Minding your own business
Pretty much every newspaper and media source ran with a particular statistic as their headline from the published conclusions of the UK government's consultation on the independence referendum. More or less everywhere led with the 75% of respondents who wanted a single Yes/No question, which is mildly curious because it's not really news – the stated preference of every party and MSP in the Scottish Parliament, and the Scottish Government itself, is already for a single question.
The Secretary of State for Scotland loudly proclaimed that the consultation had therefore delivered a mandate to get on with the referendum on the UK government's terms, meaning a single question as quickly as possible and no votes for 16/17-year-olds. But the respondents to the consultation actually presented a much more significant demand: a similarly large majority of them – 72% – expressed the view that what they really wanted the UK government to do was butt the hell out altogether and give the Scottish Government the power to get on with it.
For some reason, Moore and the Scottish media weren't so keen to draw attention to that particular finding. But it would appear to mean that the electorate overwhelmingly want the Scottish Parliament – the only body which has an actual democratic mandate to hold a referendum on independence at all – to handle the entire matter without interference from Moore and his coalition colleagues.
We look forward, therefore, to the Scottish Secretary and his chums – having made their point and stated their views – keeping their noses out from now on, waiting for the Scottish Government to conclude its own (far more popular) consultation, and make its own decisions about the number and wording of the questions, the timing of the vote and the extent of the franchise. As democrats, we're sure they'll happily comply with the wishes of the people.
Loving it, Alf. BTW, what’s the Scots for linguicide? That’s surely gonna be the first question every alert…
Another figure that seems to have been missed (or maybe it hasn't – I've been ill the past few days so I'm not as on top of the news as usual) is that 71% of those who responded to the question on the voting franchise agree with the Scottish Government (and the UK government, apparently) that it should be based on residency, like the Scottish Elections, rather than the Westminster election franchise. Only 4% back the ridiculous idea of letting everyone in the UK vote on it. So, assuming the Scottish Government's consultation backs this up, then hopefully those two particularly pathetic arguments can be put to bed.
Not only that, but it shows opinion is completely divided over votes at 16 (44% for, 47% against – although they still manage to point out that "more" were against it), so it will be very interesting to see what the figure is in the Scottish Government's consultation (i.e. the REAL consultation).
One final observation – responses from the public are as moronic as you might expect. I hope they're better in the real consultation; and true to form, Westminster are excellent at spinning neutral responses to sound like they back their point.
Oh, and the fact that A Boyd Tunnock of the outspokenly unionist Tunnocks (not sure why Salmond continues to offer people caramel wafers with their tea) thinks the referendum needs to be as quick as humanly possible does not hold much sway with me. And I don't need to know how fat he is either ("As a reasonably large employer in Scotland…") I also don't care about members of the public parroting lines they've heard on the news about "the damaging uncertainty" – this adds nothing.
A final point – look at the list of respondents, and look for the political parties. SNP (various branches), Scottish Labour (wow, Jim Sillars' defunct party has been resurrected?) and Scottish Liberal Democrats. No Greens, no SSP, and most importantly, the only Tory response is from the London Scottish Conservative Club.
So the Scottish Tories didn't even respond to their own consultation. Unbelievable.
There was a far easier way of discrediting the UK consultation. Less than 3000 responses in a country of 5 million is 0.06%. So any figure of 75% is 75% of 0.06% of the population: 0.045%.