The Big Scottish Independence Debate

[Charles Bannerman]

 

Apparently, 51% of Scots-born voters voted Yes, while 74% of non-Scots UK-born voters voted no.

So the Scots did actually vote for independence.

 

Don't see the relevance of that statistic. Everyone choosing to make Scotland their domicile was entitled to vote on the future of their country irrespective of their place of birth and quite properly so.

 

A very fair comment from a supporter of Yes Scotland.

[+DoofersDad]

It will be fascinating to see if the SNP's support gained at the last Scottish elections holds up in a general election.  If so, they could hold the balance of power.  Sure they have massively increased their membership, but I guess a lot of folk who voted for them in the Holyrood elections on the basis that they seemed to be doing a decent job in governing within a devolved parliament will not vote for them in a general election if they don't also favour independence.  These folk are also unlikely to vote for them in the Holyrood elections the year after, particularly if labour can get their act together again.  We may argue the toss about a lot of things but I guess we can agree that politics is not going to dull in the next wee while

[dougiedanger]

Apparently, 51% of Scots-born voters voted Yes, while 74% of non-Scots UK-born voters voted no.

So the Scots did actually vote for independence.

 

Don't see the relevance of that statistic. Everyone choosing to make Scotland their domicile was entitled to vote on the future of their country irrespective of their place of birth and quite properly so.

It is relevant, the Scots voted Yes.

[Sneckboy]

The vote wasn't for 'the Scots'. It was for the people of Scotland, of all nationalities. Maybe you'd prefer if they all 'went home'.

[Yngwie]

Apparently, 51% of Scots-born voters voted Yes, while 74% of non-Scots UK-born voters voted no.

So the Scots did actually vote for independence.

 

Source? The same one that claims Inverness voted Yes?

 

The You Gov survey of how over 3,000 people cast their actual votes says 49% Yes 51% No for those born in Scotland.

 

And even if it was particularly relevant how "the Scots" voted, you'd have to then bring in Scots who are currently residing outwith Scotland, who according to previous surveys would be massively No voters.

[Yngwie]

 a massive increase in party membership from 26,000 to over 60,000

 

Loads of folk wanting to join now that Salmond is stepping out of the way? 

[dougiedanger]

l A total of 74 per cent of those voters who were born elsewhere in the UK voted No. Some 51 per cent of Scots-born voters supported independence.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/referendum-survey-suggests-a-slender-majority-of-young-people-voted-no.25407723

 

Just relaying facts, to enrich the debate.

[dougiedanger]

The vote wasn't for 'the Scots'. It was for the people of Scotland, of all nationalities. Maybe you'd prefer if they all 'went home'.

That's racism.

[Sneckboy]

The only statistic of relevance is the 55%-45% outcome.

Yet, you're eager to proclaim "Apparently, 51% of Scots-born voters voted Yes, while 74% of non-Scots UK-born voters voted no. So the Scots did actually vote for independence"

I'm not sure what else I'm supposed to infer from those comments!

[Yngwie]

l A total of 74 per cent of those voters who were born elsewhere in the UK voted No. Some 51 per cent of Scots-born voters supported independence.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/referendum-survey-suggests-a-slender-majority-of-young-people-voted-no.25407723

 

Just relaying facts, to enrich the debate.

 

We're actually talking about the same survey here, and through no fault of yours, the Herald have simply got the figures the wrong way round!  Fantastic journalism!

 

Scots born were 51% No, RUK born were 74% No and non-UK were 59% No, as per the bottom row of page 1 of the actual poll data.

 

http://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/09/19/scottish-independence-final-prediction/

[dougiedanger]

 

l A total of 74 per cent of those voters who were born elsewhere in the UK voted No. Some 51 per cent of Scots-born voters supported independence.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/referendum-survey-suggests-a-slender-majority-of-young-people-voted-no.25407723

 

Just relaying facts, to enrich the debate.

 

We're actually talking about the same survey here, and through no fault of yours, the Herald have simply got the figures the wrong way round!  Fantastic journalism!

 

Scots born were 51% No, RUK born were 74% No and non-UK were 59% No, as per the bottom row of page 1 of the actual poll data.

 

http://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/09/19/scottish-independence-final-prediction/

 

 

Oh feck. Fair enough, you guys win, humiliation is complete.

[Charles Bannerman]

This aftermath is becoming a complete pantomime. Yes supporters now seem to have invented so many sub-divisions of the electorate where they claim actually to have won that there can't be any votes left to make up the 2 million who voted NO.

Oh but I forgot. They have video "evidence" that every single one of these 2 million NO votes was fixed.

 

Within a couple of hours of the result being confirmed I said - if there is one sight that is more glorious than a bunch of Nationalists in defeat, it's a bunch of Nationalists in defeat after thinking they were going to win!

Maybe instead of "glorious" I should have said "hilarious".

Edited September 24, 2014 by Charles Bannerman

[+DoofersDad]

This narrow nationalism is so desperately negative.   The fact is that the union allows people to move freely within the UK and this referendum has brought home to folk just how many non Scottish born UK citizens live in Scotland and how many Scots born UK citizens live elsewhere in the UK.  And that's a really healthy thing.  Those who move around bring different skills and different perspectives to the areas they move to.  This helps to enrich the community they move to just as that community enriches them.  It is one of the real strengths of the Union.  Independence would restrict the benefit Scotland derives from this exchange of skills and perspectives and it would make it more difficult for Scots born people to benefit from a move in the other direction.  Those moving between Scotland and the rest of the UK understand this and that is why there is so little support for independence from those who have made a conscious decision to move to Scotland to live.

 

But just what is a Scot in any case? OK, if your parents have lived all their life in Scotland and you have lived all your life in Scotland then it is obviously fair enough to call yourself Scottish. But if your parents have lived all their life in England but just happened to be in Scotland when you arrived earlier than expected and you subsequently lived all your life in England, does that make you Scottish? Of course not. If it did, then that most Scottish of Scottish entertainers, Andy Cameron was English. At least the famous Indian folk singer Hamish Imlach always claimed he was conceived in Scotland!   For many, national identity is not so clear cut and increasingly people are relaxed with that.  The reality is that it makes no difference whether we were born here or elsewhere.  If we live here we are entitled to vote.  And the most relevant fact of all is that more of us voted NO than voted YES.

[Ayeseetee]

Hardcore unionists seem pretty upset we havent let this go yet and I doubt I ever will.

 

 

You know how screwed the uk is when you know people see milliband as some sort of saviour

Edited September 25, 2014 by Ayeseetee

[Yngwie]

Turning that around, you know how bad the independence proposal was when most people would rather be governed by Cameron or Milliband!

[Alex MacLeod]

At the end of the day its the statistic that was published after the close of polling that matters. The one that says NO to independence. We all have to live with that and fight on for a healthy future.

[Oddquine]

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.

[Sneckboy]

As mentioned by DD (Doofers Dad, not dd, dougiedanger!), the next few years in politics should be interesting with the General Election next year, the Scottish Parliament the year after, then, the following year, perhaps an EU referendum?

 

I read an interesting article recently, from the anonymous punter who placed £800,000 on NO winning. He placed 4 bets at different times resulting in average odds of around 1/4 resulting in just over £200,000 winnings. Obviously, this guy could 'afford' to lose such a vast sum - and it's an example of how money-makes-money, but it was nevertheless an enormous amount to stake, and regardless of how rich, his reasoning follows some compelling points.

His rational was interesting. He was guided more by bookmakers odds: to paraphrase, "this was a significant gambling event, and bookies are more often reliably accurate than opinion-polls."

 

And secondly, he had studied the outcome of world-wide referendums (referenda?!) over time and, with only a few exceptions had seen a significant trend.

For the most part, people tend towards the status-quo. But, there's often an upturn in polling figures for the 'away team' (a YES in this case) at some stage - before, nearer the day of the vote, folk 'refer-to-type'.

 

With bookies odds, SNP fans may take some comfort in the knowledge that, currently, they have Danny Alexander to LOSE his Inverness seat next May, with the Nats favourites to take the seat.

Also, a future referendum appears inevitable - but, you've got another 24 years to wait! (date with the shortest odds). I suppose that's a 'generation'!

[Alex MacLeod]

So they told us the oil is running out---------http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-29342142

[Alex MacLeod]

[Alex MacLeod]

Thats the start of our new powers

[Oddquine]

As mentioned by DD (Doofers Dad, not dd, dougiedanger!), the next few years in politics should be interesting with the General Election next year, the Scottish Parliament the year after, then, the following year, perhaps an EU referendum?

 

I read an interesting article recently, from the anonymous punter who placed £800,000 on NO winning. He placed 4 bets at different times resulting in average odds of around 1/4 resulting in just over £200,000 winnings. Obviously, this guy could 'afford' to lose such a vast sum - and it's an example of how money-makes-money, but it was nevertheless an enormous amount to stake, and regardless of how rich, his reasoning follows some compelling points.

His rational was interesting. He was guided more by bookmakers odds: to paraphrase, "this was a significant gambling event, and bookies are more often reliably accurate than opinion-polls."

 

And secondly, he had studied the outcome of world-wide referendums (referenda?!) over time and, with only a few exceptions had seen a significant trend.

For the most part, people tend towards the status-quo. But, there's often an upturn in polling figures for the 'away team' (a YES in this case) at some stage - before, nearer the day of the vote, folk 'refer-to-type'.

 

With bookies odds, SNP fans may take some comfort in the knowledge that, currently, they have Danny Alexander to LOSE his Inverness seat next May, with the Nats favourites to take the seat.

Also, a future referendum appears inevitable - but, you've got another 24 years to wait! (date with the shortest odds). I suppose that's a 'generation'!

 

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.

Edited September 25, 2014 by Oddquine

[Charles Bannerman]

 

 

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.

 

Oh for God's sake why can you people not come to terms with the fact that having this damned referendum was your idea, you were allowed to hold it under your own rules and, despite wholesale bribes to the politically naive, YOU LOST?

[Yngwie]

YOU LOST

 

[Yngwie]

^

 

Nominating a head of state who doesn't want that state to even exist would be something like Israel appointing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president!