scotlandisdifferent

Overheard: She: See this independence thing, like, Ah'm worried about ma, you know, ma pension... He : For f*ck's sake! Was Robert the Bruce worried about his pension !?

I'm worried about the polls. Opinion polls for this referendum are showing neck-and-neck, and we're told that the result is 'too close to call'. But this is not what it feels like on the street, where I spend time trying to f*ck the heads of No voters. What it feels like on the street, as a colleague said to me on a street stall a month ago, is pushing on an open door. I trust the street more than I trust the polls, and the street says we're ahead. I'm not entirely comfortable putting this view forward, because it could cause some Yes campaigners to be less energetic, and that could lead to a disaster. But equally, if we are on a roll, then let's acknowledge it, and give ourselves more energy and courage. This campaign has been described as the biggest grassroots campaign in Scottish political history, and Yes has enormous visibility. When I count window-stickers as I toddle about the Kelvin electoral area, I see something like ten saying Yes, or maybe twent...

I wrote earlier that the English don't do politics, they only do power. Here are some reflections on events related to this theme:- 1. The European Union. The European Union runs on compromise and consensus: Germany does it, Brussels does it, and the entire machinery of European governance depends on it. The result is that nobody gets everything they want, but everybody gets enough to be going on with. Everybody except the UK, that is - if the UK doesn't get what it wants, it'll Brexit from the whole enterprise. 2. The Cunningham Amendment. A clever ruse that scuppered the 1979 devolution referendum, a brilliant elevation of form over substance, about as clever as dropping the ball in the hole and saying you've won the match. It didn't win hearts and minds - instead it alienated them with its cynicism. And those hearts and minds made their views very clear over the next twenty years. 3. The UK Alternative Vote Referendum of 2011. An unbelievably trivial debate, a sh...

The No side's widespread claim that the UK is the most successful union of nations that the world has ever seen should not pass unquestioned. Notable derelictions of duty on the part of the senior partner include: - One hundred and seventy years of Highland Clearances (1782-1854), during which up to 200,000 people were summarily evicted, stood watching while their homes were demolished, and were then then forced to emigrate. Donald MacLeod, a witness of one such incident, wrote of "two hundred and fifty blazing houses ... The conflagration lasted six days, till the whole of the dwellings were reduced to ashes or smoking ruins." - The Irish Potato Famine of 1845-1852, in which the UK Government refused to authorise help from England. One million people died and a further million were displaced, out of a population of 8-to-10 million. Ireland had been part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland since the Acts of Union of 1800. - The Irish armed uprising of Easte...

Last May I went to hear Prof. Anthony King speaking to an audience at Glasgow University about the referendum. Prof. King thought that independence would be virtually unachievable, because of the difficulty of the post-referendum negotiations. The audience, too - mostly from the University's department of politics - was generally hostile to independence, and one of those present said that he was "hoping for a new Cunningham Amendment that will blow this thing out of the water." Perhaps we're looking at such an event now. The Cunningham Amendment will be a vivid memory to any readers old enough to have been politically aware in 1979. A bill setting up a Scottish parliament had received Royal Assent in July 1978; one of its provisions was that it would only come into effect if it was subsequently approved in a referendum, by a simple majority. So far so good, and campaigning began. Then in November 1978 a jobsworth called George Cunningham moved an amendment to the exis...

A friend has asked me to provide a short, impartial account of the issues in the referendum. I'm not good at impartial, but I'll do what I can in 600 words. Scotland currently has a devolved government within the UK, with welfare, defence and foreign policy reserved to Westminster. Economically, Scotland pays to the UK all the taxes that it raises, and receives in return a subvention calculated according to the "Barnett formula", which neither side is willing to unravel. The Yes side is dissatisfied with this arrangement for two reasons: Scotland is a net contributor to the UK economy: its GDP is higher per capita than the rest of the UK, and it raises more in taxes than it receives in subventions. But this greater profitability does not benefit its people, who are poorer than the rest of the UK. The neoliberal and chauvinistic thrust of UK policy is alien to Scottish left-wing traditions, and Scots feel uncomfortable with the growing inequality in wealth, the relianc...

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I've just been reading, uncomfortably, the Labour Party's Referendum brochure. It presents an avalanche of reasons for voting No: we can't use the pound, our public services are subsidised by the UK, we can't afford the NHS, we can't afford pensions, we can't keep the pound, the UK subsidises our public services, we won't be able to pay for the NHS, we won't keep the pound... Yes, it's as repetitive as that. And as empty-headed. 'The Nationalists haven't said how they would fund the NHS,' it says; 'the UK subsidy helps pay for NHS hospitals', and 'no one has explained to me how we can afford the health service'. This doesn't actually say that we can't afford the NHS - it just implies it, by saying that at the moment the UK pays for some of it; every point is made in the same way, by suggestion and innuendo instead of with facts. LIkewise, every point names some item that forms part of the Scottish block grant. By n...