To think its ok to tell voters that businesses will move south if its a yes?

[Loopylala7]

If these businesses do intend to shift south of the border if its a yes, shouldn't the voters know this is a possible outcome? Why is it considered unfair for this information to be out? Can somebody please explain? Am I being a bit dense?

"How dare they gamble my life, and millions of others, on an ideal?"

With all due respect you say that as if yes voters will somehow be unaffected...I live here too, I'm not rich enough that it doesn't matter to me what happens, my DP is a small business owner and that's where both our livelihoods come from.

NanooCov - yes if devo-max was on the ballot that is what I'd vote for, but with a straight yes or no even with the promise of further devolution on a no then I'm a yes.

That's disappointing tabulah. Wish we could roll back to when the question was set. I'm no fan of the SNP but ironic to think that Salmond originally proposed the inclusion of a second question on "devo max" as part of the referendum. Bet Cameron's kicking himself about that now (or if he's not, I hope someone else is).

Sorry, but could we please avoid relaying everything Yes voters have supposedly said that you find stupid in a mocking cod-Scottish accent?

It's all 'wouldnae' this and 'wee yin' that. And 'Scoatland'?! FFS, who says that (barring Shrek, obv).

I'm a No and disagree with a lot of what I'm hearing on both sides, but chortling at people

Sorry, chortling at people's accents is bad form. Not good debating behaviour at all.

But but but - they have published something called 'the wee blue book'! Open season, I say.

Not to me, nicename

Creating a book title in your own vernacular isn't really comparable to using that vernacular as a vehicle for pointing out what you see as someone's low intelligence.

Hmm. I'm Scottish and its weird to me. If I was creating an official documate setting out serious issues, I wouldn't use 'wee' 'aye' or 'naw'.

Its like a London council issuing a document called "council tax, innit mate". Why would you?

Yeah, but the Wee Blue Book was released by Wings, not a local authority or official body.

Why would you?

Because language, especially Scots is a political issue, well it is to some people. It's the whole Scots is a separate dialect or language and not just informal English.

I don't think it's a massively helpful point to be making in that context though because it does perpetuate the nationalist complaining about being oppressed by the English stereotype.

But its still a 'proper' piece of writing. Like writing an essay. Who writes the way they speak?

If I wrote the way I spoke it woule be very very sweary and full of made up words.

No, its like when my highly intelligent and well educated brother does his 'working class credentials' "ah havnae opened a book since school" thing.

Why does he do this? Because he 'rebelled' as a teen, dropped out of school and joined a rock band as he didn't want to be 'posh', as a lot of lads do.

So you can't be WC and well educated? Is it a class thing? Why not go the whole hog and speak gaelic? Someone forgot to tell our father and his brothers that. All proud Glaswegians/Aberdonians who studied hard and worked hard. They didn't feel the need to 'scot it up' to prove how Scottish they were.

I think I have a solution to the whole Westminster problem. Nobody seems to like Westminster. I live in semi rural south central England and there are signs on cars saying 'keep your bullshit in Westminster and we'll keep ours in the countryside'.

However is it really Westminster that is the problem or do people just hate politicians?

Parliament should rotate so that every year it meets in a different place - then Londoners would have the chance to have car stickers saying stuff like 'keep your hot air in Edinburgh and we'll keep ours in the smoke'.

Released by wings you say?

"Muuuuulll of kintyyyyre, oh mist rolling in from the sea something desire dum de dum de dum"

"No, its like when my highly intelligent and well educated brother does his 'working class credentials' "ah havnae opened a book since school" thing."

Hmm...yes there's probably a bit of that, but there is a whole issue with the Scots language as informal English when actually it is fairly distinct.

Part of it will absolutely be to do with the Scots language issue being all tied up with fervent nationalism and making a point about it.

I understood from my Scottish grandmother that English was only properly spoken north of the border.

This is also something that I have learnt from some phonics threads.

Lol, yes the pronunciation in many Scottish areas is much closer to correct standard English than in lots of English areas.

But with word choice and grammar it's not so straightforward, bairn for instance would largely be considered to be an informal word and child formal and correct...but the reason they both exist is because they come from different root words.

Outwith is a Scots word that replaced the original meaning of without as it evolved to mean what it does today.

Plural you...it used to exist in English and as it died out it was replaced by yous in Scotland, which many people really dislike as being slang and grammatically wrong, when actually it's no more wrong than using you for both singular and plural.

There are some different grammatical rules as well, though I couldn't tell you them as it's been a while since I studied linguistics.

Now I'm not saying I agree, but there is a whole movement believing that regarding Scots as informal English and discouraging its written use is part of the whole 'keeping down the Scottish people' thing.

So yes I think it's there for that reason mostly, but I don't think it was the right time or place to be making a point about language.

Sorry, that went a bit long and a lot off topic, language is just something I find interesting.

I say outwith all the time, I only realised I'd picked it up in Scotland when I noticed all the spell-checkers reject it!

Don't apologise it is interesting.

I know that 'Wee' is common Glasgow/West of Scotland usage where you're forever asked 'Do you want a wee bag for that?/ Shall the wee..../Have you a wee....and so on. It's tacked on to a whole host of things as common parlance and not necessarily related to size but more as an issue of attachment I think. I haven't really thought that through properly though although I've noticed it.

I thought also that it might relate in ironic fashion to the Little Red Book of which I have a copy but I don't know the WBB's precise origin. Perhaps you do?

The wee blue book was produced by Stuart Campbell the same man who does wings over Scotland...interesting it might be, but it's completely pro-independence, which is why I'm assuming the use of language is intentionally tying into that.

The little red book never even occurred to me, lol, yeah it could be.

"Wee" isn't used universally all over Scotland. In the North East, they would call it a booky.

that might be too polite for what I've seen it called actually

And in Shetland dialect, the formal du and informal de are preserved for "you".

And yes, Wings over Scotland and its self-published, rather abusive publication, The Wee Blue Book, are the work of a former games reviewer from Bath, who now lives rather nicely off contributions from his fans for coming out with this sort of stuff.

But tabbouleh you are gambling. Massively. Based on not an awful lot. And you are taking that decision from me. So yes, how dare they. It's your choice to gamble, of course. But not at the expense of everyone else. And therein lies the problem, because you are by default with a Yes win saddling that 50% of us, if it is indeed that low, with a future full of uncertainty and inevitable hardship. So why should I, or any other no voter, have to put up with it? Because of an ideal is simply not good enough.

In the event of a 50%ish yes vote it would be odd to go full steam ahead on independence without the support of so many. Has there been any discussion of what will happen in the event of a weak yes?

(In the event of a 50%ish no vote as far as I understand the status quo will change and greater devolution will happen).