to start a new Scottish Indyref thread?

[FannyFifer]

Round 2 folks, ding ding!

I find it very sad (and an indictment on British politics in recent generations) that the fact that so many people have engaged in the debate on both sides is seen as something to be feared rather than embraced.

Contrary to many on here, I hope that many of the people who are currently "talking politics", filling public halls, over kitchen tables, in offices - on both sides- will continue to get involved after the vote, whatever the result and will continue to work for the good of the country.

The Opposition (of whatever colour) doesn't go away and hide for the 5-7 years that the Government is in power. It holds it to account - and we, as the voting population, should also continue to hold both the government and the opposition to account.

The levels of turn out in recent elections has been atrocious - maybe this will change that but I doubt it

Och, LadyCordelia, can you not recognise a wee bit humour when you see it? This has been a long, hard campaign, a bit of light relief doesn't go amiss. (And Yes are better at it... )

I do plenty focusing on what important thanks.

Internet indyreffing is for the banter.

Maybe I should just do what the ad tells me, don't make an attempt to find things out for myself & just vote No like a good wee woman.

So the Yes party think an advert by the No party is patronising. There's a surprise then :)

Do you think the No party will admire your advert?

That's what I think as well, I have given info & helped people get on electoral roll who are not even voting Yes.
Everyone's opinion counts regardless of how they are voting.

prettybird

I agree! I've certainly become so much more pro-active in political / constitutional matters since this all began and I know from the local groups that it's got lots of people who two years ago would never have dreamed of expressing their opinion on these matters to speak out. Even if people disagree with each other I think it is great to have a politically engaged population because then they can hold a government, be it Westminster or Holyrood, to account.

Of course not, our adverts are usually shite as well, I take the piss out of them also.

No, my point was maybe if people spent less time seizing on soundbites and minor things that the other side said we'd be having a much better quality of debate across the country. Instead we have folk focusing on mini victories, taking information out of context and trying to get one over on the other side. It's turning in to a stupidly adversarial game of he said she said.

Pretty touchy about your wee advert, huh?

Good for you Fanny!

Oh bugger off and grow up will you TeamScotland. It's not my advert, I'm not involved in the BT campaign, I don't particularly like it. I just don't think it matters and I think the way the Yes voters are jumping on it is pathetic. I xposted with Fanny, her humour wasn't exactly clear initially.

This is a good ad though for example, certainly less patronising toward women.

Statistically nice

And this one was pish, the theme song "united we stand, divided we fall" ummmm not a good choice.

Yes that ad is better...............aside from Elaine C Smith. She gives me a pain in my

Don't diss Marydoll hen!

She was an arse to me because I didn't have a clue who she was. She didn't like that!

Hello again.

Scottish people are happier to have immigration to put more tax revenue into the Scottish economy to help pay for the overweight and aging Scottish population. That's the only peculiarly Scottish need that isn't addressed by the Westminster government.? According to Nicola Sturgeon Scotland requires only 1,200 more tax-paying immigrants per year (I've forgotten for how many years) to meet that need. It doesn't seem like too big a deal either way.

This is reinforcing my opinion that we should not leave the UK. I genuinely asked that question because I thought there might be economic issues I wasn't aware of. Apparently not.

Voting for independence as a means of protesting against the current government seems like a really bad idea.

OhBugger A professional practicing Celticist What the feck is a professional practicing Celticist, outside academia, and does it have a practical application?

The current scholarly consensus is that the pre-Gaelic speaking inhabitants of Northern Britain spoke a Celtic language that may have been a branch of or related to Brittonic. Nobody believes in the wilder theories like Basque any more

Because obviously Pictish origin names could never be Gaelicised, like many placenames in Scotland...

I assume you are focussing on that relatively brief period in Scottish history where English speakers in Scotland referred to their land as terra Anglorum et in regno Scottorum? Its hardly a sound basis for inflicting Gaelic on the entire country in a very false way later on. Glad to hear there is a new current consensus which obviously excludes any other viewpoints as approaching it from a neutral perspective, but genetic research has surely shown certain alleles found only in Basques and what are believed to be Pictish areas.

Norn was spoken in Shetland more recently than Gaelic in the Central Lowlands of Scotland, so why this emphasis on "Celtifying" Scotland? At the expense of all its other cultural history? It is not a homogenous country, so the Gaelification and Celtification must be for political ends. And it clearly suits the independence movement very well. Not so good when the rest of us have to pay for the SNP's pet projects.

I must admit I'm struggling with the main supposed benefits independence will give. Are these really supposed to be vote winners?

• Free childcare, with the aim of getting more women out to work.
• Higher taxes, with the aim of becoming more like Scandinavia.

Now, one of the things Scandinavia is known for is its many female workers and single parent families. In many ways, the strong welfare state has taken the place of a traditional family, and while obviously there is nothing wrong with one parent families, have the politicians really thought about the social implications of what they are advocating? And do hordes more Scottish women with children want to go out and work full time?

• More immigrants to pay tax. Which presumably means yet more new build housing covering the much vaunted Scottish landscape, which in certain parts of the lowlands, resembles American towns more than anything any native or tourist would associate with Scotland or give any credit to?

• Higher taxes? This is really supposed to be a vote winner? I already pay quite a lot of my salary in tax, and now I'm to be castigated for not paying even more of it. I could understand it if I lived in a well run country like Germany or Switzerland, where we got things everyone could benefit from such as pavements and maintained roads, but in Scotland I have to pay yet more money so more poor people can benefit from it. So the question arises, why is it being promoted that Scotland has so many poor people who are seen as being incapable of supporting themselves now and in the future, and how can such a country possibly ever be successful?

• I have actually seen it promoted as a vote winner that Scots die earlier than English, so we will make savings on pensions. So presumably this relies upon Scots continuing to be less healthy than the rest of the UK - again, and this is supposed to be a vote winner?

It drives me mad too. Gaelic signs on the east coast!..... meanwhile the potholes grow ever deeper. Perhaps we'll get signs saying, 'Mind the potholes - sorry we have spent the money that could have gone on repairing them on gaelic signs' in Gaelic.

I have read that paragraph with the alleles in it about four times and am still none the wiser as to what you're trying to get at. But any attempt to correlate genetic data with historical linguistic developments is profoundly problematic and doomed to methodological failure.

As for political and infrastructural support for Gaelic, it's hardly an SNP project - there's been cross party support for Gaelic for decades, and the major advances came under a Labour administration. I'm all for supporting Scots and other minority languages and cultures too - but there's no need to devalue Gaelic and its relevance to do so.