I just have to share this before I retire for the night, with a pint of whisky and a leg of lamb....... I was over at a concert in Glasgow a couple of years ago and a guy had "SNP" tattooed on his forehead...... I asked him why he had Dickhead tattooed onto his forehead...... he was like "eh?" I asked him if he had ever looked in the mirror.......... "PNS"
I'll get my coat.........
My response to your post is going to be in bits over a few days...sorry about that, but I do take a long time to write a post! I'll try and snip the quotes to include mostly that parts to which I am responding.
To an extent, that is the whole point,orkneycadian. We do know pretty much what the UK's economy is going to be like even after the next election.because we have been told that Nulabour will pretty much do more of the same as is already flagged up. We, however won't know exactly what that fact will mean to our standard of living in the UK until we get the figures, which the Government will hope will do as they expect..and if it doesn't...well they will just U-turn.as they have more than once in this administration.
Come Independence, if by that you mean directly after the vote..everything will carry on pretty much as it is now until 2016, because we will undoubtedly spend much of the time before then dividing up the family cash, bank accounts,assets, debts etc. Like all divorces,if amicable, it should be reasonably easy..but if not, there will have to be recourse to law, which will make it last longer. Come official Independence in 2016 we will know the distribution of assets and debts, and whatever relations we will have with international actors....and maybe by then we and the rest of the UK will even be talking to each other nicely(it can happen after a divorce,)........and we will surely have a few more political parties to set up what Thatcher and Regan would likely have called a competitive market in manifestos. ....and we will always have the panic U-turn to fall back on in a real brainfart!
However, we do know pretty much what we input to the UK coffers..and we do know that the " nobody will invest in Scotland because of the referendum uncertainty" has been shown to be wrong (because businesses will invest wherever they think there is a profit to be made)..and we do know that the pessimistic forecasts by the UK Government on the future of oil is nothing like the forecasts of the oil companies who are still investing in the North Sea. And into the bargain we do know that even Westminster has given in and said there is no reason we couldn't be a successful Independent country..at least I assume that is what various members of the Government meant, when, despite producing a White Paper that said we ceased to exist (were extinguished)as a nation in 1707, they commented as in squidge's post here..http://forum.caithness.org/showthrea...94#post1045494 Are they confused much?
What Scotland is really going to be like after Independence in 2016 is not up to the SNP necessarily...and that is something a lot of people don't seem to have yet quite grasped. The ONLY way the SNP is going to be the Scottish Government in 2016 is if there is nobody else with a better vision/manifesto which meets the aspirations of more people.....and that isn't up to me or you....but up to the political parties who want to be involved...just as, let's be honest, Labour/LibDem and Tory don't ask me or you directly what we'd like to see in a manifesto for UK elections..if we aren't a paid up and active member of their party so acceptable in a "Focus Group" (which I have always thought was just a group to focus on the best way to meet the party's aspirations...and to hell with the general population.though I am admittedly cynical). Before 2016 we should know pretty much what our income is liable to be, with just as much accuracy as the UK Government currently manages to forecast theirs (given they are still increasing our borrowing)..and will know how much of the UK debt we will inherit..so we can budget for the future.
The SNP is going to come up with White Papers on pretty much all of the stuff which worries people...and on a written constitution so we don't end up, as in the UK, with legislation being decided on the hoof by Judges in the Supreme Court....BUT nothing put in place by the SNP before 2016 is set in stone after 2016. The SNP, after all..despite what some think, is only writing the introduction to a story we must write ourselves...if we have the courage. However much the pro-Union side insist that Alex Salmond is the devil incarnate.....he is where he is and is doing what he is doing because we gave him permission to do it by being Scottish enough to like the fact that the SNP is more in tune with the way most Scots think than the Unionist Parties who held sway in the Scottish Parliament from 1999 to 2007.
I'm not daft...I don't think it is going to be plain sailing into Utopia over calm seas, as some appear to believe....but I do think that we can do well....though maybe not in my lifetime (which ain't going to be decades!) But then when was anything really worth having not worth working to achieve (bar a lottery win)? I will be voting for my grand-children's and my great grand-daughter's futures...and if I personally don't benefit by more than being a Scot, even a more impoverished Scot, in an independent Scotland, in a fair society striving to reduce poverty and inequality, with a good relationship with our neighbours over the border to the south..then I will be happy.
Thing is a business plan is akin to an MOT certificate......an MOT certificate only means anything until you leave the garage and a brake light blows half a mile down the road......a business plan is an aspiration based on the currently known circumstances....and should be a moveable feast to cope with changing circumstances. I'd guess that no entrepreneur worth his/her salt would contemplate trying to get a loan without a business plan.....and no bank manager worth his/her salt would look at the plan and expect the business to move from a to b to c as written down.......but the bank manager would have enough faith in the idea behind the plan to approve a loan, perhaps. That is pretty much what the SNP will be doing from now until September next year....setting out a business plan on the known information.....and hoping that the Scottish voter has as much faith in Scotland and the Scots as they have.
The in-between bits I'll come back to later, if someone doesn't beat me to it.....as they are specific questions so a response to them needs facts and I don't have them at my fingertips.
I am not sure yet how I will vote. it would be nice if both sides could just stick to displaying facts not going off on a tangent with accusations and mud slinging. This is a total turn off to anyone wanting to make an informed decision. Both camps are guilty of swinging the truth to suit but that's politicians in general these days.
Last edited by Alice in Blunderland; 05-Sep-13 at 19:00. Reason: Taking out reference to another person now suspended's post
Doesnt take long for tangerine dream to reveal the true colour of his particular dream. Alice, a local debate might be a good place to start. A real life face to face thing with real people who are voting not politicians. Reasonable articulate people.
I havent posted here in a while, but here is why.
Common Language
Shared history
Common culture
UK is powerful, Scotland is not
Larger economy, less dependent on one large volatile commodity, broader shoulders and all that
Complete and utter lack of clarity over what and Independent Scotland would look like. I wont chuck my future away on a point of principle
Huge, potentially utterly crippling blackhole in Scotland budget that I havent heard an argument about how we will deal with
Already have control over most things (NHS, Schools, law etc)
EU membership????
Division is the past, coming togetehr is the future.
If the Yes campaign were to lay out who we could for example become denmark then Id vote yes in a haertbeat, but such has been the complete failure of the Yes campaign its hard to see how they can restore credibility now.
Most people my age agree. Grown up with poeple and services coming from all over the world, we dont see "Scottishness" as even being a thing really. Its a bit like religion, its all in your head.
There are basically 3 type of people in this world, those who can count and those who cant
However informing the undecideds and those who would have voted for devo-max, if it had been allowed to be on offer is where the difference in numbers between a yes or a no vote and success or failure for one or the other side lies, cptdodger.
Many pro-Unionists appear to think that if they do nothing but scaremonger, lie, misrepresent, and from time to time insult, while pooh-poohing information directly taken from Government figures and facts, because they are not interpreted in favour of the Union, the majority of undecided people will on the day, vote for the devil they know...and it will be no change.
You saw how well a negative, vituperative campaign against the SNP by the Labour Party worked in the 2011 Scottish elections.....are all of you who will definitely vote NO next year, prepared to assume the same type of result won't happen again this time round?
The difference on here between the two POVs is glaring......the pro-Independents among us are trying to have a debate to inform the voters and clear up misconceptions as to fact, as best as we can ahead of the White Papers to come.....and the pro-Unionists are stifling that debate, just as they do elsewhere on the internet.
WHy ask....reasons for yes / no are personal, as will be the democratic ballot ( personal confidential vote ) thats why people ignore pollsters standing outside election stations....whats it got to do with any body...so as Kenny Dalglish puts it, maybes aye....maybes no....just wait and see ! As for me, maybe aye maybe no !!!!
The SNP wanted to include the Devo-max option to cloud the issue, and to try and squeeze a yes vote for something which was not what they actually wanted. It would have made a fair referendum impossible. They as a party stand for "Nationalism" the clue is in the name :-)
If they wanted further powers for the Scottish Parliament, and not independence then they should have engaged with all parties and demanded those powers from Westminster. They did not wish to do that, and indeed where quite obstructive of the Scotland Bill which gave greatly increased powers to Holyrood. So their spurious devo-max charade was kicked into touch, and the people living in Scotland are now quite rightly being given a straight choice between remaining part of the union, and becoming independent.
It would be good if the SNP therefore gave some honest and compelling reasons to the electorate to allow them to make an informed decision as to which way to vote. So far we havehad plenty of smoke and mirrors, we have had bluster and lies, we have had ridiculous claims about how the world is going to bend over backwards to give wee 'eck all that he wants, and that nothing is going to stand in the way of his grand plans. Unfortunately the truth and reality are very different to the pretty pictures they are trying to paint.
So if the SNP want to change the status quo they need to start treating the people of Scotland as grown ups, stop simply promising them everything they think people might want and start telling us what they would like to see an Independent Scotland look like.
The only way in which the unionist parties (and incidentally the federalist parties) are currently stifling debate is by showing up all the grand plans as so much hot air and downright lies.
If, and that is a big if that I cannot see happening, they start to treat people with courtesy, with honesty, with integrity then, and only the will they have any chance of persuading people to follow their grand plan.
I should perhaps add that if they tell me that they would like us to become something very like Sweden / Denmark in terms of well funded socially cohesive and inclusive societies, with the very high tax bills that go with them then I could be seriously tempted to vote yes. But I would want serious details, not just a vague promise.
I have never done that. You asked for "reasons" as to why we are voting no, then that turned that into "excuses" What exactly are we supposed to be excusing ourselves for, we have done nothing wrong, apart from having a different opinion from you it seems. You wo'nt even accept the reasons you have been given, yes I am proud to be British, and I do not care who knows that. If you are not, that's fine, forgive me for saying this, but it's a big world out there, go and find somewhere else you can change and be proud of. Just do'nt ask the question then belittle people , because it is not the answers you want to hear.
I can not imagine a yes vote. What I worry about is the number of disgruntled, disapointed and very angry yes campaigners after the no vote. I am angry at the whole idea of the referendum. It was never going to be anything but utterly devisive. It will take a long time for Scotland to get past this I fear.
I haven't said you did....you do kinda need to quote the whole of a connected post to comment on one cherry-picked part of it! I was responding to your I rest my case. And with still over a year to go until the Referendum, it is just going to get worse. I was simply explaining that many Unionists are among those who are making it worse! And nowhere did I specifically target you.....although I have no problem if you want to consider yourself one of those I describe.
Aside from all the logistical hurdles which no one seems able to answer, I'll vote "no" simply because there are more than enough barriers and differences between us without adding more.
Oddquine - I don't expect, given your posts on the subject, that your mind can be changed either......
Hey Oddquine given that I have been courteous enough to answer your question how about addressing the points I made... (I'll not hold my breath waiting)
We should've had a vote on if we wanted a referendum
W.A.T.P.
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