Indyref8

[grovel]

ItsAllGoingToBeFine, but who will be Prime Minister? Pretty unsatisfactory changing halfway through. My suggestion was that maybe Cameron, Clegg, Miliband et al agree on a team and step back themselves. It would make the end result a joint enterprise and could prevent years of feuding in rUK.

IssyDee - there is a team of no campaigners on these threads who shout insults at yes supporters.

It is very hostile and many yes supporters have been hounded away.

It doesn't matter if you are articulate, polite and civilised they will still call you names.

But done despair there are plenty of yes and undecided lurkers watching who can see through the no campaigners' silencing strategy.

They want to make this a negative debate.

They want to scare people.

The yes campaign is positive.

Yes will win.

Well I have seen some pretty horrid posts on both sides tbh.

Yes will win

Do you have a crystal ball then?

Weatherall there have been extremely aggressive posts from some people on both sides. Ladycameron got the micky taken because of her tone which was really patronising, not because she is voting yes.

Re negative debate did you bother reading the positive reasons posts?

I've seen plenty of attempts to silence from the yes camp too so stop with the we're being bullied attitude because it's not true.

There were a lot more 'Yes' voters contributing at the beginning of these threads but they keep on being viciously shouted down as 'stupid', 'uninformed', 'racist', 'violent', 'bigoted', 'emotional' and 'neo-Nazis'. People may as well be using the term 'the great unwashed'.

I think things get heated because most of us are directly affected by the outcome and put votes really matter.

I've seen some vitriol from No campaigners, especially the implications that Yes campaigners are naive idiots/latent nazis/too poor to matter/too stupid to vote.

But it's only a chat forum - there's a much bigger debate going on outside.

Ok well I am a no voter and I've never used any of those terms. You obviously haven't seen the previous threads where no voters were hounded.

How about we just move on and discuss the actual issues, rather than fighting yet again about who has been a bigger numpty?

Stat- I wrote a long reply to the 'positive reasons for the union' post.

Thanks for bothering to read it.

I've not seen the level of vitriol from yes that has come from no.

Yes supporters have got annoyed and defensive in response to no campaigners calling us names.

Please show all these supposed posts where yes are calling no 'stupid' 'twats' 'thugs' 'nazis' 'uneducated' 'feckless'? Because I've only sen this level of nastiness from no posters.

Well there still isnt any answer to the questions i posed. So perhaps again...

Yes voters - what do you really think you will get? Because time and again - it has been pointed out by the people with the power to grant these things have said Scotland will not get them.

1. Currency - Currency Union has been ruled out and sterlingisation is against EU membership rules - so Either you set up your own currency and bank and lender of last resort or you cancel the idea of being in the EU
2. Debt - reneging on your debt is against EU rules. A country which has reneged its debt - cannot apply. Period
3. EU - assuming you still want to - you will be at the back of the queue and at the mercy of Spain, Belgium, France and Italy - with nascent seperatist movements who they wish to discourage - what have you got to get in or even ask to get in that they want?
4. Nato - if you want in - you keep nukes where they are. Part of the entry price. But you go to the back of the queue.

All of these things have been guaranteed by Salmond as not changing and every single institution that controls the entry has said NO.

So what will you have on day one that you have been promised as not changing? Do you still buy what he says to you? He spent a fortune of our money to cover up the fact that the advice he claimed to have didnt exist.

Snake oil indeed. Shame on you for thinking otherwise.

So my challenge is on the 4 critical points above - please point to any source to the contrary.

Weatherall - is was you that started the thread about the scrounger baby wasnt it? And that independence would rid you of that???

No, you cannot separate the way the debate is conducted from the content.

No show their true colours by their bully boy tactics. It is exactly this kind of attitude towards Scotland that has caused us to reach this point.

I wasn't referring only to my post Weatherall and apologies if I missed your response as I was rather busy yesterday but to then say we are totally negative is completely false.

I am not going to get in to a who has been meanest pissing contest with you. It's unhelpful, unproductive and a waste of energy.

I got abused in the street yesterday by yes voters. And why can't we try to focus on the debate? It's a reasonable thing for us all to at least try.

I worry for Scotland (and my family living there) after spending time living in France and Italy when the Euro was introduced and the pain that is caused the poorest as prices where all rounded up. Restaurant and the tourist industry suffered as visitors watched their wallets and spent more time in supermarkets than eating out. They already had their infrastructure in place and went directly from one currency to another and had years to plan. The idea that new departments can be set up in 18 months when generally the consultancy time is longer within the red tape that is the public service. As the accountants, solicitors, planners, architects become richer and doing this without a guaranteed currency. How can people not be scared?

Oddcommentator :"He spent a fortune of our money to cover up the fact that the advice he claimed to have didnt exist."

Please could you explain that quote? I haven't heard it before.

Weatherall - is was you that started the thread about the scrounger baby wasn't it

Yes it was

petty I think odd was referring to this story, when AS spent a lot of time and money trying not to reveal the legal advice he'd received re EU membership.

Will the new currency be called "scottish dollars" or "scottish punt"?

Can I put my savings into an English bank to keep them safe while we set up a new country or does my money have to stay in Scotland and lose all it's value?

... and that advice turned out to be non-existent

Annie the Bank of England has agreed to be lender of last resort while negotiations happen, so I'm guessing there will be time to transfer sterling into English branches after 18th.

Then at least you won't be forced to exchange all your money at once at whatever exchange rate is agreed.

weatherall
No one has been shouted down.
We just prefer to post facts, which are far more powerful than smoke.
It's not surprising therefore that you may be feeling overwhelmed.

pettybetty, Alex Salmond basically indicated they'd had legal advice on entry to the EU. Someone did a Freedom of Information act request to have the legal advice released. They spent £20k fighting the request before eventually admitting that the advice didn't actually exist.

Ok, thanks, I'll continue in the hope that it's possible that there can be difference of opinion or sharing of perspectives without shutting down the conversation:

I get that it's easier from an administrative standpoint to continue with the institutions as we have them, so there's some dispute about the extent to which it would be an additional expense in an independent Scotland to set up/transfer existing institutions... however, what I'm wondering is that even the most risk averse of us must be a little bit scared about what happens if we don't rethink how the UK does business.

I'm struggling to see how we can continue to exist in a global market, where other countries can offer cheaper labour. Won't the long term impact of that be that jobs get fewer and fewer and pay less and less, unless something is done to develop domestic production and consumption so that we have less reliance on imports, at the same time as investing to develop better UK exports. It seems to me that most of foreign 'investment' is in the form of asset stripping, INEOS for example are running a massive profit but are cutting jobs and wages.

I'm not a macroeconomist so would appreciate input from those who are. I know the IMF are now saying that austerity doesn't work, yet all the parties are signed up to austerity except the Greens and the SNP. We know that the entirety of the UK growth is down to the London property market, and asset bubbles burst... so it appears that our economic policy favours investment in the form of speculation, instead of investment in the form of industrial development. We are very firmly headed in a direction of travel that is going to increase the reliance of the entire economy on the banking sector. Banking sector crashes come in 9 year cycles, so we've probably got about 5 years to reform the system so that we don't have a rerun (or worse?) of the 1998 crash. But I don't see any plans from the UK government to do this (are there plans that I've missed?)

Why isn't there a will to reform this now?

Who benefits from not reforming?

Wouldn't there be massive income gains for the UK if we also reformed the tax system? Progressive taxation on sales as opposed to corporation tax would ensure that companies like Amazon would be paying into the UK economy - money that could be invested in infrastructure which would then stimulate innovation and encourage competitiveness and quality of exports. On a global platform, the UK isn't competitive as a labour market, but we are valuable as a consumer market - so what is standing in the way of reforming taxation so that the UK gains from the fact that global corps want to sell here.

Argh... sorry if questions are a little all over the place, trying to type with a small person rubbing marmite hands all over my head... Not ideal for forming coherent thoughts :)

Any Yes or undecided voters reading here, yes these threads have got heated, especially late at night, and some posters on both sides have had their wrists slapped.

But what I feel has happened time and time again, is perfectly valid points are made and questions asked of the Yes side, and no reasoned or accurate replies come back. Or we get accused of scaremongering or patronising.

I hope on balance that those of us on the No side have been neither, but many of us are facing huge upheaval in our lives if there's a yes vote, all of us love Scotland and love living here, and none of us wants this catastrophic, sudden split - as someone said upthread, we're all getting pushed off a cliff whether we like it or not and there is no way back. Much better to have a No vote for now, then work on the many valid concerns that have been raised in the campaign to negotiate gradual further devolution.

Sorry for going back a bit, just catching up

200 institutions which would have to be set up.

This is worth a read

www.futureukandscotland.ac.uk/blog/financial-reflections-patrick-dunleavy-independent-scotland-costs-controversy

Also
"A Scottish government spokeswoman said Scotland already had much of the infrastructure of an independent country.

She said: "We are already effectively independent in many policy areas such as health, education, police, law and order, environmental policy, rural affairs and local government - and bodies covering these key areas already exist in Scotland.

"The list published today by the UK government shows just how cluttered and inefficient the UK public sector landscape is. Devolved public bodies will shortly reduce to 113, representing a 43% decrease from a baseline of 199 in 2007.

"It would be wrong to suggest that Scotland would need to replicate many of the bodies on the list such as Public Health England, the British Library or the Wilton Park Conference Centre, and the functions of many other UK bodies could be integrated into existing Scottish bodies.

"And for some of the bodies named in this list, Scotland also already has its own equivalent national bodies, for example we have our own national sporting and tourism authorities.""
[]www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-22993750]]

If you look at the actual list (link above) it is pretty daft. Why would an iScotland need a Royal Mint, for example?

Stat

I am not going to get in to a who has been meanest pissing contest with you. It's unhelpful, unproductive and a waste of energy.

Well of course you would say that, it's not you or your supporters who have been called nazis repeatedly on these threads.

People aren't going to forget how low the no side stooped on these threads.