so it's a no to Indyref2

[HeraldicBlazoning]

And I'm quite glad. My mental health was shot to pieces by the first one.

That free shit isn’t free, we pay for it! Where are the “ free “ laptops? Where are the “ free “ bikes? What happened to the bottle recycling project? What about the fuck up of the ferries? Where is the over 60K given by people for the referendum? Is it lost down the back of a sofa in Bute House? Maybe there is an iron there too...
Nothing is free, it’s just carrots & ultimately we do pay.

Venetiaparties · Yesterday 14:00
I hope the SNP will soon be exposed clearly to the world for the racists they are, along the lines of the BNP they will be consigned to political wilderness. The SNP is packed full of disruptive racists, feeding on hate and division - it is fast becoming a one dimensional hate party. I wish people could see them for what they are.
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They are achieving precisely nothing but more of the same.

Venetiaparties, this is a very serious allegation. You state with great assurance that the SNP is “racist…feeding on hate and division…a one dimensional hate party.”

Kindly therefore supply evidence of this racism, division and hate.

.

It’s so bad to see it happening again. The promises based on emotion not facts. Riling people up.

As Brexit was criticised for making us weaker this will be much worse. People are so hooked on it they can’t see that bigger international threats still exist and this huge division helps them.

It’s such a powerful political stance - blame someone else and no need to do well, just promise utopia. It won’t be. It’ll be poorer and more difficult in reality.

@MarshaBradyo it nearly broke me last time, there's people I know who I will never have the same relationship with again due to the vitriolic behaviour. My issue is I completely accept that they can have this political opinion to want independence and I respect that, however I found it doesn't go both ways and they would not accept the fact I didn't. Which included getting told to 'fuck off to England then'.

I find the narrow-mindedness that it's a straight England vs Scotland thought process bewildering, that some really don't see there's other countries involved!

The supermajority thing was brought up on Kaye Adams’ show yesterday morning, and some of the more thoughtful independence supporters were behind it. If the idea is to make a success of an independent Scotland rather than just scraping a win for its own sake, then the vote in favour needs to be beyond argument or the margin of error. A close ‘win’ on something so profound just leads to continued division (see Brexit), and surely we should learn from the mistakes of the past.

Sturgeon used to set the bar as 60% Indy support for an extended time before launching another Indyref which at least acknowledged the issues with the close splits. It’s a shame she’s abandoned this in favour of a ‘win at all costs’ mentality which will only lead to conflict. If there was a clear, stable >60% support amongst the public for another referendum then the denial of democracy argument might make sense, but while there is no such consensus amongst the public (we all know the quirks of the electoral system that packed that with supporters) I don’t think the UK parliament ’s position is unreasonable. Democracy doesn’t mean Sturgeon getting another referendum to break up the UK every 5 minutes regardless of public support because she didn’t like the result of the first one.

@Honeysuckle16 and@Venetiaparties perception and optics are important though and I would agrue they are walking a fine line. on another mumsnet thread it’s being stated that Jewish people are leaving Scotland (Glasgow) as they don’t feel supported under our current administration.

@Y0uCann0tBeSer10us supermajority is sensible and i agree.
Urkraine voted for independence in 1991 with a majority of 92%.

In what way? I have three Jewish friends living on Glasgow's Southside and I haven't heard any issues. Two are close friends too so I'm pretty sure it would've come up.

They're worried about general anti semitism globally but as far as I know haven't been personally targeted here.

@janeseymour78 have a look at the David baddiel channel 4 programme discussion on here. A poster mentioned that Jewish families were moving out of Glasgow in favour of London and suggested that it was down to a more negative feeling towards them in Scotland. I have no direct experience.

@janeseymour78 I imagine you thought you had a point with that post.

Unfortunately for you, you completely ignored the caveat I included which is below:

"As the Supreme Legislator, Westminster can legislate in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland if needed. But this is a last resort, especially if Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland abuse their legislative powers."

In the case of Northern Ireland, Stormont has been collapsed this time by the DUP. Before that, it had been collapsed by Provisional Sinn Féin and Provisional IRA for three years. And again years before.

It is NOT immoral, illegal OR undemocratic for the UK Government and Westminster Parliament to step in to legislate in Stormont. In fact, the Good Friday Agreement makes it clear that the Westminster Parliament is sovereign and 100% responsible for Northern Ireland. Hence, the GFA states Northern Ireland is an INTEGRAL part of the UK.

The exact same constitutional law extends to Scotland and Wales via their respective Acts Of Parliament where it states Westminster will not normally legislate on devolved powers. It makes it clear Westminster CAN if its deemed necessary.

Otherwise, only MLAs, MSPs and MSs will legislate on devolved issues.

This is well supported in international law in any country in Europe and outside it. So, you flopped here in your attempted point because you were deliberately selective.....

I consider myself fairly clued up politically, but I dont understand this defacto referendum thing at all. Correct me if i'm wrong but there is no proportianal representation in a general election so if the snp and greens take most of the seats in scotland with less than 50% of the vote, which could well happen then
Nicola Sturgeon will call it a yes vote??
If they stand on one issue only then what about education, health etc.. that doesnt matter till independence is acheived ?? will the greens only stand on one issue too?
Even if they win over 50% of the vote (which I cant see) then what .. its still not a legally binding referendum..

I just dont understand her logic.. maybe someone can explain it to me

MichelleScarn · Today 06:49
@MarshaBradyo it nearly broke me last time, there's people I know who I will never have the same relationship with again due to the vitriolic behaviour. My issue is I completely accept that they can have this political opinion to want independence and I respect that, however I found it doesn't go both ways and they would not accept the fact I didn't. Which included getting told to 'fuck off to England then'.
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I find the narrow-mindedness that it's a straight England vs Scotland thought process bewildering, that some really don't see there's other countries involved!

MichelleScarn, I’m very sorry that you’ve had this experience. People in a country finding its way to political change don't need to be personally insulting and divisive. Very many Indysupporters, myself included, socialise and work with others of all political persuasions, and respect each other’s different opinions. All of my large family are SNP supporters and would never insult others’ views.

I don't understand it either @frasersmummy
A referendum looks at number of votes, not 1st pass the post. So will they count up all the votes cast in general election for snp/Greens /alba versus votes cast for Lab/cons/lib dem? How will that work?

Otherwise it's not representative if snp get say 8000 votes in a constituency, labour get 6000, Lib Dem 2500 and cons 1000.
Snp candidate wins but majority did not vote for them🤷🏼‍♀️

The SNP were a bit confused themselves on this point a few months ago, with some of them suggesting that a majority of seats would indicate support for Independence. But in FPTP you can get a majority of seats on a third of the vote, so Sturgeon 'clarified' that she saw it as a majority of votes instead (which as you point out they've never achieved so this is somewhat bold to say the least).

I don't think anyone is pretending it would be legally binding and certainly wouldn't be internationally recognised, but I think maybe the SNP are hoping (against all evidence and historical precedent) that they'll return a massive majority of votes, so they can go to Westminster with yet another mandate. Or maybe they just need to look like they're doing something to keep their supporters on side and drive the gravy bus through another few elections - the SNP do do well out of them after all.

The practical question is what would their manifesto look like. If they are really running on a single issue (which they have to for it to be a 'de facto referendum' with no possibility people were voting for other policies) it should be one line. There should be no policies and no campaigning on anything else (health, education, defence...) and I'm not sure I see that working out well for them as all other parties will have positions on these things. And frankly, it's the other things that people care more about right now.

This is two years off. Maybe the plan is to pray for a miracle that massively boosts support for independence where Brexit, Tories, COVID, cost of living and even Boris Johnson failed. Or maybe she's hoping people will have forgotten by then, and they'll run their usual manifesto so that her MPs can continue to collect their Westminster salaries (but achieve remarkably little) for another 5 years.

On BBC Scotland phone in this morning a caller suggested that Scotlands youth are brainwashed over independence on social media so he sat his 20 year old son down and had the pound shillings and pence chat . ( Father is Scottish business man )
The pounds shillings and pence chat clearly doesn’t happen on Social Media as doubtless it is somewhat boring and wouldn’t put fire in the breasts of the young .

The Scottish Fiscal Commission has stated what the SNP would prefer not to publicly acknowledge that from day one of independence the average Scottish family with a take home pay of £35000 a year would be worse off by around £7300 due to interest rates and costs of imports which would affect wages and mortgages.

High interest rates would be paid by a borrowing Scottish govt as UK institutions could not risk being repaid in a devalued currency . . This will happen from day one .

The present Scottish govt can borrow on the bond markets if it so wishes ,
it does have levers to pull although the ones they pull already have seen over a billion wasted on vote winning projects such as Airports, Trains , The Gupta affair and Ferries so it’s a good thing they dont use this borrowing available to them as they clearly don’t have any fiscal competence. Or in case of Ferries and Mr Gupta didn’t even do due diligence .

The Uk govt also has failings - I’m not suggesting they don’t but
Scotland is a small country population wise and with more spend per head than rest of UK so it’s general incompetence at government level that we are in such a mess .
The free products are all for winning votes make no mistake.

Growth has been stagnant here for over a decade and projected to lag the Uk over the next 50 years .

Annabelindajane, I’m unable to find any link for your comment on the Scottish Fiscal Commission and take home pay after independence. Could you please provide a reference for this?

I am a Scottish businesswoman, having worked as a management consultant and with an Edinburgh Uni MBA. Much of what you write doesn’t bear scrutiny.

For example, an independent Scotland intends to use the pound sterling as currency for the first few years so will not be using a devalued currency. Presently the government balances its accounts every year demonstrating fiscal responsibility and competence.

Nothing the government does comes close to the billions lost by Westminster paying Covid grants to non-existent companies or £44bn on a test and trace system.

Please let’s stick to what is true and can be verified.

No. I don't see how it can work either. I think it's just Nicola trying to placate the nationalist element that are accusing her of not doing enough.

I wonder will the "referendum" they say will happen in 2023 go ahead now. The supreme court have absolutely put the kibosh on the outcome of that holding any significance whatsoever.

Surely one politician from one party can’t dictate to a whole country what they are voting on in a General Election. People vote for hundreds of different reasons .

It’s a strange one and how mad can this one idea be? Are there any boundaries so the people get insight into governance.

The reason she’s making it a one issue election is because if she campaigned based on health, education, public services, the economy….she’d be in big trouble. Independence voters will vote SNP anyway. All those people who allegedly don’t support independence but still inexplicably vote SNP…it will be interesting to see what would happen with that.

I’m not sure how I will explain it all to my 85 year old Gran . That she isn’t to vote like she normally would but on independence. Nicola knows it won’t work just trying to get herself another term on the gravy train.

Exactly. She can claim the vote is based on independence only but she’s got absolutely no proof that’s what everyone is voting or not voting for. Another baseless claim from the SNP - they’re really going to have to change the record.

Exaclty what gives them the right to interpret peoples votes without consulting with each individual.

Let’s not forget she said on national television in 2021 people could vote for her even if they didn't want indy then immediately used their votes as supporters