renton

Same here. Lets put this in context: It's the fucking diddy, diddy cup. Its worthless and not one of us would've given two fucks if we'd been put out of it at the start of the fucking season. Just 'cos it's the fucking Newco does not make it any less of a dubious shitey fucking honour. Fifes Finest player of the year trophy is probably worth more and Jason Thomson didn't even bother to pick that up!

I think their are distinct shared cultural markers that mean I will have things in common with our hypothetical lichtie (let's call him patient Xbl). It doesn't mean I won't have things in common with the lad from Southampton, or the guy from Dortmund, or the family in Groningen.

Except the stuff that involves how much money is spent on what, who we are going to war with and how we treat the most vulnerable in society. Even a lot of policies that involve devolved powers include voting on how much noney is being spent, which knocks on to Barnett, and therefore what money ScotGov gets to spend. and yeah, there is actually an over representation of Scottish MPs by population head, but still, ultimately what scotland votes for doesn't count, that's simply the political reality, far removed from abstract consitutional questions. We get our government acoridng to what England votes for.

Well you don't know until you talk to him I guess.

When the SNP managed to break the electoral system but good. largely though, Scottish governments are governed by coalition and even if you don't vote for the winner, you can be sure that you rvote did contribute to the overall balance of the legislature. Under the Westminster model it doesn't acutally matter what Scotland votes for, it get's what England wants.

A shared collective history. All nation states are ultimately nothing more than individuals inhabiting geogrpahical regions, but such a mechanistic outlook ignores the real, emotional and probably quite irrational bonds that these individuals form.

You have the same democratic mechanisms as others do. Holyrood represents a much more localised democracy, with smaller, less 'safe' seats. If there are other ways of improving it, then by all means put those forward, there is a vote in September that at least gives us the option of further remoulding how we do things. It's a damnsight more responsive than the Westminster scottish seats.

Again, if Scotland is merely a geograhpical region then you are entirely correct. If Scotland is a distinct nation then it colours the argument differently.

Again, I've never insinuated that regions of England don't do badly out of the FPTP system. It's also a true fact that some of these regions were offered a form of assembly similar to Scotland and Wales but rejected these, we can conjecture as to their reasons why, but ultimately it's their problem. There is a democratic deficit, it does affect Scotland as it affects certain regions of England, I accept that independence is only a solution for Scotland to some degree, but then meaningful reform of the British system is dead, and if the English regions want better representation then they should agitate for more devovled power.

old browser, so apologies for the non broken up quotes: 1) I said that I thought it crazy that people would be happy with a system where their voice was incidental to how that system was run. not that they were incapable, merely that they enabled a system which sidelined them. No more, no less. 2) Again, I'm not an uncritical proponent of the EU as it exists today, I do recognise that it enacts policies, and that an individual nation has limited soveriegnty but also that generally, it seeks not to dominate domestic or foreign policy over it's sovereign states as the UK does over Scotland. 3) And I'll adress your last point here. I present the argument as follows - you can have multiple political identities, but there ultimately are hiearchical demands for these. I am a Fifer, a Scot, a Brit by passport and a European. The first and last of these are for me, goegraphical, rather than national affiliations. There is a degree to which the argument must be seen in terms of the relevent political units we are subject to. The British union is an incorporating one, by it's very nature it sets itself above being Scottish or indeed English, it denies those identifications in a way that a looser, federal union might not. So when folk are both 'Scottish and British' in terms of a political Union that holds all the important sovereignty, it's impossible for me not to think of people who take that stance holding the latter over the former. It's my judgement that the British Union does not seek to 'pool resources' it is a top down Union, not bottom up. It doesn't seek to let folk have control of their resources and then letting them put those resources into a common pot, as say the EU does or the federal structure of Germany does. The British identity to me then, seeks to stifle the Scottish or English (or Welsh or Irish) component of people's political identities. 4) a) Why shouldn't they? b) I don't, I merely conjecture that this could be the case for people. It is of course coloured by my own prejudices that the idea of a sharing, open British 'project' to be quite laughable in any case.

Scots may have done well out of the Union, Scotland less so. The perception that a prime minister being Scottish has a tangible benefit for Scotland is false. The democratic deficit, such as it exists is about the fact that there is never enough Scottish votes to influence an election. Now, call me cynical, but my view is that democracy only works when there is acountability from the legislature to the electorate. That means (as Tony Benn would say) being able to get rid of them, but also having a real say in electing them. In Scotland, one major party has giving up on trying to court Scottish votes, so out of tune with the wider Scottish electorate are they, the other can afford to take the place for granted - in addition, neither side needs Scottish votes to win a majority (look it up, only twice in eighteen post war elections have Scottish votes changed a result!) as such neither side needs to court the Scottish electorate, neither side needs to create policies that are targetted at Scots (and you might say, with onyl 10% of the population,why should they?) so the Scots really don't get decent representation, irrespective of whether a Scot holds one of the 'great offices of state'. Now, with the majority of population and capital, England must dominate the legislature to the point where we have reached, that Scotland has no real say in how things are run. That's only right, based on the political processes in place. It's just that it doesn't that we should be happy about it or find another way where Scotland can have a alrge say in how it runs it's own affairs.

Please feel free to rebutt my arguments, which if they are nothing more than a series of sewn together words and phrases, should be easy.

Your wow means so much to me, I mean that. But what does it mean to be both? Is it a dual nationality, or is it a regional or administrative division? If Scotland exists as a collective national idea, then it deserves to be heard as an equal voice in the world. Equally valid, if it's not - if instead being British is a collective national idea, then so be it, if both are then both should be heard, but being Scottish and British is a matter of hierarchy - it's nice to be Scottish but it's more important to be British. Ad Lib brings up the idea of complex political identities - but outside of those who hold dual passports, I would argue that people hold a series of hierarchical loyalties to the various political identities they hold, and ultimately some are more important than others. For those who feel equally Scottish and British but seek to maintain the incorporating British Union, it points towards exactly what I said above, they see Scotland as a nice optional extra, but British is their main identity. I don't think there is anything wrong with that. note than in these discussions I exclude the broad class of fuckwits who probably tick Scottish over British in the census but are shit scared that scotand will cease to function without the English piping all that money north

I didn't say you couldn't.

Not really, giving that it's not a proposition I advanced in the first place. As for "pooling" the sovereignty - that only works where you maintain enough clout to actually get your voice heard. England makes up 90% of the population of the UK, London and the South East of England form the cultural, economic and political centre of the UK. The incorporating Union doe snot allow for a pooling of resources, it's far too lopsided - the practical effect is having no sovereignty/

I would note that the central argument hasn't really changed in 300 odd years. Back then those in favour of the Union were happy to trade political independence for perceived economic bounty. It's the same thing today. people who's arugments are that the current arrangements are fine and having no sovereignty over foreign relations, taxation, monetary policy or welfare in favour of the 'security of the UK' are delusional. Any meaningful pooling of resources can be done without the incorporating Union we have now, which as a federalist you will at least acknowledge (unless some of that true blue tory DNA still lurks in there somewhere). Sovereignty is something that is not an absolute, it is malleable, can be shared and pooled - of course it can. There is nothing in the construction and maintenance of the Union as it exists today however, that is worth giving up as much political independence as the Scots have.

The argument works all the way down, but it also scale all the way up. For example, if there is nothing special about Scotland as an organising mechanism for people, if demogrpahics dictate that we have more in common with others of the same class and outlook and therefore we should stick by the UK, then it's also true that that UK as an organising principle has no special nature either, and we should form an incorporating union with our European neighbours (after all, we have as much in common with workers in Barcelona as we do in Liverpool, right?) However, that's not an argument you'll hear from Better Together, indeed they have consistently shown consternation for the prospect of Scotland being 'foreign' - foreign being a perjorative term in their lexicon of course. So really, it's a question of whether or not Scotland exists. If it does exist then there is no good argument against independence, if Scotland is merely a goegraphical region of the greater UK, that could be extinguished as easily as say, Humberside then there is no good argument for independence. Ultimately emotional resonances concerning shared and passed down experiences do matter to humans, and it is not and never will be purely a matter of reorganising administrative units, the same goes when you talk about the UK as well.

Who says I am? I recognise that the European free trade zone is something we should be part of, I don't like the European parliament as an organisation and in any case, most important EU stuff is still carried out at an intra-state level. Ultimately there are trade offs in sovereignty. I'd quite like some to have to trade, please.

Again, not the point. The point is that Scottish votes do not significantly contribute to the composition of any given UK government. If Scotland votes Labour, it only gets a Labour government becuase England voted that way as well, same goes for the Tories.

Not the point, the point is that maintaining the UK system at present means that Scottish votes are not generally required to inform the composition of government, hence Scotland effectively hands over control of it's affairs to a legislature in which it's own representation is marginal, and unable to influence policy in a meaningful way.

How anyone can think their affairs are best managed by other people where their own voices are incidental, rather than integral to the decision making process is beyond me.

Don't try and put trendlines on polling data, there is no underlying physics available to be able to predict ahead, and therefore any future trend is highly speculative at best, it could quite as easily slow down, speed up, reverse itself or bottom out.

On a plus or minus 3% it's either 36 or 43%, still not 30 odd percent and not marginal at all, given that the No vote could then be 43 or 49% as well with DKs included, so worst case scenario is a 13 point deficit and best case is a dead heat (based on ICM results) Also, the fact that you think they should be pulling out the cigars does not mean it is a serious analysis backed up by facts. Sociology may not be an exact science but I imagine factors such as 307 years of Union, 50 years of solid habitual Labour voting in the West of Scotland and only a relatively recent 'falling out' with Westminster over the last 30 years in terms of the post war consensus may contirbute to a drag on what it takes to get Indy over the finishing line.

Even allowing for dks the polls have narrowed, personally I don't hold with excluding DKs becuase the DKs will have to go someway, Curtice on his blog reckoned DKs favoured Yes a bit more but I haven't seen the data that suggests that. Nevertheless, the polls are narrowing - there is no underlying physics that dictate the pace of that narrowing so it could easily speed up, slow down or reverse. The interesting thing about your earlier argument about the static nature of an independence vote over the decades is that it is valid in reverse - regardless of the flavour of government and it's policies the vote was always quite static, now it's not - as people get engaged with the issues the share of the vote is increasing with Survation at 39% PB at 40% and ICM at 39% - that's not 30 odd percent anymore, not by a long shot.