Scottish Independence and the UK State

[semper occultus]

....been obvious ever since the financial collapse & eurozone crisis....so much so that you have to ask if Salmond's gaffes & strategic cluelessness are entirely accidental or hes been got at...

[conniption]

Scottish independence: No chance for Yes - Silver

The Yes campaign has “virtually no chance” of victory in next year’s referendum on Scottish independence, according to one of America’s most-respected polling experts.

Nate Silver, the award-winning statistician who shot to fame when he correctly predicted the outcome of all 50 states in the 2012 US presidential elections, says all the indicators point towards Scots voting to stay in the UK on 18 September next year.

http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/t ... -1-3042233

Did you notice where Nate Silver said, "If..." in that article?:

Speaking yesterday, Mr Silver said, however, that the Yes campaign could benefit if there is some kind of dramatic economic collapse south of the Border.

“If there was a major crisis in England – if the Eurozone split apart and there were ramifications economically (for the UK) – the maybe things would reconsidered a little bit.

Or if Ahab writes the best Scottish Independence song of all time and posts it on YouTube...then Nate Silver will have to eat his words. Yeah?

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link - embedded links at source.


Why the Debate on Scottish Independence Might Be More Interesting Than You Think?

By bellacaledonia on August 4, 2013 • (comments 41 )


vote-yes-skydivers

By David Greig

Recently I’ve noted comments from friends bemoaning the ‘quality of the debate’ around Scottish Independence. For some the journey towards voting is only just beginning and perhaps they are looking for information for the first time. Political nerds like me have been on this for a while but for most people this debate is a slow burn and will only really warm up next year. The comments, though, are interesting because they reflect almost the precise opposite of what my own personal experience of the debate has been so far. Since I began to engage with it I’ve found the referendum has produced some of the most invigorating, complex political thought – on both sides of the argument – that I’ve encountered since I became politically active in the mid 1980’s.

It’s certainly true that a great deal of the discussion in the mainstream media has been of the binary – ‘yay, it’ll be great!’ – ‘boo, it’ll be terrible!’ kind. The official ‘No’ campaign has so far been too focused on the negative at the expense of proposing any positive futures of its own. Dig a little deeper, though, and there are some genuinely inspiring discussions taking place. You can find them happening online on sites such as National Collective, The Jimmy Reid Foundation, Think Scotland and here at Bella Caledonia. They are happening in public at events like The Radical Independence Conference. If you follow the right people it’s happening on Twitter and Facebook too. There are good articles happening in the much criticised mainstream press as well. You just have to know where to look.

Over the last few months I’ve seen Independence based discussions on topics as diverse as crowd sourced constitutions, peak oil, Iceland’s collapse, arts policy in Finland, land reform, wildness as a concept, Black identity in Scotland, the function of defence forces, bilingualism and brain development, immigration, pensions… and the list goes on. Almost every area of public policy seems to be up for grabs. It’s a far cry from the political debate in the rest of the UK where the only area of discussion left to us seems to be whether we get a little bit more or a little bit less austerity.

In the context of independence the parameters of politics suddenly turn out to be more malleable that we thought. The pound, the monarchy, Trident – nothing is a given any more, not even the idea of Scotland itself. Should Shetland be part of Scotland? Should Newcastle? This new malleability is married to a practicality that gives even ordinary political discourse an extra piquancy. Change is possible. Put simply, the Independence debate allows us to explore every aspect of our national life and ask ourselves the question – ‘does it have to be like this?’

For me, one of the most interesting moments of the debate so far was the infamous 500 Questions which Better Together released to mark five hundred days until the referendum. The questions ranged from serious to the silly. ‘What will happen to pensions?’ right down to ‘what will happen to stamps?’ The intention was to drown voters in uncertainty but inadvertently it actually opened up whole new areas of possibility. After all, what should happen to stamps? The Royal Mail in the UK is about to be privatised. In a world of broadband and email do we need a national postal service? If we do, what form should it take? Should it be nationalised? Come to think of it, how does the mail service function in the Highlands and Islands as compared to Glasgow? Is that fair? Where thus far ‘stamps’ had lain as a relatively unquestioned part of our national life, it suddenly became possible to wonder if here was an area where things could be done better, cheaper, more fairly. Five hundred questions became five hundred possibilities.

You don’t have to be a ‘yes’ supporter to engage with this. The referendum is a one-off chance for everyone to question assumptions and imagine a different future. It’s even an excellent chance to defend the status quo, if such is your feeling. Alex Massie is a good example of a writer who proposes what we might call the ‘tory with a small ‘t’’ defence of the Union. He’s not in favour of change but in his engagement he does at least takes seriously the possibility that change is an option. While the most interesting thought so far is coming from the ‘Yes’ camp there’s no reason that Unionists can’t rise to the challenge and come up with some positive futures of their own. Federalism, anyone?

The Independence debate allows us, for the first time, to take off our UK goggles and to see the world through different lenses. It’s a bit disorientating at first but you quickly starts to see all sorts of things you maybe never noticed before. Without the distortion of UK goggles, The British Establishment reveals itself not as a natural and unchanging truth but as a system which can change like any other. Immigration reveals itself as not necessarily ‘a problem’ but as a potentially useful means of counterbalancing Scotland’s declining population. The need to ‘punch above our weight’ reveals itself not as a truism but as a little, perhaps, hysterical? Without our UK goggles, social democracy reveals itself not as a pipe dream but as a distinct and perhaps necessary possibility.

Ten years of devolution has meant that in Scotland we’re at least UK bifocal. In England the electorate are not so lucky. I recently spent six months working in London and it astonished me how stunted and depressed the English left has become. Hopelessly adrift, staggering from defeat to defeat, fighting all its battles on the territory reaction. People seem almost unable to imagine it any other way. London is a great city but it’s economic power over these islands is plainly problematic. It bewilders me why the rest of England puts up with the sheer economic and cultural power of London. London skews every aspect of English cultural and economic life. The citizens of Manchester and Newcastle are marginalised in their own polity in a way which would never be tolerated by the citizens of Marseilles or Milan. One would have thought the independence referendum was a chance for everyone in Britain – at least momentarily – to take off the UK Goggles and ask some questions of the status quo. Isn’t it time journalists and commentators in England opened their eyes to the chance? I’m astonished, for example, that The Guardian hasn’t yet covered the inspiring ‘Commonweal’ Project from The Jimmy Reid Foundation. Surely it can’t only be of interest for the left in Scotland. Realism is one thing but to listen to the left in England you’d think the chance to imagine the world as it could be is a gift given to the privileged alone?

Part of the problem is that the independence debate doesn’t split on straight party lines. The ‘No’ side is a coalition of Labour, Tory and Lib Dems. The ‘Yes’ side includes Greens, Socialists, and Labour for Indy. The SNP is pretty much a coalition of nordic social democrats, celtic tiger free marketeers and every shade of economic thinking in between. This makes it quite difficult for the usual political pundits to write about. It just doesn’t suit The Daily Politics or Question Time. In the English print media the referendum there merits barely a mention and what coverage there is tends toward the hackneyed. ‘Jocks wear kilts, they hate English people, they eat mars bars etc.’ No David Aaronovitch, Nigel Farage and Alex Salmond are not the same thing. That’s just lazy thinking. It’s deeply misleading and it turns people in England off what is potentially a very fertile political territory.

British politics is built around binary oppositions which simply no longer apply. Even in Scotland much of the debate has been formed around the idea of a straight fight between SNP and Labour, but seeing the debate in that way misses almost everything that’s interesting about it. Independence is not about the weakness of Labour nor is it about the strength of the SNP. In fact, there’s a strong argument to say a ‘Yes’ vote would see the end of the SNP as the dominant force in Scottish politics. SNP strategist Steven Noon even argued as much in the Scotsman recently. After Independence many SNP voters would rejoin their ‘natural’ parties. Far from an being a one party state I expect proportional representation would mean a swift return to coalition politics in Holyrood with rejuvenated Labour, Tory and Lib Dem parties battling for position with greens and socialists. A rump SNP might carry on for a while but they would have to define new ground on which to fight. You don’t have to agree with Noon’s particular vision of diversity to agree that pondering it as a counter-factual gives the lie to the idea that Scottish politics is homogenous or that the independence debate is a tribal battle between left and right.

The Independence debate is asking new questions about nationhood. Patriotism has not been a major driver. The last forty years have seen the build up of a powerful civic consensus in Scotland which carefully separates electoral polity from national identity. It unsurprising and perfectly logical to find English people living in Scotland who are pro independence. It is also quite normal to meet someone who feels intensely nationalistic and yet wishes to remain in The Union. This careful separation of identity from politics is a genuinely interesting development within European politics and it surely carries intriguing possibilities for the rest of the UK.

I noticed someone on twitter recently praising the victory of The British and Irish Lions in Australia with the hashtag #bettertogether, implying their victory was an argument for the union. The fact that Ireland is already an independent country seemed to have passed this tweeter by. But that moment of daftness was, for me, emblematic of the new nationalism.

The British and Irish Lions are a model for the exactly the sort of contemporary fractal identity that a civic Scotland is creating. Every sports fan knows that one can be a European during the Ryder Cup, British and Irish for the Lions, English during the Ashes and Scottish during the World Cup. Personally I add to those sporting fractals Dunfermline for my running colours and North Queensferry when I’m doing the coastal rowing. None of these identities conflict with any of the others. They’re all contained within the same body. The same is possible with political identities. North Queensferry has an elected community council. Fife has local government. Scotland has Holyrood. Europe has it’s own union. Is it so absurd to imagine, post Scottish independence, a British and Irish Council, a political Lions, convened to represent the shared interests of our shared islands?

There is no question that right now there’s plenty bad temper and fear on both sides of the debate. That’s especially true if you experience it in the mainstream media, or below the line on the comment pages. People care very deeply and they’re not always polite in arguing for their side. But it’s important to state that the ‘cyber’ problem is nowhere near as bad as people make out and it’s pretty easily ignored. The foaming idiocies of those who accuse ‘no’ voters of treachery are plainly absurd. Which is why they receive no amplification from any of the Yes parties or major players. Similarly it’s unfair and unreasonable for Yes campaigners to be constantly accused of anti-Englishness. It would be kind if both sides could agree a rule of thumb – we’re all arguing what we think’s best for Scotland – and just keep the poisonous stuff out of the debate.

With that in mind I’d like to pointers for everyone interested in the indy debate which if observed will help the debate to flourish and grow.

1) There are reasonable arguments for both sides. Most Yes voters have their private doubts as do No voters. The fruitful debate emerges when we share those doubts, not when we pretend to certainty.

2) Try to stay future focused. We can’t ignore the past but lets not dwell on it. This is the 21st century. Surely on behalf of our children surely we can imagine what might be best for them, and not get bogged down in a hundred quid in tax here or there, or whatever economic argument happens to suit your side politically right now.

3) Whichever way this vote goes it’s going to be close and we’re all going to have to live together in the same country afterwards. It will do no good if this debate is characterised by contempt or name calling. There’s no value in building up a new us and them, or fomenting new grudges. If either side feels defeated or humiliated in 2014 we will all be storing up serious trouble for the future.

Personally, I started this debate as a definite ‘No.’ I softened first to a ‘don’t know’ when Labour and Cameron ensured the Devo Max question was removed from the ballot. Now, I’ve become a confirmed ‘Yes.’ Why?

For me it’s a matter of democracy. I like devolved governance. I think small European countries are able to be more democratic, decentralised and community focused than big ones. If the UK’s infrastructure is Victorian, our democratic infrastructure is antidiluvian. The things which matter to me – a sustainable future for my kids; a compassionate political system, the best education, health and economic opportunity for every citizen, imaginative and flexible policy-making, stronger communities, progressive tax… It seems to me that all these things are much more likely to be realised in an independent Scotland than they are within the United Kingdom as it currently stands.

But if the Unionists can put forward a more positive proposal I’m genuinely open to changing my mind. Whatever I think, the debate is out there and it’s happening right now. It’s important that as many people as possible get involved. It may have scunnered you to be asked this question now, you may even think it is the wrong question but the very fact you are being asked gives you the opportunity to examine the way you and your community is governed. Surely that’s worth a bit of your time and imagination?

Getting into the debate on Independence is like jumping into Loch Lomond for a cheeky swim. It looks a bit chilly at first. You hover for ages dipping your toe in the water before eventually you commit and just jump in and you know what? It’s all right. It’s a bit of a shock at first, maybe, but by god it wakes you up.

To those of you hesitating on the shore at Balloch, I say only this, come on in.

Here’s a quick guide to some of the best articles, podcasts, tweeters and blogs on the independence debate (feel free to add your own in comments below for any we’ve missed)

Articles

Karine Polwart ‘Karine Polwart: Imagination vital to telling the Yes story’

Iain Banks ‘Scottish Independence – Divorce makes sense for both parties’

Kevin McKenna ‘Scottish independence is fast becoming the only option’

or ‘Scottish nationalists can rest easy, given the opposition’

Iain Bell ‘Independence is risky, but the Union is even scarier’

Pat Kane’s Thoughtland

Joyce Macmillan ‘Why the Unionists Parties Must Offer a Positive Alternative or Face Oblivion’

Blogs and Publications

Bella Caledonia’s Don’t Know series

Scottish Review - Ian Hamilton on the Torrent of Fear

Robert Somynne on Race and Identity

Lallands Peat Worrier – wit and wisdom

Jimmy Reid Foundation

The National Collective

The Commonweal

Scottish Independence Podcast

Lesley Riddoch at Scotsman

Iain Macwhirter at the Herald

Wings Over Scotland

Film

Precious Few Heroes

On Twitter

@nataliemcgarry
@alanbissett
@gregmoodie

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Scottish independence: No chance for Yes - Silver

The Yes campaign has “virtually no chance” of victory in next year’s referendum on Scottish independence, according to one of America’s most-respected polling experts.

http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/t ... -1-3042233

Nate Silver is a very intelligent man.

As I have heard said, he is never wrong on these matters: - provided you ignore all the times when he has been wrong.

He got the outcome of the 2010 UK General Election wrong, for instance - he predicted a Tory majority, and an unpolluted Tory government. Even if he turned out to be right in spirit, with the Lib Dems turning out to be Tories in all but name, he was nevertheless wrong in fact:

In the run up to election day, Silver anticipated heavy losses for Labour, and big gains for the Liberal Democrats. One of his predictions had Nick Clegg’s party with 101 seats — a gain of 39. Of course, what actually happened was that the yellow party lost five seats, in an anticlimactic comedown from “Cleggmania”.http://politicalscrapbook.net/2012/11/n ... ion-wrong/

He predicted a major Labour collapse, and that turned out to be true, but not in 2010 as he'd said - it didn't happen until the Scottish Parliamentary elections in 2011. Maybe he only sees the future of Scotland itself, and only blurry outlines of everywhere else, a bit like the Brahan Seer of Uig? It can't be that, though, 'cos he got the US states right.

Anyways, let's all be honest for a second. Nate Silver was ambushed at one of his appearances in the UK by a few Better Together officials, who thrust some of their preferred polling data into his hands (the kind of polling data which counts the undecided as definite No voters), and then was given two minutes to provide a prediction. He did as he was bid. The Better Together folk rejoiced, the media ran the story without question as they do, and here we sit now looking at a row of newspaper headlines saying stuff like : "God's Own Expert Says: Yes Will Lose." Just like last week, or yesterday, or the decade before.

But think ye.... Here are a set of predictions made by UK unionists and polling pundits over the last few decades.:-

There will never be a Scottish Parliament again. Scots don't want or need one.

Well, okay, even if we offer them a Parliament, the majority of Scots won't vote for it.

They want one? Oh. Shit. Give them devolution. Like Tony Bair said: "it should have all the powers of a Parish council."

"Devolution will kill nationalism stone dead," - Lord George Robertson, 1995.

The SNP will never become the government in a Scottish Parliament.

The SNP will never hold a majority in a Scottish Parliament.

The SNP will never bring forward a referendum on independence themselves even if they win power and get a majority government and are riding high in the polls, because some of them like their Westminster jobs and love Lizzie, so it's okay.

Ach, but, they can't really want independence anyway... can they? Surely they'll only want devo max or something instead? Why are they agreeing to a one-question referendum? It doesn't make sense. Why would they reject all our subsidies.....?

---
So here we are, in 2013, with an SNP majority government sitting in a Scottish Parliament and officiating over a referendum on independence. lol.

Less than twenty years after the re-opening of the Scottish Parliament we have already overturned every supposed impossibility and structural barrier placed in our way. The trend is set. Even if we lose in 2014, the Union is done for. Glad tidings.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

To the surprise of no one much:

THE pro-independence Yes Scotland campaign took the dramatic step of locking down its IT system today, amid claims that an unknown hacker was still trawling its e-mails for further details about its internal affairs.

The group’s chief executive, Blair Jenkins, declared that his campaign was “under attack” from “forces unknown” as he confirmed the group had shut off its computer network following signs that e-mails were still being accessed illegally.

The move comes a week after the organisation says it first became aware that private information about its dealings might have been hacked into.

The group acknowledged earlier this week that a private e-mail, which is said had been unlawfully accessed, showed it had paid an academic £100 for writing a newspaper article which set out the case for a Scottish constitution.

http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/t ... -1-3057019

I like how The Scotsman makes it sound melodramatic and hysterical that a democratic campaign group has complained about being hacked by it's opponents. It then goes on to report the only known revelation derived from the hacking as if it was a serious scandal worthy of newspaper space. Apparently the pro-independence campaign gave £100 expenses to a known pro-independence academic as compensation, for an article that a unionist newspaper had commissioned from him and then refused payment for. Shocking stuff.

Academics normally write articles for free, just like lawyers, and journalists.

So that's the worst dirt the hackers could find, and they had to commit a criminal act to find it. Clearly those on the No side are confident of victory.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

...you have to ask if Salmond's gaffes & strategic cluelessness are entirely accidental or hes been got at...

I know what you mean, in a way. But at the same time, I think you're wrong. Salmond certainly has made some gaffes recently, and occasionally he makes a tit of himself - the green tartan trousers on US telly, the face-palm-worthy Saltire stunt at Wimbledon. But he has no strategic cluelessness. In his negotiations with Cameron he got everything he wanted - his chosen date, his question, his expanded franchise, and above all the legal permission to hold an independence referendum (that decision being reserved to Westminster like most important things).

Even with the Saltire stunt he achieved his aim - a lot of the folk I've spoken to up here just don't understand why his impromptu display of the flag was a problem, or can't see what was supposed to be wrong with it. They were confused by the sudden universal objection and hostility in the UK media to the display of the Scottish flag, coming right after the victory of a Scottish sportsman, and don't really grok the politics behind it.

Just as well, I suppose.

Anyhoo, if you want to see some gaffes, here is the leader of the pro-Unionist campaign Alastair Darling. What a guy. After fifteen minutes of explaining quite reasonably why the UK is so shite, with some choice details on how the government he served in made it worse, he embarks on a ten minute attempt to justify it's continuation. Money quote, when speaking of the Scandinavian countries:

"It's not that you couldn't be like that. But should you be like that?"

So here we have the choice. Do we want to be a prosperous social democracy with decent public services, achieved through the use and investment of our own vast natural resources, or should we continue to be a much-derided province that hands 100% of it's revenue to another country's Treasury, and allows that country to decide our tax rates, our welfare policy, our foreign policy, and ultimately whether we go to war or not.

Check this zoomer out from 9.00 minutes onwards. This is the leader of the anti-independence campaign:

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Or if Ahab writes the best Scottish Independence song of all time and posts it on YouTube...then Nate Silver will have to eat his words. Yeah?

I planned for that very eventuality Conniption. One must plan ahead. Oh aye.

One is lucky in that the union is already over 300 years old, and so guys like Ernie Ford have been around for even longer, so songs that sum up the political nature and class structure of the United Kingdom are already in widespread and good supply abroad. Or something like that:

[conniption]

Hey, wait...isn't that Ahab in front of the rally?

RT

Thousands rally in Edinburgh for Scottish independence

21 September, 2013 04:09 PM | Photo by AFP Photo / Andy Buchanan

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CeaseFire

Why Scottish independence gets my vote

Socialist journalist Yvonne Ridley's decision to support the call for Scottish Independence will raise a few eyebrows among her friends from the Left but the arrival of Chancellor George Osborne to Aberdeen this week prompted her to explain here why she will be backing the 'Yes' campaign.

Posted on Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - 26 Comments

By Yvonne Ridley



POSH lad George Osborne headed north of the Border this week to tell the Scots how lucky they are to be ruled by Westminster. That’s a bit like sending a Sunderland supporter into my native Newcastle to give a lecture in the hallowed grounds of St James’ Park about the finer points of the beautiful game!

Few on the south side like or trust the Chancellor of the Exchequer so I would question the motives of those who dispatched him to the North in the expectation he would receive a rousing welcome.

It’s already well known that there are more pandas in Scotland than Conservative MPs and now that the female in Edinburgh Zoo continues to show positive signs she’s pregnant it looks as though the only endangered species here are the Tories.

I say ‘here’ because this is where I made my home a couple of years ago and as a member of the Geordie Tribe I reckon we’re close enough to hold a valid opinion on independence. In fact I’m quite sure, following the ruthless Tory-inspired destruction of the North East’s shipyards, as well as its coal and steel industries. that if the vote for independence was extended 100 miles south it would be seized upon enthusiastically with both hands. The boss class in the south has never done any favours to northerners and I expect most Scots feel exactly the same, but at least they have a chance to do something about it now.

I can’t believe anyone was taken in by the nonsense which came tumbling out of Osborne’s mouth when he said Scots would be £2,000 better off if they voted ‘no’ in next year’s referendum. Like all of the figures coming out of Westminster, they need to be scrutinized very closely. My man with the abacus says the sum of £2,000 is per household and would not be realised for a full 30 years; in other words, Osborne is promising Scots the square root of nowt.

Bearing in mind the appalling state of the education system in England, he might be able to blind folk on his side of the Border, but in Scotland where there’s a superior system in place and no such thing as university fees it’s not that easy to pull the wool over the eyes of canny Scots.

Here’s a figure to consider though – it will cost £25 billion to replace the Trident nuclear system … imagine the extra burden to taxpayers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland should Scotland’s 5.3 million population opt out, not to mention the mind-boggling costs of installing a new nuclear facility if the Prime Minister still wants to dine at the same table as other nuclear powers including America, Russia, France and China.

Not content with using dodgy maths, Osborne also claims that the United Kingdom could boost real incomes by as much as four per cent after 30 years … not convincing at all from a man who gets his monthly budget predictions wrong and failed to see the double dip recession coming.

Seriously, if the Westminster crew were that sincere why have they waited until now to plan a bright future for Scotland? The truth is while Northerners have often been regarded as an afterthought, Scotland hasn’t even appeared on their political scanner. Traditionally, the North and Scotland have been viewed as Labour strongholds so the Tories never really concerned themselves with our lives other than to loot, pillage and then destroy the once lucrative heavy industries, livelihoods and communities.

Eton-educated Osborne even said Scotland’s trade would collapse without the UK … the truth is Scotland would be a lot better off today if his ilk hadn’t taken an axe to the shipbuilding, mining and steel industries. And if the Tories had worked out a way of siphoning off the oil, gas and whisky and shipping the Edinburgh Festival off to Chipping Norton they would have done it by now.

Labour has always taken the North and Scotland for granted and, since the toxic introduction of Blairism, the region has become even worse off. It’s little wonder the Scottish National Party has done so well. The formula is simple; the SNP puts Scots first and that is something none of the London-based politicians can do, or even promise to do.

Now we are being told we are better together. Does anyone seriously believe that? I don’t see any of the dominions, colonies, protectorates or other territories which cut themselves free from British rule queuing up to return to once the largest empire in history. If Scots do cut themselves free from the yoke of Westminster rule it will mean an end to nuclear weapons and all that it costs the Scottish taxpayer to keep the British PM dining at the table of the G7 and G8 countries.

It would mean an end to legislation designed to extract more money from the pockets of the working classes and those who can least afford pernicious inventions like the divisive bedroom tax. Cutting off the ball and chain that is the UK, Scotland would be able to continue to maintain a free education system, free medical prescriptions and guarantee the survival of the National Health Service here at least.

Having already stood up to America on several issues in recent years, Scotland has shown it is prepared to punch above its weight and will not be bullied by superpowers or cajoled into foolish military adventures demanded through so-called special relationships. Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill stood firmly by his decision in August 2009 to release the terminally-ill Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi to Libya on compassionate grounds.

US president Barack Obama reacted angrily at the time, as did the US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. This was further exacerbated when Scottish ministers later refused a demand to attend the US Senate hearing in July 2010. And under the present Holyrood government there is no way Scottish lives would have been wasted or used as cannon fodder in Iraq or Afghanistan for imperialistic wars built on lies and deception.

The referendum is all about putting people before politics and that’s something the warmongering, sleazy, expense-fiddling, out-of-touch cronies and posh kids in Westminster know nothing about.

Scotland’s withdrawal from the union will expose fully something many of us have known for years: one of the world’s oldest political democratic systems no longer exists. Britain is being ruled at the moment by a cabal of over-privileged rich blokes who form a coalition government not one single person voted for in the last General Election.

Come Referendum Day, my advice to the Scots is: “Get out now while you have a chance.”
_____
Yvonne Ridley is a British journalist and a patron of the London-based human rights NGO cageprisonners.com as well as being the European president of the International Muslim Women's Union and the Vice President of the European Muslim League. Her website is http://www.yvonneridley.org and she's on Twitter @yvonneridley.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Hey, wait...isn't that Ahab in front of the rally?

Ach, that's joost ma wee brother. Skinny Boab we call him.

Here's my video of the march though. It was a bit too rich in flag-ishness, skirling pipes, and silly patriotism for my tastes, as was the one before, but I can't complain since every voter is a vote.

[MacCruiskeen]

Ahab, good to see you back. Thanks for this thread and for all the very informative & well-argued things you've posted here, both your own words and your links to articles by other people.

Just got around to reading this:

The wrong lizards
Posted on June 09, 2012 by Rev. Stuart Campbell

http://wingsland.podgamer.com/the-wrong-lizards/

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Cheers Mac. There is lots of stuff I could say about the debate tonight/this morning, but all of it would be boring, and none of it will be relevant after next week anyway. These are interesting times though, aren't they, with Grangemouth and all?

The debate itself (regardless of how much it may, or may not, have advanced my side of the argument) has thrown up many interesting and worthwhile bits of knowledge about the UK itself, which is why I think the unionist side didn't ever want to have this debate in the first place. The UK looks like a strong and eternal thing - unless you actually look at it. It is the default mode of governance for all of us now living.... but is it the best one possible? Examination weakens it, like a poor insurance claim. The things I have discovered! It's quite something. As cynical as I already was, I am amazed.

Your mate Alasdair Gray has dipped more than a hairy toe into the lukewarm bathtub of the debate. He got in trouble late last year for writing an article that was trumpetted by the media as being anti-English, and therefore racist, by people who hadn't read it, and also by people who didn't know the modern history of arts and culture in Scotland (fair play to them - who does?).

Anywey, he has written a new article the other day. And I can't find it anymore among my forest of bookmarks. Sorry. But he is a good lad, very attentive, and knows how things should be. You are right to be proud of him.*

*I still haven't read Lanark, because I am a prick.

[MacCruiskeen]

Ha! They really are having to scrape the barrel. Alasdair Gray is himself half-English, so if he's "an anti-English racist" (as these toerags suggest) then he must hate 50% of himself. Maybe he'll have to saw his own legs off and post them to Westminster. (In his situation, I myself would have to post my legs to Dublin.) What bollocks they talk, it really sounds like desperation.

Ahab, a small question (but a serious one): Are electronic "voting" machines by any chance going to be introduced for this referendum?

Also, I want no part of Scottish independence if it means I can't like Russell Brand anymore.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Don't worry Mac, you would still be able to like Russel Brand even if Scotland was governed from Edinburgh rather than London.

Surely no one would ever be silly enough to suggest otherwi... Oh. My. God.

FORMER Chancellor Alistair Darling has used a keynote speech to claim that independence would mean the loss of all British culture in Scotland and would lead to relatives of Scots in other parts of the UK becoming foreigners “overnight”.

Mr Darling, leader of the Better Together anti-independence campaign, issued a warning that “British music will no longer be our music” and that “British sporting success will be someone else’s to celebrate” if Scots vote yes in the 2014 referendum.

http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/t ... -1-2625817

Remember how no one in America ever considered the music of The Beatles as being "their music" because The Beatles were "foreigners"? So everyone in the states just spent the Sixties listening exclusively to Merle Haggard and The Staple Singers instead? Remember that?

Apparently, that's what'll happen here. Instead of quoting Martin Amis and Shakespeare (and Melville), I will instead be forced to start ending every post with a verse from Sorley MacLean. This is according to the leader of the unionist campaign. Apologies to everybody in advance if he turns out to be right.

Desperation, you say? Barrel-scraping tactics? Not half.

Ed Miliband went so far as to imply in his recent Labour Party conference speech that Scots will no longer be able to receive NHS treatment in England and Wales if we dare to vote for independence, as we would then become "foreigners."

Irish people still do receive treatment on the NHS in England and Wales, of course, as do French people, Germans, Swedes, Americans, New Zealanders, South Americans, Asians, Africans, etc. - even if they are only visiting on holiday. But he wants us to believe that Scots will be left to die in the streets of English cities - waving their European Health Insurance Cards in vain - if we have the sheer audacious temerity to choose self-government.

I am starting to think that the unionist leadership honestly believes we have a collective mental age of nine up here. And why are they so hung up about "foreigners" anyway? I have relatives who live in Canada, but I don't think any less of them for it. We still talk, even though they no longer vote in Westminster elections.

The unionist attitude to foreigness is bizarre. There was a minor Scottish Labour politician on TV recently who lamented the fact that her son in the Republic of Ireland would become "a foreigner" if Scotland voted Yes!

The British Establishment have done a great job over the centuries of conflating their own preferred system of government with the national identity itself. They have somehow gotten away with making the UK the arbiter of Britishness, even though Britain existed long before the UK, and will still exist after it's gone.

If British national identity really is predicated on being governed from Westminster, then it's not really a national identity at all, is it, in the conventional sense? It's just a form of blind loyalty to a political power structure.

I'm getting sidetracked....

Electronic voting machines. Aye, I'm afraid so, most likely. They were first used here in the 2007 Scottish Parliamentary elections, and were an unmitigated disaster. There was a record (and inexplicable) number of supposedly "spoiled ballots." The SNP probably would've won a majority that year without the 'computing problems' that arose. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/6975346.stm

More recently, in the elections for Glasgow City Council, the machines went offline for fifteen minutes during the count, and had to be re-booted. Labour won.

I have very definite concerns about electronic voting, and postal voting fraud too - Labour's speciality.

[parel]

Scottish pupils taught to sing for separation



SCOTTISH schoolchildren are being taught to sing pro-independence songs as well as trade union and anti-nuclear anthems, the Sunday Express can reveal.

By: Ben BorlandPublished: Sat, October 12, 2013
28Comments
Both Sides of the Tweed was written by the Glaswegian folk singer Dick Gaughan above Both Sides of the Tweed was written by the Glaswegian folk singer Dick Gaughan (above)

The quango Education Scotland is promoting a number of modern, politically-biased songs for primary and secondary pupils under “Freedom and Scots people”.

With 16 and 17-year-olds entitled to vote in next year’s referendum, the idea of rousing nationalist lyrics sung in the classroom will concern parents and pro-Union politicians.

A spokesman for the pro-Union Better Together campaign said: “This is an outrageous example of taxpayer-funded political propaganda. It is a deeply cynical ploy aimed at presenting a distorted view of history to people who will, after all, be voting next year.

“This exposes the lengths SNP ministers will go to in order to get people to vote for independence.”

One of the political songs on the Education Scotland website, which is designed to be used by both teachers and pupils, is The Freedom Come All Ye, by the late Scots poet Hamish Henderson. It is regarded as the unofficial anthem of the independence movement and was recently sung en masse at the Yes Scotland rally on Calton Hill.

Another is Both Sides of the Tweed, a protest song against the Treaty of Union which was written by the Glaswegian folk singer Dick Gaughan after the 1979 Devolution Referendum.

On the website, Gaughan is quoted as saying: “The verses call for the recognition of Scotland’s right to sovereignty and the choruses argue against prejudice between our peoples.”

Two of Robert Burns’s most famous works – Scots Wha Hae, the official song of the SNP which is sung at the end of party conferences, and Sic a Parcel of Rogues – are also on display.

With regard to the latter, the website states that “many Scots were angry in 1707” and suggests that Sir Walter Scott – who was a prominent Unionist and Tory – was against the formation of Great Britain.

Education Scotland even appears to be pre-judging the outcome of the referendum by listing the various “candidates for a Scottish national anthem”, including Caledonia, The Freedom Come All Ye, Scots Wha Hae and Scotland the Brave. There are also numerous Jacobite songs, as well as a number of left-leaning political works.

They include Ding Dong Dollar, “the anthem of the Scottish Anti-Polaris movement of the 1960s and beyond”, which remains popular with protestors at Faslane naval base.

Students are also encouraged to learn If It Wisnae for the Union, “a song in praise of trade unionism”, which was adapted by Billy Connolly into The Welly Boot Song.

Who Pays the Piper? by Nancy Nicolson attacks the “immensely rich companies” involved in the North Sea Oil industry, which is described as being “fed by workers’ lives”.

Another song pays tribute to the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, while All Jock Tamson’s Bairns are Coming Home, by Steven Clark, welcomes refugees from “Iraq, Zimbabwe, Turkey and Somalia”.

Last night, Scottish Conservative education spokeswoman Mary Scanlon said: “The SNP is abusing the education system to promote its own separation propaganda.

“It should be up to teachers to use the material they choose, but there is no doubting in the run-up to the referendum the Scottish Government is trying to influence things with an independence slant.

“First we had Mike Russell insisting all colleges play a video of him at graduation, now we have an influx of divisive anthems for the classroom.”

The Scottish Government insisted this was a matter for Education Scotland and a spokeswoman for the quango denied there was any pro-independence bias on the website.

She said: “The aim of this resource is to help pupils learn about the long and rich tradition of Scottish music, which is still very much alive across the nation.”

[AhabsOtherLeg]

That article from the Express is 100% true.

I can barely pass a high school nowadays without hearing hordes of enthusiastic teenagers inside singing about Yuri Gagarin.

....seriously?

The truth, of course, is that there are around 217 songs recommended on the Education Scotland website, for both primary and secondary schools, and less than ten of them have anything to do with Scottish history or politics at all.

http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/sco ... /index.asp
http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/sco ... /index.asp

How the Express and Better Together were able to wangle a story out of that non-story is beyond me. The fact that they actually went to the lengths of printing it and putting it in a newspaper speaks volumes about their campaign.

the website states that “many Scots were angry in 1707”

That's true, the rioting after the passage of the Acts of Union lasted for months.

Walter Scott was always a Unionist and a Tory, though... quite an extreme one. He went so far as to raise his own private army to fight against the Insurrection of 1820, after the workers (Radicals that they were) had the audacity to demand a forty-hour working week. The leaders of that rebellion were not just hanged, but beheaded too. His favoured system of government was preserved.

I don't really see the problem with Scottish kids being taught Scottish songs in Scottish schools. Is there a problem with that?

When I was growing up we got taught all about the Norman Conquest (an event that never happened here), the Corn Laws (laws that were never passed here), King Henry the 8th (who was never King here), and the English Civil War (which we only played a small part in) rather than anything to do with Scottish history. It's about time the balance was redressed. I would say it is the lack of Scottish history that has been taught in our schools over the last few centuries that has left some folk susceptible to the Braveheart myth. Many leave education with the idea that pre-Union Scotland was a land of hairy coos and mud huts rather than a nation state with it's own Parliament, legal system, education system, and armed forces. Hell, some even think that we were defeated militarily, and the Acts of Union followed from that. A lot of bitterness and stupidity could be avoided if we just started teaching folk the truth.

[MacCruiskeen]

That article from the Express is 100% true.

I can barely pass a high school nowadays without hearing hordes of enthusiastic teenagers inside singing about Yuri Gagarin.

Ah, you must live in Lumphinnans:

Fife communists' historic respect for trailblazer Yuri Gagarin

By STAFF REPORTER, 12 April 2011 8.45am. Updated: 26 November 2012 11:23am.



http://www.thecourier.co.uk/news/fife-c ... in-1.30316

I hope it's a taste of things to come in our future Scottish Socialist Co-operative Wholesale Republic (© A. Gray). Don't forget St George's Place in Glasgow was already brought beautifully up-to-date in 1986:



...so anything is possible. Princes Square can become People's Square, Merchant Square can be Chomsky Square, and George Square (dont interrupt me, I'm planning) will be renamed Russell Brand Plaza, its centrepiece a 30-foot tall equestrian statue featuring Russell in a kilt astride a Clydesdale, with traffic cones on both their heads, and George Bush & Margaret Thatcher kneeling before them in prayer (the whole ensemble in bronze, of course).

[^^Can't find an image for that. Yet.]

Gagarin Way is a good play too, I know it well.