Should Scotland be an independent country?

thistledome

funky83 wrote: »

I think you will find that since 1955 scotland has had a government for 36yrs that it has not voted for. And the simple answer to that is we have different social priorities up here than New South Britain. Take the bedroom tax for example , 88% of scottish mps voted against that bill at Westminster but what do we get. I understand down south has Its priorities and therefore immigration gets thrusted into the media spotlight every 5mins, but that just lends towards my argument that we are different nations with different social agendas and different idealism in achieving our way. We will still be friends. But equal

Having lived in both countries I find this post very interesting.

I've heard more than once from Scots that they dislike the constant complaints about immigration from English people. I've heard more than once Scots saying that the English are very fortunate that Scots people aren't so intolerant of immigrants with so many coming from England etc etc.

I've also heard an SNP member bitterly complaining that English incomers were skewing the results of a local survey with their obsession with an "imaginary immigration problem" that he believed was solely caused by tabloid newspapers in England. He has never lived in England btw.

My one doubt about leaving the Union is the fact that the SNP will rapidly expand the population of Scotland without considering the consequences to Scotlands culture and native population. Already Nicola Sturgeon has been on TV and said they have a plan to grow Scotland's population. No politician wants to rule a small country when they can rule a large one. The SNP have always had a chip on their shoulder about Scotland's population being a tenth of England's.

Expect to see a rapid growth post-independance with all that entails. The 60 million population of England has absorbed over 6 million newcomers (and not without problems), but how will the 6 million of Scotland absorb many millions more? Will Scots be so contemptuous of the English "obsession with imaginary immigration" when they are a minority in their own country?

Scots are very proud of their left-leaning nature and boast about their free prescriptions, their superior education system with it's free university places for Scots and their intention to roll back the "cruel" tory benefit cuts, i.e. the bedroom tax. They don't seem to worry that this could bring a flood of eager benefits claimants from England. The kind of people who want something for nothing and have no interest in contributing anything to their country.

Some of the smaller Scandinavian countries are currently experiencing the fall out from taking in large numbers of immigrants that don't share their culture or beliefs or sensibilities. Unfortunately, the genie can't be put back in the bottle and they are now left with the nightmarish future for their grandchildren of being a minority in their own country. I don't want Scotland to fall into this trap.

I like Scotland as it is now and I like the open spaces and fresh air and the lack of traffic jams every time you take your car out. I like not having to worry if I don't lock the door every time I go out. Scotland is great as it is.

I don't miss having a 1 hour drive to my work in England which was 10 miles away (45 minutes in a traffic jam every morning and the same going home). I don't miss the frequent road rage and the incivility of people who are permanently stressed from being overcrowded and overworked and don't get to breathe good fresh air unless they're on holiday.

I don't trust the SNP as far as I'd throw them. Never liked Salmond, but the final nail in the coffin for me was his ill-judged and dictatorial intervention in the Trump Golf Course debacle. Read this and see if you think this ambitious politician wants the best for Scotland:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/donald-trump-fails-to-deliver-on-golf-resort-jobs-pledge-8693854.html

The thought of an SNP government in perpetuity fills me with dismay.

If you hate Scotland as it is now, then vote YES.

ibiza

Note: The 'I live in Scotland' vote started rising rapidly late Monday evening. Most of the additional votes were 'yes' (beforehand, 'No' had been winning). Our suspicion is there's been an email/social media campaign to get 'yes' votes - so please take this result with a pinch of salt.

It would appear the Better Together campaign initially tried to dominate your Scottish Independence poll, but once it became brought to the public's attention, the far larger online YES campaign have corrected the issue.

Although its reassuring the author acknowledging the YES side has the numbers to muster a turnaround in figures, while the Better Together campaign lack the numbers, skills or both to follow suit.

However, unarguably the one thing your poll does show, is that it is only England who want to keep Scotland in the UK.

Here's a few details to add...

SNP are NOT the independence campaign. They are part of it, with every socialist party supporting independence (Greens, SSP, etc). The Better Together campaign are the parties on the political right wing of the above parties. UKIP was not permitted to join, but have miniscule representation in Scotland (a socialist nation).

The YES campaign is almost entirely funded by donations from people in Scotland. The Better Together campaign is almost entirely funded by an oil dealer based near London who donates to the Tory party & is called Ian Taylor. He or rather his lawyers liked to send out letters to people in the YES campaign, newspapers, groups...

Ian Taylor (businessman) on Wikipedia

Scotland has more pandas than Tory MPs at Westminster.

Lastly the Better Together campaign were discovered to run their own named "Project Fear" whereby terrible things were claimed to be in line for Scotland following independence (despite having a close to 30% greater GDP per capita than the remaining UK (close to £6K). Claims such as Scotland would lose the UK's AAA credit rating! My favourite was Scotland's airports could require to be bombed following independence. This was from the very man who coined the phrase "one apple short of a picnic".

Article 17005697 in the Herald.

Lastly, most I added here is from memory. If you perceive wrong in any way, please offer what you feel to be correct.

PS I could not add links, so left search details for two sources.

gm_xone

@thistledome

Why would you think that an independent Scotland would always have an SNP government?
Post independence, just as now, you can vote for whichever party best represents your interests. And, that's what will happen - even the SNP acknowledge it.

It's much the same erroneous statement that many are making saying there will always be a Conservative government in the remainder of the UK (rUK) if Scotland votes for independence.
The truth about that, however, is very different. The influence of the Scottish vote in determining the result of UK general elections 1945-2010 has rarely been significant...

• Scottish MPs have NEVER turned what would have been a Conservative government into a Labour one, or indeed vice versa.
  
• on only TWO occasions, the most recent of them being 38 years ago, (1964 and the second of the two 1974 elections), have Scottish MPs given Labour a majority they wouldn't have had from England/Wales/NI alone.
  
• The majorities in question were incredibly fragile ones of four and three MPs respectively – the 1964 Labour government lasted barely 18 months, and the 1974 one had to be propped up by the Lib-Lab Pact through 1977-78 so in practice barely qualified as a majority. Without Scottish MPs but with Liberal support, Wilson would have had a majority of 12.
  
• and on ONE occasion (2010) the presence of Scottish MPs has deprived the Conservatives of an outright majority, although the Conservatives ended up in control of the government anyway in coalition with the Lib Dems.
  
• which means that for 62 of the last 67 years, Scottish MPs as an entity have had no practical influence over the composition of the UK government. From a high of 72 MPs in 1983, Scotland’s representation will by 2015 have decreased to 52, substantially reducing any future possibility of affecting a change.

And, far be it from me to tell others what to do, but if the people no longer want a Tory government, surely they are sensible enough to vote for someone else.


As for Donald Trump; he got the hump about a proposed wind farm situated off the coast of his golf courses. He thinks if he jumps up and down about it enough, then he'll always get his own way.

wiogs

ibiza wrote: »

It would appear the Better Together campaign initially tried to dominate your Scottish Independence poll, but once it became brought to the public's attention, the far larger online YES campaign have corrected the issue.

Although its reassuring the author acknowledging the YES side has the numbers to muster a turnaround in figures, while the Better Together campaign lack the numbers, skills or both to follow suit.

However, unarguably the one thing your poll does show, is that it is only England who want to keep Scotland in the UK.

Here's a few details to add...

It certainly shows nothing of the kind.

Mike_Duggan

wiogs wrote: »

And how will my vote have more weight in an independent Scotland?

My vote did not have any effect on who got the regional seat either.

Edit - rephrase that. No person I voted for got a regional seat.

It'll have more weight because it'll be electing the people who control ALL aspects of Scottish governance, not just a few of them.

As for nobody you voted for getting elected, them's the breaks.

How can I put this more simply? If your vote - just your personal one, nobody else's - counted for 100 rather than 1, it probably still wouldn't actually change who got elected, because 100 votes is rarely enough to make a difference either in FPTP or PR. But you presumably accept that 100 is a bigger number than 1, right?

A 100-kilo lead weight is heavier than a 1-kilo bag of sugar, even if it's still not heavy enough to make a see-saw fun for an elephant, yes?

Every vote in a PR system counts. It has an effect on the final outcome, even if it's not a big enough effect to win any given seat. In FPTP, every vote not cast for the winning candidate might as well not have been cast at all.

gm_xone

patnadunty wrote: »

Didn't take long for the cybernats to hog the poll. However the only result that matters is that of the actual vote. They can manipulate all they want. It's frustrating to hear people from the other nations within the UK believing that ALL of the people in Scotland want independence wait for the result and judge for yourself. I believe Scotland could be an Independent Country but at what cost? How much more in taxes are you willing to pay to be able have a Scottish passport? What sort of Independence will it be when Brussels are calling the shots with our laws and the Bank of England calling the shots with our Interest rates and budgets? or are these ready made scapegoats for the Scottish Government when they can't fulfill their promises? I look forward to the referendum and more polls that see the YES campaign winning all you are doing is lighting a fire under the Complacent and Apathetic Unionist voter. I was Born under a Union Flag and I intend to die under it and being a veteran Buried under it. The Union I will fight to maintain.

"Cybernats". Yawn. The Britnats are here too, obviously.

Scots already pay taxes. At the moment they go to the Westminster Treasury. We get back a proportion of that.
After independence, all revenues come to Scotland. It's not a case of how much extra independence would cost - because we wouldn't be paying for both Westminster and an independent Scotland, only the latter - which is something we can very much afford.
Oh, did I miss something? I thought I heard the naysayers repeatedly stating "there'll be no currency union".

And, and as there's no-one alive today who is at least a mere 306 years old, it's safe to say that all who were born in Great Britain since the Acts of Union, were born when there was a Union flag. The Saltire is much older than it, of course.

Mike_Duggan

thistledome wrote: »

The thought of an SNP government in perpetuity fills me with dismay.

Then don't vote for one. The Holyrood system is designed to create coalitions. It was a miracle the SNP got a majority once, it's pretty unlikely to happen again, especially if the party fragments into left and right wings once the thing holding everyone together - independence - is achieved.

Leanne1812

wiogs wrote: »

In what way informative?

Good grief, giving an indication of how people will vote etc.......

Henry_Brown_esq

paulc333 wrote: »

really? online polls which are open to everyone are the least informative thing ever. too easy to manipulate.

Even Panelbase have made it so that new signups cannot do this particular poll as the one that showed a majority for independence was shown to have been manipulated. And it was commisioned by the SNP!!

The latest "real" poll has Independence at 27%, that's a real stat.

If you take Panelbase out of the equation the rest of the regular pollsters have never had a no lead less than 10% when asking the actual question

In fact without panelbase in the calender year support from Independence has never been over 34% and has been as low as 25%

Those are the real facts.

Scottish voters heard precisely these predictions several times in the past.
Pre 79 when Scotland was cheated by Labour out of our devolution.
Pre 97 when we got the ball over the line.
Pre 2007 when we voted the SNP in to Government.
Pre 2011 when we gave the SNP a resounding vote of confidence to secure our independence.
On each and every occassion we heard voices such as yours trumpeting the "fact" that should Scotland choose such a path we were doomed, and that anyway only a handfull of Scottish voters would vote in favour. On each and every occasion Scottish voters delivered a slap in the face to Westminsters bullying and intimidation, supported by their supine lackeys in the UK dominated MSM.
The voices we see on the forums such as yours have their DNA stamped all over them, as they originate from Westminster lackeys in The Scottish Office and Labour infamous black arts deparetment. Unionist gravy train passenger who stand to loose considerable amounts of money and power when we vote for independence.
You see what you have failed to understand is that the more you tell a Scot he cannot do something the more likely we are to bloody well do it. The no campaigns relentless negative anti Scottish droning is doing the work for Yes. All the insults the abuse the bigotry and yes the racism directed at Scotland, is fuel to the fire of independence. Alex Salmond just has to sit and wait.
As to this poll being influnced by sharing information on the web, well quelle surprise. If all elections got their message out and attracted people to vote, instead of trying to suppress the message then we would have been in a much better place years ago.
The Union has been flawed since the word go in 1707. People have been against it since it's inception. For the first time ever after years and decades of comissions of enquiries on Scottish Home Rule. Thanks to the political skill of Alex Salmond we will be asked, and the answer will be Yes we want our country back, it should never have been sold in the first place:beer: .

wiogs

Leanne1812 wrote: »

Good grief, giving an indication of how people will vote etc.......

Good grief. Do you think the people voting in this poll are all entitled to vote in the referendum?