Scottish Referendum debate - watch with Mumsnet

Getting fed up with rich celebrities sticking their oar in as well with their Vote NO stance.

Ah, my favourite, the "all No voters are selfish short termist sods, and all Yes voters are wonderful altruistic human beings who care for the greater good" line

It's not fair, and it's not true.

ItsAllGoingToBeFine your post is exactly why I'm voting No. It is so smug. The Yes campaign does not have the moral monopoly and they are certainly not saints.

Things may well get shitter, you say. Someone upthread suggested 10 years at the earliest. Well what's going to happen to the people who already need food banks during that ten years, and the people on the cusp of needing them?

IMO, there are too many problems in Scotland to put ourselves through 10-25 years of massive change.

Ahh, the food banks one - a favourite of the Facebook warriors. So, how will an independent Scotland get rid of foodbanks? They are throughout Europe, but so show we are supposed to believe this will cease in Scotland?

If we're looking at distribution of resources, why does the Svottish Government continue to spend money freezing council tax, which benefits people like me a bit (although if I'm being selfish I do like it, as I live in Edinburgh and something has to limit the 'iconic' projects our council is so keen on), benefits the wealthy in their expensive houses a lot, and doesn't really benefit the poorest who are not pAying council tax? This is money they could have chosen to spend on making things 'fairer' but haven't.

I guess its a question of which set of uncertainties you go for: an uncertain future controlled by WM, or an uncertain future controlled by Scottish parliament.

Also depends what you think the hallmarks of a successful country are?

Number of billionaires?
No food banks?
World leading banking sector?
Living wage throughout?

Scotland has already shown it has different priorities to rUK, prioritising eg free education whilst cutting other areas.

I agree though, anyone who thinks that an independent Scotland will immediately become this socialist utopia with the population at the top of the happiness index is deluded.

Things will remain shit for a few years, and may well get shittier before they get better.

I'm a No voter concerned about the impact on myself and my family AND the impact on Scottish and UK society. I genuinely don't think independence is the best option. Yes, I'm worried about my children - that's not unreasonable. I don't think the economic outcome will be great, which, for me, means I don't believe we will get all the benefits for society that are being promised. That's how I look at it, obviously other people will approach it differently.

Its interesting. Looking at these threads the No voters are all concerned about the immediate impact of independence on themselves and their families, yes voters are more concerned with the long term impact on Scottish society.

25 or even only 10 years are an awful lot out of a person's live, 10 years take me close to my retirement age and 25 to my mid-seventies. My children will grow up, go to university (possibly) and try to make a live for themselves in that time. I can't understand how blasé people are about that. I know there are no certainties either way but independence strikes me as the far more doubtful future option.

Erm...we're being given the chance, collectively, to vote and make a democratic decision. Whichever way the vote goes there will be people who don't get the outcome they want but I'd hardly say they are being denied their human rights.

Why do English people want to hold on to Scotland? Surely the Scots who want out will be denied the human rights which England adheres to.(if they stay together with England).
PS:I'm American.

Gender equality in insurance is a crazy requirement and long term it's just going to cause costs to go up for everyone as insurers try to come up with new pricing models to let them price as accurately. It's a scientific fact that men on average have a shorter life span than women. Why is less clear. So whilst men paid more for life and car insurance, women paid more for annuities. Now they have to try and figure out those underlying factors and build them in to pricing. The only people who will pay the cost for that is the end customer.

It is very unfair. It does make me think of thing such as "women are generally better at housework so they should all stay at home". I have seen male drivers charge out onto roundabouts without a care in the world, stopping the traffic with right of way, and I've also had a woman almost go into the side of my car coming out of a side road because she was busy texting. I have no doubt that if I hadn't swerved and sounded the horn as quickly as I did, DP in the passenger seat would have been seriously injured at best.
There are irresponsible drivers on either side. Why should DP have to pay hundreds more than me because other male drivers are twats?

The european convention on Human rights has nothing to do with the EU - women drivers paid less on average because they have less accidents on average, this no has to change because it is 'against human rights' to make a statistical analysis of accident rates??

I don't trust them to reinstate another one though. Or one that is equal to the Human Rights Act we have just now. I am in favour of the EU, myself.

Allowing prisoners the vote - I'm undecided on that one, but leaning to agreeing with your, carol, that it shouldn't be allowed. I would need to look into it more before making a decision.

Demanding equal pension ages - I think that's fair.

Demanding no sex related basis for car insurance, thus increaisng bills for women - I also think this is fair. I don't get why DP should pay more for car insurance than me. We're both (usually overly) cautious drivers.

Numanoid the conservatives desire to have a UK hunam rights act rather than tie us into the European convention came becasue of a number of bizarre and anti-women rulings, namely:

Allowing prisoners the vote
Demanding equal pension ages
Demanding no sex related basis for car insurance, thus increaisng bills for women.

I think my brain is going to sleep, "culture-related" sounds weird to me. A country in which I've previously worked and lived, is what I mean. Excuse my wording in my previous post, I think by having lived there before and experienced the culture, my brain made an odd connection!

We have ties with a particular country in Europe, work and culture-related. :) For a while, we were unhappy with the way things had went since the Conservatives came into power. It was bad beforehand, but it got a lot worse. It really scares me that they have voiced a desire to scrap the Human Rights Act, amongst other things.

Even after a Yes vote, it would be a while before everything started to move into place, both sides agree on that at least! I would hope that these businesses, if they couldn't/won't continue trading in an independent Scotland, would allow people to move to keep their jobs (if they were happy to do so) if they continued to trade only in rUK.

Santana I don't see the problem - vessels carrying nuclear weapons will call at our ports regardless, they're not going to nuke us just because we don't have nuclear capabilities.
Why was Scotland chosen to 'host' Trident? Why not southern England?

And what about all of the jobs which will be created, since the independent Scottish Government will need all of these offices too? A good example being the Passport Office.

Myself and DP won't be staying if the No vote prevails. We made the decision a while ago as we don't like the way things are going in the UK, so it isn't a knee-jerk reaction to the referendum result.

All the central government jobs based in Scotland will go south of the border - why would you have people living in a separate country doing those jobs when you can give them to your own citizens

Not all of them. An iScotland would needs its own HMRC etc.

I wish celebs et al would stop begging scots to stay. It's cringe .