renton

which poll is this?

I would imagine that a desire to devolve the tax base to Holyrood at least suggests that the economic narrative of BT is not entirely convincing to start with.

Actually, all it suggests is that the majority of that missing 33% believe at this point in time that the Labour party will come up with the raft of devolved powers to keep them happy. That belief can wane, and for some, will do as Labour prevaricate before coming up with some absolutely paltry scheme for further devolution. Both Curtice and WoS polls give us a good idea of what powers people think should be devolved, how do you think poeple wil lact if Labour comes up with something well short of what they want or expect.

Now your being obtuse, how is that not relevent? Right now there is a nebulous quality to the notion of further devolution. A lot of people certainly would like greater devolution without the total 'risk' that comes with independence. Yet if this devolution is not available, if they rate their loyalty to the Union lower than they rate having more real power at Holyrood - you think they'll just shrug their shoulders and vote No? All of them?

Great, now, within that No group, what percentage favour greater devolution, what are their priorities for devolution and what way will they jump if those priorities are not met? Where is that data?

For all you are the one talking about changing the narratives, you have your own particular reality you are desperate to push, don't you.

Where is this vast amount of data? Where is the poll showing voter priorities on what should be devolved and how they will behave if they don't get it. All this shows is that there is currently a large appetite for those who want more devolution, and who currently favour that option over indy. there is little enough data showing how they will jump if they don't get it.

It's one poll form months ago, it didn't occur to me to specifically remove it on that basis when making a general point about how different pollsters come up with different results. As to your second point, I put "bought" in inverted commas for all the usual reasons someone does. For the record, I do not consider that poll to be a complete write off. For all the headline figure was an outlier, probably due to the sequencing of questions, I do think it's an interesting data point for that very reason, in what frame of mind you had to get people thinking to evince a 5% swing fromt he other PB polls?

Why the f**k not? The quesiton asked makes no reference as to what extra devolution means, because none of the BT parties have given us the benefit of what they actually think on the matter. Without that information in the question, it's up to the responder to imply what it means in their own head. Therefore you have no way of knowing if what is eventually put on the table will be enough to sate the desires for more devolution on the part of those responding, nor does the question illuminate the responding person's priorities - for all you know, the desire to have welfare and tax totally devolved trumps staying in the Union, and if that is not what is eventually offered, then why would the responding person not change their mind from 'more devolution' to 'independence'.

It conveniently ignores nothing. The principle difference is the weighting, and when I said that it was with reference to those panelbase polls undertaken by the times, while I did not go as far as to specifically exclude the outlying poll as "bought" by the SNP, it never the less remains a true point, the weighting is the principle difference. It's also true that both sides do use different questions to influence the outcome. As for the WoS polls, they were principally not for the headline referendum question (and actually some of the data was quite interesting, and in line with both Curtice's SSA survey, and the recent BT poll with the three options). I honestly can't believe you are picking up on one sentence in a post that did not exactly exclude one poll you find offensive when remarking that the wieghting behind differne tpolls influence their outcome. Ad Lib would be proud.

Already answered in response to HB, perhaps you'd care to tell me what official powers, what offices and statutes either Holyrood or the Scottish constituency MPs can use to influence the Governor's decisions, thereby illustrating how Scotland's elected officials are able, currently, to suggest more beneficial fiscal strategies for Scotland and her people?

What is your actual fucking point here? Nothing I've written to date, and nothing in the post you originally quoted before engaging in this particular bout of ad lib style pedantry suggested that BT had bought a poll on the referendum, this was never a point I made, nor one I've argued in favour of. I merely stated, and am correct to state that the pollster companies themselves are impartial (they are), that both sides can use, and do use different questions to influence the outcomes of these polls regardless of whether it's the referendum question or not (and both the SNP "bought" poll and the YouGov one I linked to are evidence of this) I also said that different pollsters use different sampling strategies to weight their polls (according to YouGov and TNS, Lamont should be first minister). So at what point did I suggest that BT "bought" a poll, and what parts of what I've written above do you find innacurate?

http://scotgoespop.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/do-you-think-alex-salmond-should-give.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+ScotGoesPop+(SCOT+goes+POP Link to the Scot goes Pop blog on the subject.

Nominally independent, the Prime Minister cannot directly force the governor to raise interest rates. Though no doubt there is plenty of other ways of influencing how the governor behaves with respect to interest rate. It still doesn't change the question though: What official vested powers does Holyrood, or the Scottish constituency MPs have to influence interest rates in such a way as to be beneficial to Scotland, currently?

Someone on this thread posted a link this morning to a YouGov poll paid for by BT that had an incredibly leading question over childcare policy, just as one example.

It's not so much a point to be argued but rather a mantra to be repeated for you, isn't it. Tell me, why can't it work ,and while your at it, tell me what vested powers Holyrood, or indeed the bloc of Scottish constituency MPs have, on influencing the BoE interest rates?

Not really. It's far too simplistic to imply such a causal relationship. It doesn't cover, for example, a whole range of divergent tax base priorities, which under the existing political Union does not provide for in it's London size fits all theology. Scotland is demographically and geographically divergent from England. The economies, though broadly in line with each other are still divergent in terms of what we make and export: manufacturing in Scotland is still a larger % of the economy, our digital sector is proportionately stronger, while primary sector farming and oil extraction give a different character to the Scottish economy that is blotted out by London priorities. Currency Union without political union only really means a lack of control over interest rates, however we currently have little or no control over those anyway. The BoE is independent of Westminster and Scotland as a nation has no bargaining power with respect to the BoE and only a small minority of MPs to influence Westminster policy. For me, getting control of the tax base in the first instance is more important, and a currency Union, at least in the short term leaves us no worse off than we would be by staying in a ridiculously lop sided political union with England.

Why is what we have now better?

What's your point caller? It's well known that the infamous SNP payed for poll used a series of run up questions prior to asking the all important question. Both sides have used leading questions over the course to influence the outcome of the polling, the companies are impartial - that's not to suggest that the questions their clients want asked are though. It doesn't mask, however the fact that the time/panelbase polls still give narrower No leads than, say TNS, who use different weightings and polling processes. It's also fair to say that this effect also shows why thr PB polls remain basically static while there has been a much trumpeted 5 point drop in the No vote in the TNS polling, almost certainly due to the fact that their weighting oversamples Labour voters, so any small drift of Labour voters to Yes looks more dramatic than it would in the PB polls that samples more SNP Yes voters.

Why?

Basically, there's a third for, a third against, and a third who want more devolution, but only one side is offering serious devolution (i.e. devolution of all mechanisms to form a new nation state). Unless Labour and the Tories offer up serious concrete offers for conceding large tracts of domestic policy (and you only have to look at YouGov's September poll to see what scots think should be under Holyrood control) before the referendum, then it's anyone's guess where that other third will land. To simply state it's 2 to 1 against is of course,the correct reading of the headline data but does nothing to bring out the actual subtelties of the situation: i.e. there isn't a snow ball's chance in hell of either of the major parties devolving the kind of powers that Scots want to see devolved, at which point, it's a quesiton of whether the devo-maxer third stick or twist. They are impartial, of course they are. So are TNS, so are Panelbase. However, all pollsters carry certain weighting regimes into their anaylsis that can dramatically alter the outcome. YouGov use Westminster weighting, Panelbase use Holyrood. It's a question of who's the most accurate.

There is also this YouGov poll from September '13 (for those who don't like Panelbase polls): http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/yo2tn77guq/YouGov_Times_FINAL_16-Sep-2013.pdf Again showing that people want the Scottish government to control everything from tax, to welfare to drugs policy. When you add this alongside Curtice's social attitudes studies, it seems to show that Scots seem to be more adverse to the word Indpeendence than they are to the idea of independence, given that they seem to want pretty much every government function undertaken by Holyrood.

Wings over Scotland (I know, I know) commisioned panelbase to do a poll on just that, think it ended up with Scots wanting full control of immigration, welfare, the tax system, the oil.... think the big headline power that Scots didn't seem to want devolved was defence. If your interested go here: http://wingsoverscotland.com/bullet-points/ The link to the panelbase data is in the first line.

That's a fairly wide net your casting there, and probably includes everyone who's registered with the SFA.....

Well, we don't know that there will be. Arguably a 1 question referendum is Salmond's best chance of getting the win, as I said a two question refernedum has huge disadvantages to those seeking independence, and would arguably rob both indy supporters and the Devo-maxers of any kind of victory by splitting the vote.