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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
Anyway, I don't know if it's shameful or depressing that supposedly left-wing people and "anarchists" are lining up behind Scottish nationalism.. Because really, that's what you're doing. Certainly a sign of desperate times in the absence of real movements.
 
Friend of mine has just had her car keyed in Partick. Can't have been for the YES stickers she has on it.. Oh no. Just a random car scarter on the loose. :rolleyes::(
 
caleb said:
Anyway, I don't know if it's shameful or depressing that supposedly left-wing people and "anarchists" are lining up behind Scottish nationalism..
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Surely the answer is 'neither'? People are free to decide the issue themselves, not because they're right-wing or left-wing or whatever. George Galloway is a left-winger who's against independence, for instance. Scottish independence goes way beyond left-wing or right-wing politics. It's far deeper than that. Scotland may be to the left of the UK now, but who's to say that will be the case in 20 or 50 or 100 years? You only have to go back 60 years to see a Tory-dominated Scotland. No, Scottish independence, at its heart, is an example of politics in its purest form: the decision of a people to form their own polity or remain within the polity of the UK. We've got to look beyond the hot air of politicians looking at the next electoral cycle and look to the long term.
 
Quartz said:
Surely the answer is 'neither'? People are free to decide the issue themselves, not because they're right-wing or left-wing or whatever. George Galloway is a left-winger who's against independence, for instance. Scottish independence goes way beyond left-wing or right-wing politics. It's far deeper than that. Scotland may be to the left of the UK now, but who's to say that will be the case in 20 or 50 or 100 years? You only have to go back 60 years to see a Tory-dominated Scotland. No, Scottish independence, at its heart, is an example of politics in its purest form: the decision of a people to form their own polity or remain within the polity of the UK. We've got to look beyond the hot air of politicians looking at the next electoral cycle and look to the long term.
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I would agree, and this gets to the question that I can't get past in relation to this referendum - what defines a 'people' - i.e. what defines a group of people who have the right to/can/should be able to in an ideal world (however one might define it) decide to form their own polity?

Ie - why is 'Scotland' a definable political unit? I can only assume because of history - which seems an odd way to allocate modern political rights to me - i.e. on the basis of outmoded feudal (or earlier) boundaries defined by whoever had the biggest stick at the time.

Don't know if I'm making sense - I'm not at all clear on this myself.
 
Quartz said:
Sure looked like it..
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I am sorry Quartz, I have stood on the side of the road with people with megaphones before. None respond to hecklers like Jim Murphy did. Everyone knows that when you do this sort of thing, you don't start arguing with voters. Jim Murphy was vitriolic, nasty and is now a divisive figure in Scotland. For him to start editing and lying to justify his actions is a sad state of affairs. There is a difference between campaigning and inciting. Jim Murphy crossed that line many times. At no point did I ever see him address a question put to him in any reasonable way. At no point did I ever see any attempt by Murphy to calm things down (these were his events). He responded with insults, barracking and provocations. I have never seen a politician do what he has done.

Let me ask you this. Where are the people that were on the other side of this story? Where are their stories? What about the cameras that Murphy took around with him to get stock photos of 'cybernats'? What Murphy did bordered on the illegal. If he was shouting to the muslim community in Tower Hamlets, he could well have been arrested. As far as I am concerned Murphy has all but ruined any hope he has of leading the Labour Party, and I doubt he will even be able to lead the Scottish Labour Party.
 
DairyQueen said:
I am sorry Quartz, I have stood on the side of the road with people with megaphones before. None respond to hecklers like Jim Murphy did. Everyone knows that when you do this sort of thing, you don't start arguing with voters.
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You truly don't get it, do you? If he were a nationalist and been heckled by unionists, I'd be saying the same thing. He has a right to speak. He has a right to demonstrate to people that he's an ass.
 
Quartz said:
You truly don't get it, do you? If he were a nationalist and been heckled by unionists, I'd be saying the same thing. He has a right to speak. He has a right to demonstrate to people that he's an ass.
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If he was a supporter of independence, and he started calling all those that heckled him bigots and BNP supporters, he would have been lynched and maybe arrested. A number of Yes supporters have been assaulted and threatened with assassination. The difference, there is no coverage of those.

What you don't get is that it is against the law to go on the street and start inciting people. If Murphy never did that in a legal sense, he was very close. If anything it is Murphy that is more likely to be arrested than those heckling him.
 
DairyQueen said:
If he was a supporter of independence, and he started calling all those that heckled him bigots and BNP supporters, he would have been lynched and maybe arrested. A number of Yes supporters have been assaulted and threatened with assassination. The difference, there is no coverage of those.
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You can, of course, back up those claims? A quick Google shows up nothing for assassination threats. Indeed the top results on Google for assault are all assaults by Yes supporters. And I'm excluding Mr Murphy.
 
 
The only people that have been arrested so far have been no voters. It is truly diabolical the type of politics the no campaign is promoting, and Murphy in particular.
 
I had to go back a bit, but here's a Yes supporter who was attacked last year.

DairyQueen said:
The only people that have been arrested so far have been no voters.
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Are such incidents by Yes voters not more likely to be recorded and processed as anti-English racism? Here's an article from 2012. If you look at Table 8 here, you'll see that in 2012-2013 1139 complainers were White British in Scotland, and Table 8a shows that 5% of complainers were White English and 4% were White British. There are no stats for the description of the complaints, but it doesn't take a genius to deduce Scottish racism against the English.
 
Wilf said:
No, you are telling the audience what to do when he speaks - and in a public space.
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To respect his right to speak? Damn straight. And that's part of defending his right to speak. If you don't want to listen, turn away; don't shout him down.
 
Quartz said:
To respect his right to speak? Damn straight. And that's part of defending his right to speak. If you don't want to listen, turn away; don't shout him down.
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Look, he chose to go into a public space, he chose to start sounding off there - why should that impose obligations on passers by or those who chose to turn up? Presumably if someone started saying something you disagreed with in the pub, you'd speak, you'd reply. Why is it different if the speaker is a politician?
 
Wilf said:
Presumably if someone started saying something you disagreed with in the pub, you'd speak, you'd reply.
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I'd let him speak, then reply. Not try to shout him down. If I feel the need to interrupt, I'll lead off with something like, "Excuse me but...", and not try to shout him down.
 
weltweit said:
It all seems to be getting a bit bad tempered.

What a shame.
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Nah, it is just BT's PR campaign. On the ground its different.

caleb said:
Anyway, I don't know if it's shameful or depressing that supposedly left-wing people and "anarchists" are lining up behind Scottish nationalism.. Because really, that's what you're doing. Certainly a sign of desperate times in the absence of real movements.
Click to expand...

What other social movements come close to the yes campaign in modern British history? Labour/Tories are two parties indistinguishable. Galloway's Respect is depressingly shit. The Green movement will never see serious representation at Westminster. The only movement that I can see which has a broad, genuine grassroots support with any hope of influencing anything is the movement to leave the EU.

You can scoff all you want at Scottish independence, but there is quite frankly nothing in the UK that gets my hopes up. Maybe, in the far off distant future, there will be some group that represents my interests and philosophies. Until then we will be left with total dumbass career politicians who are not even book smart, pompously waving the Union Jack on a small island with increasing irrelevance in the world throwing mud at anyone who disagrees with them.
 
Quartz said:
I'd let him speak, then reply. Not try to shout him down. If I feel the need to interrupt, I'll lead off with something like, "Excuse me but...", and not try to shout him down.
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If you think Murphy's sermons involve allowing people to reply. You're either deluded or one of his office boys. Pretty sure its deluded.
 
Quartz said:
As I said earlier, two wrongs don't make a right.
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No, the point is that his views go completely unchallenged. He voted for the Iraq war. He hates the SNP, not because of nationalism, because they go back to his electorate and tell them how much of a right-wing bastard he has been.
 
Surely Murphy was interrupting several people who were trying to speak at the time and, since there were more of them than there were of him, preventing them from exercising *their* right to free speech.
 
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