Why is Scotland so different?

[Indiestarr]

Does anyone have any insight? Presumably Scotland has the same post-industrial decline and deprivation issues as the north east of England and Wales, and yet their vote was pretty much the complete opposite of these areas. How is it they are almost uniformly progressive when the rest of the UK (NI aside) is anything but?

What made me think of this was the lady interviewed on the pm radio 4 programme a few days ago, who was I think from Boston Lincolnshire??, who said she isn't racist but when all your neighbours speak a different language to you and your DC is one of the few with English as first language in their class, you can't help but feel that there are too many immigrants.

All the middle class luvvies, upper echelon academics, people whinging because a few hundred thousand might be knocked off their million pound London apartment seem to be oblivious to those on zero hour, minimum wage contracts whose amenities are stretched to the limit by large numbers of incomers.

And being surrounded by people not speaking your language is not a situation most people would choose. Surely you are more likely to feel included in society if you can understand what others are saying.

Never had an issue with people not speaking my language. Some of my closest friendships started with signs & charades, listening & teaching each other a few words & phrases of our languages developing then into proper conversations.

X,.

Sorry, as you were, not sure what happened there.

Most CAN speak English in London, I am thinking of being on the tube and not hearing English spoken, I must be visiting at a different time of day to the rest of you.

London is a major international city. If it wasn't full of people speaking different languages something would be seriously wrong.

MissMargie

If you are wanting to protect those on zero hours, I better hope you voted REMAIN.

EU law is actually more on the side of the employee than UK law. The European Commission actually reprimanded the UK because of the zero hours contracts before, and the EU is proposing better rights for zero-hours workers.

See it this way - the EU always veers a little to centre-left. If you have a terribly right-wing UK government, the EU could actually protect people from them a little. But we won't have that protection once we leave the UK. Must please the Tories though.

I live in a very ethnic part of Glasgow.

The closest primary school's school roll is 98% English as an Additional Language. Our catchment primary (not the closest ) is 60% ethnic minorities/EAL with a very high proportion of FSM.

I do not have a problem with this.

I love the vibrant community within which we live. Ds' primary school dealt with the languages brilliantly - as an asset rather than a problem - and his secondary is proud of the many nationalities and languages within it and has awards for being an International School from the British Council.

As it happens, almost none of the "ethnic minorities" at ds' primary school would be affected by Brexit as they are mainly from the Indian subcontinent.

Maybe a higher percentage would be affected at his secondary (a few more Poles, some Italians, a cohort of Roma) but not many.

Yet I don't feel threatened by the fact that I often don't hear English on "my" local shopping street. That I might be the only white face on occasion. If I did, that's my problem, not theirs.

So I don't buy the argument that Scotland voted differently because of a lack of immigration. Glasgow is affected by immigration - yet managed to vote a resounding Remain and voted Yes

Well to really understand if the areas of Scotland were more pro Brexit in higher immigration density areas we'd have to split the vote-count into smaller units than Glasgow, Edinburgh etc.

Munch that makes no sense and is to completely miss the point. Who are you defining as an immigrant for one thing?

As I said previously the only area I think of as having a significant ethnic or non-British immigrant population is Glasgow and the surrounding area. Glasgow itself is 600k population and Greater Glasgow is 1.5 million but 2.5 million if you include the "home counties" equivalent of the commuter belt. It was remain in all areas.

For reference the whole population of Scotland is about 5.5 million with about 1.5 million in and around Edinburgh and about 500k in and around Aberdeen. That leaves 1 million to spread around the rest of the country, but even that is concentrated in Stirling, Dundee and Inverness.

that's not an analysis of voting patterns though is it? We can assert that Scotland does have some immigration (undeniable) and is inherently more tolerant but we'd need to see comparisons of areas in England, Wales and Scotland with similar levels of the same categorized types of migration & tie that to voting in the same exact area to really be able to conclude anything properly. As a theory though, yay Caledonia!

Glasgow South (where I live) and Glasgow Central (adjacent - and probably has the highest concentration of immigrants as it includes Pollokshields East and Govanhill) both voted strongly to remain, with the highest turnouts in Glasgow.

Munch I assume everyone is not as much of an anorak as me which is why I tend to steer clear of all the detailed analysis in these discussions. However it is available at understandingglasgow.com and centreforcities.org. Glasgow population make up is in lots of ways similar to London and voted similarly in the referendum. Both sites look at other Scottish and English cities.

The most Eurosceptic part of Scotland was Moray in the North which is sparsely populated and almost exclusively white Scottish. Here the vote was 50/50.

Wasn't that trend actually fairly well reflected in parts of England too, where very white areas with few immigrants were staunchly Brexit. I know there were some exceptions e.g. Boston

I think so statistically and perhaps reflects the fact that UK wide polling gave sovereignty not immigration as most people's primary reason for voting Brexit.

statistically
just maybe the areas with few immigrants (please do not call them very white areas - as that is insulting and ignores the fact that Europeans are mostly white) had OTHER reason for voting to leave

• just maybe it was not racism but a desire to cast ourselves free from the EU superstate

and just maybe we can cope on our own with neither vast injections of EU money (we have very little) or financial services jobs. That does not make our vote any less valid or thought about.

It waa short hand typing on a phonew, I'd meant to put quotation marks round to reflect the fact that it's normally how these areas are described. I also didn't say why I simply commented on the trend relative to moray.

Wind your neck in.

And I actually said "very white areas with few immigrants" which in no way excludes white European immigrants.

Interesting. So regional areas with low pop voted leave- so could be older people who remember being independent of eu

I've just looked online at Euro immigration stats for2014 and uk is roughly double other eU countries, at 600+ thousand , Germany has 800+. But then it wanted more immigration.

Interesting. So regional areas with low pop voted leave- so could be older people who remember being independent of eu

The old/young voter divide is grossly exaggerated.

I believe the correct analysis is that whilst a larger %age of younger voters voted remain due to the fact there was a far greater turn out by older voters the actual numbers of older voters who voted remain is higher than younger voters who did.

In other words disgruntled younger remain voters should aiming their ire at their contemporaries who didn't bother voting at all.

Glasgow population make up is in lots of ways similar to London and voted similarly in the referendum. Both sites look at other Scottish and English cities

Edinburgh voted 74.4% well ahead of Glasgow.

Why so condescending re Scotland Claig?

"The English don't like being bossed about by anyone. We are a rebellious, independent, non-conformist lot."

So interesting how nationalistic talk purposefully ignores class differences in the name of presenting an imaginary cohesive population 'the English'.

Not sure about the working class but i have to laugh at the thought of the English middle classes being rebellious and non-conformist. H

Soundbites is about right.

I am not being condescending. I think there is a difference in state vs independence, socialism versus liberalism as shown by named person etc

'Not sure about the working class but i have to laugh at the thought of the English middle classes being rebellious and non-conformist.'

The Brexit vote showed that it was essentailly the English and Welsh working class who ignored the state and the Establishment and the experts and voted out, as did Middle England who are the middle classes who don't like being bossed about by bureaucrats or bigwigs.

Also the newspaper that has been described as "the Bible of Middle England" is the newspaper that is most despised by the political class and inteligentsia, the Daily Mail. It is the paper that is non-conformist against the Establishment, the BBC etc and sticks two fingers up because its readers don't like being told what to do.

If you take the Daily Mail, for example. Nearly all of its readers believe there is such a thing as "political correctness" and nearly all of them are against it because they believe it is a means of control of thought, a Big Brother Orwellian language code. And the majority of those readers are middle class. Among socialists, there is mainly a belief that "political correctness" does not exist and if it does, then it is considered a good thing. The opposition to it is due to its attempt to control thought and to be free from that restriction which is about independence and freedom.