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Will you vote for independence?

Scottish independence?

  • Yes please

    Votes: 99 56.6%
  • No thanks

    Votes: 57 32.6%
  • Dont know yet

    Votes: 17 9.7%

  • Total voters
    175
They've been shut down. Was just coming on to tell you. And their wiki page is under deletion warning. Apparently the Herald have also been threatened with legal action!!
There is another site up if you want a link I can pm you danny la rouge

Bella & wings are letting people know Collective have been shut down.

Stazi, anyone??

Wings have now had a lawyers letter (5.19pm)
 
geminisnake said:
They've been shut down. Was just coming on to tell you. And their wiki page is under deletion warning. Apparently the Herald have also been threatened with legal action!!
There is another site up if you want a link I can pm you danny la rouge

Bella & wings are letting people know Collective have been shut down.

Stazi, anyone??

Wings have now had a lawyers letter (5.19pm)

Just saw this from Kevin Williamson's Twitter. Are they shutting down the Guardian, too? Because the same claims were made there 12 years ago, and were in the link I posted above.

Nat Collective apparently have a statement on their Facebook, but I'm not on that so can't read it.

Big guns are running scared by the looks of things.
 
No campaign responds: http://www.heraldscotland.com/polit...ed-to-hand-back-money-from-oil-chief.20640681

On Vitol:

It did pay £1million to Arkan as a deal fixer, but that wasn't illegal.

It did pay Saddam's Iraq money outside of the oil-for-food, but that wasn't their fault. A big boy done it and ran away.

It did do deals with Iran, but gets away with it by being registered in Switzerland.

And it won't comment on its tax affairs, or using Employee Benefit Trusts. But it's all legal. If immoral.

So, a nice company.

Better Together calls the allegations "a cynical attack" and says of Vitol boss, Ian Taylor: "What we are happy to say is Ian Taylor is a respected figure internationally, in the UK and in Scotland. He has a long history of philanthropy and his personal investment has revived the Harris Tweed industry in Scotland."

So that's OK, then.
 
...so he gave half a mill to a 'labour led' anti-independence campaign...and he gave half a mill to the tories.
 
I just tried to look at Bitter Together, I didn't get passed the home page. And there was a couple of loud Hahs! there. It's closed now. If people are stupid enough to believe that then I truly despair.
 
http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/referendum-news/silence-over-no-donation.20640745


LEADING political figures behind Better Together, the pro-Union campaign, are maintaining a wall of silence over a £500,000 donation from a controversial business figure.

Former Chancellor Alistair Darling, now head of Better Together, and Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander – a critic of Ian Taylor's donations to the Conservatives when they attracted accusations of cash-for-access – have both been unavailable for comment.

While Mr Taylor was criticised by Labour's Westminster backbencher John Mann and by Mr Alexander for being invited to dine at Downing Street following his Tory donations, it is Vitol's controversial activities in Serbia, Iran, Iraq and Libya that have led to questions being asked about the businessman's personal backing for Better Together.

Mr Robertson pointed out that Mr Mann, a member of the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee, was reported last September to be calling on the Tories to return donations from Mr Taylor.

The Daily Telegraph reported: "Vitol was accused of 'immoral' trade and 'backing corrupt regimes' by John Mann MP, a Labour member of the Treasury Select Committee, who demanded that the Tory party hand back the 'dirty money' it has received from Mr Taylor."
Interesting that Douglas Alexander especially has nothing to say now. Nasty little hypocrite.
 
This is a better link ;)

http://nationalcollective.com/2013/...-and-the-thoroughly-reputable-campaign-donor/

Does the Mary Lockhart one take you to the scotsman? <spit>
Yes. Would you like me to C&P the article?

By MARY LOCKHART
Published on Sunday 21 April 2013 00:00


I HAVE been a member of the Labour Party for more than 30 years, at first by inheritance, later by conviction, and since the invasion of Iraq, from sheer bloody-mindedness.


Both my grandfathers were miners, my maternal grandmother’s parents counted Keir Hardie amongst their friends, and as a child I believed that the framed portrait of him which had pride of place in her living room was my great grandfather.

As I grew up, I learned with pride that I had English, Cornish and Irish forebears as well as Scots and that I was Scottish, British and working class; and with prejudice that the Labour Party was the people’s party, born in Scotland of “Keir Hardie socialism”, which believed in home rule for Scotland, Ireland and Wales. I loved the story that when a heckler shouted, “What about home rule for Hell?” Hardie replied, “Certainly. Every man to his own country”.

The Labour Party, which believes in equality, solidarity, public ownership for the common good, the power of the many against the control by the few, and which is committed to the principle of “From each according to his/her ability, to each according to his/her need” is the Labour Party to which I am deeply committed. It is not just a political conviction. It is an emotional immersion.

My sense of a political and social identity and of belonging to the Labour Party runs very deep – much deeper than my sense of national identity. I feel very at home with socialists anywhere in the world. Culturally, I am a European in my musical and literary tastes, and I am much more comfortable at a gathering of English trades unionists than I am at a conference of Scottish entrepreneurs.

When Alex Salmond announced there would be a referendum on Scottish independence, I was clear that even if national independence is possible in a world dominated by the hegemony of transglobal corporations in a virtually free market, it was not attractive to me. Neither, however, was the continuance of a partially devolved United Kingdom, with powers heavily centralised in London and in Edinburgh, and increasingly determined and controlled by fewer and fewer of the many as hundreds of thousands were too disillusioned to vote. I was disappointed when a Devo Max question was ruled out, but retreated to a comfort zone of voting No, and waiting for the return of a UK Labour government to expand devolution.

The centralising policies and anti-Labour nationalism made it difficult for me to reflect objectively on any positive opportunities which a Yes vote might deliver, and the debate between politicians degenerated into a tit-for-tattery I found insulting. But not so insulting, not so offensive, as I found my own party joining forces in Better Together with the parties who were taking a wrecking hammer to the NHS in England, demonising the people whom their policies had left without work, perpetuating the myth of strivers and scroungers, and unpicking the fabric of the welfare state until there is no such thing as social security.

On 19 March 2013, 40 Labour MPs voted against retrospective legislation to overturn the outcome of a court of appeal judgment and ensure the government would not be forced to pay £130 million in benefit rebates to about a quarter of a million jobseekers. The remaining 218 obeyed the party whip, and abstained. That night, I tossed and turned, and slept fitfully. I remembered the Drumchapel school children hauled off to Dungavel in the grey dawn from the only home they knew, in a devolved Scotland, with a Labour administration at Holyrood, and under a Labour government at Westminster.

I remembered the trades union legislation which Margaret Thatcher introduced, and which Labour failed to repeal, which keeps workers divided. I pondered a Labour Party which had failed to highlight the bedroom tax at earlier stages of the Welfare Reform Bill, a Labour government which had pledged to renew a redundant nuclear deterrent. And I went to sleep wondering if the Labour Party socialism by which part of my identity is defined was beyond redemption.

On the 20 March, I awoke with a sense of hope, and with new resolve.

A resolve to vote Yes in the referendum for Scottish independence. It won’t deliver Utopia. But it will deliver the chance for socialists to help shape a Scotland which reflects the identity of its people. «


Mary Lockhart is chair of the Scottish Co-operative Party, but writes here in a personal capacity
 
Thank you danny. I will never knowingly click a link to that rag again :)

Watching what is going on with SLab I'm starting to think they really are a bit screwed and this is not good. Wee Eck needs opposition or he'll disappear up his own arse too :(
 
Orange Order in No vote campaign (Herald).
THE Orange Order has begun the mobilisation of its members across Scotland as part of its campaign against independence.

It has applied to join community councils and is involved in a series of roadshows across greater Glasgow, where it plans to lobby councillors on how it can get involved in the No bid.
 
geminisnake said:
Like that's a surprise :rolleyes: Bigoted Unionist twats!
Afaik the OO only get any support in the Glasgow/ish area. It's not like they'll get much support on the east coast.

Mrs la rouge read the story and said "that's me decided now".
 
Just out of interest, and apologies if this is covered properly elsewhere in the thread, but is there any obvious reason why Urban is so out of step with the rest of Scotland on independence? A two thirds majority here, and even one third in favour in the country as a whole would be a huge relief to Salmond. Why?
 
Just out of interest, and apologies if this is covered properly elsewhere in the thread, but is there any obvious reason why Urban is so out of step with the rest of Scotland on independence? A two thirds majority here, and even one third in favour in the country as a whole would be a huge relief to Salmond. Why?

We have got about a third in favour at the moment

http://news.stv.tv/scotland/220553-scottish-independence-support-stands-at-30-according-to-poll/
 
Fair enough, most Picts I know are ardent unionists - or, at least, Salmond-loathers - and have been talking gleefully about 20%. They're obviously avoiding polls they don't like.

But, still, why is Urban so unrepresentative?
 
Fair enough, most Picts I know are ardent unionists - or, at least, Salmond-loathers - and have been talking gleefully about 20%. They're obviously avoiding polls they don't like.
And obviously have been doing so for decades. Support for independence oscillates between 30 and 40%, and has done for decades. It has occasionally edged over 40%, but only just: 41, 42. That seems to be the high water mark. I personally don't expect Yes to win this time. (Give it another 25 years and another referendum).

Why is there a majority of probable Yes voters on Urban75? My guess is that it's because these boards attracts people active on the left, and the left in Scotland is pro independence on the whole: SSP, Solidarity, the Greens, SRSP, Communist Party of Scotland, etc. all support independence. This is a tradition that goes back to John McLean and Jimmy Maxton.
 
Fair enough, most Picts I know are ardent unionists -

And how many Picts do you know? Bearing in mind that the Picts were generally from the North and North East(ie north of Edinburgh)?? If you know a heap of weegies they were Scots. The voting pattern for the North/NE of Scotland tends towards yellow of one or the other. LD/SNP. Has done for years. The only Labour support up here seems to be concentrated in Dundee/Aberdeen and that is fading.
Most of the Scottish urbs are East/NE coast.

PS you don't have to like Salmond to believe in independence. I really wish people would get it through their thick skulls that this is NOT a political issue :facepalm:
Do you want independence yes/no does NOT equal do you like Salmond yes/no!! :mad:
 

You are the exception :p I think if you add the total number of active scottish urbs that I can name I am correct. I think there may some westies in politics and football, but I'm not sure. You are the only central one afaik. Tar, weeps, me pogo, Sas, Velouria, catinthehat, Alan(letter) all E/NE and that's just the ones I can think of just now.
 
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