The Dirty Independence Question

[kaosmark2]

I think everyone's being overoptimistic with the turnout. I'd love it to be 80%+ but I just can't see it. I think it'll be a narrow no victory with something around 70% turnout. The sort of result that isn't conclusive and just leads to tension, which is exactly what would be wrong for everyone.

[LJS]

Just my own wee straw poll for what it's worth.

I am not an out in the streets campaigner but I have been talking to 5 or 6 people who have varied from "undecided tending to No" to "Yes but having doubts"

As things stand now they are all yes.

For the record i have not achieved this by sharing Neil's Bullshit nor Alec Salmond's bullshit. Most of them have approached me and asked for my opinion. I have not approached them & all I tell them is why I am voting yes.

Incidentally none of them are voting yes because they expect to be better off. None of them are voting yes because they have any hatred for the English. And (in my opinion) none are stupid.

Oh and just a wee postscript to that, one of the No campaigns hopes is the "shy noes"

Well of my little group I have 4 " shy yessses" - virtually no one knows how they will vote & I am sworn to secrecy -small sample I know but shyness comes in many flavours!

Edited September 17, 2014 by LJS

[atomised]

Watching the live debate on channel 4 . Definitely yes-ers on top at the moment

[wee_insomniac]

Watching the live debate on channel 4 . Definitely yes-ers on top at the moment

Jeez this is one of the worst TV debates yet, including the ranting George Galloway...

[CHRLY]

Terrible terrible crowd.

[brandycoke]

Jeez this is one of the worst TV debates yet, including the ranting George Galloway...

I've obviously missed something .When was George Galloway on?

[atomised]

It is truly awful. Expect better from channel 4

[LJS]

I've obviously missed something .When was George Galloway on?

In one of the most astonishing cock-ups in a car crash of a campaign. better together decided George Galloway wearing a hat would be a good person to represent them in a debate in front of 8,000 16 & 17 year olds in Glasgow

[CHRLY]

Yeh he seemed so out of touch. I believe in general terms the stuff he speaks is true, but using the war as an example to teenagers? Absolute wreck

[GuitarManDan15]

I just saw an interview with alex salmond where it was pointed out that his argument of 'we don't get the government we vote for' is rubbish as for 13 out of the last 17 years we've had a labour PM and a majority of scottish MPs being labour.

Alex's rebuttal was that for his 60 years on earth for about half the time the government has been Tory as opposed to the majority of scottish labour MPs.

However isn't that just democracy in a FPTP society? Sometimes you won't get the government you voted for and sometimes you will. This seems more of a vote for a 'proportional' voting system than independence... however dont get me started on voting systems

To me it underlines salmonds hypocrisy. He'll say whatever suits his campaign no matter the evidence or consequences.

The No campaign has acknowledged Scotland can go it alone but are better with the Union, the Yes has been very narrow minded in its musings of how Friday 19th September will look, in my opinion.

Just my two cents on a random interview I saw.

Overall I think they'll be a no vote but i'm increasingly, and irrationally, wanting a yes as I'm fed up of the scots wanting to have their cake and eat it!

Lets just hope the losing side tomorrow graciously accepts defeat.

[TenInchToenaiIs]

Betfair paid out on a No vote yesterday, unsure if this has been mentioned

[LJS]

I just saw an interview with alex salmond where it was pointed out that his argument of 'we don't get the government we vote for' is rubbish as for 13 out of the last 17 years we've had a labour PM and a majority of scottish MPs being labour.

Alex's rebuttal was that for his 60 years on earth for about half the time the government has been Tory as opposed to the majority of scottish labour MPs.

However isn't that just democracy in a FPTP society? Sometimes you won't get the government you voted for and sometimes you will. This seems more of a vote for a 'proportional' voting system than independence... however dont get me started on voting systems

To me it underlines salmonds hypocrisy. He'll say whatever suits his campaign no matter the evidence or consequences.

The No campaign has acknowledged Scotland can go it alone but are better with the Union, the Yes has been very narrow minded in its musings of how Friday 19th September will look, in my opinion.

Just my two cents on a random interview I saw.

Overall I think they'll be a no vote but i'm increasingly, and irrationally, wanting a yes as I'm fed up of the scots wanting to have their cake and eat it!

Lets just hope the losing side tomorrow graciously accepts defeat.

lots of points on this - it depends where you set the starting point - if you say 13 out of the last 17 years" you are starting just as 18 years of Tory rule ended. if you instead started in 1979 you would get "13 out of 35 years" - as it happens this is the period since I first voted. Currently there is one Tory MP in Scotland & a Tory led government - it really doesn't seem like democracy to a lot of the people in Scotland.

I won't get into the cakeonomics because there are countless posts already on this and we have not reached a consensus. But you are free to believe we are having our cake & eating it if you wish.

I have no doubt there will be some grumpy people for a while but if as I believe, we have won the campaign even if we have lost the vote, there will remain work to be done which I really hope folk engage in.

and as for "the no side have acknowledged that Scotland can go it alone but are better with the Union." that usually goes like this

"no one i denying that Scotland can be a viable country BUT it has no viable currency option,will have to pay massive interest rates on its massive debt, will need to but public spending, won't get into Europe or NATO. will have a border between it & England and lose thousands of jobs. very viable.

Edited September 17, 2014 by LJS

[LJS]

Betfair paid out on a No vote yesterday, unsure if this has been mentioned

several times

[TenInchToenaiIs]

several times

I am sorry

[LJS]

I am sorry

That's ok.

It is now the 18th September 2014.

[atomised]

Good luck to all involved and here's hoping the count is fair and well managed.

I don't mind which way it goes but hope for a clear majority either way

[salvador wali]

60% NO Vote.

[atomised]

It's time then. In 24 hours time things will be clearer

[eFestivals]

My personal view is that there should be no new powers on the agenda and those suggested might not be acceptable to all.

I'd rather see a full review across the whole UK that finds an acceptable way for the whole of the country, not one small component. Without the scattered sole interest annoyances such as this whole campaign which seems to have damaged national relationships to no ones interest.

Yep, I agree with this.

Any solution that is cooked up to make just one partner happy will ultimately ensure that other partners are not. There's nothing special about Scotland to cause it to deserve more than Wales or NI.

The more I think about it, the more I think that any type of regionalism for the UK won't work. Devolution as we have it just causes greedy Thatcherite individualism in the units. Federalism can work well when a nation state has the 'natural' structure for it (many units, where each unit is similar in size and vision), but that's not how the UK is. The UK-federalists answer is to break up England into Scotland sized chunks, but there's no natural units to break it up into, it won't work well for London/SE which ideally needs to be one political unit if there was much greater autonomy, and it's a solution which doesn't give a shit about Wales or NI. There's no putting the genie back in the bottle now, but the devolution was a bad mistake.

The real problem lies within our electoral system, and the answer is its reform;, and not with arbitrary boundaries we might draw to try and create a manipulated version of democracy.

[eFestivals]

Ah yes Neil's famous list of unlinked figures

You can find the link provided by me a page or two back.

A link where the Scottish Govt themselves say that Scotland has run a bigger deficit than the UK for 19 of the last 25 years.

But just pretend that iScotland with today's spending can be solvent when the facts say otherwise and vote yes with confidence...?

[eFestivals]

Just for fun.... way back I used to needle you that you were a secret YES man. I gave up asking but to be honest...

Anyway. If you were asked on Friday what way YOU would have voted IF Salmond had not been in charge....well we`ll never know I suppose

I've said many times that my support for no is not support for no in all circumstances.

I could support a plan for independence.

I can't support jumping off a cliff and keeping your fingers crossed, where you've been led to believ it'll be fine via endless PROVEN lies from the mouth of Salmond.

Real people's lives will suffer for your lack of thought. Perhaps even yours.

[eFestivals]

Remind me Neil, who makes the decisions in the EU?

the same member states who set the rules that an iScotland doesn't comply with.

Why do you think they created a set of meaningless rules?

The proof that they're not meaningless is demonstrated by the EU forcing other interested states to comply with those rules before membership.

And how many of the states who've been forced thru that process will say "iScotland is run by such lovely people that it can do anything it likes and we don't care that we had to do much more, we don't care about the effects back onto us, and we don't care about the future of the Euro and the future of the EU despite our future being wedded to them"?

iScotland will not meet the core Copenhagen Criteria, and so iScotland will not be admitted to the EU unless those members abandon the Copenhagen Criteria - and so signal the death of the Euro (their own currency for many member states) and also the death of the EU itself.

The fact that you think that a nothing only shows that you don't understand the effects of what you think will happen.

[eFestivals]

Well Neil, I had a good long look at it & couldn't find anything remotely resembling your table. I'm not too interested in the 1980's so i'll stick with the past 5 years if that's ok.

Ahh, the proper intellectual response of a yes-er .... "because I don't understand it, it can't be true". :lol:

FFS. It *PROVES* what I said, that iScotland runs a bigger deficit than rUK, in the words of Salmond himself.

But you just pretend it doesn't matter. iScotland will be so fantastic it will be able to buck the markets.

[eFestivals]

I think more undecided will go yes than no.

i've gambled on that with my own prediction - tho I'm far from confident in it.

I've also gambled on plenty of yes-ers losing faith at the moment they mark their cross. There's data from polls that suggests this is likely (tho I'm far from certain it'll happen), plus i've seen quite a few onliners in the last 48 hours who have posted "I was yes but i'm going to vote no".

If the polls hold true and it's a no vote, I reckon the margin will be greater than the polls have suggested. But I still won't be surprised if it's yes.

[eFestivals]

I think it's telling that some of the polling companies have said that they don't know how accurate their polls are. I'll certainly be watching with interest

They've got no historical benchmark to work methodologies against.

However, do be aware that the actual data collected by the polling companies (and with the don't knows excluded) has been showing a much greater percentage towards no than the results they have published - it's their methodologies that is pushing the yes percentage so high.

So the suggestion seems to me to be that the polls have been stating the best possible position for yes, and that it's not likely to rise beyond that .... tho there's those pesky don't knows that could spoil that idea.