To ask all Scottish MNers to join in and work together?

[SantanaLopez]

No gloating.
No blaming.

Just appreciation for a huge turnout and a peaceful process.

Tinker I suggest you hide thread, as I am going to do.A thread started to promote cooperation without gloating and blaming has just turned into a huge smug No justificationfest.

No point in posting on it.

And I said before I wasn't an SNp member or even voter, or a passionate Yes campaigner.

Sorry your kindly meant thread turned like this Santana.

At least it's nearly full. Then maybe you lot can start a 'why No is right' thread and then people can at least avoid it as they will know what they are dealing with :)

fanjo in fairness I was asked to justify my position!

Fanjo, I've justified why I voted no on this thread - because I was explicitly asked to do so by someone accusing us of cowardice and treachery. That's not right or fair either.

Re the stats on young voters - I mentioned this upthread but the sample size was only 14 people. Because of the small sample size it also didn't reflect the geographical split properly so it really is not a reliable indicator. Even when they grouped the 16-24 year olds in to one group (which came out as 51% Yes) it was still a sample of under 100, which means that the result when that close again wasn't actually reliable - as literally 1 person would have changed the outcome of the survey.

toad your EU post was spot on.

area52 a No vote was based on common sense. There were plenty of posts on MN talking about how people were voting No with a heavy heart. 73% of us had already made our minds up 2 years previously so no amount of shiny marketing and cozy 'we can do it' messaging, full of style but seriously lacking in substance or fact, was going to make us change our minds.

As to the lack of access to social media. I find this very patronising. My parents, aunts and uncles and their friends are in their 70s and on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Viber, Linkedin etc with three times the amount of technology in the house than I have.

For those who are waiting for a good proportion of our society to kick the bucket so they can hold another referendum? I wouldn't hold your breath. Scotland may have a lower life expectancy than elsewhere but you'll still be waiting a good 15 years or so before that happens at the very least. Things will have moved on significantly by then.

The Lord Ashcroft poll is not representative of a wide cross section of age groups or society. What is interesting about the Lord Ashcroft poll are the sheer amount of Yes voters who voted because of dissatisfaction with Westminster. That is not the same thing as wanting full on independence. There were in reality few true nationalists as part of the Yes campaign. I was told repeatedly by Yes colleagues in staunch Yes areas that people didn't really want to leave the UK, but they wanted political change.

Many of those votes were protest votes and anger at politicians. Lots of us No voters have sympathy with this. I for one just feel that there are better ways of achieving it than a full scale departure from the rest of the country.

The BBC today showed newspaper reports that very few want another referendum. And who the hell would want to go through that again? The same arguments over and over, division in the country? There was a democratic vote, the No side prevailed by a good margin and the country needs to move on.

I would be interested in hearing from Yes voters when they feel ready about ideas to move past this. It has been a valuable exercise in giving politicians a kick in the nether regions, and invigorating the electorate, but we have to sustain the momentum.

fanjo your comments have hardly helped in the spirit of the thread. All I have seen from most of the Yes posters (not all) has been spite and anger. If you don't feel ready to engage yet that is fair enough, but then don't comment on a thread when we are all really quite sick of the arguments and division and just want to move on.

Livingzuid, I've just started another thread about the what we need to change in our country, what the issues are etc - it's in AIBU.

Of course people are going to explain their positions when accused of cowardice and treachery.

thanks SC I will pop over there instead.

chelsy I think I am with you on Nicola Sturgeon tbh. She speaks very well and I had great respect that she stood there and took all the questions when AS had disappeared all night long and should have been the one to do it, not her.

You can hide the thread but you will still need to provide well thought out, well informed answers to the questions that people have raised if you want to change their minds.

I have hardly been on thread and didn't call anyone thick or anything else.

For the record.

If there is a referendum in future, presumably there will be considerably less oil left for Scotland to rely on.

Yep Fanjo I'm off to, of course I'm angry but at no point have I called No voters cowards or disrespected anyone for voting no. And re older people, the statistics speak for themselves... All age groups under 73 had a majority of yes. And I didn't say Scotland received more under the Barnett formula because they put more in....I was just stating a fact to counteract all the misconceptions some Englisg people have about subsidising Scotland. That have even appeared on this thread and hardly anyone has challenged. It won't matter now anyway because thanks to the No vote the Tories will cut this anyway. So yep Fanjo still being shot down eh, let them all rejoice in the No vote together ...

I hope this can be put to bed once and for all to be honest. I don't think another referendum would be helpful. Yes or No this whole thing has been very upsetting for everyone and unless it was going to be a 90/10 split( which I don't think will happen) then I don't think it'd be worth it. After seeing how upset people are about not getting the result, I wouldn't want to enforce that on almost half the country.
I'm shattered with the whole thing. People need to remain politically engaged and work out the best way to go forward.

fanjo you yourself said you needed to change your language earlier in the thread.

tinkerball if the majority across all age groups had been a yes aside from 73 then we would be having a very different discussion right now. 87% turnout from everyone voting is the only reliable statistic we have and the majority of the population are not over the age of 73. It is unfair to say the No vote are celebrating. I haven't seen any huge street parties.

clarabumps I agree. The whole thing has been sad and damaging but I am pleased that people becoming more engaged again is it too early to pray for a change in leadership across all 3 parties in London before the next election

45% of people in a region wanting to leave the country is a very bad thing indeed. I would love it if it caused the government to take measures to make everyone, or, at least, as many people as possible, see benefits of remaining in the Union. I'd also like to see the rivalries between England and the other countries calm down, and perhaps, say, supporting the other home countries in sporting events and taking pride in other regions' cultures.

One can hope.

Stop picking on things I said and generalising them out of context, thanks. Someone misunderstood me and I explained. Dont make it look like I used awful pejorative language loads.

Thanks.

I said the language had not been in the spirit of the thread which you had agreed with earlier on yourself.

If you choose to interpret that as pejorative that is your own affair.

badlad that's a good post. SC started a hopefully more productive thread here that you might want to repost on.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2190099-To-start-a-thread-inspired-by-but-not-about-indyref?

"45% of people in a region wanting to leave the country"

Not in a picking on you way at all, just because that made me go, oh, interesting? And I'm curious :)

Is that how you see Scotland? A region in a country and not a country in a union of countries?

I voted no and I'm not rejoicing, smug, shallow, cowardly, only worried about my mortgage (don't have one) etc etc. My decision wasn't affected by promises from Clegg, Milliband or Cameron.

I read the white paper and did some research of my own. I reached the decision after a lot of soul searching and heartache, because I did not think it was the right decision for Scotland. I think the price of failure was too high. The response from the yes campaign to difficult questions about crucial issues like currency wasn't very reassuring.

I am very sad about the way this referendum has set people against each other. About the only good thing to come out of it is that more people are engaged and interested in politics.

I used ONE ill chosen word. Then explained.

But my whole sentiment was that people didn't vote Yes from anti English sentiment.

Very much in spirit of thread.

And now goodbye

fanjo for clarification I have found ALL your posts not in the spirit of the thread. Does that help? I am sorry you and some other Yes voters are not around to carry on the debate as of yet as things are still too raw. But I personally not found it helpful to be attacked in the way I felt I was for voting NO, hence my earlier comments about points in general. That you chose to take that personally is, as I said, your affair.

Is that how you see Scotland? A region in a country and not a country in a union of countries?

Come to think of it, no. It was lazy typing. People often ask me about Britain (I am not in the UK), and while I rarely bother to point out the difference between Britain and Great Britain, I always specify that there are four countries.

I suppose I don't see it as a foreign country, now that I give it some thought. I appreciate that that is a contradiction.

My little group of No voting friends met in secret last night to be free to speak our minds and be a bit jubilant. Local Yes supporters had booked, and then cancelled, the village hall for an huge party. No voters are, on the whole, behaving with quiet dignity and relief. I have had to hide the dozens of people who are calling "fix" blaming the old, talking about lies and becoming "the 45". Do you know what, I would love just one Yes voter to say, "Well done. You won the arguments. We lost. We concede." Still waiting.