Scottish Independence (the sequel)

(04-09-2014 16:42 )Scottishbloke Wrote:  For example last week we had a Torie defect to UKIP. The UK is now in real danger of UKIP coming to power and I personally do not wish to live under a regime run by racists, liars and bigots. I wouldn't trust that Nigel Farage to run a pie stall nevermind a whole country.

Alex "English Out" Salmond is better than this?

Quote:Option 2 The Conservatives win the next General Election, Cameron steps down and that crackhead Boris Johnson becomes the next Prime Minister.

Why would he step down if they WIN? He's floated along for almost 9 years already, it's not like Gordon "Say No to Independence" Brown waiting in the wings, is it? OTOH, Boris the Popularity Spider would presumably get a lot of support from other Tories.

Bilateral summits with Alex Salmond & Ed Miliband don't bear thinking about.

I'll be glad when it's all over..
I feed up with seeing that dreary double act of Alistair Darling and Alex Salmond.

...it'll never be over. No matter whether Yes or No

(05-09-2014 16:30 )M-L-L Wrote:   ...it'll never be over. No matter whether Yes or No

Especially if its a close result .
There will be haggling and jostling for political position galore going on relentlessly.
The more I watch these career politicians playing political games the more out of touch they seem with the ordinairy person on the street.
They just don't get it and probably never will.
Too engaged in greasy pole climbing, power and cementing personal legacies.

(05-09-2014 16:30 )M-L-L Wrote:   ...it'll never be over. No matter whether Yes or No

Sadly I think you're right. This will run and run for ages - even if Salmond loses, he'll never stop preaching what is in my opinion an impossible dream. I don't particularly have much time for Alistair Darling, or most politicians for that matter, but I think breaking the UK up would be a mistake for Scottish people.

They're all just game players - none of them are upfront with the electorate : but then look at the last General Election.
And Snookered's absolutely right about the quality of this Referendum campaign.

Doesn't bode well for the next UK General Election irrespective of the Referendum result imo - the quality of debate is going to be just as poor I fear, with nobody being honest and either just pandering to what they think their own supporters want to hear - especially over the whole Europe/immigration thing - but more especially they'll all just be playing on the perceived negatives of the other sides' positions : I think it will be another "Project Fear" cranked up to the max.

You never know...

There was a good article the other day comparing the upcoming referendum in Scotland to the Quebec referendum in the mid-1990s.

That one had something like a 98% turnout and the "No" campaign won by 50.6% to 49.4%.

It can't get much closer than that!

And that too is a nationalist cause that has been rumbling since the 1700s, with language and religious divisions thrown in for good measure.

And yet...

Despite all predictions and demographics that should theoretically have swung support toward the separatist movement -- older people in the 1990s tended to vote for the status quo, while younger people voted for independence -- in fact, the opposite happened.

Apparently, the vote was so close and the outcome of another referendum so seemingly certain that it served to fire a warning shot across the bow of the Canadian government. They became a lot more conciliatory and adaptable and the French Canadians managed to negotiate a lot of the concessions that they had previously tried to grab through independence.

The moral of this story...

MAYBE a very, very close "NO" vote, followed by Westminster's collective removal of its head from its collective ass, is just what's needed to kill this issue off once and for all.

OR

MAYBE French Canadians are nothing at all like Scottish people and I am talking absolute b*****ks.

(I would have structured that question as a poll, but sadly, I don't think the vote would have been very close!)

I'm not sure it's as simple as giving concessions to one group or another either : there's more than two nations involved here. There's too many unresolved questions about the nature of the Union opened up by devolution that will still hang around : West Lothian Question blah blah blah.

But I think you're right about Westminster - surely if the majority of people in all nations of the Union genuinely felt that the policies being pursued were generally reflecting the majority will of the people and were on balance serving all of the country and not just favoured sections of it - then some of the issues being used as arguments for the need for Independence might not seem so pressing ?

Don't know what the answer is - do you look at the United States and a model of individual states under a federal government ?
The relationship between some states/regions of US and the federal government seems pretty awful at the moment and no better in a lot of ways ? You've got grid-lock between central/federal/Presidential policies and between grassroots activists/small government "Don't Tread On Me" would-be secessionists.
Sound familiar ?

There's a fundamental loss of trust here between the electorate and government about the nature of the social contract : ever since governments have been "rolling back the tide of the state" and talking about markets deciding everything - they left themselves the awkward question :

WTF is the government for then ?
Is it just there to do whatever the market wants regardless of the consequence, and to enrich the MPs in the process ?
People just don't believe in government's potential to be generally competent and not just favour their own particularly cronies of left or right.
Markets don't give a damn who's in charge as long as they don't interfere with their ability to make maximum profit for minimum effort.
Markets aren't moral - they're ruthless.
Survival of the fittest untamed.
Buyer Beware.
I'm Alright Jack.
Step over the one who's down on my own ladder up to the top.
Fight tooth and nail for me and mine.
To hell with paying taxes for safety nets cos God Forbid one day I'll be down in the depths through no fault necessarily of my own.

So then you have to be repressive and authoritarian to clamp down on the consequences of creating an underclass with no stake in wider society.
Is that how you want society to be ?
Because it only takes a power cut for the folk at the bottom of the scale to say "Sod this - what's in it for me" and to start taking everything into their own hands.

(05-09-2014 18:03 )M-L-L Wrote:  They're all just game players - none of them are upfront with the electorate : but then look at the last General Election.
And Snookered's absolutely right about the quality of this Referendum campaign.

Doesn't bode well for the next UK General Election irrespective of the Referendum result imo - the quality of debate is going to be just as poor I fear, with nobody being honest and either just pandering to what they think their own supporters want to hear - especially over the whole Europe/immigration thing - but more especially they'll all just be playing on the perceived negatives of the other sides' positions : I think it will be another "Project Fear" cranked up to the max.

im more worried not about the general election vote but if the tories do retain power the EU referendum i can see the same thing happening.

in fact the Scottish and Eu referendum is the same thing the Yes Vote in scotland want more independance from people ie westminister who they think control there lives and UKIp want the same So Salmond is the scottish Farrage

The No campaign focus on losing Business from trade as will any NO campaign to seperate from the EU

The Yes vote is ahead! Latest 'YouGov' poll (excludes the don't knows):

https://twitter.com/YesScotland/status/5...5523598336