to start a new Scottish Indyref thread?

[FannyFifer]

Round 2 folks, ding ding!

I was pretty shocked at how wet the moderator was at allowing them to speak over each other like that. I was also really surprised at the audience being allowed to shout and whoop like it was a football match.

The moderator was truly awful. I couldn't believe he let them talk over each other like that. You couldn't actually hear either of them.

A very cheap shot -I'm married to a wonderful, kind man who went to Loretto. Going there no more made him a pushy snob than going to state school and growing up in a rough council estate made me a violent thug. Stereotypes do nobody any favours and far too many are being thrown around.

Nice to see on BBC2 the coverage after the debate and one of the voters who was undecided now a Yes. Watching Darling in action didn't exactly win many over because he never put across a positive case for staying in the UK. He just painted it black over and over again.

Maybe, but DSis said this morning that she's now confused about how to vote. She was leaning towards a yes, but was so put off by Salmond's approach last night that she is starting to think again.

Why the hell should there be gaelic signs plastered over parts of Scotland which have no gaelic tradition?

Do you have any idea how much this is resented? What is the point beyond pandering to some mythic Brigadoon Scotland for tourists?

I have to say I find it a bit bizarre and worrying that people are actually making up their mind which way to vote based on a television debate...

Those tourists bring in an awful lot of cash

Itsallgoingtobefine Can you link me to the relevant bit of planning policy, you have obviously read it. I'm afraid I failed to find that too in my last google. I did find something about planning rules being relaxed to allow farmers a small amount of diversification, but I couldn't find anything about housing on agricultural land

There isn't a link to a specific bit of planning policy that allows building on prime agricultural land, because it isn't something that is considered by current planning policy. Planning policy in Scotland operates on the basis of zoning, mainly concentrated on the edge of existing settlements. In the Central Belt, this often means that prime (Grades 1-3) arable land is zoned for new build housing.

I have read a number of your posts and can't help noticing that you equate a posted internet link with a proven fact. They are not actually the same thing. Things can exist without a link to a random internet site. Things may not be proven by linking to an internet resource. Sometimes, you have to use your own human experience and find out your own proof in the real world and apply it, rather than relying on others to provide endless lists of internet links.

Anyway, to keep you happy, a quick google search produced only a Scottish government circular which highlights the need for it to be taken into account. Given that it was published in 1987 and is of slim advisory value only, its fair to say that it doesn't offer sufficient protection. I've seen hundreds of acres of Grade 1 farmland near my home covered in new builds in the last five years alone. All of this is also vaguely covered by the Town and Country Planning Act 1972, but again, the Scottish Government hasn't seen fit to update it, although it is now within their powers to do so.

I think your approach to understanding and learning is a little unusual, and very much at a tangent at times. You could easily find out this information for yourself.

What PuzzledandPissedOff says:

"If anyone needed convincing that Salmond is a base opportunist and half-crazed bully, this should have done it ... "

As for Scotland being like a 'battered wife leaving her abusive husband (England) - that's pretty offensive in a number of ways actually.

But, for what it's worth, there is a whole load of nastiness and bullying going on in Scotland atm, with both sides accusing the other. I have only experienced it from the Yes campaigners personally, but I bet it wont just 'simmer down' after the Referendum.

Whatever happens, Salmonds ego has done a great deal of damage.

Statistically but anyone who attended or sends their children to a private school in Scotland is fair game for that sort of cheap dig.

at your lack of empathy chelsyhandy

Her complaints about the shoots are over the lack of proper care and attention which directly leads to the loss of livestock and damage to their crops and land.

She doesn't moan - she gets on with things. If you look at the timescales - that's over the last 6 months. She is stating the reality of what it is like for her - and actually exlicitly talks positively about the experiences of other tenant farmers, with local estate managers. From the last time I met her (which was at a Christmas meet-up), her dh was re-roofing the sheds at his own expense, the water supply, iirc, had been condemned and they had had to move out into a caravan (still paying rent on the house as part of the farm because otherwise they lose the tenancy) as otherwise Social Services were going to take away their children. If she is only mentioning now that there is an intermittent new water supply, then that is over two years later.

I'd put gaelic signs under the 'nice extras ' heading at a way lower level than a truckload of other things money should be spent on. Nhs, schools that are big enough and not falling down, better transport infrastructure to name but a few.

After watching the debate I'm not sure I'll feel very welcome in Scotland whichever way the vote goes. May have to wait a while to see my cash again.

It was a bit of an eye opener, wasn't it grovel?

I have read a number of your posts and can't help noticing that you equate a posted internet link with a proven fact.

Links to relevant legislation/government policy can be very useful/the only way to find this particular info. Of course, if legislation published on the internet is somehow invalid?

Sometimes, you have to use your own human experience and find out your own proof in the real world and apply it

I though you of all people would realise that one person posting their experience does not equate to evidence - in fact I'm pretty sure you have forcefully said so on more than one occasion.

It is also worth pointing out that I wasn't just asking for the information for me, but for all of the interested people following this thread.

I agree Phaedra - why can't the NE have Doric signs?

PrettyBird and what do you think life is like for the average working person? All joy and fun? We all have parts of our life which we find hard and difficult. If that woman is being threatened with having her children removed from her due to her living conditions, then she needs to take a good hard reality check, forget about the relative privilege of living in the same place her family have done for 124 years, do as many have before her and get a job and make a better home for her children. No-one is forcing her to remain in farming, are they?

Could it be that she is a difficult tenant and the estate aren't exactly bending over backwards to accommodate them, because they want them to move out voluntarily? Alternatively, since the farm sounds awful, she doesn't want to put in her own fencing, the rabbits are out of control, its a shooting area, etc, why is she not looking around for a new tenancy?

We now have the Repairing Standard, which our shiny new Scottish Government introduced, so why isn't her local authority enforcing that on her behalf?

For the benefit of English posters I have Google'd the Doric reference.

According to The Oxford Companion to English Literature:

"Since the Dorians were regarded as uncivilised by the Athenians, 'Doric' came to mean 'rustic' in English, and was applied particularly to the language of Northumbria and the Lowlands of Scotland and also to the simplest of the three orders in architecture."

Is the yes vote basically that Scotland's budget will be in surplus, therefore the negative impact of being a minority shareholder in the currency union will eventually be an irrelevance due to not having any need to borrow?

Well, it appears to me that this is very much the case - trouble is, as so often with politicians, none of it seems to have been properly costed. Personally I believe that Scot would be ill advised to vote for such a risk, but of course I respect their right to choose

If they do choose independence, though, that means taking MUCH more responsibility for themselves. It's all very well posters such as Fannyfifer blaming Westminster for practically everything, but with independence they wouldn't be able to do that so easily ... at least, not without making themselves sound extremely foolish

ChelsyHandy

I think it's a real shame to see this descending into ad hominem attacks - could everyone try to lower the tone of disdain so we can have a reasoned conversation? It's possible to disagree without casting aspersions on the intelligence of the person you're disagreeing with.

Phaedra

I am sorry to hear that. But, not all "nats" are the same. (And I've been told to go worse places than out of Scotland by No supporters. That doesn't mean I think all No voters think that way - I've had lots of really thought-provoking and courteous discussions with No voters. At the end of the day this is about individuals with strongly held opinions either way, not die-hard Unionists vs nasty nationalists).

Snapespotions

Great name BTW.

I personally really dislike the whole aggressive televised debate thing, both for this and for general elections. I think it too often comes down to who can shout the loudest and ends up leaving people less genuinely informed. I think as you say it is also off-putting and in issues like this it's very misleading to bring it down to a personality-based showdown between two politicians when the issue is actually so much larger than either of them.

I don't mean to sound hard, but if it's that bad maybe the blogger should move? After all that's what the folk working in financial services, and are at huge risk of losing their jobs, are being told to do in the name of progress...

Sooo, from claiming that people didn't live in such awful conditions, it's now their fault that they choose still to live there Real victim blaming there

FWIW, iirc, you can't just "get" another tenancy - they are passed on. And her dh doesn't want to leave the farm, so her choice is leave him or leave the farm.

Iirc again, she wasn't that impressed with Salmond either on a MN webchat as she felt the the legislation was toothless as they hadn't been able to enforce anything (maybe you'll think better of her for that ) Although that might be why she does now have a water supply.

£24 million iirc for the promotion of Gaelic, including signage on roads and public buildings. What a waste of public money.

Nice.

Doric is usually understood to be the north-east dialect.

Then there's Shetlandic, Orcadian, Weegie Patter; much more widely spoken than Gaelic.....

Alec Salmond would not let Alistair Darling answer his questions. The point about more job-creating powers in the event of a no vote is irrelevant anyway. Ironic when Nicola Sturgeon in answer to the question 'What would an independent Scottish government do to create more jobs?' said, 'lower corporation tax' [ie aggressively compete with rUK - fine until rUK lowers its corporation tax] and 'provide free child-care for women returning to work'.

It's such a pity that AD has a habit of pointing because he is so much more polite and restrained than AS - the only times he interrupted was to assert that AS was telling untruths.

AS has a degree in economics. He originally proposed joining the Euro.

I find him deeply untrustworthy. Eg quoting the projected wholesale oil returns - in the hope that people will overlook the fact that the revenue will be a tiny fraction. Basic economics.

I understand the point of a wish for self-determination in principle, but I don't see why people feel under-represented when the previous prime minister and chancellor of the exchequer were both Scottish. It might well be true that the majority of the Scottish electorate are more more socialist than the majority of the UK electorate but IMO that isn't enough to claim that Scotland is under-represented. The labour party voters of Scotland possibly but the fact of a majority in Scotland doesn't make Scotland as a whole socialist.

Arguably, Scotland is over-represented in british politics. Now that we have a devolved government I can see no case for Scottish independence. I suspect that AS wants independence for himself, at any price.

Agreed choccaluvva. I have little doubt that AS knows that everything promised in the white paper isn't really feasible, at least not in the short or probably even medium term. The cherry picking of economics is awful

I find him deeply untrustworthy. Eg quoting the projected wholesale oil returns - in the hope that people will overlook the fact that the revenue will be a tiny fraction. Basic economics.

That really annoyed me, when he repeated the oil returns figures about a squillion times, verrry slowwwly. Thing is, there are big figures involved in running a country. I expect if he'd repeated the NHS spend, or the education spend, that'd sound pretty big too.

I don't believe for a minute all Yes voters are stupid, but sometimes Salmond talks at them as though they are.