Wings Over Scotland

Do you know what Rev, your maybe not too far off the mark. That would be a terrifying prospect. Although Ian Davidson and Eric Joyce in charge of Defence could be a vote winner.

My eyes, my eyes!!!

Please post a warning if you’re going to put up pictures like that.

It is a scary thought. Can you imagine Lamont at the Whitehoose?

@ Juteman, pmsl I just spluttered coffee all over my iPhone when I read that, Barak dae ye no want tae buy some ay oor steel fur the new bridge yees are building, eh mags whit dae ye mean we don’t dae that type oh steel.

I suspect in the event of a yes vote the current Unionist parties will simply tear themselves apart. Lamont, Rennie, and the rest will become utterly deranged and lurch so far to the right they’d make Ukip look quite rational. I’d be looking to Denis Canavan and the those on the old fashioned left to reform a labour party most folks would not fear being in charge. Career opportunists like Sarwar would make a pitch to join, but frankly I wouldn’t bother – I’d want to rid myself of the dead wood.

Yeah, I mean how can you respect a politician with a tiny epiphany?

There is some fear with the Scottish electorate that a newly independent Scotland would mean a forever SNP government. Hence all the attacks on AS being a dictator Mugabe/Stalin et al. It has to be driven home by the YES Campaign and Independence minded people that the Scottish elections would continue in 2016, so vote in whoever you want. I think there will be upheavals (infighting?) in all the parties after a YES vote (less so SNP) as I would think many of those Westminster MPs based in Scotland will be wanting to continue a political career (changing gravy trains) in Holyrood. Labour may continue in Scotland as Keir Hardie socialists but the SNP have to be careful not to take the place of the Tories by default.

Whuuufffff (grabs ankles). Hold on a sec (hyperventilating intae a bag). Jeez, that pic’ll give ye nightmares.

Actually, when you have a wee think about it there’s something to this. Are we afraid that should we gain independence we’d be stuck with crap politicians in perpetual moanin’ faced opposition? I have a wee theory of my own (bear with me here).

We’ve already seen the birth of breakaway groups in both Labour and the Libdems who have come out in support of independence. Could we actually be seeing the birth/rebirth of these parties? Is it possible that the further down the referendum path we travel these parties will clean their own houses of Westminster stink? 

The quality of the opposition leaders is extremely poor on purpose. The power behind them wants us to think Scotland is incapable of producing able politicians. Of course the SNP gives the lie to that.

@Major Bloodnok
I’ve suspected for some time that one or two of our female politicians do indeed have tiny epiphanies.

Some horrible thoughts and images!
I agree that some of Labour’s more able figure might be inclined to return if their place at the Westminster trough is terminated.
Elsewhere, Charles Kennedy would be a welcome addition – but things don’t bode well for the Tories. Any party who would be strengthened by David Mundell is in trouble.

Visualise role reversal at FM Question Time, post – independence. 
 Labour has formed a coalition (no matter with which other party) at Holyrood in order to govern. Lamont as First Minister, Bailie as Health Minster,and Baker for Justice.
Alex Salmond posing questions to Lamont! She would be off on a long-term stress sicky within a month. Who is/would be Lamont’s Deputy? Baillie?
Then what about the big beasts curran-tly at Westminster if they decide to preside at Holyrood. I doubt that they would comfortably morph-y into Holyrood and its meagre financial rewards in comparison to Wastmonster, and there are only so many placed jobs that can be magic-ed at Glasgow City Council.
My crystal ball predicts that in the event of a Labour controlled government at Holyrood Lamont would sub-let the government of Scotland via an OLEO to the big beasts at Westminster be it Labour or Tory.and so all would be back to normal. And Lamont would have skillfully avoided ever having to express her policy on Trident. “We have let out a contract on government management and we must let the contractor get on with it without our interference”.
isn’t that something like what we had prior to the SNP gaining control at Holyrood?
 

Rev,
Interesting post today. I took part in telephone canvassing on behalf of Ayr SNP prior to the local elections. Whilst the questions we asked were primarily about the local elections and voting preferences the last question was about the referendum and whether those canvassed would consider voting yes.
Bear in mind this was Ayr – hotbed of Scottish Conservatisim – but several people I spoke to who were either “no” or “undecided” cited their concerns that whilst SNP government were competent (yes even grudging acceptance from tories!) who else amongst the Holyrood parties could form a credible government of an independent Scotland.
My conservative voting mother-in-law also expressed this very same thing to me yesterday.
It seems by their very incompetence the Better Together Holyrood allies undermine the very idea that we could govern ourselves in some of the electorates minds. Any neutral observer of FM’s Questions would often be hard pressed to disagree.
It is one further hurdle of the “too stupid” argument that we have to overcome.

I said Months ago the best case for the Union was “Do you want Johann Lamont to represent you on the world stage?”

I’ve had some time to think about it and came to the conclusion that Scottish Unionist parties are suffering from a dire lack of capable representatives because they are Unionist parties. Thier best and brightest run along to Westminster at the first opportunity.

In a new Scotland a lot of our best politicians would no longer be welcome in Westminster and would have the opportunity to come to Holyrood. Can you imagine a Scottish Liberal Democrats party in Holyrood lead by Charlie Kennedy? Labour might even find themselves led in Scotland by Brown or Darling!

The Tories are still screwed though!

Anyway, I’m fairly sure that a Yes vote will lead to an SNP majority in 2016. I’m equally sure we wont have the SNP in perpeptuity but the Unionists will take years to sort themseves out. And the first step of that, as in the aftermath of the 2011 Landslide, will be to replace the leaders. I could even imagine some of the current leaders will be shown the door after a yes in the referendum as thier parties will not hang around until 2016. (My tip is Labour with both Sarwar and Curran itching to stab Lamont in the back!)

I see that Kenneth Roy is working on the principle that when you’re in a hole, keep digging:
 
http://www.scottishreview.net/

@Willie
 
I think that talented people in a range of different professions might well be tempted to stand for a independent parliament at Holyrood.  Remember that in a independent Scotland there would be a lot more powers and also much more responsibility.  In Scottish politics over the last four or five decades a lot of lawyers have represented all the major parties.  This included politicians like John Smith, Donald Dewar, Ming Campbell, Winnie Ewing, Nicola Sturgeon, Malcolm Rifkind etc.  If we only have one major national political chamber then the quality and level of debate should gradually rise.

Like most people I’ve heard others mention that their vote for the SNP was purely to stop the kakistocracy of Iain Gray and his friends. In turn I point out that the current leadership of the Labour Party in Scotland is a direct result of the Union and the machinations of the Unionist media.
 
I’d actually given up on Labour till I heard Allan Grogan speak at September’s march. That an ordinary member of the party could speak with more articulation than the leadership, and I don’t mean his message, just his ability to communicate, gave me hope that upon independence there are people in the party who could correct its course.
 
I’m sure that there will be a realignment of the parties fighting the 2016 election, and while the SNP continues it will find some members leaving to take up, what they see, a more natural home.
 
The Left is in crises at the moment: Labour has abandoned that position and the SSP Solidarity split saw the loss of all ‘Radical’ Left representation in parliament. (I hate labels btw).
 
The SSP and Green involvement in the YES campaign does offer them a chance to expand their electoral base before the 2016 election. For two years they will be delivering the same message as part of a larger and better financed organisation and, by highlighting their distinctiveness and their ability to participate in relevant politics, they can make more of an impression than they currently do. The caveat here being the Unionist media’s attempts to ignore them so that they can portray YES Scotland as an SNP vehicle.
 
Labour will survive the YES vote but I think that it will be a much reduced party. We can only hope that it will not be run by the likes of Richard Baker.

You know, it seems to me that you’re far more likely to get the Lamonts and Baillies in charge if you stick with the status quo than if you vote for independence as some voters will see them as just about competent enough to lead a parliament with limited powers. 
With independence, I think the opposition parties will be forced to re-group and re-establish themselves, not least because there will be the issue of having enough funding to keep themselves going and because these parties may split in the run-up to the referendum.  Would the Gordon Browns and Douglas Alexanders be happy to sit back and let Richard Baker run the finances or say, Kezia Dugdale run the foreign affairs of an independent Scotland?  I think the Labour Party, if it wants to survive in Scotland and attract funding, will ditch its own chaff.
Another issue is “people power”.  The electorate is presently mobilising and exerting its own power at this time and will gain in strength over the next two years.  They may not be  keen to go back to being led by incompetent politicians in the future – we might even see more independents standing for election.
Then there’s our own electoral system and fixed term parliaments.  It’s not that easy to get an outright majority and you can be out again in 4 years so if you want to be re-elected, you’re going to have to be good.
The point is, that in an independent Scotland, the majority of the electorate will  live within around 40 miles of the Parliament, so the politicians can’t hide from us as they do at Westminster. 
People might want to take the view that it’s not how our politicians manage us that’s important, it’s how we manage our politicians.  I think independence will force them to up their game as it will be hard for them to attract funding to keep themselves going if they don’t.
And let’s not forget the Civil Service – they keep things going irrespective of what brand of politician is in charge.  With independence, there’s the possibility of many able Scots currently working in the Civil Service in London to bring their expertise home and for many new Civil Service jobs with good career paths to be created in Scotland – which is good news for our kids!
So, I wouldn’t be put off voting for independence on the grounds the current opposition politicians are incompetent – I don’t think they’ll be there for very long.
 

@Jeannie
 
I have to say that I would not want Gordon Brown anywhere near the finances of an independent Scotland!  I lost a lot of respect for Brown when he did not have the decency to personally congratulate Salmond in 2007.  He regarded Scotland as his personal fiefdom and power base.  Brown also started talking about a Britain or British day, British jobs etc and he turned to the right wing significantly in his last 20 years in politics. 

@Jeannie
 
So what you’re saying with regards to Richard Baker is that a waste of space has filled a vacuum.
 
I agree with you that after independence no sane person would let the likes of Baker, Dugdale, Lamont et al near government office. The parties will go through a period of adjustment.

@mutley79
No, like you, I wouldn’t want Gordon Brown anywhere near a Scottish Parliament.
What I think is that the people who are influential within the Labour Party will want it to survive, so are likely to wield influence behind the scenes to remove the incompetent and inexperienced from positions of power, in order to make the party electable again in Scotland.  I would hope that by now Gordon Brown might be aware that he’s a bit of a toxic brand, even if Alastair Darling hasn’t realised it yet.

Having watched FMQs I kind of concur.
 
As far as I can see the main attacks of the Unionists are “don’t trust Alex Salmond” but also

“We can’t have Independence, thinking for ourselves is H A R D !”

good point…

Had a conversation on FB with a friend of a friend who thinks independence will just be a big embarrassment for Scotland.

Further, within the same conversation a friend of his stated she would vote ‘no’ because she didn’t want an SNP dictatorship. She did concede the point I made that at the moment we live in a practical dictatorship with a government very few people in Scotland voted for.

I should reproduce the conversation for you all somehow. It was interesting to see the fear and misinformation in their thoughts.

@muttley

If the hat, and the frock, fits…

@Jeannie

I think that a lot of Labour MPs will just retire on their generous pensions, and if you’ve ever heard some of them you’ll know why. The title MP is not quality assured.

I don’t think that the Libdems will survive independence. People talk of Charles Kennedy as someone who could save them but I don’t rate his abilities that highly. The man’s never held down a real a real job, he’s just another career politician, and his unfortunate alcohol addiction makes him unreliable.           

@Graham

“Surely he can’t be dismissed by SNP sockpuppets as a unionist stooge.”

Apart from the Scokpuppets thing its a very well known situation that good government needs good opposition, but like many here have already stated, the good debaters and thinkers are sucked into the Westminster bubble for the higher wages (and prestige).

This is the career path that is laid out before them and Holyrood is just a sideshow.

But if Scotland is independent and the Holyrood parties able to function for themselves then inevitably the voices that can provide guidance will come to the fore.

At the moment their entire party thinking is dictated from Westminster, this must surely put off people who would otherwise be engaged and productive within the parties.

I dont think we have anything to worry about on the independence front.

Oh and on the Sockpuppets…

Very bad idea. You are playing with matches and a very big tank of petrol.

As far as I remember, people said as much about the Nazi party (talk them, give them a few votes- they’ll sort out the commie’s). The problem is that when they got into office the changed the rules so that Germany became a de facto Dictatorship. 

Funnily enough the cracked down also on press freedom. Earlier today I got bounced from an article in the Guardian for suggesting a name change to the author- SLEVERIN Carrell. I do not know, but it hut a raw nerve there, I think.

I have post 3 times, make an apology but also stating it was unfair how ALex Salmond could be described as everything under the sun, but critiiscism of other would not be tolerated. 2 so far have mysteriously disappeared.

Rem acu tetigisti, RevStu.  The ideal that SLab might govern an independent Scotland is, has been and always will be the best argument  against Scottish independence.

I can’t hold in my despair any longer at the latest effort from Kenneth Roy over at Scottish Review today on Hurricane Sandy. At least in this piece Roy has progressed from making a cheap and tasteless joke about the Americans to merely insulting them. Having said that, there is something tasteless about quibbling over the numbers who die in natural disasters, or about the number of homes that are destroyed, or the value of the damage done. I don’t think that this kind of disaster-competition reflects well on any of us so I’m happy to leave that to people like Kenneth Roy.
 
I’d also rather not be associated with any discussion that even implies that the Americans shouldn’t make a fuss about the tragic loss of 64 of their fellow citizens on the grounds that not quite enough of them have died compared to other ‘genuine’ disasters. It reminds me of a variant of the old line, usually attributed to Stalin: ‘a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic’.
 
Roy tells us that he was in Portobello in Edinburgh when Hurricane Low Q hit us in January 1968. I was in Edinburgh that night too, about six miles from Portobello. Our family lived on the top storey of a run-down tenement. I remember it being very windy that night, but, in truth, then as well as now, there was nothing unusual about that in Edinburgh at that time of year. What was different that night, though, was that the winds seemed to get stronger.
 
The reason we appeared to be “stoical” as Roy puts it, wasn’t so much because our ability to deal with it or our reaction to it was superior in any way compared to the “over-reaction” that Roy attributes to the Americans, but because there wasn’t 24/7 saturated news coverage in those days to capture, with immediacy, the wide range of public and official responses. For example, I can remember my mother that night, pacing the floor with worry, and I’m sure she wasn’t alone that night in the households of Edinburgh or elsewhere.
 
Notwithstanding that, Roy’s ill-informed comments do a huge disservice to the millions of New Yorkers, and others on the eastern seaboard, who have been stoical in their response to Hurricane Sandy. The irony here is that much of this stoicism was not visible on the TV screens, providing the 24/7 news coverage that Roy bases his own comparative assessment on to reach his conclusion that, compared to Scotland in January 1968, the Americans have “over-reacted” to Hurricane Sandy.
 
And before we Scots get on our high horse over the alleged “over-reaction” of the Americans to the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, maybe we should remember that it’s only two years ago that Scotland’s transport minister, Stewart Stevenson, had to resign in the wake of the hysteria generated in Scotland over a couple of inches of snow on the roads.
 
Things have changed a great deal from the late 1960s, including how the media reports on Hurricanes, an obvious fact that’s conspicuously absent from the misty prism through which Kenneth Roy is reconstructing these events. Something else that’s conspicuously absent from Roy’s piece, which might help us to better explain American “over-reaction” to Hurricane Sandy, is the effects of Hurricane Katrina in the US in 2005. Then again, only 1,800 Americans lost their lives in that Hurricane, so I suppose you can’t really call that a “major disaster” either, not compared to ‘authentic’ major disasters.
 
But that raises the question: what is the appropriate threshold of human deaths before a disaster is to be classified as “major”? 5,000? 10,000? 50,000? 100,000? And who is to arbitrate on this? Perhaps the UN should set up a classification system? Something along the lines of:  less than 5,000 deaths would be a mere local disaster; 5,001- 10,000 deaths, a mini-national disaster; 10,001-20,000 deaths an average national disaster, 20,001-50,000 deaths a slightly above-average national disaster; 50,001-100,000 deaths a higher than above-average national disaster; but only when there are 100,001 deaths or more could we authorise a disaster being classified as a “major” disaster. And, of course, the “over-reaction” of a nation would only be permissible in major disasters.
 
In fact, had Kenneth Roy done a modicum of research beyond the limits of his homespun philosophy on disaster classification – little more than typing a few keys on his keyboard –  he would have understood that President Obama was probably right to classify Sandy’s effects as a “major disaster”:
 
dspace.udel.edu:8080/dspace/bitstream/handle/19716/674/PP304.pdf?sequence=1
 
ec.europa.eu/agriculture/analysis/external/insurance/definitions_en.pdf
 
But why let such matters get in the way of the important business of disseminating ill-informed opinions into the public domain? As for the opening point in Roy’s concluding paragraph:
 
“There is politics behind the American storm too”.
 
No shit Sherlock, and at the time Sandy struck, the Presidential election was all of seven days away! I look forward to Roy’s next piece, when no doubt he’ll be telling us that he’s discovered the moon.
 
There is a space, and there must be a space, for humour (and politics) even in this tragic situation. But it requires a more subtle tool than a sledgehammer. I never thought I’d hear myself saying this – and to illustrate this point as well – but try Frankie Boyle’s survey of the devastation wreaked by Sandy, on twitter, for example:
 
“Shit, New York looks like it’s been invaded by the Americans”.

Arbroath
 
Where is the Major?

I think it would be potentially very damaging to welcome the likes of Darling, Brown, Rifkind back to politics in an independent Scotland. These are individuals that have only contributed lies, scare stories and propaganda in regards to Scottish autonomy. These people should be allowed nowhere near positions of power due to the very fact they have for years conspired against the best interests of Scotland. They cannot be trusted and I imagine they would do there best to negotiate as poor a deal for Scotland as possible and try and run Scotland into the ground and say I told you so. These are people that in some ways were happy with the financial collapse of the banks due to the fact they had Scotland in there name, i can still remeber the glee on the faces of the unionists when the RBS group needed bailed out, great ammunition which they could transform into a very effective scare story by an all too obliging media. 

Of course the likes of Lamont, Rennie, Baker come across as intellectual pygmies completely out of there depth but at least they may have an excuse for there behaviour. The individuals in thew know should all be exposed in some Panorama style documentary exposing the lies and misinformation that the Scottish people have been spoonfed for decades by Unionist politicians and there complicit and obliging media. I for one could never ever vote for any politician that actively campaigned against the interests of Scotland. 

Shouldn’t the line be that by voting yes in 2014, Scots would be ensuring that the deeply corrupt, crypto-medieval construct at Westminster which so dominates and infects the polity will get the kick up the backside it has needed for decades, if not centuries?

I’ve become increasingly convinced that once independence is achieved (which I of course regard as a “good thing”), the logical concomitant of that step is the gradual unravelling of the UK system, which will also be a “good thing” for rumpUK. I wouldn’t be surprised to see an existential crisis in the creaking Westminster system once the “current” UK ceases to exist.

With respect to Scotland post independence, I can’t see the SNP disintegrating given the afterglow of being the motor of independence…. but… it is probable that sections of its support will spin off and coalesce around other “new” political movements on the right of centre, centre and left. The interesting turf war will be on the centre left, to see whether the SNP establishes itself as the “natural” holder of that part of the political spectrum, or shares it with something constructed from the ashes of Labour.

I can’t see a lot of the dyed in the wool unionists in Labour being able to swallow their pride and join with the SNP (or indeed being welcomed!)… but where else would they have to go? It seems to me likely that an independent Scotland may end up with a larger number of smaller parties, and perhaps sectional or interest group parties and independent members, which as far as I’m concerned is all to the good. The further away and more different from the old Westminster model we are the better! It isn’t possible to construct a progressive beacon on the deeply flawed and indelibly institutionally corrupt foundations of the current UK.

I’m there alright, it’s just difficult to describe….

Don’t worry Major we believe you. 😀
 
Here’s some more nonsense from the BBC about Cameron’s Remembrance day 2014 plans.
I’m still confused as to why 69% of those asked want the 2014 Remembrance day to be something special. They must surely know that Remembrance day remembers the fallen at the time of CESSATION of hostilities in 1918. So why on earth is 2014 anything special to them, IO can understand 2018 but not 2014.
 
Of course there is the more obvious reason, they respondents were all members of the Tory party and they see this as a way to win the referendum in 2014. Hmm, November 11th 2014, is that not AFTER the Autumn referendum?
 
link to bbc.co.uk
 
Just another wee aside.
It would appear that we will be able to tune into a new radio station in a few weeks time.
YESonair will hopefully be live by the middle of November. Let’s hope we can all spread the word as much as possible about this ,very much, pro Independence radio station.
 
link to yesonair.com
 

Do you know why they took the fence Macart?
 
Perhaps they would have been safer taking the gate!
 
Boom! Boom! 😆

YESonair. What a simple, but brilliant idea. 

Thanks Marcia.
On to the second bottle now. 🙂

Ah perhaps indeed, good article. I talked early this year to an ardent Nationalist who was going to vote NO because we don’t have the depth of politicians in Scotland, except for Salmond. So no opposition. He reckoned it needs a new generation.

What I’d suggest is not bigging up the bad ones, but the good ones. I’ve taken to Michael Moore for instance, seeing how he stood up to the SAC and stuck to his guns. And though Davidson is unpopular, my provisional belief is he sticks to the point, and makes sure every witness of fellow committee member does the same.

Then there’s Annabel Goldie, and Ken MacIntosh. Maybe it’d be a good idea to work out a list of the good ones? People who stick to an issue, rather than do the negative stuff the likes of Lamont does. Then there’s that Tory guy who wants to rename the party, Murdo Fraser is it?

Perhaps the simple way is always to praise any Scottish politican when they do well, regardless of party, and even if they make a good point against Independence! Perish the thought. Ones that address the issue, not the man/woman.

@Dadsarmy.
I would think that the ‘decent’ opposition politicians have deliberately stood back from the limelight. Who wants to be associated with the sacrificial numpties? Sensible opposition politicians will be biding their time.

If Westminster was full of competent politicians, we’d not be busy with the business of organising ourselves a referendum on independence.

@Juteman
Yes, good point, there are a lot of quiet MSPs all round Holyrood. Not easy to use that, except on a one to one basis. I’ll mention that next time I’m talking to my Nationalist friend, see what the reaction is. But, perhaps all it needs os for that one poll showing a majority YES,, for them to come out of the woodwork and start manoeuvering.

Just a little SC research I did for any Gruniad posters who might like to use it!

First is his latest request under FOI from ScotGov, so expect some snidey biased and misquoting article about energy, power or nuclear soon:

link to scotland.gov.uk

Second is this (right side):

link to journalisted.com

“10 topics mentioned most by Severin Carrell
edinburgh eu holyrood labour nato salmond senussi snp trident trump”
with Salmond in big big letters, plus:
“Severin Carrell has written…More about ‘salmond’ than anything else
A lot about ‘salmond’ in the last month”

Note that as “Scotland correspondent” Scotland isn’t even in his top 10, perhaps he should be renamed “Salmond correspondent”

Next the biography, suitable material for Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” perhaps.

dadsarmy

I agree, whilst not exactly at the top of my Christmas card list, at least Moore, MacIntosh and Fraser have their political head screwed on right. No matter how hard I try, I can’t help it, I’ve always had a deal of respect for aunty Annabel. I suspect they are at least politicos you could work with.

As for the likes of Lamont, Wee Ruthie, Paddington Mundell, Rennie, Scott, Baillie, Baker, the Alexanders and more than just a few others, a serious industrial pull through is required by their respective party’s members and voters. 

@Morag
It was just on Channel 4 news a few minutes ago, but they didn’t identify the person.  However, the person is specifically identified by posters at the end of Guido’s blog – you’ll need to go to the end of the comments.

Aye Morag, I think if everything goes to plan Iain Overton’s plan that is, then tonight’s Newsnight programme will only be the START of the fun and games.
 
link to huffingtonpost.co.uk
 
Allegedly Michael Crick has talked to the alleged Westminster M.P. at the centre of the Newsnight programme who, unsurprisingly denies the claims and is threatening to take libel action against the BBC.
 
Boy when the brown stuff hits the fan it REALLY hits the fan. 😀

@Macart
I have tried at times to remove my bias and think neutral, don’t know, uncommitted. It’s not easy as if I was to post here the reasons for Independence it would stretch to 1000 pages plus illustrations and maps, probably plus 50 pages of references. It’s a reason I changed my avatar on CiF, so I could be more critical while showing my true colours.

It seems to me that any politico in Scotland who has a genuine interest in Scotland’s future has no choice but to consider the arguments for Indy, and to engage in debate, and if any good at debate, would have to consider those arguments just to try and refute them.

At the very least it’s going to be hard at times for any decent politico to stick to a line of Better Together, if any of those Indy arguments impress them. They’d have to find their own balance of for and against.

Two years. I expect a lot of quiet politicians over that time, running it all through their minds. What’s best for them, their families and friends, their constituents?

Perhaps party leaders should allow all their members to vote and even campaign according to conscience. It’s a big issue, the biggest in Scotland’s history, more so even than Devolution. It shouldn’t be fought on party lines, but on personal beliefs and convictions.

Very much on side with that dads. As Margo pointed out in her March day speech in September, independence isn’t just about the economics its about principle and conscience. It would be a standout moment on its own if each party allowed its members to campaign and vote along those lines. It will however require a catalyst, a final straw moment in our case, I’d say.

I can’t be arsed looking at Guidos comments. Is it Leon Brittain?
Allegedly. 🙂

The “conscience” vote and campaign card is a visible ace up the SNP’s sleeve, that they can use any time they like. Perhaps within the last 12 weeks before the referendum 🙂 Maybe Margo could call on the SNP to do that, and man from SNP he say “YES”.

Labour have a real problem, as their natural ideology is very close to the SNP’s. It’s just Westminster and UK Labour holding them back at the moment.

James Kelly and Richard Baker in charge of something?

Bloody hell Stu, don’t even joke about it… 

Macart,
 
Jimmy Reid famously said, “I didn’t leave the Labour Party, they left me.”
 
He was late in coming to that conclusion, but he was right.
 
What we are asking of Labour voters is a recognition of that truth. Frankly we will never convince their salarymen or their apparatchiks. The likes of Ian Smart and Duncan Hothersal are beyond redemption.  It is the people who Johann Lamont sees as cannon fodder – in the sense that she claims she is actually speaking for them – that we have to persuade.
Quite why she chose to attack the Welfare State etc is a distinct vulnerability for the Labour Party. Apparently it is ‘just Scotland’ that stands against the part or whole privatisation of services. Labour, in London, has accepted it as an inevitability.  (Which would be right, given their obsession with PPI/PFI, and all that jazz extemporisation on how to run an economy from the astonishing Gordon Brown, Who never ever though of changing the rules?). It is as if the party that should stand out most strongly against this nonsense had suddenly had an absinthé binge. They stand for nothing as the hangover wears off.
It seems to me that their tactics are alienating to the electorate. Long may it continue!
 
 

Macart,

I completely agree with you.

Anyone, anyone at all, that is willing to embrace an independent future should be nurtured and encouraged.

For we, as a nation,  are entitled to a plural future – which no official representative of the ‘No’ campaign seems willing to offer us. Are they all going to leave politics and go in a permanent huff? I hope so.

The near silence of independence voices in the other parties is a puzzle to me.

More power to the elbows of Messrs Allan Grogan and Andrew Page! (I had never heard of Andrew Page until you mentioned him, I’ll look him up.)
 
 
 

Wings – the Machiavellian scene that you paint is truly horrifying and plausible, until one realises that such a dastardly scheme would require a high intelligence (not to mention cunning)  to conceive it, let alone implement it so effectively, and that is something the unionists appear to lack even at the highest level.  

@dadsarmy

I’ve only chatted online with Andrew Page a couple of times, but he struck me as a very perceptive and progressive chap. I tend to like his take on a number of issues.

Macart / Rev
To be honest if he’s got a new baby, politics might be the last thing on his mind. When we had our kids I think Indy could have been and gone, and I might not have noticed. Umm, well, maybe not!

I heard kind of a rumour that interesting things might be happening in about 5 days. Just to tantalise, I guess, but I don’t really want to go into it! Lamont’s nukes U-turn may well make it more likely. I do wonder if Lamont is an SNP plant; she’d be the unsung heroine for years until it was deemed safe to give her the Wallace Medal of Honour for outstanding bravery as a double agent.

How about Labour demanding a second question on the referendum?
or
Lamont reverses her anti universality ideas.
or
Lamont apologies at this week’s F.M.Q.’s for all the name calling she has done.
 
Take your pick Macart. 😀

Maybe a poll might get published that shows that 75% of Scots want to live in a country without Nuclear weapons?

Oooohhh no I’ve got tae take that imagery tae bed with me. 😛

No more posts about Scottish Review from me after this but I have to say, just when you thought Scottish Review couldn’t get any worse, it seems determined to continue to disappoint!
 
Scottish Review’s latest contributions to the Hurricane Sandy ‘debate’ remind me of an event that followed another ‘minor’ disaster in New York. The late BBC foreign correspondent, Charles Wheeler, went to New York for Newsnight to make a programme about New Yorkers’ views on 9/11.
 
One of the people he interviewed was a black professor of media studies. The professor told Wheeler that he thought that 9/11 demonstrated how racist America still was. Wheeler looked puzzled. The professor elaborated on his thesis, telling Wheeler: “The New York Times recently published the photographs of all the police officers and fire fighters who lost their lives in 9/11. Hardly any of them were African-Americans”.
 
Of course America is still racist and arguably more racist than it was four years ago. Strictly speaking, the professor was right, of course, but, although Wheeler didn’t press the professor on his argument (at least not on camera), like Roy’s original article, there was something distasteful about it, it kind of missed the point. It was like listening to the type of person who might tell a mother, who’d just received the news that her child had been abducted, that she ought to have looked after her child better. Unfortunately, Wheeler also didn’t point out to the professor that there was an obvious flaw in his argument. For, although it was true that not many of the first responders’ fatalities of 9/11 were African-American, a significant number of them were Hispanic, an ethnic group which, since the 2000 Census, has been the largest ethnic minority in the US.
 
In this ‘debate’ I’m reminded of one of my favourite scenes from the film, Annie Hall, that features, funnily enough, a character playing a professor of media studies. It has one of the most sublime punch-lines in cinematic history. Needless to say, I’m with Woody Allen here, but I think Kenneth Roy would make a good professor of media studies:
 
link to youtube.com