Oddquine

And the stature of Charles is what, exactly?

Because the sea is not populated by people who have homes on the seabed, Alex........and people on rigs tend not to drink water drawn from the sea bed. People on rigs choose to be on rigs. The rigs weren't there first and oil companies came in and drilled beneath them without a by your leave on the say so of politicians sitting in Westminster.... .http://news.scotland.gov.uk/News/Scottish-householders-rights-to-object-to-fracking-to-be-removed-108e.aspx 99% of the tens of thousands who responded to the consultation were against it...but Westminster has decided that the 1% of those for it, which probably mostly consisted of those who could profit from it, like the oil and gas companies, have more rights than anybody else.....which shows how little democracy means as far as Westminster is concerned. Into the bargain, the company which produced the Geological report, on which the Government relied, is funded largely by oil and gas companies, which makes their impartiality suspect. Where is the democracy when Westminster can ignore the Scottish People and Parliament, and introduce a "one size fits all" policy, which only benefits Westminster....because energy is a reserved subject, and the House of Lords had, probably in anticipation of this coming up, removed what little control we had over any aspect of energy. If Westminster can make money to meet their bills, it seems, what does it matter about the people. There have been earthquakes in Blackpool, and since Central Scotland is on two fault lines, densely populated and most of the communities are built on top of historic mines, coal bings, shale and sand, there are obvious risks. Edinburgh has a lot of historic tenement housing, much of which is already cracked and stressed by subsidence and ground movement. How is it responsible practice to give blanket approval to the likes of UCG, which is known to cause seismic activity? It is funny really, we are no longer ruled by a Monarch who believes in the divine right of Kings, we are ruled by a Committee Replacement who believe they have the divine right of kings. Edited to add.......and just to prove conclusively that they don't do giving a toss about anything but what they want , they are going to spend £3 billion of our money in fighting yet again in Iraq, and to pay for it, rather than scrap Trident, (or take the bonuses away from three or four RBS of the bankers we employ....or sell off some of the bank), or stop the buy-to-let tax subsidy......or scrap HS2........they are going to make those of working age on benefits, because there aren't any real jobs, pay for the War with a two year freeze on those benefits. Aren't we all just so much Better Together! NOT!

Interesting.....from an FT columnist .....http://archive.today/u6JJF#selection-1917.0-1929.327 A quote......quite a long one to keep it in some context....... The noise about “unfairness” is in inverse proportion to a more prosaic reality. There have been only a handful of occasions in recent decades when Scottish MPs have been “swing” voters. On at least two of them, during Tony Blair’s premiership, these MPs were voting with a government that had a majority in England. As for the myth that Labour invariably relies on Scotland for a majority at Westminster, the electoral facts show it is just that – a myth. Home rule in Scotland does raise important questions about the governance of the rest of the UK. There is a legitimate debate to be had about if and when Scottish MPs should step back from voting at Westminster. There will also be room for scrutiny of the Barnett funding formula for public spending in Scotland once Edinburgh gains more fiscal autonomy. But the prior question is whether England wants a parliament that represents all four nations of the union? If the answer is yes, then it cannot expect a formulaic English votes for English laws. The strength of Britain’s unwritten constitution has lain in its capacity to accommodate anomalies and contradictions. If tidy English minds now redefine “fairness” as perfect symmetry between Scotland and England, the unavoidable consequence will be the break-up of the union. Mr Salmond, of course, is rubbing his hands at the prospect.

We are about to be fracked...isn't the Union wonderful, always pooling and sharing. After a consultation which included 40,000+ people, 99% of them were opposed to fracking......but as is Westminster's wont.....they have decided to listen to the 1% who didn't object, and the businesses who want to frack for profit.......like Sir Ian Wood, who denied the conclusions of his own oil report in his effort to sook up to Westminster...for fracking licences in Scotland.....or an ermine collared robe ? Makes one wonder why they aren't listening to the 45% of us who voted for independence rather than the 55% who didn't if numbers against don't count, doesn't it. Westminster said Whilst a wide range of arguments were raised and points covered, we did not identify any issues that persuaded us to change the basic form of the proposals..which, the cynic in me says, means that it isn't going to affect any of them and will keep their party donors and future employers very happy. I do cynically also observe that 1% is precisely the percentage of people in the UK who have pots of money and houses with gardens big enough that it is unlikely they will be getting fracked under the foundations of their house. Gee, thanks, NO voters!

A couple of decent articles from the Grauniad, by the same person............the first written in January 2012, and the second on the day of the result. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jan/13/deborah-orr-scotland-independence-no-vote http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/commentisfree/2014/sep/19/scotland-voted-no-next-step-must-not-be-return-to-business-as-usual From the first article........ Unlike the recent succession of British prime ministers, Salmond never wavers from putting the domestic agenda first and foremost. The fact that Salmond can do this, while British prime ministers find such a focus so wearying, is in itself a lesson in why devolved government, with Westminster concentrating on the international matters that its PMs always seem to want to concentrate on anyway, would be good for Scotland, Wales, the English regions, and for all of Britain. And from the second...... We still don’t quite know what Scotland said, in its historic referendum. I’m glad the turnout was large. I’m glad the outcome was decisive. But in an important respect, it wasn’t decisive at all. How many no voters were happy with the status quo? How many would have opted for independence had devo max not been so grudgingly offered at such a late stage? Some of the people of the UK got to speak on Thursday. The truth is, that even on that day, Westminster’s machinations muddied, confused and diluted their message. Business as usual. That does not feel good. Intelligent woman.

24 years to wait is only if we get a decent amount of useful devolution out of the "VOW" ....otherwise, bookies take note, all bets are off! Anyway, much as the terms of the Union started being broken pretty soon after it was signed......the Edinburgh Agreement said the referendum should be conducted so as to command the confidence of parliaments, government and people deliver a fair test and decisive expression of the views of people in Scotland and a result that everyone will respect And it has failed to do that for nearly half of those voting in it as it has not our delivered a result which commands our confidence, and is not seen by us as a fair test of the views of the people in Scotland. If purdah hadn't been broken by Westminster with the sudden insertion of the "VOW" so late in the campaign, having refused to have anything like it on the ballot paper, and if their main tactic, in fact only tactic, hadn't been to sneer at and denigrate the aspirations of YES Scots and the abilities of all Scots, and recycle smears untruths and misinformation eternally over the piece and deliberately lie to old people about their pensions, for the love of god...maybe we would have believed we had lost fair and square, folded our tents and gone away. However, to have a decisive expression of the views of the people of Scotland, that decision has to be made on the basis of informed consent. Our foot soldiers tried hard to impart information, even down to printing out the pension letters from the DWP and the appropriate information from Hansard, but the daily battering from the MSM drowned us out, as did MPs and MSPs being economical with the truth on High Streets. A referendum is not an election and should not have been undertaken using the election battle tactics, much the same as we are beginning to see now in the run up to May 2015. The issuing of the postal votes so far ahead of much of the campaign was a problem, and the postal voting system is something which should be looked at for future elections/referenda. We had people who got their postal votes, completed them and sent them back in short order as a NO vote, coming in to us, having actually spoken to people and saying if they had had the information earlier, they'd have voted YES, and I suspect we were not alone in that. I also suspect that the postal vote sampling, before the "VOW" and the scaring over pensions, showed that there wasn't as much in it as NBTT was happy with as an expression of confidence in the Union. It may take a generation, but I hope not, as I'm going to be unlikely to live to see Scotland an independent country. I feel for the 102 year old war veteran who did at least get to vote YES in his lifetime, only to be left feeling that we lost because of the clout of the Westminster fear machine, not because of the more compelling merits of the Union's case versus ours, and who has no chance of being around a generation from now.

According to Blair McDougall, the head honcho of the NoBetterTogetherThanks campaign, the core NO vote, those who would vote to stay in the Union, regardless of consequences,the BritScots or ProudScotsbut, like the MPs in our UK political parties, was 40% of the population. He is quite Britproud of the fact that, if they had made a "positive" case for the Union, rather than engender fear about possible economic risks......Scotland might (and I think would) have voted for independence. He said negative tactics work.....and I suppose they do, but they leave a nasty taste in the mouth of the losers..and I suspect some of the winners as well. If the vote had been won by the NOs on a level playing field with mutual respect and fair MSM commentary, then perhaps we might have laid down and taken the result as final. However,a Union which still exists only because the elite, who could see their lifestyles going down the pan could shout louder and nastier to sway the undecided voters, particularly those with no access to the internet, is a Union hanging on a very shoogly peg. It will be interesting to see if the shoogly peg is tightened using the correct size of Devo-Max screwdriver, or if the Union digs out a wrong size screwdriver, strips the screw.....and screws us instead. I have my doubts, we'll get much because of Westminster's propensity of always trying to get away with ceding as little control of anything as they think we will wear..and the fact that Westminster politicians lie through their teeth until they get their way, and then ignore their promises. Think 1979 referendum, think House of Lords reform, think No top down reorganisation of the NHS, think no intentions of increasing VAT, think no frontline service reductions, think no change to child benefit, think no scrapping of the EMA, think a bigger army for a safer Britain.and then explain why you think that what Westminster calls "Devo-Max" will actually equate to anything we consider Devo-Max? It will not be acceptable if all we get is the transfer of more responsibility to implement, or ameliorate, Westminster's economic and welfare policies, as is the case now and will be after the Scotland 2012 Act comes into force, rather than at least the ability to run different economic policy for Scotland's different circumstances with our hands on enough of the fiscal tools to make that work for us. With respect to being able to give certainty over Scotland's economic future with Independence, as was always demanded, and did have an effect on the result......hasn't anyone noticed the failure of Westminster's computer modelling to forecast the UK economy even a year ahead, considering that, despite all the public service cuts, the benefit cuts and the burgeoning benefit sanctions regime, the sale of Royal Mail, the increase in VAT, the trebling of tuition fees etc....Osborne is still borrowing £60 billion more than he said he would be! Why were/are the forecasts from economists, on behalf of a future iScotland economy, illustrating what is possible, given certain circumstances, all pie in the sky..and the forecasts of UK economists, based on the same figures, from the same source, not accepted as being just as much pie in the sky..both regarding their estimation of Scotland's financial future.and the UK's. And it rather looks as if we are going to be spending more money we don't have and can't afford on bombing more wee brown people in foreign lands.....way to go, UK! http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-09-24/case-you-are-still-confused-what-going-middle-east It's a letter which illustrates very lucidly the convoluted thinking behind Western Foreign policy, which nowadays exists only to make profit for oil companies and arms manufacturers, at the cost of thousands of lives. Though I suppose it is one way of decreasing the world populations....and less contentious than the eugenics idea which was so lauded by Churchill, Roosevelt etc in their day..and the research financed by the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations, by the latter in Germany up until 1939. We live in interesting times indeed....and what a difference the winning of a referendum makes...the NHS is being privatised.....and the oil is not running out at all...at least not in the short term as Westminster has been telling us since it was first discovered. And even with the oil, Westminster can't make ends meet from year to year. Economic nincompoops indeed.

Charles, the reason the police and fire services were centralised was to save money to allow the SG to meet their obligations regarding the devolved competences...like not cutting the NHS budget in real terms....plus to pay the additional donation to Westminster to enable the amelioration of the impact of the bedroom tax on the most disadvantaged and compensate for the removal of the UK crisis loan payments by setting up our own system. You are, I assume, absolutely horrified that the centralisation of the police forces in England is being seriously considered to save money and you may yet wander down to Carlisle to see a cop with a holster in England in the future...and are quite happy that Westminster, which allocates the funds to England, has all its own money and a chunk of ours, and still can't meet its obligations without getting more into debt annually. Economic nincompoopery has been the hallmark of Westminster Governments for decades, and it seems also of some unionist supporters of their profligacy. .

Alex... much of what Ayeseetee has said in this debate I have disagreed with, but I am totally with him in what he says in post 1614. There is also a sub-plot to the carrying of guns question in that it is certainly even less necessary in the likes of Inverness than it is in the central belt, but our one size fits all National Police Force dictates that our local cops should have to have them as well, hence depriving us of local control. There's the irony. At a time when there is much shouting about devolving powers from "Westminster" to Edinburgh, we are also seeing powers being centralised from areas like the Highlands... also to Edinburgh. Charles you and many others seem to be believing all the local media propaganda! The old Northern Constabulary were carrying hand guns before they became Police Scotland but it is not the routine arming of the police as stated by many. There are a few trained firearms officers on duty at any one time who will attend other calls if they are required and go into a shop or filling station to purchase lunch. I am not concerned at all if I see them on my day to day business and am sure others would not notice either if it was not in the papers every week. IBM, I am aware of that but the timescale is such that the decision was quite clearly influenced by what was equally clearly the shape of things to come. On the infrastructure questions, irrespective of which party was involved we are looking at extensive investment in the central belt while all we can see in the Highlands are average speed cameras - which most definitely ARE the creation of the SNP. Charles it is clear that you hate the SNP and only respond to certain parts quoted in posts. If the SNP had not got an overall majority the last time we would still be no further forward on the A9! I have driven the A9 over many years and remember when your travel time was 4 hours to Perth before it was upgraded when the Tories were in power. I have driven at high speed on the A9 before speed cameras were ever used on the roads and would prefer not to have them at all. The average speed cameras are being installed at a cost of 2.5 million, with the cost of a fatal road accident 1.8 million you would just need 2 less fatalities and you have saved money. It would also save a lot of heartbreak for the family and friends of those involved. I think that is why the only high profile person objecting to them is Danny Alexander! He hates the SNP so much that he has never complained that, over the term of the two NuLab/LibDem administrations before the SNP ones, when it could have been used to at least make a start on dualling the A9, McLeish and McConnell handed £1.5 billion back to Westminster because they couldn't think of anything to spend it on. Everything wrong in Scotland since devolution, is the SNP's fault, as far as Charles is concerned..just as the Tories are still blaming NuLabour in 2014 because they haven't been able to balance their books since 2010.. What surprises me about the "not being able to find anything to spend it on".......those were the same Governments which took on PFI projects, when using the unspent money could have saved them and future Scottish Governments for years, the costs of paying through the nose. For example, £150 million for schools, which could have been funded directly, ended up costing the Scottish Government £792 million on PFI contracts. Great economic commonsense there, then. If it had been an SNP Government being so stupid, Charles would have been spitting red, white and blue fire.

Tune changing now we have voted NO......Twitter on 17th September 2014 from Scottish Labour......worried about the future of the NHS? It's safe with a NO vote. Twitter on 22nd September 2014 from The Labour Party......Want to be part of saving the NHS? Join us(it only takes 3 minutes) If the NHS is safe with a NO vote.why isn't it safe now?

Used to be a counting agent at Elections in the Margaret Ewing days in Moray. Counting agents didn't then just watch like a hawk for dirty tricks, and I don't suppose they do now.......we also used to sample the papers as they were unfolded and put on the piles........it was where I learned to count reliably to 10. We usually knew to a reasonable level of certainty, relatively early in the evening, if we had won or lost the constituency....and which areas had voted which way. Should think the SNP well-oiled sampling machine maybe was employed in the referendum, just as the Bitter Together sampling machine was employed in at least the postal vote envelope opening. If sampling took place the way the SNP used to do it, I'd be inclined to believe specific area vote percentages wouldn't be too far out.

I actually think it is fundamentally different. Let's not forget there were scare tactics on both sides, with the YES campaign scare stories on the NHS being described by Johann Lamont as the most shameful bit of electioneering she has ever come across. And of course one person's scare story is another person's identifying the risks of one course of action. What the SNP were doing with what I have called "bribes " was quite different. The White Paper on the independence referendum "Scotland's future" goes way beyond a paper detailing the process and certain consequences and, indeed the case for independence. What it provided was a manifesto for the 2016 election detailing what measures the SNP proposed to implement in an independent Scotland. It then heavily promoted those policies to those who would benefit most. The problem here is that it was a one horse race. No other major party could say what policies they would propose if there was an independent Scotland because they were all opposed to independence. To put forward policies in the event of an independent Scotland would only serve to encourage people to vote YES if they liked the policies. All that the other parties could say is that the policies were not affordable; to which the SNP's response was that they would borrow to fund the policies. This gave the SNP free reign to stick in anything which they thought might be popular. As Charles says. it didn't matter whether the policies were affordable or not, by the time these bought votes resulted in Independence an irrevocable change would have been made. The SNP would then either renege on their promises or plunge the nation into debt. Either way, they wouldn't be caring because we would be an independent country and that was the goal all along. I don't blame the SNP for this. There were no rules of engagement, as it were, to stop turning the referendum into an election. The loophole was there and they exploited it for all they were worth. As with so much, the blame lies with Better Together and the Unionist leaders for letting them get away with this. This tactic of the SNP was obvious from the start - after all, they turned a Government White Paper into a party manifesto! Labour should have responded in kind. They will have seen the White Paper / manifesto and could have issued a preliminary manifesto for the 2015 election and argued firstly that what the SNP were promising was not affordable in an independent Scotland, and secondly that a UK Labour Government would be able improve on much that is currently a problem - and do it before the SNP could in an independent Scotland. Perhaps they felt such tactics were not consistent with the togetherness approach. Whatever the reason, they let the SNP electioneer virtually unchallenged and focused instead on the issues which should have been what the referendum was all about but which was of little interest to some of the most vulnerable in our society who were being offered something tangible by the SNP. The SNP really shouldve carried this election at a canter by promoting the potential of all governments under an independent Scotland. A critique of their White Paper as an unaffordable manifesto, is only fair when the other parties bring out their own in the run up to next May, I suspect none of them will be going in with a balanced budget, given how utterly decimated our economy is. The money ran out years ago, the numbers on the balance have a minus symbol at the start of them. Don't kid yourself into thinking we're a rich country when it's all been paid for with credit cards, we have very little of tangible value to offer the world, every party will be running a government off debt. Your last paragraph is why Westminster was so desperate to have a NO vote . According to the Grauniad..... http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2014/sep/19/uk-plc-breathes-sigh-relief-scotland-no-vote The final issue is that the referendum has highlighted some of the weaknesses in the UK economy – in particular the importance of the North Sea oil in disguising the weakness of the balance of payments caused by the decline of manufacturing. Without oil and gas, the UK would be running a current account deficit of 7% of GDP. Even with the help of the North Sea, the gap stands at 4.5%, extremely high for a country in the early stages of an economic recovery. The prospect of an independent Scotland taking control of 90% of North Sea reserves would undoubtedly have sent sterling into a tailspin. Even though that threat has now been removed, the size of Britain’s trade gap means the upward movement in the pound is limited. Sterling is vulnerable to bad news – be it a slowdown in growth, problems in the eurozone or a widening current account deficit. Once the dust has settled, it is likely to fall back.”

I dunno, Ayeseetee,in a country in which foodbanks are protected by billions of dollars worth of nuclear weapons, guns in the holsters of a few police seem the lesser of two evils. Personally, not too keen on the guns being carried by any officers as a matter of course....you'd not have thought it was outwith the bounds of possibility to have gun cabinets in a selection of fairly central police stations over Scotland, would you? I do not think that the decision to arm some policemen routinely is one which should have been the decision of the Chief Constable, anyway. Parliament should have been able to vote on it.

Lets get this right, culduthel.....on three, or, at the most, four occasions since 1945, has the Scottish vote made ANY difference to what the English voter wanted.......and one of those times was in 2010, when we changed a Tory majority of about 2, I think, to a Tory minority and spawned the Coalition....and so far this "Scottish chosen" Government, if it goes to term, will have lasted longer than any other one we have "chosen". In 1964, which I very vaguely remember, because I helped leaflet for Labour with my folks, Scottish MPs changed the Government from a Tory majority of 1 to a Labour majority of 4..and that one lasted 2 years. In 1974, at the first election, Scottish MPs changed a minority Tory government to a minority Labour one, and in the second 1974 election, they changed a minority Labour one to a majority(by 3) one. Ergo in 65 years, Scotland has "chosen" the UK Government over 7 years in total apart from the current administration

I've been talking to people and posting on forums so much over the past few months, that I don't even know if I said it on here, or somewhere else, that, if we voted NO, Westminster would make it so we will never be able to have another referendum, or at least not another purely Scottish referendum. I know I have said..and again I'm not sure where...maybe on a forum, or even to the many Catalonians who visited the shop over the summer, that, if we vote NO, we will become another Catalonia, with England's ownership of Scotland enshrined in law, as is Spain's ownership of Catalonia. And it appears that I wasn't far wrong in my cynicism.....http://wingsoverscotland.com/number-1-in-a-long-series/ Jack Straw, seeing as the NO vote won, wants to make it so we are shackled to Westminster much as Catalonia is shackled to Spain and he wants to change the constitution to make the Union indissoluble. And under Westminster rules, constitutional change is solely their prerogative and does not require Scotland, or we Scots, to agree to it, the constitution being a reserved competence. I find myself producing hollow laughter at the below the headline remark, "The United Kingdom may be unbalanced. But, hey, it works". And I'm sure it does for those who have the money to load the balance in their favour, and even for newspaper proprietors, but it doesn't work for the majority of the country outside the more salubrious areas of London and the home counties. Unfortunately the NO vote has given them the right to allow the majority of my rather selfish age group, because they still have 15 or 20 years to live, to choose the long term future for our 16 + year olds, who would prefer to have the opportunity, in an independent Scotland, to stay here and work, but will, as so many hundreds of thousands have in the past, be forced to leave to find work, rather than exist on the zero hours contracts and minimum wage jobs which pass for employment in the UK today. . I have always said that NO voters are not voting for the status quo, however much they try to kid themselves to justify their vote to themselves, but are voting to reduce our country to a region of Greater England.which an indissoluble Union will make them. As an aside, for those who think it is all over, the SNP have had 5000 new members in 2 days, the Greens have had 2000 and the SSP have nearly 1000...and a lot more like me, haven't made up their minds if we are going to be party members or just use our votes where they will do the most good.

Not a chance it will take more than a referendum to stop us singing that Only allowed to sing it if you are wearing a YES badge, an "I'm one of the 45%" badge.or a "Don't Blame Me, I voted YES t-shirt! Anyone else is a weed not a flower (joke.......honest!)

Got a YES vote from bughtmaster! I'd do anything for a YES vote! Tbh, I hadn't intended to come back...a) because I thought the thread was pretty well finished anyway, given the vote was past and b) because I was well through a bottle of red and indescribably depressed when I wrote the flounce (my spelling and grammar were decent though, weren't they ?) and c) nearly two years of banging my head off a brick wall composed of DD, yngwie and starchief was getting wearing. . However, on reflection, given that I have had myself deleted from the database on leaving other forums to stop me going back, but hadn't here, I rather think that culduthel just caught me at a bad time....and I did just what Westminster does.when making laws.....produced a knee jerk spur of the moment reaction . . Decided I'm just going to put culduthel on ignore, and then he can be as stupid about me as he likes. Sorry DD, yngwie and starchief and the others I irritate.....but it isn't likely I'll be posting much............unless Westminster plays silly buggers over the "VOW". .

On the two days before the referendum, a Tory Highland List MSP stood at the Better Together stall on the High Street and told pensioners that their pensions wouldn't be paid and their bus passes would stop on independence...no uncertainty...stated as fact......just as companies employing Poles and other EU nationals were telling them that if there was a YES vote, they would be deported.....so I am not surprised that so many voted NO in our area and North. And that is why the campaign for independence isn't over....we are not going anywhere but onwards......the fact that the debate was slanted and our voice was not heard means all bets are off as to when the next attempt will be. I think it is more telling of attitude that the areas in Scotland with the most poverty voted more YES and the areas with the least poverty voted more NO. A YES worker locally was passing the time of day with a NO campaigner neighbour, and remarked that he was shattered, what with meetings, canvassing, leafleting etc right up to the day before the vote......and the NO campaigner said he didn't have to do that much......the media did it all for them. And from Eric Joyce's website http://ericjoyce.co.uk/2014/09/a-lie-wont-fly/ I, and others in the No camp with me, believe Scots are best within the union. I am glad that Scots voted No. But if we were lied to and the government of the day reneges on ‘the vow’, the vote was a fraud and the UK is corrupted beyond repair. And going by the media today, it looks more and more likely that this is 1979 all over again.......lie to get the result you want...and then forget you promised anything.

All of you talking about acceptance and togetherness when discussing my words ......how do you like the acceptance and togetherness shown by the NO thugs in Glasgow. http://wingsoverscotland.com/enough-is-enough/ A quote......We watched it on live video feeds from the state broadcasters of other countries, ones we’ve been taught to regard as less truthful than our own. We saw it on pictures and Vines and video clips sent by people who were actually there. We know. But we don’t know about it from the BBC. The BBC’s story was for many hours tucked away halfway down a piece about Alex Salmond resigning. Eventually it got a page of its own where it was portrayed as a clash between rival groups, rather than what it was – a mob of thugs attacking people who’d been peacefully and happily assembled in the square for days, with not a single disturbance or arrest. Shame I can't join in the TV licence boycott being advocated.....as I stopped paying mine a few months ago after previous instances of blatant bias. .

Ahem....the vows of further anything aren't worth the back of the fag packet on which they were written...as Ed Milliband, by 3pm today, was scuttling backwards to distance himself from them. And so it starts as so many of us knew it would. The only thing any of them can agree on is that the UK is sunk without Scotland's oil underpinning their borrowing. I'm betting that the "time table" will lengthen in the same way as the time table for accomplishing a balanced budget in the UK has as we don't meet expectations and are still borrowing. And the promises of the political parties, even if genuinely meant, and I have always doubted they were, does rather depend on getting the final proposals, when they are cobbled together, through both Houses of Parliament, whole and unchanged, when we all know what the chance of that is .......somewhere between ha!ha!ha! and nil. And this, you will be delighted to know is my last post on this forum. I stayed too long after the connection alluded to by bauhaus was broken, because I rather enjoyed being here, but I think the time has come to depart, before my plethora of irritating "I told you so" posts start to come. After all, when the inevitable happens and the austerity cuts, still to arrive, are made, the block grant is reduced through that and creeping privatisation (if it is not stopped altogether), and further reduced to pay for the cost of tax collection and for paying Westminster the interest on our own allowed borrowing, we will get services cut, or tax increased above the UK levels. To the Yessers on here.keep on going on.....our time will come........and to the Noers...in advance of what is going to happen when the Scotland Act 2012 is introduced......"I told you so!

But egging Jim Murphy should be reported in the MSM for three days, and then again when he found his backbone and decided to continue haranguing from the soapbox............and a sticker on Ian Murray's rooms window gave us three days of howls about vandalism? A level playing field would have been good, No shame in losing a fair fight...a lot of shame in cheating and "being economical with the truth" as Westminster/the NO campaign has been doing..and it is going to take a long time to get over the feeling of being shafted by the establishment for the sake of their own jobs/bank balances.

This is a very poor turn out considering there are around 60,000 people in the vicinity of Inverness. Of all the people that I know in Scotland none of them are voting Yes - that includes many, many people in Inverness. I reckon there will be a lot of disappointed Yes voters the day after the Referendum. And a lot more disappointed NO voters who are voting NO on the strength of a status quo which will only exist until 2015.......or on the strength of the promises of more devolution from Westminster which will, l suspect, if it happens,allow us nothing much more than the little we already have from the Scotland Act 2012. I'd prefer to be able to remove Trident than legislate over airguns, myself.....but that appears to be the level of competence Westminster thinks we can achieve. To be fair, this campaign, if it does end up in a NO vote, has at least shown us exactly what our Westminster masters think of us.....the insulting level of disrespect for this country’s collective intelligence displayed over the course of the campaign has left a sour taste in many mouths, particularly when we are PAYING so many of them to denigrate us. But what really will upset me, as a Scot living in Scotland, if there is a NO vote, is that most of my own people, both those native Scots, like myself and those who have very freely and sensibly chosen to come here to live, think we are too poor, too wee and too fecking stupid.as well, when the reality is that they are too bliddy feart, or too well off in the current set-up, to put the same faith in themselves, and all of us Scots, as they are willing to offer the most incompetent, corrupt, heartless, self-interested set of millionaire liars and fraudsters, of all party colours, it has ever been my misfortune to have in charge of my life. And by the way, Alex Salmond may well have said this is a once in a generation effort......but remember, we have said all along that this is not about Alex Salmond......so he isn't the boss of the Scots! There have been upwards of thirty efforts over the last 300 years to achieve Home Rule/Independence for Scotland, both peacefully and otherwise......and the aspiration won't be disappearing any time soon. But it sure as hell will be embarrassing, to put it mildly, if we become the only country in the world to say a big NO to Independence, and choose to become a region of greater England on the strength of the disgraceful tactics used by the No Better Together Thanks brigade......because the rest of the world will know that most Scots are exactly what Westminster thinks of them, and are happy to be considered so.

The increase of immigration to Scotland would consist of 2,000 more immigrants annually than we already have on average, because the figure quoted by the BT liars was the required amount, as if we had no immigration at all in any year, extrapolated over 20 years. How thick are some people that they believe anything from the NO campaign without checking further for themselves?

It is indeed a highly competitive market, but if ALL the major retailers are faced with the same upward cost pressures then sooner or later they all have to pass those costs on to the customer, that's just how it works. Well, of course.......that's the situation everywhere.......DUH. I'd have thought that if all the major retailers are faced with the same upwards pressure on current prices, there would still be a differential from retailer to retailer....otherwise they will be deemed a cartel, won't they? Then you are bound to be able to explain, in that case, how Lidl and Aldi can sell stuff just as good as the big supermarkets......but a lot cheaper, right now, given they are bound to have as much, if not more, costs in getting their goods from where they are made to the warehouses in England and then up to the shops in Scotland where they are sold, (given I've never heard of most of their brands and can't pronounce a lot of them, I kinda assume they are not all UK produced goods).

Yngwie, mortgages,and investment income etc can go up or down...as everything can........and the reasons all things go up or down are the policy decisions of Governments and the policy decisions of companies. We have always known that.........so the problem has suddenly become something different, has it, because of independence? You know exactly what the policy decisions of the first Independent Scottish Government will be.......and exactly how that will impact on business in Scotland? Do tell! We're interested! Your crystal ball polished? And while you are about it, perhaps you can also forecast if/when Westminster is going to stop the austerity cuts, balance the UK budget and stop racking up the national debt, close food banks, give Scotland meaningful devolution, do something to close the wealth gap and reduce poverty, come up with a democratic Parliament, denuded of the expensive placemen in the House of Politician Pensioners and Party Donors, and stop creating terrorists in the Middle East and "Wee Things" like that?