Indyref 10. The Marathon Continues..

[WildThong]

All welcome

Agree Apple _ my family falls into this category

Oh and must say I'm loving the quote from Crsigmillar/Niddrie Yes group about

"The Pied Piper of Niddrie invites all Yes voters to take part in the march to the short walk to freedom"

Unless the author is of course familiar with the poem and is really a No voter being satirical.

Gordon Brown writes in theGuardian:
www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/12/scottish-independence-referendum-gordon-brown-moment-destiny

If you can get past the first two paragraphs which are all about him, I think it's a good and sober analysis if the situation.

Any thoughts about the Orange Walk? 20 years away from Scotland made me forget about that nonsense. What effect will it have on Catholic voters? How tragic if such nonsense pushed people towards Yes.

criseyde - do read my post.

the yes campaign are stirring up hatred for political ends. If not directly stirring it up - it is being quietly seized upon and exploited.

My other point is simple - there is a lot of good reasoning going on here and i do love a debate. but there are those who are refusing to listen to reason and call those who do not agree traitors, quislings. These are the bright eyed revolutionaries. they are here on this thread. The cost to lives doesnt matter - the ends justify the means. And that is where the slippery slope lies.

Look at the huge tragedies that have unfolded as a result of nationalism stoking race / ethnic based hatred. I will not stand for it in my native England and to see English friends and colleagues get called "english cunts" and to read of children being abused for their accent speaks volumes.

I hope the yes campaigners are utterly ashamed of the company they keep.

If you fail to learn the lessons of history you are doomed to repeat its mistakes.

Facepalm, odd. Facepalm.

There are some great comments on here and the last one this morning. I so don't identify with BT just as many yes supporters don't identify with the SNP. I hate that what should have been a fascinating dialogue with Scotland leading the way for the whole country in terms of modernising governance has descended into a Scottish/English polarised debate. This type of discussion rises above politics. It has to. It's a forever decision, at least in my lifetime. How often are we faced with something as binding as this?

wee blue book-little red book-mein kampf
The former may not be anywhere near as drastic as the latter two (and I am sure does not mean to draw such an association) but this talk of books I should refer to to guide me on Scotland's journey to independence - without questioning the legitimatcy of the contents - has left me feeling very disturbed for some weeks. I would be interested to hear from a Yes vote who has challenged the contents and what their feelings are.

It could never happen here could it...

You really don't see what you are missing here, do you, odd?

An extract from Hugo Rifkind in The Times today:

I’m tired. That’s part of it. It’s hard to convey, perhaps, the sheer, bleak, anxious, miserable, killjoy weariness of being a Scot who thinks “no”. You’re the grit in every bright eye; the pish, as they say, in every bath. All around you is hope and glorious anticipation, and your only role is to ask it to stop. There’s something about that garbled phrase — “vote like you live in the better days of a world” — that just seems to sum it all up. So earnest. So hopeful. Such nonsense.
In Scotland all the good arguments against independence are practical. It’s all very well going on about shared history and cross-border love and the general undesirability of two mixed peoples on a crowded island suddenly having divergent aims, but the simple fact is that nobody north of the border gives a toss. It’s too late. “It’ll be bad,” is the only real argument left. The currency thing won’t work, the businesses will suffer, the money will shrink, the oil might end, all of that.
Project fear? Sure. Because it’s frightening. Imagine Alex Salmond and Alistair Darling in pith helmets, leading a posse of Scottish voters down a jungle path and coming to a fork. “There’s a tiger that way!” Darling would say. “Project fear,” Salmond would retort. “But it’s, um, right there,” Darling would quail, pointing. “Stop patronising Scotland!” Salmond would declaim, and lead the group blundering on. Then all you’d hear was the shrieks.
People who don’t see the tiger are people who don’t want to see the tiger. Deep down, they must know that it is there. It’s not them who trouble me, though. It’s the younger Scots. It’s the ones who just want to live in the better days of a world. Because, amid the nonsense, always, there’s a hook.

I could do without the Orange walk but I hope it will be irrelevant. They are not going down Princes Street.

I have heard Yes is bussing in/rounding up its supporters. I hope they are and I hope they make a huge fuss and disrupt it. Whilst one might not like The Orange Order it is a long established and legal organisation. They are a right to express their views whether the Nats like it or not.

Cris - please - enlighten me as I am sure i have missed something critical

Roseformeplease

I understand that the SNP sought advice (had training sessions even) from an American spin doctor who told them that the most positive candidate generally wins a US presidential election. Hence the almost relentless positivity of the Yes campaign and the flip side which is to call all your opponents negative.

Rose - Spot on - there is always a hook. a sharp pointy and gleaming hook. Glistening with dark purpose.

Tension There's no attempt to be patronising / intellectually superior - it's way too important for that. The 'No' side are labouring the economic points & vast weight of independent opinion because so many prospective Yes voters are still in denial and intent on sleepwalking to separation.

Don't agree with Brontolo that this will have little effect. The public have not been given this volume of opinion or level of detail previously.

Point is very, very simple, odd. A thread or so back a poster (can't remember who) was pilloried - chiefly, I think by Phaedra but perhaps also you (?) was pilloried for quoting Nelson Mandela.

Whether or not you think that referencing a very famous quotation necessarily implies a direct comparison between contemporary Scotland and apartheid-era South Africa, is is quite right that any inferred or implied comparison is treated with disdain and contempt. By the very same token it is equally reprehensible to draw a comparison between a democratic referendum and "Bolivia, bader meinhof, the cultural revolution of the 70's in China under Mao or cambodias killing fields."

OnNight - i think you are right - it is in the linguistics.

Everything for Yes is couched in the positive. All the benefits are transformational nouns. Fair, Decent etc

Salmonds speeches are a masterwork of artfully vague linguistics. Milton Erickson was the expert on this.

I very much doubt that Yes is bussing people in to protest the Orange March, given that campaign advice all week has been to ignore them, don't protest, don't give them publicity, don't give them the chance to make Yes look bad... Agent provocateur?

Leaving aside the Yes and No voters and individuals in Scotland for a minute it might be useful to look at who would be the other winners and losers in the event of a YES vote. I am certainly no expert and there are others who know better than I do but from my limited knowledge I would guess at:

LOSERS might be: the Labour party, DavidCam, investors in Scotland, property owners but not landowners, the EU, The rUK, businesses that have to get to grips with a new economy/new labour laws/new tax regime in uncertain times

WINNERS might be: anyone who has bet on a fall in Scottish stocks or taken a short position in finance, hedge funds, Landowners, those who want to see the UK weakened, Russia, anyone with a lot of free cash, China perhaps, (there are resources to be had - possibly cheaply), entrepreneurs, Separatists in other countries, (think Ukraine, Spain), property owners in rUK as prices go up...?

I have no idea - I am just thinking aloud here.

In a way, I wish independence could work for Scotland and the rest of the UK. That Scotland could have its national pride and identity, its own determination and all the rest of it, with nothing going wrong. What I really don't want to see though, is 'Yes' followed by financial disaster. As an English person, I sincerely hope that whatever the referendum decides, it doesn't damage Scotland in any way.

I am not comparing the democratic vote - I am drawing attention to some of the people the yes are attracting and saying this way madness lies.

The self same people have driven prosperous, safe, democracies into hell through ideology, nationalism and hatred. In each case the ends justified the means. It then takes years to put the countries back together.

Should I sit silent or cry out?

Oldlady I haven't been out today. We had a tradesman in this morning who mentioned that he'd seen visible Yes supporters. If it makes you feel better think they are agent provocateurs but I doubt it.

Maybe be it's the Yes "Pied Piper of Niddrie"

Tension There's no attempt to be patronising / intellectually superior - it's way too important for that. The 'No' side are labouring the economic points & vast weight of independent opinion because so many prospective Yes voters are still in denial and intent on sleepwalking to separation.

Don't agree with Brontolo that this will have little effect. The public have not been given this volume of opinion or level of detail previously.

- Particularly in the SNP's White Paper!

You were drawing a comparison between the political context of a democratic referendum and "Bolivia, bader meinhof, the cultural revolution of the 70's in China under Mao or cambodias killing fields."

Please accept responsibility for your own words.

Omg just listening to Jim Sillars on the BBC. "The working class people of Scotland will not be bullied" and foaming at the mouth about bankers being the root of all evil, regarding the opinion of the Deutsche bank economist. The man is a lunatic. The interviewer handled him brilliantly.