Wings Over Scotland

Gallowglass – ‘Is that how they base the largest party though? Membership?’

Well, it can’t be based on number of MPs, as Nigel Farage’s UKIP don’t have any, and they’re never off the telly.

@Findlay Farquaharson says: 22 September, 2014 at 11:24 pm:

“Its awffly unfair scotland can vote on independence but england and wales cant. Surely the english and welsh people deserve the same opportunity”

Aaaargh! The reason they have no vote on independence is because they did not want to fight for it. Secondly are you stupid or something? Westminster is the de facto parliament of the country England and England is funded directly as The United Kingdom by the treasury as it doesn’t get a block grant. England has 533 English MPs who are all both United Kingdom MPs and Country of England MPs.

That means, for all intents and purposes, The Country of England are the master race devolving English Powers to three subservient countries. This is apparent as there are only 59 Scots members, 40 Welsh and 18 N. Irish members. That’s 533 English and a total of 117 others in total – an English moverall majority of 416. They can do exactly as they wish with all non-English matters. Now guess who decides the level of the Scottish, Welsh and N. Irish Block Grant? Yet these people want to prevent the Scottish, Welsh and N. Irish members from voting on what those 533 Englanders decide are English only matters.

Sheeeesh! I’m off to bed before my blood pressure gets any higher.

A.N.Surgent says:

Think that the ebc demo might not be the way to go, if people stop paying their licence they become irrelevant, if people stop buying
papers they become irrelevant. The Hope not Fear rally in October
could be massive, really massive.

The dam has burst, we could be experiencing a peoples revolution
right now and we are all part of it.

Thing is ANS why not do all three.

Stop paying TV TAX

STOP buying newspapers

BBC Protests

As you say the first two make the BBC and newspapers irrelevant. However, by continuing with the BBC protests we are continuing to shame the BBC on the international stage because the international media, notably RT and al Jazeera, are now paying attention to these protests and they do report on them. We all know next to no one has the guts to report on them in the British media, which is their downfall because it shows they are all complicit together.

Provided we can keep doing these monthly protests against the BBC we are above all else showing them that we are not scared of them and that no matter how much the try they can not hide the fact that the people of Scotland are less than impressed with them. You get that word out in the international media and the reputation of the BBC internationally is bound to eventually feel the heat!

I’m wondering,

who decided that there would be no exit polls –

and then enforced it.

And no recount after a declaration.

Next time I plan to rig a ballot

I’ll be sure to include both.

Please, guys, ill-informed allegations of counting fraud make Baby Jesus cry. Well they make me cry anyway.

Several people have come on these threads who were counting agents, actually there when it was happening and tasked with observing to make sure there was no jiggery-pokery, and confirmed that everything was honest, fair and transparent. Five comments later and everyone is off again as if it had never been said.

I was a counting agent too, in Kelso, part of a huge team of Yes agents, covering every count. No had a similar team. Not only was there no funny stuff, familiarity with the process lets you realise that large-scale systematic fraud is as close to impossible as it can be.

Yes, it’s possible the odd paper accidentally went on the wrong pile, or a bundle was a paper short or a paper over, by mistake. It’s not possible to rig the vote. Please give it up.

There are hoax videos circulating on the web. Some actually show footage of counts in other countries, not our referendum at all! The ones that show our vote are all entirely innocent, with normal process being misrepresented by a misleading voiceover to allege that something is wrong. It isn’t. (The voiceovers are mostly American, too – think about that one.)

I wrote a post last night explaining the details, but Akismet kept eating it. I’ll try again later, and I’ll keep reposting every time people start down this destructive rabbit-hole.

The count was honest. Including the postal votes. Even Ruthie probably didn’t do anything wrong – it seems some councils did the postal vote reconciliation in advance, face down, and if you’re clever you can sample from that. It was naughty to say that on TV, but nobody is going to charge her for that.

I have racked my brains to try to figure out a way to rig the system that was in operation on Thursday/Friday, and come up with a complete blank. Anything I could dream up, we would have spotted it.

Please accept that the result was as it was, and move on to deciding what to do about it.

O/T Don’t know how the rest of you feel but I am angry, upset, depressed and bitter in varying cycles. I glare at people thinking they sold my country down the river. I would hate to offend, especially a fellow 45. If you are not already doing so can I ask you to wear a yes badge (with pride)as this would show Scotland we are still a force and give fellow yessers some moral support. I do find that probable no voters, when they see your badge, will not look you in the eye! Maybe they are ashamed of their actions.

Hell, someone even posted another link to that bloody American hoax video while I was writing my post.

Get a grip people, have you no critical thinking capability of your own? You’re being sucked into a scam.

Labour has about 190,000 members. I would expect the Scottish membership to be 18-20,000. Even with the massive leap in membership of the SNP, the figure is nowhere near 10x Labour in Scotland. Good chance that a number of the people who are joining the SNP have left Labour, though, so that would accentuate the difference a bit.

Lesley-Anne

Regarding the BBC etc.

Just listened to the full recording of Will McLeod (think u posted it earlier on fact) and he summed it up spot on.

The American radio show he was reporting for is going to keep track of events here for the next while. He summed it all up perfectly and also really slated the BBC.

Just shows that other folk outside of Britain are showing/ telling the world what went on here.

O/T SNP new members has topped the 20,000 mark!! So much for us ‘going away’ lol!!

Tomorrows times front page
RIght hand column
link to t.co

There are some who are suggesting that AS knew the indy ref campaign was going to be very hard to win.

BBC establishment – remember in Edinburgh he mentioned the forces against us.

So what he has done is to expose Labour for the liars that they are to all.

The cons want to win England, just watch the combined forces of the Brit establishment line up against lab to push for a tory victory.

The only way forward was to prise Scotland from the dead hand of Labour, watch the devo max promises bite the dust and we now have a fully committed, highly political electorate ready to go to the next stage.

Morag

I’m with you. If there are any irregularities I’m sure the YES Scotland and the Scottish Government are aware of them and will take appropriate action, police and courts.

After each of the 32 regions is counted and agreed, the ballot boxes are sealed and kept for a year in case of court action, where they can be opened and inspected.

Meanwhile the rest of the world are saying that the Progressive YES movement looks like a retarded conspiracy cult.

@Morag – I keep saying this is a sideshow but remember there will be folk trying to distract from the real purpose.

I think enough of us know that even if it did happen it is going to be too hard to prove.

If we have this big investigation and it is proved false, then we will be seen as conspiracy nuts.

This suits some folk’s purpose.

Vote rigging.

Here’s how it can happen and almost certainly does by both sides but on a small scale.

1). Applying for postal votes on behalf of others and using them. Quite limited.
2). “Helping” people to fill in their postal votes, or advising them in advance how to vote, e.g. “Do you want to stay in the Union?” “Heck no, I want Independence”. “O.K. then, put an X in the NO box”.
3). Someone asks “if I don;t vote is that counted as a NO?” (shades of ’79). “Are you a NO voter”. “Yes, I want to stay in the union”. “OK then, you don’t have to bother voting at all”.

These fiddles work for both sides, mostly cancel out, and there always some people who go too far in their beliefs.

Widescale rigging? I doubt it very much.

Valerie
Likewise. I did follow links and had a look, but two things prevail. One is common sense – there are people with the authority to investigate if neccessary, it doesn’t need us (except to report any suspicious occurrences of our own – not third-hand – to them).

The other thing is that the likes of WoS and the WBB came damn close to doing the job, there were attempts to discredit it and the likes of me as a Pro-Indy poster in the Herald (a good few tries). and these are and will continue.

Those attempts at discrediting Pro-Indy resources must be resisted at all costs.

@HandandShrimp

Thanks for the reply, HaS!

I wasn’t making accusations of any skulduggery going on in Orkney and Shetland, just curious about the high No vote percentages and why. Your insight helps to make things clearer. Thanks!

And, yes, the BT fraudsters’ Project Fear campaign needs to be congratulated [sarcasm]… because it obviously worked!

Natasha says:

@ Lesley-Anne & AN Surgent could you provide details of this Hope not Fear rally? I hadn’t heard of it before reading your post.

Here’s a link to the Hope not Fear rally Natasha.

link to facebook.com

@Morag,
Thank-you. I was starting to think it was just me. I find it hard to believe people would film electoral fraud and not report it at the time and film it being reported to expose the fix and subsequent cover up. Oh and the other thing to lead me to doubt the fraud theory is that the people making the allegations are still alive. I wouldn’t put electoral fraud past the British state but find it hard to believe that if they had pulled off a rigged referendum , they would let evidence get out so quickly or would hesitate in killing anyone who stumbled upon the smoking gun.

Now if I were conspiracy minded, I’d think these fraud allegations were a state attempt to discredit the independence movement but that’s just me and my tin foil talking.

h look folks, wee Gordie Brown spent all that time pacing back and forward spouting lie after lie in order to save the union and his cloak of ermine and guess what … RED Ed forgets to thank him for the grand job he did! 😛

link to archive.today

What about interference with the boxes?

First, polling agents have the right to inspect the boxes first thing, before they are sealed, to make sure they’re enpty. My neighbour did that here, then was the first person to vote.

In any case, the whole point of the reconciliation is to make sure the number of papers in the box when it’s opened is the same as the number of papers recorded as having been put in it in the polling station. You can’t stuff ballot boxes.

What if a box or two was intercepted en route? First, you’d have to subvert several people, and indeed hope that nobody from Yes was following the box back to the count. (Some campaigners do that, you know.) And you’d have to be quick, or someone would start wondering what had kept you.

You’d have to have exactly the right number of papers to go in the box. And you’d have to replace them without disturbing the seal, or have identical seals ready to fix.

And it still wouldn’t work, for two reasons. First, the papers are individually marked, precisely so that fraudulent voting can be detected. If someone makes a complaint that someone else has stolen their vote, and a search is made for that vote in the box, and the papers in the box don’t have the numbers of the papers recorded as having been put in the box, all hell will break loose.

The other reason is us. Part of what we do is stand behind the tellers during the reconciliation and try to see a representative “sample” of votes in the box. 100 papers will do. We report this back to our agent, who collates these samples with the places the boxes came from. The idea is to be able to estimate how strong the Yes vote was in different places.

If one box came out wildly different from our expectations, we’d know. They didn’t. Nice rural villages were heavily No, urban areas leaned Yes. (The village I Wee Blue Booked compared well with similar villages that hadn’t been carpet bombed with the things by the way.) One very small village (88 voters!) was surprisingly Yes – and that was the one my friend had returned from a week or so earlier saying that the villagers had come out to meet her, wanting Wee Blue Books, and were somehow already onside!

You simply can’t rig a vote with all that cross-checking going on. You’d have to substitute just about every box with a carefully-weighted set of papers to look right for the district, with the right number of papers in it, and the right indvidual bar codes. It’s IMPOSSIBLE.

What bothers me about Ruthie and the advance postal count is the bookies paying out in advance yet still taking money on yes bets, Also YouGov coming out will a last minute poll that looks random but turns out correct. Did they know something we didn’t know? And what about the stock markets? People with inside knowledge could make a packet there.

If only for these reasons the postal votes shouldn’t be opened in advance.

What about postal votes?

These have to be accompanied by a declaration signed by the voter, and the signature has to match the one on record from when the postal vote application was made. When postal votes are opened, counting agents have the right to be present to check all this. This was done. Our agents at the postal vote opening reported that there were some cases where the signatures didn’t match, and these votes were not allowed.

No evidence of mass registration of postal voters in a suspicious pattern was seen. Many people had had a postal vote for years. Some very old people were noted to have voted (dates of birth are also checked), and maybe someone else in the household had voted with that ballot paper, but if they had, they’d got the old person to sign the declaration.

All of this is checked while the ballot is still sealed in its envelope anyway, so agents can’t know which way the sealed vote has gone unless the voter is personally known to them.

Once that check has been done, in our count the papers were put directly into a sealed ballot box. The reconciliation wasn’t done until the boxes were opened at the count at 10pm on the 18th, when it was done face up and we were able to sample the boxes openly.

Some places seem to have done the reconciliation in advance, face down. When that happens, agents present may get a glimpse of the votes anyway, or some people practice spotting where the cross is from the reverse side of the paper. Thus sampling in advance can happen even though it’s not really supposed to.

Ruthie obviously had data from such an exercise, and probably our side did too. She wasn’t supposed to say so in public, and indeed agents aren’t supposed to tell anyone, but it’s recognised that all parties do it if they can. Reporting Ruthie might lead to fun consquences, but on the whole I think it probably won’t.

Look, the whole bloody thing is scrutinised within an inch of its life. We were all over it like a rash. There are one or two fevered FB accounts ostensibly from agents who think they saw something wrong, but if they’re even real in the first place, they’re the work of naive first-timers who were badly trained and didn’t know what they should be looking for or what to do about it.

Please, please, take your heads out of the rabbit-hole.

O.K. folks, well at least those of you in and around Edinburgh. There is to be a rally at the Scottish Parliament on 27th September. The details are below.

On Saturday 27th of September, we will rally peacefully at the Scottish Parliament to have our voices heard.

IF YOU CAN AFFORD IT WE ARE ASKING FOR PEOPLE TO BRING FOOD DONATIONS FOR THE FOOD BANKS, don’t feel pressured though, ALSO WE DO HAVE A PIPER TO PLAY AT THIS EVENT!

Do people have any idea how depressing it has been these past few days seeing the same bullshit conspiracy theories being shared over and over again on Facebook and Twitter? Quite apart from all the things Morag has said, as a Referendum Agent at the Aberdeen count, I’m insulted that folk think me or any of my counting agents were stupid enough to be duped by such shenanigans.

We’ve spent two and a half years slagging off the No campaign for spreading lies and scare stories, and yet folk are happily doing exactly that about the referendum counts.

We didn’t lose because of vote rigging, we lost because we couldn’t convince the over-55s that independence was worth voting for, and instead of having us tell them that the UK state pension is the worst in Europe and that independence would give them a better one, they had the likes of Blair McDougall phoning them up to scare them in their homes. It’s surely no coincidence that the one target group that we failed to convince was the only one that didn’t have a high-profile campaign group. Where was the senior citizens’ equivalent of WFI, RIC or Generation Yes? Nowhere. So BT were left free to run their scare stories, because there was no strong voice saying “hang on, you’re speaking pish.”

The grassroots groups are trying to move onto the next stage to keep the momentum going. It doesn’t help to have people making nutty conspiracy claims making us all look like idiots.

Some vote rigging Maybe ? Overall vote rigging cant see it. Even if there is how do you Prove it. Lets move on. Lets all work together to make sure that all the Politicians going down to Westminster at the next General Election are all Yes minded. Lets wipe out all the Labour Career Politicians. Lets Vote Scottish.

BB
Sure, I sent mine in on the Friday so it would have arrived Sat / Mon. But many did hand them in on the day, and some including my last minute son probably the day before. In many places (like my house) the post doesn’t arrive until afternoon. I always postal vote in case I have to go away the day.

They did process postal votes on the day, the deadline even on my “How to vote by post” here in front of me that came with the postal vote and envelopes says “For your postal vote to count, we must receive it by 10pm on Thursday 18th September 2014”.

There’s a rumour they were sent down to London for some incredibly weird parallel universe reason, hence my first post and posts from others.

The worst thing about the pensioners being scared into a no vote with lies that their pension will be stopped is today’s announcement that they will lose their winter fuel allowance, and, of course, this will hit Scots pensioners hardest.

How could Labour do this? Con our old people into voting for a worse future. How can these people live with themselves? They are nothing better than con merchants, now depriving old folks of the ability to heat themselves. Oh God, I hate them so much. It is truly despicable, Aaaaaarrrrggggghhhhhhh!!!!

Lesley-Anne, much as I love you to bits, will you please calm down. You were one of the most vocal people promoting the conspiracy hoax, and earlier in this thread I could frankly have throttled you. Now you’re barreling on to other topics, without giving any sign that you’ve taken on board what Doug and I and other counting agents have been trying to tell you.

I realise you’re fired up, but could you just slow down and think for a bit before you run off these stream-of-consciousness posts. It’s not the time for thinking out loud, it really isn’t.

And I know certain people will now attack me for being domineering or something, but really guys we need to get a grip here.

Pensioners for indy. I hadn’t thought about that. We had quite a few in our group of course, but they’re the sort of person who doesn’t congregate with the old folks at the bingo or the bridge or the coffee morning.

Food for thought, that one.

Morag,

The ONLY thing you can say for sure is that the count itself was accurate, and I don’t dispute that.

But there were endless possibilities for the vote to be rigged BEFORE the ballot papers got to the count, not least the postal votes.

How many ballot papers were printed and how many used?

God knows how many postal votes were sent by the British establishment.

Why was there a record 97% registration but then only 83% bothered to vote?

Why were there relatively low turnouts in Glasgow and Dundee?

The canvassing by Grassroots Yes campaigners in so many areas all over the country was showing 60% or more support for independence. Were they all being lied to?

There was a widespread view that once No’s and DK’s became informed and Yes, they wouldn’t go back. Was that false?

In numerous debates, the Yes vote won after the debate. Why didn’t that materialise on the day?

Why were there massive No votes in the SNP ‘heartlands’?

Apart from Dundee, why were there Yes victories or close results ONLY in Labour strongholds? Reason: they weren’t expecting Yes wins there and therefore didn’t bother rigging there.

Why was there only 57% Yes in Dundee when 70% or more was expected?

Why did the No camp panic in the last couple of weeks and started making ‘vows’ of more powers, which they could have done a long time ago but didn’t because they thought they would win?

The elderly and the middle classes were always going to vote No, but the working classes would not have been frightened back into voting No at the last minute by Gordon Brown.

How could a betting company pay for No bets before the result?

How could Kellner be 99% sure of No as soon as the polls had closed?

I had been expecting it and have no doubt whatsoever that the vote was rigged.

But I also know that there is no way the British establishment would leave any evidence for it to be discovered.

So there is no point in seeking re-counts or re-votes.

But to categorically claim that it was not rigged is nonsense.

In 2007, the SNP achieved a 1 seat majority over Labour. I voted in Cunninghame North, won by just 48 votes.

“The SNP’s Kenneth Gibson defeated Allan Wilson of Labour by the tightest of margins – just 48 votes separated the two candidates.

There were 1015 spoiled ballot papers, including claims that some of those which arrived from Arran were damp. Labour toyed with launching a legal challenge but chose not to.”

48 vote majority making the difference between a Labour minority Government or an SNP one – no legal challenge. 2014 Referendum 400,000 vote majority for NO.

Time to move on. Onwards and upwards, from 45% first target 55% YES with 2/3rds of those that voted for more powers being sadly disappointed (or all of them for 59%).

Then the 25% who succumbed to FUD – Fear, Uncertainty Doubt, including the pensioners who were sadly neglected in the campaign which targetted women (younger ones) and Trident.

Taking just 15% of that 25%, that makes it 70% YES. Now we have the referendum again – Indy Ref 2. Timeline – 6 months 🙂

(over 24 hours off the Herald – yay, I broke the addiction)

1. The fraud allegations really need to stop. It discredits any campaign going forward. People will just see a tinfoil-hat brigade. Even if individual cases took place, it wasn’t anywhere near a 10 point difference. Personally, too many people I know ended up voting No, so I don’t doubt the result.

I agree completely. It may or may not have happened, but even if it did, nothing can be done about it. Crying about it on facebook will solve nothing. A petition will solve nothing, because petitions never solve anything. Regroup, refocus and wipe out Labour. Labour must be uprooted and thrown out.

Oh for God’s sake, Rock, give it a bloody rest. If you read all of what I wrote, you’ll realise that your allegations have all been considered and countered and (other than penny-number fiddles) they’re IMPOSSIBLE. It simply couldn’t be done. Not with all the cross-checks and the sampling.

Honestly, I spend half the night trying to explain this, and someone promptly picks it all up again. It would be enough to make you slit your wrists.

A final final thought.

The tellers were people from our own community. The counting officials were people from our own community. The polling agents and counting agents were people from our own community, connected to one or other campaign. We in Wings had our own agents in most council areas! The polling clerks and presiding officers were people from our own communities. The people who drove the boxes from the polls to the counts were people from our own communities.

They were our neighbours. People we know. They were also voters, and some voted No but as few were over 65 maybe most voted Yes.

This community involvement in the process at all levels is probably the strongest thing about it. We know each other and we’re (politely) watching each other. There IS no remote “they” in a position to interfere with any of the counts!

Holy shit, how to destroy the credibility of the YES movement in one easy load of crap.

Statistically with about 10 polls totalling 10,000 votes the MOE is probably down to 1% I can’t be arsed looking it up in my stats books. So if it’s 48% YES and 52% NO with 10,000 sampling, there’s about a 99% confidence in the result of 51% NO to 53% YES, so that takes care of Kellner and his 99% probability – it’s actually statistically correct for a normal distribution. “normal” is a technical term in stats.

Why do bookies pay out early? For publciity, and I doubt they paid your man his £180,000 on his £800,000 bet until after the bet, in fact that probably wasn’t even on the general market. It also encoourages more bets at worse odds, but they’re still getting YES at better odds, so they make even more money money money money, muunnny.

Not everyone votes. People say YES to the YES people and NO to the NO people. They probably mean it for 5 minutes. As we all said whenever we saw polls showing NO ahead “it’s the poll on 18th September that counts”.

Next we’ll be hearing the Kuz flaming netzov was sailing in our waters – it wasn’t, it was international waters outside the 12 nm, and it was a fishing boat that discovered it, no, it was tracked by radar solid from flaming Murmansk and eye-balled by at least one Astute, oh, and surface warships don’t generally attack surface warships so HMS poor York was just there to show the flag and make sure no fly-tipping was done. Strange that Lossie is so near the Moray Firth and there was nothing there to shoot down the limited jets on board and sink the carrier. The RAF really must get some flaming missiles for their Tranche 3 Typhoons or the then Tornados.

I despair. 32 months of correcting Unionists and now it’s not Unionists with the garbage. I’m not sorry for the rant, but I might be later today, good night all.

And finally. If one more person cleverly points out that I was only at one of the counts (well done for spotting that I left my TARDIS at home) and therefore declares that I don’t KNOW all the counts were fair, so they’ll just assert that their pet fraud happened at all the OTHER counting centres, I probably will get arrested for what I’ll do to them.

Hi all – regular reader but rarely comment here. Also a bit of a night-hawk!

Regarding vote rigging – I sense division over this issue. I fully understand why those here involved in the count could take these allegations personally or indeed feel insulted, having devoted their time in an honest manner towards the procurement of a fair democratic process.

I also understand that this issue will simply not go away.

I also recognise in the examples above, everything seemed to be in order locally but I must balance this with how it could indeed be a relatively simple task to swing a couple of hundred thousand votes at some stage of the process.

My personal view is that this was always going to happen, and at some point vote rigging may have taken place on the scale I mentioned. This would have been undetectable to the counting staff etc. I believe it probably did happen, but I am very sympathetic to the idea that pursuing this could be counter-productive.

It is my understanding that there is a 6 week period of challenge and cannot blame those who wish to pursue this. It should be considered though, that this ‘distraction’ in fact serves us well, because if the Establishment believes they have a tin-foil hat brigade in opposition, they’re likely to focus away from Scotland altogether, preferring to devote their time and energy to fighting the 2015 GE.

To Morag and others I say – Chill! Let those who want to chase a revote do so. It has no reason to interfere with the excellent plans being fomented here and elsewhere, nor to disrupt your own personal contribution.

To others I’d suggest the SNP won’t touch this with a barge-pole, unless there was some irrefutable proof, rather than spurious (and mostly anonymous) accounts of weird goings-on and some unexplained videos.

Everyone is a bit emotional just now, but there’s no point in getting annoyed at each other. If we can’t let out our frustrations and suspicions here, where can we?

We all know the way forward is to secure an unprecedented level of SNP support at the next GE, possibly enough to have a mandate for independence. I’d set a target of about 2/3rds of the setas, and a share of over 50%. That is an unquestionable mandate.

In the meantime, let those keen on the rigging thing do their thing. They’ll only be at it for a few weeks 😉

Love and light to all xx

So now there are massive air strikes on Syria. Did anyone doubt this would happen?

The majority have been duped into voting No due to the lies and propaganda from the establishment media, we must go on. Join the party closest to your beliefs, lets take politics back into our hands.

Anyway.

Again from the Ashcroft poll, the interesting figure is that of the 55% NO voters, “only” 27% said their most important reason for voting NO was “A strong attachment to the UK and its shared history, culture and traditions“.

This works out at 15% of all those who voted in the Referendum. So that’s 540,000 who probably can’t be swayed by any argument, though Westminster and the BBC did throw over a year’s worth of British History at us all. I haven’t checked the breakdown by age group, it might be many older ones who lived through it or whose parents did.

That’s phenomenal, as it started at around 30%. Basically what it means is that after 32 months of the Referendum kidnap attempt by Cameron, and 26 months of the two campaigns, there’s a potential to get out up to an 85% YES vote next referendum.

I forgot to say with my messing up the gravatar naming, I used to post occasionally here as dadsarmy (ex Guardian Cif), Peter Piper in the Herald where I’ve stopped, and yesindyref2 is dual purpose – YES vote if the same question in Indy Ref 2, and YES to actually getting Indy Ref 2 real soon now to vote in.

The Scottish Gov can afford them, but we must get another vote for Independence soon. Whether through Westminster or another Referendum. The Labour Psrty must now be wiped out of Scotland. The Tories and LibDem are gone. Now Labour must pay the price of Brown/Darling treachery. The academics pay by Scottish taxpayers who took £Millions of tax payers money illegally to rig the ballot must go. They have blood on their hands. They have caused death and devastation worldwide and are responsible for food banks.

Wipe out the Unionists in Scotland before it is too late. Only then will Scotland become a rightful country.

Sorry for going O/T but I woke up with an epiphany this morning and I hope I’m not repeating something someone has said and I’ve not seen it..

Does anyone remember United With Labour? We roundly mocked it for being a facade, fit ion, something that didn’t really matter. What if you didn’t have access to the internet…what if you relied on BBC etc for your news or believed what they said about it?

Well, you’d think Brown, speaking through United with Labour, was a spokesperson with authority in the referendum. But then of course, once official campaigns were announced, it vanished.

Then Brown re-appears in the last week. This was set up in case they needed it. In case they were losing. They needed someone who APPEARED to speak for BT but wasn’t part of it so they wouldn’t be breaking any purdah laws. The real reason for United with Labour becomes clear.

They were set up from the start to make people THINK it was a voice within Better Together so Brown could come out and make promises at a late stage if it looked like they were going to lose.

Underhanded, manipulative and borderline lies. The things they’ll do to save their jobs.

Hague should be in jail. The criminal who destroyed the Report of child abuse by Westminster MP’s.

Hague telling Scotland what it can do, what powers it can have. Aye that will be right.

Scotland will have full powers. Independence

Vote rigging in the UK is unthinkable. The UK may be rotten or outdated or whatever, but it is still a Western democracy, not a pseudo-democracy such as Algeria or Libya before the downfall of Khadafi or even Russia nowadays and before. If such a large scale rigging could be proved, that would be probably open a crisis that would spread far outside the borders of the island. The UK would lose every credibility abroad and become the laughingstock of all Europe and beyond. This is a risk no government, not matter how conservative, would consider taking. Even if Scottish independence is a thorn of thistle in the foot of the Tories, it’d be infinitely less dangerous for them to let Scotland go rather than to fake a referendum result.

Aye, folks.

The conspiracy stuff does us no favours at all.

We fight 2015 on a ‘Devo Max’ ticket. SNP get highest number MPs in Scotland, we called not UDI, but Devo Max 🙂

After initial dejection and heartbroken, I’m more determinted to get those corrupt Labour crones out of Holyrood and Westminister.

A loose ‘YesAlliance’ for Westminister in a common bond to achieving ‘Devo Max’ for Scotland, and then judging by the rise in party memberships for the SSP, Greens and SNP – I think we’ll see a large number of pro-Indy parties in Holyrood, 2016.

Imagine Scotland with a majority of pro-Indy MSPs. Labour sitting on 14 or so, Tories on 10 and the Libs will be gone!

Labour, Tories will always have a hardcore support, but imagine over a 100 MSPs all independent supporters.

This constitutional wrangling will go on for days, weeks, months. The 3 Westminister parties are as has already been shown not agreeing on how much and already broken part of their “timetable”.

We may have lost, but certainly not out. Honestly, thought pre-ref it was a No, I’d be back in my box.

Absolutley not, and I know so, so many people are thinking the same too. I know guys who haven’t voted in years – now donating to food banks, joining the 3 pro Indy parties.

We didn’t win, but as Salmond said in 2011. A political earthquake has struck Scotland on Thursday.

These 1.6million (ok some, a minority may revert to form), but a huge amount of them are not going away. We’ll vote tactically, we vote together, we’ll stand together, and we’ll bloody well win.

The genie is oot the bottle and it’s not going back in.

Heids up and mourning over.

We crack on!

Honest, ah’m no kiddin, that photo wiz a set-up. He jist walked up tae me, crouched doon an said: “Listen, auld yin, you are gonnae smile and pretend you’re pleased tae see me, coz if ye don’t, that big fat skinheid wi the rule-britannia earings and the union jack tatooed on his foreheid – aye, him, the wan that’s haudin the camera – is gonnae jump on ye and mash ye tae a pulp. Got that?”

OT
Happy to see that Farmers 4 Yes and Bikers for Yes are still going strong, to take us through the next stage.
Stu, I hope you will also, if you dont I might aswell chuck my iPad and social media!

Patronizing tosh fro Ed Mliband on BBC Scotland this morning when he said
“People in Scotland who voted YES did so because thay felt they had nothing to lose”,

WRONG
we voted yes becuase we had EVERYTHING TO WIN!

Why did people vote No? They were lied to. End off. Now get the liars.

I posted this at the end of the previous thread not knowing that this one had been running for some time. Hopefully the apparent lack of interest was due to people having moved on and some folk will pick up the baton on this thread. We need to get back on the streets and to chapping doors:

I would like to see a site along the lines of ‘Indy Poster Boy’ be established as a library of (preferably) A5 leaflets in PDF format for downloading and home printing.

There’s a huge range of general topic subjects which could be covered: Oil, Pensions, The Scottish NHS, Barnett Formula, comparison of average wage and tax take etc of Scandinavian countries with UK demonstrating difference in spending power with UK. etc,

Let’s get our street stalls back out there and educate our neighbours so that when the call comes we are ready and the scare stories have already have been neutralised.

Pesonally I use a laser printer and with the winter approaching would suggest that folk who don’t have one look to aquiring one. They are not expensive and the toner doesn’t run when damp. Also, they are actually cheaper to run than inkjets.

“People in Scotland who voted YES did so because thay felt they had nothing to lose”,

So we live in region where half the electorate that voted have nothing. Great.

@Faltdubh Good post. I do agree that conspiracy theories don’t do us much good but at the same time you now have a generation of folk who do not trust the electoral system(inc me). That is a serious situation.

I do not want to go round and round having referendum after referendum every 20 years that they either rig by media or postal votes. The voting system needs a full inquiry in the mean time and changes need to be made for anyone to trust it again. In my own opinion i would not put it past them rigging a vote, the British state has always played dirty tricks and is rotten from top to bottom. It amazes me that people laugh at you for mentioning vote rigging in this country as if it is impossible or you are talking absurdly. This is a country that went on an illegal war, covered up mass paedo ring, black and tans, expenses Hillsborough and so n and so on.

I agree with the rest of your post, let’s tactically vote and destroy Labour. Their day of reckoning is going to come. If you saw the videos of Scottish Labour in Manchester, their faces were tripping them(pretending to party). They know what is coming.

They want us to go back in our box but we are going to use the hurt and devastation of Friday morning to come back stronger than ever. Scotland has changed forever, no matter what they say.

Never give up, we will do this!

In my place of work – a university science department – most people were no voters. I am dismayed about this but at the same time know there was targeted propaganda and fearmongering. We were threatened with the removal of research council funding, that there would be a brain drain, that the universities would fail. Even the president of the royal society weighed in on the better together side. Other groups were the target of focussed scaremomongering too, notably the pensioners. So perhaps it is not so surprising that the no vote prevailed. I doubt that the vote could have been rigged to that extent. We need to move on. The surge of membership in the greens and SNP is encouraging. As others have said we have the opportunity now to change the face of Scottish politics for ever. And my no voting colleagues will surely realize, sooner or later, that they chose the dark side on this occasion.

People voted No because they were told lies.

18 – 24 year old group, a pro rata higher no of English students. (1/5) Aberdeen area pro rata higher no of English settlers. Oil. (1/5) Moray pro rata higher No of English settlers Military (1/5).

I do agree with you guys above but:

“If voting changed anything, they wouldn’t let us vote’ – Mark Twain.

I don’t really want to go round in circles with a voting system i do not trust, should there not at least be an inquiry from the Electoral Commission? Tightening up procedures, making the postal votes more secure. People didn’t trust the postal voting system even before the referendum.

For me UDI should remain on the cards, keep that threat on the back of their minds and make it an SNP landslide in 2016..

I’m 100% with Morag on this. Chasing a conspiracy is not worth the effort and is a waste of all our energies. If there is anything dubious i’d be inclined to believe the ‘cock-up rather than conspiracy theory’ approach. To actually pull off a conspiracy along the lines suggested would require a cast of thousands, and people talk.

I spent much of yesterday removing random nutcases from my FB friends list after reading some of the dross they are spouting as fact.

that being said, Ruth D is not getting off the hook. She admitted to the law being broken and this must be followed up.

Morag – while I tend to agree with you about “rigging” I still have nagging doubts. Regardless of the allegations around the referendum. What about 1979? Glenrothes? and of course didn’t the Government of the time lie us into an illegal war? There was proven voting fraud in Birmingham a few years ago. Then there is the general level of dishonesty from the “Better Together” lot throughout the campaign! An establishment that will lie to send men to kill and be killed must be the lowest of the low – why wouldn’t they rig a vote to keep trillions of pounds worth of oil? Just asking – want to be assured that the process was fair!

Bill, for heaven’s sake drop it. Glenrothes is a bit of a mystery but nothing like that happened at the referendum. The Birmingham fraud was a group of Asian men trying to get a council seat for one of their number, and who indulged in attempted fraud on a scale so blatant and so incompetent that any counting agent (or indeed returning officer) would have spotted it a mile off if it had actually made it as far as the count.

Constant low-level dishonesty is one thing, doing the impossible (i.e. rigging the referendum to the tune of 100s of 1000s of votes without being detected) is quite another.

Westminster never believed they could possibly lose, not until very near the end, when they panicked and started laying on the stick and the carrot in an absolutely manic fashion. They didn’t prepare a huge, covert vote-rigging exercise. Indeed they couldn’t, nobody could.

Our system has minor holes that allow small-scale mistakes and penny-number fraud. On the large scale, it is astonishingly robust. It’s run not by faceless bureaucrats, but by our own friends and neighbours and indeed by we ourselves when we volunteer to be polling clerks or presiding officers or polling or counting agents.

Please, please can people take this on board and stop telling me to “chill”. It’s those who are falling for a US-based conspiracy hoax who need the chill pill.

@Calgacus

Tactical voting requires a bit of intelligence, so that rules out any unionists managing it!

@ Morag, That’s what we need to talk about. Not tell ourselves comforting lies about how we really won and they had to rig the vote to prevent us.

Appreciate your anger etc but the fact is and these are facts Morag, the NO campaign suddenly went apeshit in the last week before the ref, THE VOW, Asda price hikes etc OK?

You cant deny any of that.

Then we have the leader of the Scottish Tory party stating quite clearly on BBC tv that the postal vote was “sampled” and that the results they took from this sampling made her think that NO had won.

These are the facts Morag. You know the rules as regards “sampling” and using these samples and yet clearly a huge change in the Bettertogether campaign kicked off.

Yes it could all have be down to that one Sunday Times poll but rules were broken and votes were counted long before the official count and these result was used for BT campaigning, if only to make Ruth Davidson think they had won.

This is not paranoia, this is what happened.

Good grief, now we’re told people don’t trust the electoral system and don’t vote.

Say hello to your imaginary 3.6 million friends who did.

Bill, Westminster have the power to send people to kill or be killed. They do not have the power to rig a national referendum at the macro scale. Nobody has. It’s really that simple.

We were cheated of a win by Westminster force majeure, the BBC, and some poor tactical choices by Yes Scotand. Not by vote-rigging.

@yesindyref2

To be brutally frank there are only two ways to achieve independence, the bomb/bullet or the ballot.

If people do not trust the ballot we must ensure that the voting system is as robust as it can be.

The other way is not worth contemplating.

Morag – you still miss the point. If WM has the power why did they need to accompany power with a lie? Do you not see what I’m getting at? If local councillors in Birmingham and Slab in Fife can fix results do you really think it is beyond the “power” of Westminster. This is not real, in my opinion, i’m afraid. You should not try to shut this debate down based solely on your opinion as you at least acknowledge that they used “force majeure” on that bastion of decency and impartiality, the BBC,to cheat us! I agree that we should wind away from it. Is it not better to have the debate now than in 6 months when we need to apply ourselves to defeating the evil that is Scottish Labour?

All this talk of vote rigging is counter productive but understandable, people feel a sense of injustice and looking for some-thing/one to blame. Having said that the one thing which I am suspicious of is the yougov poll that put yes in the lead.

This was the game-changer. The establishment went into overdrive after this poll and the BT campaign changed. We had the 3 stooges drop everything (eg. PM’s QT) and join the fray, Gordon Brown took over from Darling as front man and MSM were busting a gut with their project fear / pro union propaganda.

The momentum was strongly in YES favour before that poll and it is my feeling that if there was any jiggery-pokery it was made here.

Bill, I’m not missing the point. There were some anomalies at Glenrothes that gave rise to suspicion, and were never satisfactorily explained. Some vital records went missing. There were no such anomalies last week and nothing has gone missing.

Nobody rigged the vote in Birmingham. A laughably inept conspiracy to steal a council seat was exposed, and if it hadn’t been exposed when it was, it would have been detected at the count with the greatest of ease.

Westminster have the power to do a lot of things, and they didn’t miss much as regards referendum dirty tricks. They simply do not have the power to rig a Scotland-wide referendum on any significant scale. The process is too robust and too transparent for that, and it’s run by ordinary people, our friends and our neighbours and ourselves, not Ernst Blofeld.

Wow that’s really helpful. Not.

Worry about who produced these hoax videos with the false allegations of counting fraud that so many people have fallen for. If there’s a conspiracy, that’s where I think you’ll find it.

The point is that vote-rigging was not seen by the numerous observers we had all over the process. More importantly, knowledge of the process demonstrates that the vote was impossible to rig on the scale of 100s of 1000s of votes.

Westminster clearly thought they might be losing it, the week or so before the vote. That also might tell you something.

Heedtracker, I’m not arguing with you about Davidson’s gaffe, though I think it will be seen as a more minor matter than you’re portraying it as.

It’s not actually logical, though, because the sampling she refers to revealed a massive No in the postal votes. I struggle to see how that could have galvanised the No campaign to what we saw it do in the last week or two. A comfortable No majority should rather have made them realise they didn’t have to cough up any more bribes. The bribes seem more likely to have been triggered by the YouGov poll.

Be that as it may, though, we seem to be somewhat at cross purposes. I’m pointing out that the actual count was as honest and transparent as it could have been. What wee Ruthie’s postal voting agent mates were up to doesn’t really change that.

@ Morag
Why are you so adamant that Electoral fraud did not or cannot happen?
An English Judge ,earlier this year,Judge Richard Mawrey who sits in judgement on electoral fraud cases warned that Postal Voting had made Britain`s electoral system “Vulnerable to fraud on an Industrial Scale ”
This is not from one of us `crazy conspiracy nuts` but from a Deputy High Court Judge.
After all the lies and media/business manipulation from the Establishment to think that you cannot accept the possibility of them being able if they needed to,to manipulating the vote is hard to accept.

My last point on the vote ‘fixing’ – it may have happened it also may not have happened. The point is we can neither prove nor disprove therefore we would be wasting our time and energy trying to get this solved.

I tend to read every post on here but sometimes I think others just keep posting their own POV and do not engage with other posters.

@James Caithness – I agree and I have said it a couple of times, the conspiracy theory suits some folks’ purposes in sending us off down a bind alley.

By all means those who still believe it – do something about it but stop trying to convince others to join you – we have much more important work to do.

Despite all the blitz of propaganda and scare stories, we had 45% voting Yes that is an achievement which we need to build on.

My last point on the vote ‘fixing’ – it may have happened it also may not have happened. The point is we can neither prove nor disprove therefore we would be wasting our time and energy trying to get this solved.

I tend to read every post on here but sometimes I think others just keep posting their own POV and do not engage with other posters.

@James Caithness – I agree and I have said it a couple of times, the conspiracy theory suits some folks’ purposes in sending us off down a bind alley.

By all means those who still believe it – do something about it but stop trying to convince others to join you – we have much more important work to do.

Despite all the blitz of propaganda and scare stories, we had 45% voting Yes that is an achievement which we need to build on.

@Morag, i hear you and yes if you say the actual count was fraud free then I believe you BUT and this the major flaw in your argument.

“It’s not actually logical, though, because the sampling she refers to revealed a massive No in the postal votes.”

How do you actually know that? If like Davidson you were told about the postal vote result then you too are in the same boat.

You probably learned of the pre ref vote sampling results like everyone else, after the referendum but Davidson appears to say they knew the NO win result from sampling and that is illegal for the simple reason that it gives either side the opportunity to change what people are voting for before actual polling day,

SO the whole thing is a complete and utter farce. Not just the fact that I did not know my postal vote might be sampled, I will never do that again, but of course because Brown and Cameron and Miliband completely flipped the deal, bait and switch, call it what you will.

None of this detracts or denigrates in anyway the amazing work you and people like you do, but if you are going to cheat in a referendum or at the bookies, you get along to a “sampling” and then you act.

And finally, why is sampling NOT public knowledge and how many postal votes ARE sampled to start with?

Why allow sampling and not exit polling?

Where is the legislation that brought up such an insane opportunity for fraud and i want to know why Ruth Davidson is not in front of the Police right now.

Morag you’re a star but don’t tell people to stop asking questions because its the only we will win next time!

@ Morag
A lot of people on Wings whether posters or just readers are deeply concerned about the role of the Electoral Commission,and Electoral Fraud.
You and others patting us on the head and saying don`t worry trust the grown ups best don`t mention it again theres a good boy is patronising to say the least.

You and others say it could not happen check the internet and it says it is happening all the time and open to ” vote rigging on an industrial scale”
Why are you not even open to the opinion of others that it is possible.

RE the Ruth Davidson quote & Postal vote sampling. The bottom line is the law was broken and she admitted it. I think a simple analogy would be getting fined for Speeding. You cannot use a defence that you were speeding because other people were. I know because I tried that once & the Police politely laughed and handed me the ticket 🙂

Testing – I can’t get a comment through.

@ Morag, so youre saying that sampling of postal votes took place at polling counts after the polls closed at 10pm Thurs?

Davidson right from the off here says sampling was conducted over “the last few weeks” but again this absolutely outrageous.

The vote tampering fraud query is nothing compared to this “sampling” over the weeks preceding the actual vote. But on balance, Davidson could just be bullshitting for effect or she knew NO had won. Again, this a very serious Police matter.

link to youtube.com

It’s probably best to face the fact the old political mantra was proven, once again, correct.

“You can fool some of the people, some of the time. But you can fool the Scottish people, every time…”

The penny dropped as to what went wrong. The YES campaign did not appeal to the greed of the electorate to balance Fear and Terror from the NO side. Difficult one to manage tho’.

I’d like to back up Morag. I wasn’t at any of the referendum counts—I’m an exiled Scot living in London, but I’ve been politically active for 40 years.

I’ve been to dozens of counts and there is absolutely no way an election count can be manipulated in the UK. Yes, mistakes get made, and postal voting is practically an invitation to small-scale fraud.

Let’s review the process from beginning to end.

Before the voting starts, counting agents have the right to check if the box is empty before starting, and it is then sealed.

The vote. A voter enters the polling station, shows their card or gives their name. the name is crossed of the register, a ballor paper is issued from the book, the serial number recorded, and the vote is then duly cast. There are a minimum of two people on each table, probably more than one table, a policeman, perhaps counter agents and generally other voters present. No possibility of fiddling here.

Collecting to votes. After the count closes, the boxes are taken to the counting station by car (generally) with the pliceman present, and the marked register and unused papers taken there in a different car—which often takes a different route in case of accidents.

The reconciliation count. When all the boxes have arrived at the count the number of ballots that should be in each box is determined from the marked register, the boxes are opened, and the ballots are checked to ensure this is the case. The count does not proceed to the next stage until this is done for ALL the relevant boxes (in the case of a referendum, all of them). I remember one case where the could not reconcile a box despite about four counts, and it was only when a policeman upended the box and put his head in it that they found a ballot paper stuck in the metal seam of the box. You can’t introduce or take out votes, because it would be impossible to reconcile the box. This is when the picture of Yes votes on the No table comes in. When a box has been reconciled, they put them out of the way because there isn’t room for all of them on the counting tables. In council elections, this is obvious, because they put them in piles in front of a label giving the ward name. They should do this counting face-down, but often don’t and counting agents can often get a feel for the way things are going. The ballots are then removed from the bundles and put in boxes at random, to avoid counting agents being able to count a district.

The postal votes. These are added at this point, and are often alreading in bundles when taken out of the box.

This is where we get ballots coming out in bundles when the box is upended—they were bundled for the reconciliation cout.

The count. The ballots are counted face-up into three piles: Yes, No and Doubtful. The counters are told to reject pretty well everything that isn’t a cross, but the Returning Officer will often take the obviously clear ones (e.g. ticks) back into the count as he or she sees them. They must count them so that the counting agents can see them and check each one, and they can object to any ballot they think invalid. In this case it will either go in the Doubtful pile or the Returning Officer will make a decision there and then. Sometimes you get counters who (used to counting piles of notes) do it too fast—I’ve asked people to recount a batch when this has been done, and they must do it. As they are counted, they are bundled in 100s, and someone writes the number in the last two (Yes and No) bundles and puts that with it. This could well be what the counter in the video was doing. They are then piled up in rows on the relevant table. The ballots are then counted: so many bundles of 100 plus the odds.

Doubtful votes. When everything else has been done, the Agents for the two side are called up to examine these. The Returning Officer will either explain why they’ve been rejected or ask if both (in thais case) Agents are prepared to accept the vote as valid. I had one case where a voter had used a smiley face to vote Labour—all the Agents were prepared to accept this, but the Returning Offiocer said no.

OK, mistakes can be made: there might be 99 or 101 ballots in a bundle, very rarely there might be a vote for the one side put on top of 99 for the other, but I’ve only seen this once in 40 years. Most mistakes, being random, will cancel.

Any attempt to suborn an election in the UK would require a conspiracay involving literally thousands of people. What are the chances that someone would not already have sold the story to the Record?

No, the election was conducted fairly (with the exception of postal votes—and there are not enough disputed votes for this to have made a difference).

Project fear won. It’s as simple as that. Stop banging on about fraud. It didn’t happen.

Thanks Mark. Do I know you from SNP London Branch?

I think we have to distinguish between mistakes, low-grade fraud, and significant systematic rigging. Mistakes are inadvertent. Nobody is at their best at three in the morning. They’re almost always penny numbers. Low-grade fraud is possible with our system, and it would be better if it could be tightened up on. Someone votes early in the name of someone they think probably won’t vote. Some registers a vote at an address that isn’t their main residence. Again it’s penny numbers. It can be a worry in a closely-fought constituency or even more so a council ward. There’s no way it could infulence last week’s result.

All the actual evidence people are banging on about, real and imagined is of this nature. It’s background noise. It’s irrelevant to the outcome. Nobody is going to rerun the vote or even do a complete recount on the basis of someone believing a couple of papers ended up in the wrong tray, or even that Mrs High-and-Mighty registered herself to vote at her holiday cottage.

The people who are buying the conspiracy theory believe that a winning Yes majority was turned into a loss coming 5% short by major fraud. That didn’t happen. It couldn’t happen. You could more easily put a man on Mars.

The only conspiracy I can really think about is the sudden appearance of Rupert Murdoch on the scene which unleashed the non-stop Unionist assault in the last two weeks of the referendum, which in my mind ultimately turned the tide.

All national papers apart from the Sunday Herald were anti-independent with the Sun along with the Daily Record front and centre.

Regardless of what happened to The News of The World, I think he was contacted by David Cameron to give the YES side false hope and this giving him the excuse to unleash the media assault.

I personally think it was all planned well head.

Howerve it is done. Let’s leave it behind and look to the future and take one step and time until we reach our ultimate goal, Independence for Scotland.

@ Morag
How on Gods earth could you “Know it did not happen” unless you were with the Postal votes from post box to counting table you could not possibly “Know it did not Happen”
If you were not it makes your” Factual Knowledge” redundant.
@ MarkAustin
` If anyone saw anything fraudulent they could go to the Record` , Are you fricken serious did you sleep through the last 6 months ,the media are a sham they would never report any fraud in this case.

@Morag
NASA are hoping to have a man/woman on Mars by 2035.

With regards to the post; Scum.

john king,

“No Morag in this I disagree, when we think of just HOW MUCH the UK had to lose, they HAD to rig that ballot!”

Precisely.

I had been warning about this for a long time before the vote, yet hoping against hope that it wouldn’t happen.

I have no doubt whatsoever that it was rigged.

The final attack by BT was a window dressing exercise to give the impression that people had changed their minds at the last minute and to pave the way for declaring a rigged result.

A majority of the elderly and the middle classes were never going to vote Yes. But it is highly unlikely that the working classes changed their minds at the last minute.

The unionists would not have looked so smug at 10 pm if they were not absolutely sure of the result. Has anyone ever been 99% sure of the result of a knife edge election in the past?

I forgot to include the YES 51/49 poll that was issued along with his appearance in the post at 3.18.

I found it kind of strange that polsters that continually had NO way in front, suddenly had yes in the lead or as near as damn it.