The Big Scottish Independence Debate

[Oddquine]

BBC: Breaking News

 

Didn't expect anything less, tbh!  I sent an email of complaint after one horrendous example of pure bias, and mentioned a few others of which I was aware.  I got a response which denied all I had said, not so unlike the one referenced in Bateman's piece....and pointing me at a blog which, in their eyes, proved they were unbiased. I complained about that as well  (imo, you can be biased as much with what you leave out as what you include......and with how you put things..context is all!)

 

Was promised a formal response "after they had talked to their people" and I've heard nothing since...but then I didn't expect a response.  Seriously thinking of stopping paying my licence fee and saving it up to pay to the new SBC when it is set up!..

 

I have lately been on their complaints site, which gives a list of complaints received...and would you believe NOT ONE in the first two pages has been  about bias in their Scottish Independence coverage...so that just proves they lie through their teeth, and know they do, because the complaints go in thick and fast. 

 

When I remember the BBC when I was a kid, trusted world wide.......and look at the way it is being run now..I could weep!

Edited January 22, 2014 by Oddquine

[+DoofersDad]

BBC: Breaking News

 

I see nothing wrong with the BBC seeking the raw data before reporting on this.  Why on earth should they report on research which criticises them if they genuinely feel the findings are flawed.  We all know that mud sticks and if they were to dutifully report it but make a statement that they were challenging the findings, the perception that they were biased would persist even if subsequent analysis of the raw data showed otherwise. 

 

Let's face it, this type of social science research is open to a lot of subjectivity and there is some seriously bad research about even where there is absolutely no intentional bias.  If the BBC see content in the paper which suggests that the evidence may not reasonably lead to the conclusions reached, they have every right to challenge that.

 

As an example, the report cites a story about a Scottish patient being denied a cancer drug which was available to patients in England.  The implication here is that because Healthcare is already devolved matter, independence will lead to more of this.  The BBC reporting the patient being denied the drug is therefore interpretted as taking an anti-independence stance!  It goes on to state that there are examples of patients in England being denied drugs available to patients in Scotland but that this was not reported thereby increasing the bias.  But why would a patient in England being denied a drug be a news story for the BBC in Scotland?  The story may be a criticism of the NHS in Scotland and it may be an unfair criticism, but to interpret it as taking an anti - independence bias really is stretching it.

 

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not saying the BBC is not biased, but I do think that this illustrates just how complex these issues are.  The kind of soft research identified here is fraught with difficulties and the BBC are quite right to seek the raw data before reporting on this.  Of course, once they have seen the raw data they should then report it objectively and offer their comments accordingly.

[robbylad]

 

BBC: Breaking News

 

I see nothing wrong with the BBC seeking the raw data before reporting on this.  Why on earth should they report on research which criticises them if they genuinely feel the findings are flawed.  We all know that mud sticks and if they were to dutifully report it but make a statement that they were challenging the findings, the perception that they were biased would persist even if subsequent analysis of the raw data showed otherwise. 

 

Let's face it, this type of social science research is open to a lot of subjectivity and there is some seriously bad research about even where there is absolutely no intentional bias.  If the BBC see content in the paper which suggests that the evidence may not reasonably lead to the conclusions reached, they have every right to challenge that.

 

As an example, the report cites a story about a Scottish patient being denied a cancer drug which was available to patients in England.  The implication here is that because Healthcare is already devolved matter, independence will lead to more of this.  The BBC reporting the patient being denied the drug is therefore interpretted as taking an anti-independence stance!  It goes on to state that there are examples of patients in England being denied drugs available to patients in Scotland but that this was not reported thereby increasing the bias.  But why would a patient in England being denied a drug be a news story for the BBC in Scotland?  The story may be a criticism of the NHS in Scotland and it may be an unfair criticism, but to interpret it as taking an anti - independence bias really is stretching it.

 

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not saying the BBC is not biased, but I do think that this illustrates just how complex these issues are.  The kind of soft research identified here is fraught with difficulties and the BBC are quite right to seek the raw data before reporting on this.  Of course, once they have seen the raw data they should then report it objectively and offer their comments accordingly.

 

They don't seem too concerned about the anti independence reports they broadcast. As for them offering their comments afterwards..... you'll get some crap legalise that means nothing to the people most affected by said crap. Twist and squirm off the hook.The BBC effectively had its balls cut off after the Gilligan report regarding Iraq. Disgraceful treatment of a journalist who dared to tell the truth.

[Oddquine]

 

BBC: Breaking News

 

I see nothing wrong with the BBC seeking the raw data before reporting on this.  Why on earth should they report on research which criticises them if they genuinely feel the findings are flawed.  We all know that mud sticks and if they were to dutifully report it but make a statement that they were challenging the findings, the perception that they were biased would persist even if subsequent analysis of the raw data showed otherwise. 

 

Let's face it, this type of social science research is open to a lot of subjectivity and there is some seriously bad research about even where there is absolutely no intentional bias.  If the BBC see content in the paper which suggests that the evidence may not reasonably lead to the conclusions reached, they have every right to challenge that.

 

As an example, the report cites a story about a Scottish patient being denied a cancer drug which was available to patients in England.  The implication here is that because Healthcare is already devolved matter, independence will lead to more of this.  The BBC reporting the patient being denied the drug is therefore interpretted as taking an anti-independence stance!  It goes on to state that there are examples of patients in England being denied drugs available to patients in Scotland but that this was not reported thereby increasing the bias.  But why would a patient in England being denied a drug be a news story for the BBC in Scotland?  The story may be a criticism of the NHS in Scotland and it may be an unfair criticism, but to interpret it as taking an anti - independence bias really is stretching it.

 

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not saying the BBC is not biased, but I do think that this illustrates just how complex these issues are.  The kind of soft research identified here is fraught with difficulties and the BBC are quite right to seek the raw data before reporting on this.  Of course, once they have seen the raw data they should then report it objectively and offer their comments accordingly.

 

 

If you read all the pro-Independence websites and FaceBook pages, DD, and read the whole report....you'd know that, for by far the biggest proportion of them, there had been individual complaints made....all of which had been pooh-poohed or ignored (as were both of mine). And despite the volume of complaints, none of them have turned up on the BBC complaints website. Now maybe I'm not as trusting as you...but that smacks to me, of an organisation which knows it is driving a horse and cart through its charter obligations.and hopes that, by ignoring they won't have to admit it.

 

The heid bummer of the  Beeb said at the Edinburgh  Festival that they don't have to be fair and unbiased until the official run-up to the Referendum. Does that not illustrate the BBC mindset to you?  I had a rant, when I wrote to them, about the very fact that, when I went on to their complaints site to complain about their bias, I found that their charter allows them to be biased, if they want, unless within the official run up to elections/referenda, which means they can produce their crap until  30th May 2014, before they actually have to have an equal number of pro-independence and anti-independence supporters on political programmes in which independence is an issue, instead of, as now, having a three to one majority of pro-Union supporters..and won't be allowed to sign off a programme with the last word going only to the Unionist and repeated in different words by the presenter.

 

It wouldn't be a problem if we didn't  have a majority population who didn't still believe, as I used to until 1979, that the BBC was trustworthy, unbiased and always told the truth. Add to that a print media who is at least as biased, and faithfully picks up and promulgates all the crap emanating from the likes of Elgin's Gary Robertson, Keith's James Naughtie and every UK politician's rear end.

 

I can link you to a lot of stuff which was blatantly unfair....but do you know how hard it was to get even this acknowledgement of bias .....it took nearly a year....and no public acknowledgement to make up for their public lies. Raw data reported objectively and the BBC to offer their comments accordingly....don't make me laugh!

http://www.newsnetscotland.com/index.php/affairs-scotland/8501-independence-and-the-eu-how-bbc-scotland-were-caught-misleading-the-public-part-one.

 

To prove they are unbiased, in their response to me, they linked me  to this http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-13326310  . and I then complained about the whole tone of the article...and the fact that the writer said 

Incidentally, 2014 also happens to be the year two prestigious sporting events - the Ryder Cup golf tournament and the Commonwealth Games - are being held in Scotland.

And for the more romantically-minded, next year is also the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, which saw the English army defeated by the forces of King of Scots Robert the Bruce, during the wars of independence.

And never mentioned the newly decided "Celebration of the start of WWI" which is something only  the UK is celebrating out of all countries involved.. The Ryder Cup, the Commonwealth Games and Bannockburn had at least the merit that they were not deliberately organised to try to influence the Independence campaign.

 

I read somewhere that "Of course those who went to war couldn't have known when the referendum was going to be held to get the dates right, so it wasn't a deliberate action by Cameron to try and influence the referendum (or words to that effect)", but I bet you any money you like, if WWI hadn't started in 1914, and there had been any battle or anything at all he could have wrapped in a UK cloak, which fitted the timing, we'd be celebrating it. Cameron has known since he was at school that WWI started in 1914....so it is really awfully coincidental that he decides, four days before the signing of the Edinburgh Agreement, that it is acceptable to celebrate the start of a war which killed thousands of British soldiers.

 

The charter says they have to be even-handed and accurate. In the NHS case....why else would they give the impression that it was only something which happened in Scotland and not mention the fact that it was something which pertained UK wide if they were reporting the NHS situation accurately?  Can you not see that attributing something which happens all over the UK only to Scotland is because they are intending to imply that, because the NHS is devolved, it is a problem only for Scotland which will get worse with Independence?  Sure as hell that's the way a helluva lot of Daily Fail readers will understand it.

 

DD, if you had been an independence supporter subjected to the drip-drip of biased propaganda  the Unionist media, including the BBC, have been subjecting us to over the years  since 2007, you'd be irritated at best and incandescent at worst.

 

 

[Oddquine]

Don't think about what's happening to Britain - or you may have to get out and vote
 

This Headline from the Mirror is actually about the 2015 UK election, but could as easily be written as

 

Don't think about what's happening to Britain - or you may have to get out and vote "YES" in 2014.

 

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/dont-think-whats-happening-britain-3049793#ixzz2r9UHQVxt

 

and in Scotland  Running on Empty: the desperate families forced to turn to the foodbank for survival.

 

http://archive.is/CChhp

 

Can we really do worse in an Independent Scotland than Westminster is doing now and has been doing for decades.....really?

Edited January 23, 2014 by Oddquine

[dougiedanger]

Fair play to CB, gets ripped a new one every time by Oddquine, doesn't/can't engage with the actual topic at hand, then comes back a few weeks later with some diversionary non-argument about Culloden, shortbread, or his bete noire, wee Alec.

 

Quibbling about the numbers of Scots who died in the Great War is a new low though.

 

Fair feckin play.

[+DoofersDad]

 

 

The charter says they have to be even-handed and accurate. In the NHS case....why else would they give the impression that it was only something which happened in Scotland and not mention the fact that it was something which pertained UK wide if they were reporting the NHS situation accurately?  Can you not see that attributing something which happens all over the UK only to Scotland is because they are intending to imply that, because the NHS is devolved, it is a problem only for Scotland which will get worse with Independence?  Sure as hell that's the way a helluva lot of Daily Fail readers will understand it.

 

DD, if you had been an independence supporter subjected to the drip-drip of biased propaganda  the Unionist media, including the BBC, have been subjecting us to over the years  since 2007, you'd be irritated at best and incandescent at worst.

 

 

 

Oddquine, I admire your passion for the cause but I think you are so passionate about the subject that you are allowing yourself to get paranoid about everything the BBC says or does.  I don't disagree that they are biased.  I have experienced first hand gross misrepresentation of things I have said and written.  Actually I find your indignation somewhat ironic because if you were an activist in one of the minor parties you would feel that the BBC were hugely biased toward the SNP!  The hugely greater air time SNP politicians get compared with those of the minor parties relative to the proportion of the popular vote received, has always been in a totally different league to any disparity in the independence debate.

 

The thing is, the BBC have a difficult job to do.  Outside of elections when there is a specific code, the BBC have to strike a balance between what might be considered fair coverage of views and what people want to hear or watch.  It's the same with football - ICT get less coverage than a certain Glasgow team 2 divisions below us simply because more people are interested in them than us.  It's not fair but that's the way it is.  We have to live with it.

 

But where your paranoia goes into overdrive is in your response to my example of the reporting of "postcode prescribing" as mentioned in the report on the BBC "The Mantis" drew attention to.  Can you not accept that the BBC reported the fact that a patient was denied a drug in Scotland which was available in England, primarily as a human interest story and secondly a story about the policies of the NHS in Scotland?  The logic of what you are saying is that if the BBC were actually biased in their reporting in favour of independence, they would not have broadcast the story.  That is frankly absurd. 

 

Further, the logic of what you are saying is that any "bad news" reporting of a devolved government function is an implied sideswipe at independence.  The BBC's job is to report news.  Your argument seems to suggest that every time there is a news story which shows a devolved function in bad light, another story should be broadcast which shows it in a good light so that no bias is shown.  Doing that would not only have us all switching off, it would also rightly result in accusations of a lack of objectivity when a devolved function was actually demonstrably better or worse than the same function south of the border.

 

As I said, I do agree that the BBC is biased in a number of ways but I also believe that the nature of broadcasting and the decision making about what is appropriate to broadcast and what is not, is a very difficult one.  The suggestion that the BBC has a unionist stance and that this influences the way general news items are presented seems fanciful to me.  The constant accusations of bias from the "yes" camp don't go down well with the voters and are self-defeating as they smack too much of getting your excuses in early for losing the vote. 

 

Let's get real here.  The "yes" campaigners have had and will continue to have hours and hours of coverage on the BBC where they can say what they like, live on air.  There are a wide range of other media options and an excruciatingly long period of time for the campaign.  There is therefore an unprecedented opportunity for the "Yes" campaign to get their message across.  Frankly, all this constant harping on about BBC bias smacks of desperation.

[The Mantis]

According to Derek Bateman, Dr Robertson will be on GMS tomorrow

 

DD, I agree with you that the Cancer article, as a human interest item, seems out of place and shouldn't have been included.

 

But the rest of the document applies to referendum stories only, and things such as giving the 'No' people the last word, and personalising the debate to Salmond, as certain posters on here have done  are blatant. Yesterday morning I heard the 'No' person getting both the first and the last word on GMS. It went N,Y,N,Y,N which seems to happen all the time.

 

I don't think the voters get tired of the complaining at all, as they don't actually see any accusations of bias from the Yes side unless they are interested enough to search the internet.

As Oddquine says, you can't even see any complaints on the BBC complaints page which seems a bit dodgy.

Otherwise the average tabloid reader sees bias, such as ridicule of Salmond's appearance, and this just becomes established as the truth, just as happened with Michael Foot etc. The Daily Mail runs regular 'Loony' pieces about those nasty cybernats.

 

I don't actually think the 'national' BBC has (much of a ) Unionist stance at all, but again the internet has a fair bit of evidence that BBC Scotland is too cosy with the Labour Party. This in itself could be taken as an argument against indy, but to me it's just an argument against the Labour Party in Scotland which arrogantly thinks it still owns the place.

[Joe DiMaggio]

I believe Charles bannermans tediously boring and repetitive posts have helped the yes cause more than any other argument here. So constantly negative and derogatory towards Scotland

[Alex MacLeod]

I wish the people debating this referendum (or not actually debating but ridiculing for no good reason) would separate the subject from party politics. This is not a vote for Salmond or any other politicain. its a vote for our future. A future that, under the current set-up, will not see an end to child poverty, food banks and payday loan companies running roughshod over the needy. I would urge everyone to read Jim Sillars booklet setting out his reasoning and vision for the future of this country. Its less than a hundred pages. I'd also remind everyone that the best UK labour leader that Scotland never had a proper chance to experience professed similar visions.

[ictchris]

If Scotland votes No, will Jim pop up to denounce the 90 minute patriots again?

[Alex MacLeod]

More likely to say "you had your choice and blew it, now live with the poverty while I enjoy the rest of my retirement".

[The Mantis]

I heard Dr Robertson this morning at 830, just happened to come on my bedside radio before I got up.
He came across as a real pro, typical academic, totally dispassionate.
He said he found an imbalance in the reporting of the referendum, but stressed that he was not alleging any conspiracy, simply that these things creep up when nobody keeps overall control of them.
He also stressed that he was not a nationalist. Very fair interview and worth finding on iplayer.

Edited January 25, 2014 by TheMantis
conspiracy instead of bias

[ictchris]

It's a shared belief among all political parties that the press is out ot get them.

 

The Tories blame the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation and the Guardianistas for the liberal bias against them.

Labour blame Rupert Murdoch controlled press for poisoning the masses against them.

The Liberal Democrats complain that everyone ignores them, except when they get caught up in a sex scandal, which is pretty much all the time these days.

The SNP and nationalists complain that the wool is being pulled over the people's eyes by the devious 'MSM'.

 

The truth of it is that the mass of people aren't stupid, they don't believe everything that they read and they are capable of making their own choices.  Political activists find it difficult to cope with the idea that the beliefs that they hold so dear aren't shared by the general population and find ways to 'explain' this to themselves.  What it really demonstrates is the contempt shown towards the general population by the polical classes - stupid people, believing everything that the Sun/DailyMail/BBC feeds them.  In the real world, people read newspapers for many reasons and are savvy enough not to chomp down everything that they read / hear / watch.  Add to that the huge reduction in importance of the print and broadcast media in the last few years

 

If you think that it's the media to blame for the polls showing the No campaign in the lead then I think you arebarking up the wrong tree.  Support for independence has stayed pretty constant for years, suggesting that the reporting of the referendum hasn't had a big impact.  The SNP won power in Holyrood in 2007 when the vast majority of the press in Scotland wsa actively hostile to them and then romped the 2011 elections without the 'support' of much of the press.

 

Focussing on the media suggsts that one side is getting it's excuses in early, lacking in confidence.  The real danger is the implicit support for censorship that's contained in this focus.  The press skew elections so we need to control the press is an obvious narrative - obvious but flawed.  The SNP governments 'McLeveson' proposals actually exceeded the measures proposed in Westminster and don't suggest an administration for whom freedom of the press is central, a trait shared with the Westminster parties. 

[Charles Bannerman]

Fair play to CB, gets ripped a new one every time by Oddquine, doesn't/can't engage with the actual topic at hand, then comes back a few weeks later with some diversionary non-argument about Culloden, shortbread, or his bete noire, wee Alec.

 

Quibbling about the numbers of Scots who died in the Great War is a new low though.

 

Fair feckin play.

Quite frankly, I find Oddquine's lengthy monologues largely impenetrable - apart from their basic thesis of what a scandalously downtrodden bunch the poor old Scots have always been at the hands of their nasty neighbours. And it's there that the likes of inflated WW1 casualty figures and delusional interpretations of the Battle of Culloden etc become an important consideration, since such things have always been important to nationalists for the promotion of a sense of grievance.

I have to say that, alongside football, shinty and athletics, another of my favourite sports is winding up Nats. This was something I learned as a boy on the streets of Inverness where we would manage to distract Willie Bell from ranting at English tourists and get him to chase us instead, and it's provided a lifetime of entertainment. And hey! We need some entertainment after two and a half years of having this referendum incessantly rammed down our throats, with the worst eight months still to come. You really do have to have a bit of a laugh or the whole thing will grind you down. What a lot of yessers seem not to understand is that most of us, although Scottish, have far more to our lives than constantly binding on about Scotland and we really want to get these lives back.

I certainly can't accept Alex's contention that this referendum isn't really about the SNP and Alex Salmond. After all, the sole reason that we are having it is that the SNP got a Holyrood majority, and the publicity hungry Salmond is a very prominent mouthpiece, to the extent, for instance, that he didn't launch the 670 pages to his fellow MSPs at Holyrood but to the assembled media at the Glasgow Science centre.

But there are indeed organisations other than the SNP supporting yes - such as something called "Wings Over Scotland" which has been mentioned a lot on this thread. Now I learn that "Wings Over Scotland" is actually one single wee Cybernat called "The Reverend" Stuart Campbell who seems to love Scotland so much that he lives in Bath in Somerset.

Oh well, I suppose in the unlikely event of a yes vote, the MacStasi will come and put me on Rendition Flight 101 to Rockall where, since I have no great fear of rats, I will be exposed to the incessant sound of a pipe band

Edited January 25, 2014 by Charles Bannerman

[ictchris]

Charles have you seen Breaking Bad?  It's about a chemistry teacher who turns to manufacturing large quantities of illegal drugs.

 

Just saying.

[Charles Bannerman]

Charles have you seen Breaking Bad?  It's about a chemistry teacher who turns to manufacturing large quantities of illegal drugs.

 

Just saying.

    I will take some with me to Rockall to block out the sound of the pipe band

[Alex MacLeod]

 

Fair play to CB, gets ripped a new one every time by Oddquine, doesn't/can't engage with the actual topic at hand, then comes back a few weeks later with some diversionary non-argument about Culloden, shortbread, or his bete noire, wee Alec.

 

Quibbling about the numbers of Scots who died in the Great War is a new low though.

 

Fair feckin play.

Quite frankly, I find Oddquine's lengthy monologues largely impenetrable - apart from their basic thesis of what a scandalously downtrodden bunch the poor old Scots have always been at the hands of their nasty neighbours. And it's there that the likes of inflated WW1 casualty figures and delusional interpretations of the Battle of Culloden etc become an important consideration, since such things have always been important to nationalists for the promotion of a sense of grievance.

I have to say that, alongside football, shinty and athletics, another of my favourite sports is winding up Nats. This was something I learned as a boy on the streets of Inverness where we would manage to distract Willie Bell from ranting at English tourists and get him to chase us instead, and it's provided a lifetime of entertainment. And hey! We need some entertainment after two and a half years of having this referendum incessantly rammed down our throats, with the worst eight months still to come. You really do have to have a bit of a laugh or the whole thing will grind you down. What a lot of yessers seem not to understand is that most of us, although Scottish, have far more to our lives than constantly binding on about Scotland and we really want to get these lives back.

I certainly can't accept Alex's contention that this referendum isn't really about the SNP and Alex Salmond. After all, the sole reason that we are having it is that the SNP got a Holyrood majority, and the publicity hungry Salmond is a very prominent mouthpiece, to the extent, for instance, that he didn't launch the 670 pages to his fellow MSPs at Holyrood but to the assembled media at the Glasgow Science centre.

But there are indeed organisations other than the SNP supporting yes - such as something called "Wings Over Scotland" which has been mentioned a lot on this thread. Now I learn that "Wings Over Scotland" is actually one single wee Cybernat called "The Reverend" Stuart Campbell who seems to love Scotland so much that he lives in Bath in Somerset.

Oh well, I suppose in the unlikely event of a yes vote, the MacStasi will come and put me on Rendition Flight 101 to Rockall where, since I have no great fear of rats, I will be exposed to the incessant sound of a pipe band

 

Perhaps Charles, you should take your research info from something other than the rag you got that information. Wings over Scotland is not an organisation supporting YES. Indeed the Reverand Campbell is not a supporter of anything. Nor is he an SNP supporter. He's a Lib-Dem. Whether or not he's a reverend I dont know and nor do I know why he lives in Bath other than its where he earns his cash. WoS, as I said, is not an organisation. Its a website blog open to anyone with any view on anything.

 

Oh! And he doesn't actually have a vote in September

[ictchris]

Bath is lovely.

[robbylad]

 

 

Fair play to CB, gets ripped a new one every time by Oddquine, doesn't/can't engage with the actual topic at hand, then comes back a few weeks later with some diversionary non-argument about Culloden, shortbread, or his bete noire, wee Alec.

 

Quibbling about the numbers of Scots who died in the Great War is a new low though.

 

Fair feckin play.

Quite frankly, I find Oddquine's lengthy monologues largely impenetrable - apart from their basic thesis of what a scandalously downtrodden bunch the poor old Scots have always been at the hands of their nasty neighbours. And it's there that the likes of inflated WW1 casualty figures and delusional interpretations of the Battle of Culloden etc become an important consideration, since such things have always been important to nationalists for the promotion of a sense of grievance.

I have to say that, alongside football, shinty and athletics, another of my favourite sports is winding up Nats. This was something I learned as a boy on the streets of Inverness where we would manage to distract Willie Bell from ranting at English tourists and get him to chase us instead, and it's provided a lifetime of entertainment. And hey! We need some entertainment after two and a half years of having this referendum incessantly rammed down our throats, with the worst eight months still to come. You really do have to have a bit of a laugh or the whole thing will grind you down. What a lot of yessers seem not to understand is that most of us, although Scottish, have far more to our lives than constantly binding on about Scotland and we really want to get these lives back.

I certainly can't accept Alex's contention that this referendum isn't really about the SNP and Alex Salmond. After all, the sole reason that we are having it is that the SNP got a Holyrood majority, and the publicity hungry Salmond is a very prominent mouthpiece, to the extent, for instance, that he didn't launch the 670 pages to his fellow MSPs at Holyrood but to the assembled media at the Glasgow Science centre.

But there are indeed organisations other than the SNP supporting yes - such as something called "Wings Over Scotland" which has been mentioned a lot on this thread. Now I learn that "Wings Over Scotland" is actually one single wee Cybernat called "The Reverend" Stuart Campbell who seems to love Scotland so much that he lives in Bath in Somerset.

Oh well, I suppose in the unlikely event of a yes vote, the MacStasi will come and put me on Rendition Flight 101 to Rockall where, since I have no great fear of rats, I will be exposed to the incessant sound of a pipe band

 

Perhaps Charles, you should take your research info from something other than the rag you got that information. Wings over Scotland is not an organisation supporting YES. Indeed the Reverand Campbell is not a supporter of anything. Nor is he an SNP supporter. He's a Lib-Dem. Whether or not he's a reverend I dont know and nor do I know why he lives in Bath other than its where he earns his cash. WoS, as I said, is not an organisation. Its a website blog open to anyone with any view on anything.

 

Oh! And he doesn't actually have a vote in September

 

If you believe the crap that passes for journalism in the daily mail, you deserve all the scorn coming your way.

[The Mantis]

Winding up - isn't that when you make the OTHER guy foam at the mouth 

[The Mantis]

Charles have you seen Breaking Bad?  It's about a chemistry teacher who turns to manufacturing large quantities of illegal drugs.

 

Just saying.

Cool alert ******

I got series 1 from my son to watch last year after I was in hospital. How come it's struggling along to 5 series or so? Did they invent a plot twist where his cancer got cured 

[Yngwie]

Winding up - isn't that when you make the OTHER guy foam at the mouth 

 

You'll have to wait until tomorrow to get a response from Charles - Braveheart is on at 9pm!   

[Oddquine]

I wish the people debating this referendum (or not actually debating but ridiculing for no good reason) would separate the subject from party politics. This is not a vote for Salmond or any other politicain. its a vote for our future. A future that, under the current set-up, will not see an end to child poverty, food banks and payday loan companies running roughshod over the needy. I would urge everyone to read Jim Sillars booklet setting out his reasoning and vision for the future of this country. Its less than a hundred pages. I'd also remind everyone that the best UK labour leader that Scotland never had a proper chance to experience professed similar visions.

Alex.if they didn't trash Alex Salmond and the SNP and denigrate the Scottish people who would kinda like to get out of this dependency culture (as the Tory Party is always screaming the less than rich should do) and into taking responsibility for ourselves (as the Tory Party is always screaming the disadavantaged, disabled, under 25s, unemployed should do)..what are they going to say? It  has, certainly in Scotland, become the Nulabour Party mantra....Nulabour/Union Good............SNP/Scotland Bad!

 

All the rest of this isn't really a response to your post.....but my general observations about the debate.

 

We can expect a lot of "winding up the pro-independence supporters"  and not a lot else, between now and 18/9..because there isn't a lot else to be said.  If there was anything positive to be said....I'm sure Charles would have found it and posted it.  Seems to me if there was anything at all which the Union could offer that we can't do for ourselves, (over and above bombing the crap out of countries the USA doesn't like, sitting on the sidelines while UK politicians use Scotland's farmers to get cash off the EU, and then share that cash out among the other countries who didn't get it directly from the EU because they didn't need it etc).....then I am damn sure it would have been headlines in every newspaper and on every News Bulletin on the Telly.....and because it hasn't......then there is nothing to recommend it to us.....though you kinda get the impression that Westminster wants to hing on hard to the Scottish "subsidy junkies" not to benefit Scotland......but because losing Scotland will diminish them in the eyes of the world. Anyone care to try and convince me otherwise.  (I can be convinced that I am wrong and other people talk sense......I have taken IHE off ignore, because he has proven he was right about Butcher and I was wrong when I was a happy clapper about everything bar his youth policy.)

 

There is nothing to recommend the Union in 2014, imo,  bar the history.......and, tbh, I'm not convinced even the history can be recommended when you consider the state the world is in now...and largely due to the imperialism of the "Union" in history. Sure history was a different time with different ideas......but isn't that the whole point of this exercise...that  we learn from history....and I think we have but Westminster hasn't..and as long as whichever Government sits in Westminster has to win a majority of English seats...Westminster won't.

 

It seems to me to be a very simple thing, if Westminster really wants to preserve the Union.......all the Unionist parties at Westminster get together ......and fight among themselves to come up with a cast-iron guarantee that they will give Scotland devo-max/a federal system, approved by a Scottish Parliament, and get it through the Westminster Parliament whole and unamended, as the Scottish Majority would prefer, within a very limited time scale.....and if it doesn't happen, we do all this again before May 2016.   The current."each party will put forward their promises on devolution for Scotland within the Union at some stage prior to September if we feel like it " just doesn't cut it, because Westminster politicians lie to get elected.  Want a list of the lies the Tory and Lib-Dem parties told.....and all the crap they introduced which was never in their Manifestos and all they have left out?  Anyone want to convince me that this time, they will do as they say?

[Scarlet Pimple]

I've got a good friend in Bath. He's a nice guy and will be coming back to Canada at the end of this month fort an extended stay. I must ask him why?

 

Oh Charles, the news over here is that there is a wayward, seemingly abandoned ship full of infected rats out in the Atlantic and is supposed to hit the Eastern seaboard of Canada  shortly. It's like the ghost ship we all have heard about looming suddenly out of the mist. Like the wreck of the Hesperus, maybe. 

If you like I can turn it round and head it back to Rockall. so that you won't be lonely, like.