Will you vote for independence?

[Quartz]

If he's at a state school in Scotland, he will make his subject choices in S3, for the beginning of S4.

That's not what my brother is telling me.

 

[danny la rouge]

That's not what my brother is telling me.

Is it his first child? He should talk to the school. The CfE seems to have bedded in now, in most local authorities. Sounds like he may have picked something up wrong.

 

[danny la rouge]

Unless your brother's family is in East Renfrewshire, which I think delayed introducing the Curriculum for Excellence.

 

[geminisnake]

So how about we get back to Indy??

 

[Quartz]

Yes, he'll be making choices in S3, but he'll also be making choices at the end of (I think) S1. One of the things about which my brother was complaining was the limited number of exams he'll be able to take and how the early choices affect the later ones.

 

[Quartz]

So how about we get back to Indy??

I prefer F1 to Indy cars - just going round and round an oval is boring.

 

[Poi E]

I prefer F1 to Indy cars - just going round and round an oval is boring.

Indy has better crashes.

 

[Quartz]

Better than the car-crash that is Better Together?

 

[danny la rouge]

Makes it look like a Roman chariot race, now.

 

[alsoknownas]

Is there a Scottish equivalent of 'Albion'?

 

[Quartz]

Is there a Scottish equivalent of 'Albion'?

Alba.

 

[JTG]

Is there a Scottish equivalent of 'Albion'?

Stirling?

 

[danny la rouge]

Alba.

I'd argue "Caledonia" was the equivalent of "Albion"; Latinate literary term. "Alba" (pron ahll uh-pah) is Gaelic for Scotland.

 

[danny la rouge]

Stirling?

And, you know, in a funny sort of way, it is.

 

[weepiper]

I'd argue "Caledonia" was the equivalent of "Albion"; Latinate literary term. "Alba" (pron ahll uh-pah) is Gaelic for Scotland.

Although Alba and Albion come from the same root.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion

 

[Quartz]

I'm just waiting for some artist to paint Hadrian's Wall white.

Spoiler

Alba Longa, geddit?

 

[DairyQueen]

Alistair Carmichael...

SCOTTISH Secretary Alistair Carmichael has said maintaining a strong UK Government presence north of the Border in the event of a No vote in September would mean the independence question would never be put again and the issue of Scotland's future would be settled "once and for all".

He said: "Part of the reason we are where we are today is we have allowed the Nationalists to hollow out the role of the United Kingdom Government in Scotland for the last seven years and in the same way the Olympics were about reminding people they had a British identity, the Scotland Office or the UK Government has to be there, reminding people they have two governments."

In the same way the Olympics were about reminding people they had a British identity, the Scotland Office or the UK Government has to be there, reminding people they have two governments. What the fuck does that mean?

If I understand what Carmichael is proposing and that is challenging, he basically wants us to ignore the point of the Scottish Parliament and for UK Governments to interfere in Scotland regardless of whether we elected them again?

That man is fucking incompetent. No-one votes for his party for a reason.

 

[two sheds]

I think they're preparing you for us to invade if the vote is Yes

 

[geminisnake]

I think they're preparing you for us to invade if the vote is Yes

That's really not funny

 

[JTG]

It won't be 'once and for all' will it? A No vote won't destroy the Indy movement

 

[DotCommunist]

it does sound like a threat, albeit a vieled one.

 

[Poi E]

Jesus christ. That is pretty threatening stuff from the government. But then again, i just cant take that prick carmichael seriously after seeing him almost cry when sturgeon thrashed him in the debate.

 

[DairyQueen]

it does sound like a threat, albeit a vieled one.

Maybe, it does not sound in the least bit credible. Carmichael and Machiavellian are not two words I would stick together.

If the Unionist parties want to destroy Scottish independence as a concept, they should get Alistair Carmichael or someone like him to write down five suggestions that will change the British constitution. Do the exact opposite of each suggestion.

 

[two sheds]

As penance for my last post

http://www.theguardian.com/politics...ottish-independence-undecided-voters-yes-camp

Support for Scottish independence is being boosted as increasing numbers of previously undecided voters say they are now planning to vote yes, a survey of more than 6,000 people has found.

The British Election Study (BES) found that this switch from unsure to yes was not yet significant enough to affect the overall outcome: the study found that the no vote was still at 51% compared with support for independence at 39%.

The BES, a long running government-funded programme, surveyed the same group of 6,000 voters twice this year – in February to March and May to June – and found the gap between yes and no had tightened by three points, after excluding the 2% who say they will not vote. In March, the no vote stood at 52% and yes at 37%.

Prof Ed Fieldhouse, a co-director of the BES at the University of Manchester, said that tightening was due to a larger shift towards a yes vote among undecided voters.

But even so, the no vote would win in September by a margin of 12 points based on current trends, largely because voters were not convinced that the economy and their own personal finances would improve after independence.

Among the 11% of voters who were undeclared in March, a quarter of those had since moved to yes, and 18% had decided to vote no. That included voters switching from a yes-vote to don't know, and those moving from a no-vote to don't know.

Fieldhouse said a significant advantage of the BES over commercial polls, which normally survey around 1,000 people, was that it tracked the same, much larger cohort of voters. "This means we can see not only what's happening on the surface, but also the churning beneath," he said.

"The largest number of respondents switching were from undecided to yes and from no to undecided. This spells good news for the Yes Scotland campaign which needs all the votes it can get to catch-up," Fieldhouse added.

"If all the remaining don't knows were to split in the same proportions by 18 September the yes vote would of course increase by more than the no's but not enough to win the day. On this basis the result would be 56% – 44% in favour of the union."

He said the key for Yes Scotland, the official pro-independence campaign, was to land more blows on the economy, by persuading many more voters that Scotland would prosper because of independence.

"Our research suggests that the economy is the key. Two of the three most important factors affecting voting yes in the first wave of the BES were how voters felt independence would affect the general economic situation in the country, and their own personal economic situation," Fieldhouse wrote in a BES blog.

Tellingly, these were also the two most important factors in determining switching to voting yes (from any other position).

 

[The Boy]

It won't be 'once and for all' will it? A No vote won't destroy the Indy movement

Wasn't last time, anyway.

 

[DairyQueen]

Wasn't last time, anyway.

I think the type of changes that a country like Scotland would demand is too much for any Westminster government. I don't think a few train projects like being able to get to London and back in time for tea will change any of that.

 

[geminisnake]

It won't be 'once and for all' will it? A No vote won't destroy the Indy movement

No, it won't. Too many people are not happy about the crumbs we get and the general 'do as your told' attitude that Wastemonster is pushing. If the vote goes no the fight will continue.

 

[gosub]

It won't be 'once and for all' will it? A No vote won't destroy the Indy movement

North Sea Oil gets less viable year on year. Be hard pressed to reballot before that goose loses its lustre

 

[butchersapron]

North Sea Oil gets less viable year on year. Be hard pressed to reballot before that goose loses its lustre

Given your record on economics determining things (the market will say NO and that's it, game over immediately - some time last year) i'm not sure that your grasp the political nature of of much of the YES support is all that firm. And it's the political nature of that support which would make another ballot within a few decades quite likely. Precisely why you're now hearing the once and forever and final vote rhetoric from people like Carmichael.

 

[gosub]

It wasn't last year, it wasMarch/ April when the UK Government ruled out shared currency and Salmond raised the spectre of walking away from the debt. I said to look at the gilt markets, and the effect on the UK's ability to borrow. After all, Salmond was snearing that the markets would force the Treasury into accepting the Scottish position. UK has managed to borrow billions more having given this explicit promise to the markets that it won't cave in. No shortage of takers and at the same rates as before. Done deals. If it had gone the other way, Treasury would have blinked by now. As it is the Treasury knows part of its credibility depends on keeping a man prepared to threaten walking away from debt out of the MPC.


As to having a vote in a few decades. Game changes within ten.