seats
1983: Lab 35.1% of vote, 57% of seats; Con 28.4% of vote, 29% of seats
1987: Lab 42.4% of vote, 69% of seats; Con 24% of votes, 14% of seats
1992: Lab 39% of vote, 68% of seats; Con 25.6% of vote, 15% of seats
1997: Lab 45.6% of vote, 78% of seats; Con 17.5% of votes, 0% of seats
2001: Lab 43.3% of vote, 77% of seats; Con 15.6% of vote, 0% of seats
2005: Lab 39.5% of vote, 69% of seats; Con 15.8% of vote, 0% of seats
2010: Lab 42% of vote, 69% of seats; Con 16.7% of votes, 0% of seats

Now whereas they're not going to win any election soon a move to proportional representation (or even the current Scottish parliament model) in an independent Scotland would see them return to a position of relative influence and be the kingmaker in a hung parliament in the short term; in the longer term with a bit of rebranding and when the SNP become just another party I think there are votes to be won as Scotlnad becomes two-party. It's only in the Blair era they started to fall away seriously; and just as Thatcher will inevitably become something only old people talk about it's not inconceivable that the choice of a new generation could be Tory.

Yep, I think they would have greater influence again. Separating them from the Westminster party (and its toxic brand) would also allow Scottish Tories to move more to the Left and better appeal to the centre ground in Scotland. Just as Labour in Westminster has to be (or feels it has to be) more rightwards than it would naturally be.

And in the 2010 election, there were 412,855 Scottish votes for the Tory party - not many fewer than the 491,386 for the SNP.