Scottish Independence

[Tubbs]

Draft independence bill and interim constitution being published by people with absolutely no political mandate whatsoever to do so. Setting out the foundations for an independent Scotland if the country votes yes ! Undemocratic in the extreme and puts paid to any of the yes campaign being bigger than the SNP.

Its a referendum on a single question which provides no basis for decisions on what the country will look like.

[Mr Bairn]

Hopefully we celebrate the 24th March and 18th September, we could have 2 days off where we actually do party.

Cheltenham and St Paddys one week and Independence day the next week.

Yeah, one of the things I've realised in the last couple of years is just how seriously Paddys is taken by the Irish community. Wish we could celebrate like that on St Andrews

[HardyBamboo]

You are being offered the opportunity to vote this down.

How much more democracy do you actually want?

No political mandate? The SNP stood on a ticket of providing a referendum and to the best of my knowledge they absolutely pumped Labour in the subsequent election.

People voting Yes are voting to allow future Scottish governments to make pretty much all of our decisions rather than Westminster.

What those decisions are will entirely depend on the elected government at the time.

TBH I have no idea where you are going with this rather spectacular rant.

I kind of thought that myself, maybe he has been partying with Mr Bairn?

[YOGI IS GOD]

Tonight there's a debate being run by the Glasgow Skeptics at the Mitchell Library. Representing the No campaign are: Jackson Carlaw, Jackie Baillie and Willie Rennie. What a grouping.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

Britain is in a state of self denial, sitting at the bottom of European league tables, but convinced it still rules the waves. The aspirations of the SNP may seem ambitious, but all they are really proposing is to be a normal European country.

There is a trope I hear a lot at the moment: “Scotland is different”. Left to lie, on its own, with no explanation, it's a sort of petty nationalism. The idea that any one group of people is intrinsically unlike any other strikes me as a perverse way to understand humanity.

The context, usually, is political. Scotland has free education “because it's different”. Scotland hasn't privatised its NHS, “because it's different”. It's utter bunkum. The truth is that Scotland is, basically, a very normal Northern European country.

Across Northern Europe, university education is either free (in Germany and the Nordic countries) or costs only a few hundred Euros (in the Netherlands and France, for example). Most of Europe has much lower levels of income inequality than the UK. Apart from the Benelux countries and Cyprus, all of Europe's countries use more renewable energy than the UK, despite Britain having more potential than almost any of them.

In most of Europe, in fact, in most of the world, the idea that significant portions of your economy would be publicly owned is quite standard. In Northern Europe, it's not abnormal to have decent childcare provision, to work a sensible number of hours a day, and to be more productive in total as a result.

No, when people say that Scotland is different, that the social democratic aspirations of Scots are an anomaly, they are missing the point entirely. The social attitudes of Scots, and the policies of the Scottish Parliament, are pretty much standard for a European country. Scotland isn't the exception, it's the rule.

The thing that's weird isn't even England. Most English people are against privatisation, and though there is a small difference in attitudes towards social security, it's nothing that won't change over the years.

No, the thing that's an outlier is Britain. As the Radical Independence Campaign has pointed out, it's Britain that is the fourth most unequal developed country on earth, in which pay has in recent years fallen faster than in all but three EU countries, in which people work the third longest hours in Europe for the second lowest wages in the OECD despite having Europe's third highest housing costs, highest train fares and the second worst levels of fuel poverty.

It's Britain which has the least happy children in the developed world, the highest infant mortality rate in Western Europe and some of the worst child poverty in the industrialised world. It's British elderly people who are the fourth poorest pensioners in the EU. It's Britain which has the eighth biggest gender pay gap in Europe and child care costs much higher than most European countries.

It's Britain which has a wealth gap twice as wide as any other EU country, Europe's greatest regional inequality, productivity 16% behind the average for advanced economies and the worst record on industrial production of the rich world. It's Britain whose elite has a radical ideology: 40% of the total value of all privatisations in the Western world between 1980 and 1996 happened in the UK; and it's Britain's parliament which is uniquely undemocratic, with its noxious combination of first past the post and an unelected second chamber, yet holds more centralised power than almost any other legislature in the developed world. With all that, it should be no surprise that Britain has the lowest level of trust in our politicians.

Most people in the South East of England never seem to understand this. Blinded by the headlights and headlines of post imperial UK nationalism, the idea that “Britain is Great” pervades. We (I live in the South East at the moment) cling with white fisted knuckles to the notion that Britannia rules, unwilling to let go of our imperial past for fear that we might find we are just another European country. It's a myth which works much more in England, and which helps explain differences in the tendancy to believe immigrant scapegoating North and South of the border "if Britain is uniquely great" people infer "it can't be the system that's to blame, it must be outsiders".

But the truth is that this is a very sick country indeed. We are investing a net figure of nothing in our future economy, and instead just about keep our head above water by flogging off our assets at a rate which would astonish almost any other country and re-inflating speculative bubbles which suck any wealth we do create into an unproductive black hole London housing market which eats wealth out of the rest of the country, hoovering any investment away from anything productive and then complaining when it's asked to redistribute crumbs from its table.

A metropolis once at the centre of the biggest empire in human history and now at the centre of a global revolution of money-men over making things, of the wealthy over the rest is disguised by a blanket of post-imperial false confidence. Post-imperial Britain is a very strange, very damaged place. And before the people of these islands, the English in particular, can move on, and find a new place in the world, they need someone to finally point out that not only is this former emperor naked, not only does he no longer rule the waves, but his failure to grapple sensibly with either these facts has led to some pretty unhealthy habits. Telling a difficult truth is what friends are for. In part, that's what Scotland's referendum will be about.

But for most Scots, it'll be about their families and their communities. And so for them, it's important to understand this: when people say that Scotland could do better, this isn't about some nationalist belief that the talents or the solidaristic instincts of the Scots are unique. In order to be a significantly nicer place to live, all that Scotland needs is to be normal. Compared to being in broken Britain, living in a bog-standard average Western country may seem like an impossible, utopian fairy-land, to which only naïve children conned by lying politicians would aspire. But for most of the Western world, the sort of Scotland that the SNP talk about, that most yes campaigners say we can expect, isn't exceptional, it's not even better than average. I am a radical. I hope we can achieve much more. But the “cloud cuckoo land” aspiration of the Scottish Government is to be an average, run of the mill, bog-standard European country. Compared to where we are now, that would be a great start.

Where did you cut and paste that word salad from?

[Ad Lib]

Where did you cut and paste that word salad from?

Here I believe:

http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2014/03/21/scotland-isnt-different-its-britain-thats-bizarre/

You can tell when ayrmad is copying and pasting because it involves complete sentences and a semblance of spelling and grammar.

[Tubbs]

You are being offered the opportunity to vote this down.

How much more democracy do you actually want?

No political mandate? The SNP stood on a ticket of providing a referendum and to the best of my knowledge they absolutely pumped Labour in the subsequent election.

People voting Yes are voting to allow future Scottish governments to make pretty much all of our decisions rather than Westminster.

What those decisions are will entirely depend on the elected government at the time.

TBH I have no idea where you are going with this rather spectacular rant.

You said it yourself; they stood on a ticket of providing a referendum. Not a ticket of what a post referendum yes would mean.

Some people may vote yes but want a separate Scottish currency for example - how do they influence that? Instead anyone voting yes is effectively endorsing all SNP policies or writing them a blank cheque re negotiations.

If the yes campaign is wider than the SNP how do you get the currency arrangements preferred by its chairman ie a Scottish currency ?

[BradHorse]

I don't know how anyone could actually be FOR independence with Alex Salmond at the helm; what a p***k of a man.

...

[AberdeenBud]

I don't know how anyone could actually be FOR independence with Alex Salmond at the helm; what a p***k of a man.

...

You do realise you won't be electing him as life president?

I'm also no great fan of Wee Eck's, but I'm willing to see past that and look to what's best for Scotland and her people.

[lichtgilphead]

I don't know how anyone could actually be FOR independence with Alex Salmond at the helm; what a p***k of a man.

...

You forgot to mention that he's fat and has an old wife.

HTH

[Broccoli Dog]

I don't know how anyone could actually be FOR independence with Alex Salmond at the helm; what a p***k of a man.

...

[Enigma]

But I thought all those Shetlanders wanted to remain part of the UK or join Norway or claim their oil or something... nope seems they're coming round to Scottish Independence too... http://www.shetnews.co.uk/features/scottish-independence-debate/8211-majority-favour-independence-at-althing-debate

[LinkinFighter]

I don't know how anyone could actually be FOR independence with Alex Salmond at the helm; what a p***k of a man.

...

^^^ Sevco moron

[San Starko Rover]

I don't know how anyone could actually be FOR independence with Alex Salmond at the helm; what a p***k of a man.

...

Wow where to start with this statement, it appears the whole referendum debate has passed you by and I really hope you are trolling but I will indulge you

You are NOT voting for Alex Salmond or David Cameron or ANY political figure

You are NOT voting for the SNP or Labour or any political party

You ARE voting for whether Scotland should be Independent and run our own country or Whether we should remain part of the United Kingdom and have Westminster make our choices.

Alex Salmond and the SNP are not going to become the high overlords of SNPland in 2016 after cross party negotiations with Westminster there would be an election and Alex Salmond may or may not win that election he may never win a Scottish general election and become Prime Minister but that will be for the people of Scotland to decide.

Now you can either understand what the vote is about and debate actual facts and opinions or call the First Minister names. One is the action of an adult and the other a child.

[Todders]

Draft independence bill and interim constitution being published by people with absolutely no political mandate whatsoever to do so. Setting out the foundations for an independent Scotland if the country votes yes ! Undemocratic in the extreme and puts paid to any of the yes campaign being bigger than the SNP.

Its a referendum on a single question which provides no basis for decisions on what the country will look like.

You do know what 'draft' means, don't you?

[Todders]

You said it yourself; they stood on a ticket of providing a referendum. Not a ticket of what a post referendum yes would mean.

Some people may vote yes but want a separate Scottish currency for example - how do they influence that? Instead anyone voting yes is effectively endorsing all SNP policies or writing them a blank cheque re negotiations.

If the yes campaign is wider than the SNP how do you get the currency arrangements preferred by its chairman ie a Scottish currency ?

Unionists keep fecking ASKING what a post-yes Scotland will looks like. Are the SNP supposed to just shrug their shoulders and grunt "dunno"? They are setting out THEIR vision of what THEY think an independent Scotland would look. It's all open to discussion, debate and negotiation after a Yes vote.

I'm sick top the back teeth of unionists demanding answers and then whingeing like little bitches that Scotland is being railroaded by the SNP when they get the answers the demanded.

[banterman86]

You are being offered the opportunity to vote this down.

No he isn;t - it;s a parliamentary bill.

Dunno about this - I think the SNP kind of have to do it to help with the "smooth transition" idea, but it opens them up to these attacks.

[Mr Bairn]

But I thought all those Shetlanders wanted to remain part of the UK or join Norway or claim their oil or something... nope seems they're coming round to Scottish Independence too... http://www.shetnews.co.uk/features/scottish-independence-debate/8211-majority-favour-independence-at-althing-debate

To be fair Carmichael was involved so of course there will b a swing to yes.

Also I would suggest the sample may be disproportionate.

[Thumper]

No he isn;t - it;s a parliamentary bill.

Erm, I assume "vote this down" meant the referendum itself.

The argument that the SNP are overreaching or being presumptuous here is so flagrantly disingenuous you'd only get it from someone paid for the cause or a PnB troll.

[lanky_ffc]

STV News posing the question, 'If there is a YES vote, would Scots get a vote for Westminster in 2015?'.

I'd vote UKIP just for the LOLs.