Scotland Watch

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 14 Sep 2014, 18:29

Here is next week's news. Quite witty in places.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/tomphillips/the ... ry#3igbn46

RenewableCandy · Post by **RenewableCandy** » 14 Sep 2014, 18:59

Postal voters may be predominantly rural and/or elderly. Thus, they may not be a typical sample.

peaceful_life · Post by **peaceful_life** » 14 Sep 2014, 20:35

Interesting, although just as speculative as the rest really.

'Majestic is a big data source which can extrapolate deep insights from the way in which pages and entities on the web connect to each other. We thought it would be useful to turn our insights onto the Scottish independence referendum'

http://blog.majesticseo.com/research/sc ... tion-poll/

nexus · Post by **nexus** » 15 Sep 2014, 09:00

Did anyone hear ResPublica (I think it was Philip Blond) on Today this morning, it's worth checking out it was just before 7am iirc.

Somewhat surprisingly for a Tory think tank, they seem to be behind Scottish independence and furthermore they propose that cities like Manchester are given partial independence too eg Manchester be allowed to set its own taxes and have full control over spending.

I'm a bit suspicious that this is a ruse to be able to hive off London and the South East and leave the rest of England, Wales& NI/UK * (*delete as applicable) to rot.

I think it was ResPublica which came up with the 'Big Society' idea and they have also proposed that the military be allowed to run failing schools. Philip Blond appears to have Cameron's ear, so watch this space.....

Little John · Post by **Little John** » 15 Sep 2014, 09:07

If Scotland gets independence and if it were possible for the North East to do so, I would be happy for the North East to secede from the RUK and become part of Scotland rather than become a section of RUK that was still subject to Westminster rule, but was otherwise left to "rot" as you put it. I'm entirely serious. Or, at least, I am serious about the notion. It would never happen, of course. Secession, that is. A federalised RUK, on the other hand, with large swathes of it left to fend for themselves but still subject to Westminster sovereignty is entirely possible and is, to some extent, an accurate description of things as they stand.

nexus · Post by **nexus** » 15 Sep 2014, 09:18

A federalised RUK, on the other hand, with large swathes of it left to fend for themselves but still subject to Westminster sovereignty is entirely possible and is, to some extent, an accurate description of things as they stand.

.... this is what the ResPublica spokesman seemed to be proposing. And I agree that we're heading that way currently, as the cuts have had a disproportionate effect in the poorest parts of the UK.

Tarrel · Post by **Tarrel** » 15 Sep 2014, 09:47

I think there is an argument for starting from scratch and creating a federal UK. Eight regional assemblies; Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Northern England, West, Midlands, East and London/SE. Each with their own economic strengths and campaigning issues. (E.g. East, predominantly agriculture; London/SE, finance/creative/service, etc).

Regional assemblies have local budgetary control and tax-raising powers. All governmental issues are fully devolved except Foreign Policy and Defence. The Houses of Commons and Lords cease to exist and are replaced by a small federal council, with members elected from the regions by proportional representation. This assembly debates and decides on federal issues (Foreign Policy / Defence), with each region having a veto to avoid dominance from one or more regions.

Each region pays a levy to the federal centre to fund the costs of defence and any foreign policy costs, such as an overseas development fund.

Everyone shares a common currency, backed by the UK Central Bank. Common travel area. Exit from the EU. Free trade within the federation and negotiate trading arrangements with other major blocks. Anyone who wants to join in (e.g. smaller northern european states) can do so. Maybe Ireland might join, in which case NI and Ireland could be one region, as the tension for NI, torn between a "United Ireland" and a "United Kingdom" would be removed.

No head of government or president as such; more a rotating chairman of the federal council. Keep the Queen in a unifying, guiding, "devil's advocate" role.

Just a brain-dump really, not thoroughly thought through. But maybe a starting point for discussion. For the people of Scotland, I'm guessing that a commitment to full federation in the event of a "No" vote would carry more credibility than just a promise of "more powers for Scotland".

In fact, a brave UK would commit to this sort of major change irrespective of the referendum outcome and, in the event of a "Yes" vote, would extend an invitation to a newly independent Scotland to join the federation once it was in place.

Little John · Post by **Little John** » 15 Sep 2014, 18:08

Regarding the protest that took place in Glasgow following Nick Robinson's disgraceful editing/deletion of the answer given by Alex Salmond on corporation tax (if the answer was so inadequate, why did Robinson see fit to delete it and then dishonestly report the incident stating that Salmond had not answered?), this is the picture the English BBC chose to show the events on Buchanan Street;

http://wingsoverscotland.com/wp-content ... 09/bs2.jpg

This is what actually happened;

http://wingsoverscotland.com/wp-content ... /photo.jpg

The Scottish BBC report was marginally less biased. But, only marginally

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-s ... s-28079812

On this, as it is on so many issues, the BBC is now utterly bankrupt as a news outlet. I will never pay for a BBC license again.

RenewableCandy · Post by **RenewableCandy** » 15 Sep 2014, 18:12

Apparently that first shot wasn't even taken in Glasgow, it was in Stirling! And the crowds there were massive too.

Here's a lot of stuff you don't read in the papers:

The Wee Blue Book

peaceful_life · Post by **peaceful_life** » 15 Sep 2014, 18:21

http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2014/09/14 ... rebellion/

'Us? We’re over 350 totally independent campaigns, each set up by activists, each self-funded, none centrally controlled. We don’t pay too much attention to the media but learn and research from the internet. We hold meetings (I’ve spoken at coming on for 250 public meetings in the last two years). We are the most informed citizens in the world right now'

Little John · Post by **Little John** » 15 Sep 2014, 18:33

I just have to quote that in full.

The lairds came to warn us villagers to do as we were told. Then the lords came to warn us villagers to do as we were told. But we were in the fields building a rebellion.

We have now seen, on shaky mobile phone footage, the moment the British Empire finally ended. It ended with two guys on a rickshaw chasing 100 Labour MPs up Buchannan Street playing the Imperial March from Star Wars and informing bemused shoppers that their Imperial Masters Had Arrived. These imperial ‘masters’ have no guns. They rule through deference. Without it they look exactly like what they are; overpaid middle management on a team building away day. (“OK, to get the day started, an icebreaker. Let’s all try and walk up a normal street like we are normal people. No team, not like that. Like NORMAL people.”)

The Daily Record looks on, its panties wet with excitement. “It’s Gordon! It’s Ed! It’s John! It’s Harriet!’. Never in the field of all human endeavour has the Daily Record seen such wonder – a hundred Labour MPs here! How they must love us! How bright must be a future illuminated by their radiating glory! Don’t think, Scotland; gawp.

Down the street a little, a young woman and her pal see Ed, Douglas and Johann radiating away. Spontaneously, armed with a mobile phone an a pram they go for an interview. Douglas and Johann spout soundbites unrelated to the questions asked. Ed looks on blankly. Oh Britannia, once you conquered continents with your might. Now a lassie with a phone has you on the run.

The inky wing of the British Empire does not know what to do. Historians will psychoanalyse the columns of Alan Cochrane in the Telegraph, monitoring their descent from pompous, self-certain swagger to incoherent, panicked meltdown. The Times, the Scotsman, the Mail, the Express, all peer out at Scotland from behind their barbed wire. “We’ve threatened the price of beans, we’ve threatened the cost of mortgages, we’ve told them they won’t have Strictly, we’ve told them they can’t have an NHS. That’s the sum total of their dreams and aspirations. So why won’t these f***ing Scots STAY DOWN?”

In a room behind a locked door, behind a policeman, behind a gate, behind another policeman, a group of millionaires get together. One, an old Etonian, nominally runs the country. The others, the CEOs of big corporations, actually run the country. They decide on a strategy: terror. We. Will. Take. Your. THINGS. From. You. It’s a fair trade, of sorts – give up your chance of self-determination and in return we will give you the cheap things that you love. This is Britain.

In other news, if you look closely, Scotland has just seen the highest proportion of its population in its history registered to vote. Ninety-seven per cent. No-one ‘gave’ them that vote. The people new to the electoral register had to put themselves there. With the most almighty help from the Radical Independence Campaign and many more. A 72 year old man who has never voted before. A woman who ran out of her house in her pyjamas when she was told she wasn’t too late. Streets of working class people being told by Yes activists on the final day of registration that it was their last chance, them phoning their friends, going round to their neighbours doors to get them out too. Long queues outside the registration office. All barely reported. In fact, the arch-unionist political editor of the Herald managed to run a front-page story claiming none of this happened. When his story turned out to be the hopes of a British nationalist and not an accurate reflection of Scotland in 2014, the real story – highest number of people registered to vote in Scotland’s history – did not manage to make it onto the front page.

(The No campaign didn’t have a voter registration campaign.)

But at least your celebrities love us, though with a provincial love which requires no more than two brief paragraphs to explain. It is a love they express without feeling which they believe we should receive with gratitude. Every newspaper in Scotland told us how sincere David Cameron was when he spoke of his love of the Scottish people. In a speech given to a selected group of senior figures from the financial services sector.

And beneath all this, its cause – an official No campaign so incompetent at every level, so hopelessly out of touch with its nation that it brags about the size of its phone banks. Fifty thousand Scots a week on the streets knocking doors and handing out leaflets for Yes and they’ve got phone banks. What is this – 1997? What else have they got? Pagers? Spice Girls albums? It is not that these people are stupid. It is that they really, really believed we were. A Better Together ‘I’m voting No because…’ film is never more than 40 seconds long. They all consist of platitudes. Better together. Best of both worlds. Risk and volatility.

In their world it makes perfect sense to produce a short film targeting women which is predicated on a middle-class mother who is so disinterested in politics that she can’t even recall the name of the First Minister of Scotland. It explains the lobotomised Orwellian nature of a billboard campaign that says “I love my children so I’m voting NO”. Everything they touch falls apart. And then there is a desperate rescue attempt of some sort or another.

Send up Ed.

Get David to emote.

Ask the supermarkets to issue threats.

Beg the banks to relocate.

Just hope the Scots really are as stupid as we think. Because if they see through this shit they’ll realise we’re finished.

The scope and scale of the collapse of the No campaign is obscured only by the refusal of the print media wing of their campaign to report it.

BBC political editor Nick Robinson, a good establishment boy, had his chance to humiliate Salmond in front of the world’s media when he got to ask a pompous question about corporation tax. Unfortunately, he had completely misunderstood how corporation tax works. Salmond gave him a seven minute lesson which left him humiliated in front of the world’s media. In an undignified turn he starts heckling Salmond. At night in his news report he shows only his question (he’d clearly taken some time to prepare that humiliating blow…) and editorialises that Salmond refused to answer. Does he think we didn’t see? Is he unaware that social media exists?

This campaign has tested the British establishment. The more it loses this campaign, the greater the test. I am truly amazed at how weak it has been, how pathetic its response. Caught somewhere between mad hyperbole about independence being a bigger threat to the world than the Great Depression and the pointless mundanity of ‘your shopping bill may go up by literally pennies’, is this seriously all its got?

The BBC, the banks, the newspapers, the supermarkets, the Labour Party, the Tories, the generals, the civil servants. Between them they can’t muster up either a persuasive case for the union or a believable threat.

Us? We’re over 350 totally independent campaigns, each set up by activists, each self-funded, none centrally controlled. We don’t pay too much attention to the media but learn and research from the internet. We hold meetings (I’ve spoken at coming on for 250 public meetings in the last two years). We are the most informed citizens in the world right now. I left a meeting in Hamilton Miners’ Welfare and a retired labourer caught me on the stairs and quizzed me about what I thought the position would be with ten year bond yields in an independent Scotland. Kids can talk you through the details of the Shengen arrangement. Most of us can run you through the constitutional position of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Unit.

I love my family so I’m voting No? F--k off. F--k right off.

For those of you who aren’t in Scotland you may not be aware that almost the whole British establishment is now placing its hopes on Gordon Brown. ‘He gets them’ (they think). ‘They like him’ (they think). His tendency to believe that Scotland is just nascent Nazi Germany doesn’t phase them. It’s like the moment when the Labour Party thought that the most compelling person they had to buy a sausage roll from Greggs was Ed Balls. Which was only true because Ed Milliband was behind him in the queue.

And that has become what this campaign really is – Gordon Brown swinging his big, clunking fist at a thousand butterflies. All grunt, no connection.

Because that’s what we are – a thousand butterflies. None of us is strong. The guy with the mobile phone and an MP3 player terrorising the Parliamentary Labour Party with a Darth Vader gag. The young mother making the Labour leadership look like they can’t talk to real people. A hundred brilliant jokes about David Bowie. Wish trees. Hand-made posters. The RIC leaflets we paid for by a load of £5 contributions which much of working class Scotland has had through their letterbox telling them what they know already – Britain is for the rich, Scotland can be ours.

We are a campaign held together with sticky tape and goodwill. We’re all broke (we give all our money away). We’re all exhausted (we’ve haven’t rested in two years). None of us is scared. None of us needs anyone’s permission. And we never underestimate the people of Scotland.

This is like nothing I’ve ever seen. We have barely a single institution on our side, barely a newspaper, and damn few millionaires. And they are truly petrified of us.

A butterfly rebellion is coming close to winning Scotland away from the forces of the British state. I think we’ll do it, but either way, they can’t beat us. We are already half of Scotland and we keep growing. They are weak and we are strong. When the people of Britain see their titans defeated by a rebel army who used infographics and humour, what is there to stop them following? England needs its butterfly rebellion as well.

The lairds came to tell us what was good for us. The lords came to tell us what was good for us. In the fields, we already knew what was good for us. Not this. Not Britain. Our rebels grabbed whatever they had and did whatever they could.

You can’t beat a thousand butterflies with a gun. But you can beat a gun with a thousand butterflies.

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 15 Sep 2014, 19:06

“We’ve threatened the price of beans, we’ve threatened the cost of mortgages, we’ve told them they won’t have Strictly, we’ve told them they can’t have an NHS.

This sums up the mentality of the yes campaign, and it is on exactly the same level as people in Liberia who are convinced that ebola isn't real because their government is telling them it is real. It's the same reasoning: "The westminster establishment, the banks, the big retailers, the Scottish Labour party are warning us that there will be serious economic and political consequences to if there's a yes vote, therefore it isn't true."

I've heard and seen it again and again over the past six months. Apparently every yes voter thinks the same "they are threatening us! Do they think we're stupid? Why should we believe their threats? Do they think we're weak? Afraid of them? Hell, no! Vote for independence!!"

They then re-tell the tale, but turning it into a massive strawman, so instead of "they say we'll be taking a massive leap into the unknown with the currency, and we may have trouble with the Spanish vetoing our application to join the EU" they say "they say Scotland won't be able to have a currency, and there will be no TV and asteroids will hit Scotland from space!!" Very clever, but where's the critical thinking? There isn't any.

At no point to they sit down and actually consider whether these "threats" might have something to do with economic or political reality. Nope. They must be empty threats, because it's the UK labour party issuing the warnings. And ebola must be a made up story, because the government of Liberia is rubbish.

They are idiots. Their arguments and beliefs are idiotic. I say bring on a yes vote. Let them get what they wish for. Then let them run around like headless chickens when their socialist utopia turns out to involve a lower standard of living, increased uncertainty about the future, and a neighbour to the south that is more than happy to pile on the misery at every opportunity.

I'll say it again: if you can win an argument - and defend your position - with out erecting massive strawmen (and "we've told them they can't have an NHS" really is a textbook example of a massive strawman), misrepresenting your opponent's position and replacing critical thinking with jokes - then you do exactly that. Strawmen are for people whose position does not stand up to scrutiny. Jokes are for those lacking in facts.

Bring it on.

Snail · Post by **Snail** » 15 Sep 2014, 19:16

Undercoveragent:

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » 15 Sep 2014, 19:35

I can't see the attraction of leaving the UK only to join a massive Fascist state like the EU where they will be an even smaller cog on the periphery of an even bigger wheel! If their opinions are swamped now they will be even more so in the EU under German dominance. Having to join the Euro will even further do them down: have they not seen what happened to Ireland and the rest of the PIIGS countries?

I'm getting bored with the whole proceedings. Role on Thursday or whenever and then make sure that the Scots and Welsh MPs cannot vote in Parliament on any devolved issues. I'm also pissed off at being ruled by a bunch of socialist Scots.

I'm wondering if the idea to let Grasping Gordon, the Pension Thief, run the No campaign is a Conservative conspiracy to encourage the Scots to go! The bloke is so incompetent and lacking in any positive character traits that any sensible person would avoid him like Ebola not stick him in charge of one of the most important campaigns the UK has embarked on in 75 years.

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 15 Sep 2014, 19:50

kenneal - lagger wrote:I can't see the attraction of leaving the UK only to join a massive Fascist state like the EU where they will be an even smaller cog on the periphery of an even bigger wheel!

Don't give them the credit of having though it through that hard, Ken. That was what they were saying ten years ago, before the eurozone went tits up and the Germans got sick of subsidising the european fringes.

Their thinking is on this level: "The English are our oppressors!! [never mind the subsidies] If we leave the union then we can establish a socialist utopia where taxes are low because of the abundant oil, and social spending can be high! We can be like Norway! [never mind that Norway has been squirreling away oil revenues for 40 years and is still a high tax economy]"

There is no critical thinking going on. Of course they want independence! They've been promised the Promised Land, and instead of questioning those who are making the promises, they are pointing at the realists (the no camp, which consists of the political left, right, middle, far left and far right) and claiming every negative thing they say is "scaremongering".

The aftermath of a yes vote would/will be absolutely fascinating. There will be a near unanimous feeling in the rest of the UK that the Scots should be given no breaks whatsoever - that they should be absolutely shafted at every turn during the negotiations. What, after all, would happen if the negotiations were so tainted with mutual dislike and such an unwillingness on the part of the UK to let Scotland get away with anything at all, that the process breaks down completely?

The Scots are dependent on good will from Westminster, and there isn't going to be any, because there isn't going to be any in England at all. Won't matter whether you're labour, tory, UKIP, BNP or socialist workers party - everyone will agree that Scotland should be given as hard a time as possible. Everyone apart from SteveCook, that is.

If their opinions are swamped now they will be even more so in the EU under German dominance. Having to join the Euro will even further do them down: have they not seen what happened to Ireland and the rest of the PIIGS countries?

Nope, they didn't see that. Weren't looking. After all, what has it got to do with them? Their Scoootish, not Greek!!