to think that I am not a scared ignoramus - Scotland

[iamnotacoward]

That's it really.
My FB feed, and real life conversations with people voting yes. So much aggression, and complete inability to accept that people have a different view point. So much talk of people being unpatriotic if they vote no, or that they just 'need to be educated' or need the facts explained to them so they can 'stop being scared' and vote yes.
I have educated myself, and yes I do fear for Scotland's future if a yes vote wins. That doesn't make me cowardly though, or someone who is too scared of change to vote yes.

And Santana massive congratulations! When are you due?

The people who agree with me are well-informed. The people who disagree with me are ignorant!

But OP on this thread you are being what you say you deplore about the yes voters.

Also can you explain what is wrong with the two examples you quote of the yes voters being frightening or like five year olds.

The first, why shouldn't people want autonomy even if they think it might make them a bit worse off to start? What is wrong with being willing to pay more taxes for the public good? Why are you frightened? Who are your frightened for? It's surely not the people who are suffering most under Westminster's governance.

In the second these all seem like excellent goals to me. The NHS was found to be the best health provider compared to the US and 9 other developed western nations. I wish Westminster was protecting it instead of selling it off by the back door to their party donors.

The No campaign from Westminster has been full of scaremongering and encouraging the list of objections listed in a post near the start of the thread. That suggests to me that No voters are often ill-informed.

OldLady I think the risk of Devo Max on the paper was splitting the No vote - if the combination of votes for non-independence options was higher than the Independence vote, but because it was split between outright no and Devo Max, what kind of mandate would that be?

Really Old Lady? Dead people's votes counted as "No"? And those who didn't vote yes were not included in the Yes vote for independence? Unbelievable!

So whats happened to that 48% in favour since 1979? Because most polls show those in favour to be around 36 or 37% just now.

But I see, blame the people of Scotland for being lazy or whatever. I suppose it makes a change from the Tories/the BBC/Margaret Thatcher!

And you better most European countries that no-one voted for their governments! They might not realise! Those pesky Dutch for example, with their proportional representation and thinking coalitions are good government, etc..

Can I just remind you of Salmond's favourite country, Norway, again? When it voted for independence, it returned a 99.5% vote in favour. It was almost unanimous. That is generally taken to be because it is a very cohesive country. Even so, women were not permitted to vote. And Norway was an extremely poor country until oil was discovered in the 1970s, and remains ridiculously expensive, despite the oil. I doubt Scotland would even reach the standard of living of Norway, but it would quite possibly reach the tax levels.

Not for me I'm afraid. Who in their right mind (other than the currently rather unsuccessful) would want to live in such a country?

The NHS is good - but still suffering under SNP rule. Why are our waiting times so bad? Why did it take almost a year for my son's occupational health referral? Why do staff report massive amounts of waste? Why are people being transported from Edinburgh to Glasgow for routine surgery, with relatives being put up in a hotel? www.nhsgoldenjubilee.co.uk/patients-and-visitors/rooms/hotel/

Waffly Why are you frightened? Who are your frightened for? It's surely not the people who are suffering most under Westminster's governance

Oh Christ. Not the "frightened, scaremongering" argument again. Its like a broken record. Of course Waffly that's right. Everyone who doesn't want to live in a high taxed incompetent country being patronised by people more stupid than themselves is fwightened.

Funnily enough, I'm not frightened to leave home and move to another country which provides me with more in return for my taxes. I think its very cowardly to be scared to leave home and hang around your own locality all of your life.

For those interested in Norway:

www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/08/us-norway-economy-insight-idUSBREA4703Z20140508

The NHS is in fact pretty incompetent in Scotland in many areas. Many people have and use private health insurance or pay to go privately rather than be left in pain and/or untreated. Its very hit or miss and suffers massive recruiting problems which means that there just aren't specialists and consultants in certain areas. I think the French and Belgian systems are much better.

It's the OP who brought up it being 'frightening'. That's what I was responding to.

Chelsy, yet still it scores as being the most competent compared to other systems.

waffly the OP was being facetious. Just as I was when writing my imagined excuses for the vote for independence not succeeding.

As for the NHS - I got my tonsils out, privately, in Germany, because of the moratorium on tonsillectomies in Scotland at the time due to dirty instruments. I am failing to see this supposed competence.

from the OP:

I have educated myself, and yes I do fear for Scotland's future if a yes vote wins.

and further down:

Just had a quick skim of the yes page.
"Couldnt care less if it takes ten year o poverty to become a wealthy nation in our own right. I would gladly pay more tax to a SCOTTISH government to have the right to be a free independant country..... Wotever the price... freedom is priceless"
Fairly indicative of the yes mindset for me - frightening.

Perhaps the OP can confirm whether she was being facetious.

I'm a Yes. Many of my friends are No. I think they're wrong, they think I'm wrong. I won't argue with anyone over it, though I will post relevant stats and info on FB. While I think writer of decidedly average wizard books, JK Rowling was wrong use her position to wade into the discussion, her treatment by some of the yes people was not on.

The vote on 18h Sept will reveal all. Bullying one way or another will prove counter-productive.

My cousin's employer has basically told the workforce to vote no, in various email messages (large oil and gas service company). Cousin says that this has made the yes people angry and some of the no people think again.

OOAML, the risk of offering some sort of Devo Max/Plus/whatever, is that we would have voted overwhelmingly for it, and WM didn't want to transfer any further powers. So WM said, it has to be yes/no, gambling that we'd say "No". They're not so sure now, which is why they're falling over themselves to "promise" and "guarantee" more powers (although they've failed to specify what, exactly. There is no concensus on the "No" side, nothing in writing. Make your own mind up about that.)

And, yes, Chelsy, in '79, the votes of dead people counted as "no". Because if you were on the electoral roll, and didn't vote (on account of being dead and all) your non-vote was assumed to be "No", because the magic majority of voters didn't turn out.

And it was 52% of those who voted who were in favour, (of devo, not indy) not 48%. The decision was stolen from us.

Overall, I found the White Paper a very amateurish document. Or perhaps this is giving more credit than is deserved. It may be deliberately written with a lack of truth and inaccuracy, because the truth is unpalatable and unmarketable, even to the believers.

As compared to the equivalent document from the No camp? Oh sorry, I forgot, there isn't one because the No camp are too busy pointing out the flaws in the Yes campaign to actually bother telling us what will happen in the event of a No vote. The No campaign has focused purely on the potential negatives of independence without bothering about the positives of staying in the union.

The No camp want people to be scared of independence; if Yes voters see those voting No as being scared it's because that's what the Better Together campaign is all about. It's frustrating, because they have a responsibility to run a strong campaign and, so far, they haven't.

I agree Bardolino

OP YABU I've seen so much aggression from the No side too on FB.

Well, we can see a lickle bit of aggression from No in this thread. Personally, I think calling people badly-educated thugs is kind of aggressive, although perhaps it's just me and everywhere else that's reasoned discourse.

I'm a Yes person - I'm actually ridiculously so, I volunteer for the campaign in my area :) I do not at all think people voting No are stupid, "just frightened" or anything like that, and nor do I think they are some kind of traitors (quite frankly I am fucking sick of that word being thrown around in politics). What does piss me off is that the media don't let us have a reasoned debate without mad scare stories - in an independent Scotland we'll have no money, no TV, an armed border, we'll be forced to drive on the other side of the road and to top it all off, Russia will invade and every single business will leave, reducing us to poverty levels undreamed of even by Somalia. It's difficult to discuss things normally when any bored journo can make up a disaster story and have it shoot to the top of the news.

Probably the biggest difficulty Better Together are having, I would say, is making it party political. They are obsessed with everything being Labour vs SNP. I've been in meetings where we have invited a BT speaker and a Yes speaker and the BT speaker has become quite snarly - there was one where the speaker got pissed off and yelled at the room "Ashamed of your SNP party cards?" This is a very Scottish politics thing but it's not helpful, especially when you're speaking to an audience who would be about as likely to vote SNP as they would be to invent a new type of surface to air missile. It brought a confrontational tone to the meeting where everyone felt they had to defend themselves and talk about how they normally voted rather than about the referendum.

Speaking from personal experience as well, BT are...problematic. They won't come to a debate unless you can guarantee them an audience they approve of, thus bringing to mind Brecht's lines about dissolving the people and electing a new one. A mate of mine was trying to get a BT and a Yes speaker for a trade union event. Yes Scotland accepted cheerfully and bunged a speaker his way. He got a very snippy email from BT saying they declined to send a speaker and accusing him of trying to ambush them - he wasn't, there are many No trade unionists and if he wanted a Yes rally he wouldn't have invited BT in the first place! So the event went ahead with a Yes speaker and the chair reading out BT's less than polite email. I don't think comrades voting No were impressed with how they were represented there.

OleOleOle putting aside your rather barbed comment about her literary ability, J K Rowling has as much right to contribute to the debate (and indeed to a campaign) as anyone. And at least she has a vote, unlike a fair proportion of the celebrities trotted out by both sides. I imagine she had better advice than the Weirs did. I feel sorry for them - they're not 'political animals' and although they must have realised that funding the Yes campaign and the SNP to the extent they have was going to attract a lot of attention, I doubt they were prepared for the reaction.

I don't believe the disaster stories - I know some very specific issues that mean my job may move, other jobs in my sector may move, and other companies in the same sector with a different customer profile may stay. I know that Scotland could go it alone (although am worried that there seems to be an acceptance of increasing borrowing to pay for it) but I'm not convinced we should.

OldLady I think the issue with offering DevoMax is that on both sides there is a spectrum of opinion - some Yes people want a version of independence that is still sharing loads of things with the UK, some are far more radical and there is a republican element that I've seen that are pretty far out although I doubt they are representative of the majority of the Yes side; the No side has lots of people who want DevoMax, some (again I think very few) who want devolution completely rolled back, and a lot in between.

I genuinely think it would split the vote, or people would vote for it as the 'most likely to win' option, and I'm not sure that's a good basis for something that is forever.

I imagine there is no consensus on additional powers from the No side as there is a general election to follow not long after the referendum, and it would be that government that had to implement it. Perhaps there should be another referendum in the event of a No vote, offering a range of options? Probably there should have been a 2 stage referendum, asking the Yes/No question, then a separate paper asking what options in the event of a No vote, but we are where we are.

And Bardolino I believe a document is to be posted out from the UK government soon. Has cost less taxpayers money than the White Paper. Inevitably both will suffer from the fact that nobody knows what things will be like, because everything is up for negotiation. Doubtless some people will say that is Westminster's fault for not pre-negotiating (because if you're in a partnership you want to keep, lots of people would go through the CD collection and split it out, decide what maintenance was offer, and then ask their partner not to leave) but again, we are where we are.

I imagine the FB abuse you see depends where you go. I'm disengaging from FB a lot more, because I think the people arguing it out there are already fixed in their views and it is becoming a bit of a sideshow. I'm going to volunteer with the No campaign instead.

OOAOML totally great you volunteer with No, let's have sensible people on both sides take forward the discussion :) I'd much rather that than the media bollocks.

The Yes campaign isn't an SNP monolith, as you point out. I have Yes friends who are big Nats who want Scotland to continue as is but with full control over areas where we presently don't have control (defense, taxation...). I've never voted SNP in my life and never will, I'm an old Trot and I am hoping for a Scottish socialist republic preferably with workers' councils. (Er, I do agree this might take some time and a revolution or two )

All we can agree on is "let's have the Yes then decide". I don't think that's a bad basis to start from.

I'm concerned that a No is signing away everything back to Westminster, who may or may not grant us additional powers (how kind!) depending on how the wind's blowing at the time. The talk of devo-max is just that, talk - any halfway competent politico must know that is a gateway for full independence, so I will believe it when I see it. Parly has its issues, surely, but it is showing that we Scots can manage our own affairs. Why give that up for what would be a dependent state?

Generally, and I do know there are exceptions, people who have weighed up both sides in a considered way tend to be/become yes supporters

That's interesting - most people I know who have weighed up both sides in a considered way tend to think the yes voters and the SNP are deluded.

I cannot imagine how anyone can weigh it up and using reason rather than sentiment, decide to vote yes.
Actually I am scared. I think Salmond and Sturgeon are devious and duplicitous. Eck likes to peddle the myth we are so much nicer in Scotland. Didn't suit his agenda UKIP got around 10% and in some places as much as 13% of the vote in EU election. So to excuse that he claimed it was only because the BBC were reporting about UKIP.

That scares me- that's twisting of facts on an epic scale.

I dont enter into conversations about it especially on facebook I have some staunch yesers on mine. They drive me mad I cant wait till its all over, a vote for yes means a vote for independence but its a referendum people are harping on as if irs going to happen over night

I know that the majority of the folk on my Facebook are no voters but jeepers you would not think it from the posts. I think tge yes campaign are just much more vocal as a whole!

Lol at JK Rowling having no place in the debate. I wonder if you'd feel the same if she'd come out for the yes vote? Which famous yessers do you think should have stayed silent?

And the No campaign don't have to have a clear written agenda, they're not the ones calling for change.

If the no vote prevails, life will go on as it has before.

I think the whole thing is pretty ugly, with vitriol on both sides. IMO people are not exactly covering themselves in glory at the moment with regard to this issue.

The JK Rowling thing, with her being called a traitor and a bitch etc, and the 'what does her opinion matter?' carping, is ugly, but to be fair people who've donated to the yes campaign have also come in for attacks.

writer of decidedly average wizard books, JK Rowling. She's a person with a vote and with a political and financial interest in the outcome of the referendum. Just like many other people. Is she supposed not to get involved, just because she has a famous name and the press were likely to pick up on her actions and opinions?

OldLady And, yes, Chelsy, in '79, the votes of dead people counted as "no". Because if you were on the electoral roll, and didn't vote (on account of being dead and all) your non-vote was assumed to be "No", because the magic majority of voters didn't turn out

No. No. No. The dead people didn't hold up devolution. In the 1979 referendum a 50% vote in favour of the electorate was required and it wasn't met. The votes of dead voters on the electoral roll weren't counted as "No"s, they simply didn't count towards the vote in favour. Its a simple majority and actually a very low requirement for a constitutional change, because companies generally require a 75% special majority in favour of such changes. It seems strange to change a country's unwritten constitution with less then even 50% of the electorate voting in favour. Particularly when the main complaint behind the desire to do so is being ruled by a party that less than 50% of Scots voted for!