scotlandisdifferent

Sunday night is random thoughts night:- Still uncomfortable (to put it mildly!) with EU referendum result. If this is post-truth politics, where you win democratic decisions by lying longer and louder, then it stinks. Definitely Vote Jeremy to change that! Tired of people calling us bad losers. We just think the process was crap. Probably can't change that without changing the first-past-the-post system, that's why there's no nuanced politics in England. First-past-the-post is obviously the best, the UK has had it for centuries, it's the way the Britain works. Can we have an explanation of why none of the devolved governments have it? Sooner the Labour party splits, the better. At the moment we have two Labour parties anyway, the one the party memebers belong to, and the one the parliamentary members belong to. Guys in parliament are out of touch! (or as a Labour commentator on BBC Radio Four put it today, "the roots and the flowers", and what he mean...

In an earlier post for IndyRef1 I quoted my old friend Thingy, who said (basically), "It was always an English Empire! - go for it!" Now my friends Whatsit, who live in Scotland but spend time in France, and have children and grandchildren in Spain and Switzerland, have emailed to say: D and I have been so distressed and confused recently it has been difficult to know what is best to do;" and: "We have certainly been through all the obvious feelings of anger, disgust, frustration, feeling sick, sadness, mounting to fury at the complete idiocy of what has happened and spitting blood at the awful people who have allowed it to happen! You may think that their responses are overstated, but these are ordinary middle-class Scottish citizens, who are totally pissed off with the UK response. On a less despairing note, our constituency MP for Glasgow North, Patrick Grady, convened a meeting today to reassure those of his constituents who were frazzled by the EU referendum re...

Email to: Patrick Grady, Sandra White, Ruth Davidson, Nicola Sturgeon Dear Patrick, Sandra, Ms Sturgeon, Ms Davidson, I'm a voter in a Glasgow constituency, and a member of the SNP. Whilst this morning's result gives a colossal boost to aspirations for independence (62%-38% in Scotland for Remain, as against 53%-47% in England for Leave, for heaven's sake!), I urge you to proceed cautiously, bearing in mind these considerations: 1. Independence is a step that needs a proper understanding of the issues. The campaign that's just finished was too full of bile and misstatements to allow that. If we're to have independence, it's got to come out of a campaign conducted in a mature way. 2. A mature campaign needs support to be slowly built, and I'd suggest that, for a period of a year, politicians make no commitments regarding independence other than to enhance public debate and understanding. 3. Independence isn't an end in itself, despite the SNP constitution...

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...