scotlandisdifferent

I left a few points hanging in my previous post . One was that AMS, being a proportional system, makes tactical voting impossible. Tactical voting, under a first-past-the-post system, is where your preferred party is polling third, with the two despised enemies neck-and-neck at the top: you vote for the enemy you despise less, because at least it will keep out the other scum. But under AMS, where parties with even 4% of the vote get seats, voting for the less-despised enemy simply gives them a better chance of a seat, and reduces your own party's chances of winning one. Another complication is how we should properly refer to the two votes that you have under the AMS system, and I sidestepped this issue by calling one the 'constituency' vote (which is not controversial) and the other the 'second vote'. However, even 'second vote' won't do, because the ballot paper could well ask for your constituency vote in its right-hand column, and what I've called...

Looking at blogs and Twitter, I see a disturbing lack of knowledge about how the Holyrood voting system works. Even the basic fact that you have two votes seems incomprehensible to some voters. Given that the next Holyrood election will be upon us in or before Spring 2021, and is likely to be crucial for independence, readers might welcome this short 'Voting for Dummies' guide. 1. You have two votes. One is called your 'constituency' vote, and elects the MSP for your constituency. It operates under the first-past-the-post system (FPTP). We're all thoroughly familiar with that, so it needs no further comment. 2. Your second vote has various names - your 'regional' vote, your 'list' vote, your 'second preference vote' - but they're all unsatisfactory, so for the moment let's just call it 'your second vote'. 3. Your two votes are votes for different things. With your constituency vote, you vote for a person, the person you want t...

Craig Murray's petition to bring in OSCE observers for the next Scottish referendum (which I hope you've all signed - DO IT NOW!) has resurrected the doubts about postal votes in 2014. These doubts solidify, for some people, into the claim that the 2014 referendum was rigged by the UK Government packing the postal vote with "No" ballots, as evidenced by the extraordinarily high postal turnout. This is a consoling narrative for those indy supporters who were gutted by the massive "No" wrecking-ball that crawled out of the woodwork on September 18th to steal the referendum (which many Yessers feel in their bones was in truth a clear victory for Yes) and demolish their dreams. So we need to look at that claim again now. The claim The detailed account of this rigging (the "Dunoon Report") has gained some traction among the Indy community. It was authored by Andy Anderson, Education Officer of the Dunoon Unit of the Democratic Socialist foundation, and...

According to a recent poll, if achieving Brexit meant that Scotland left the UK, then 63percent of Conservative Party members would consider that a price worth paying. This is of course good news for independence. The Unionist narrative for the last decade has consistently been that Scotland lives off England's £14bn annual subsidy, a fiction that GERS was designed to support. In that case, you might ask, why does the UK not just get rid of the scroungers and used the saved cash to paint another slogan on a bus? The reason is in The Answer That Dare Not Speak Its Name: that Scotland in fact contributes so much to the UK economy in natural resources and human skills that, without it, the UK Battleship Galactica would be holed below the waterline and bound for the deep glug-glug. A call to kick out the scrounging Jocks exposes this Unionist hypocrisy, and leaves Unionists with no message. Wee Ginger Dug puts this far more forcefully than I can, so I give you his words: What British n...

The memory-failing spouse and I attended a dementia-friendly performance of Mozart's The Magic Flute , by Scottish Opera, a few days ago. It was a matinee, sparsely attended, disappointing no doubt for the singers, but for the audience it meant that there was no audience-intrusion to distract us from the top-notch performance, and the unpretentious simplicity of the occasion was overwhelming. Readers will remember that there are three strands to this opera - the heroic couple Tamino and Pamina, who undergo ordeals, and summon up their courage by playing a magic flute; the nasty flim-flammerie of the Queen Night, whose aim is to plunge all other characters into such despair that they kill themselves; and the earthy clowns Papageno and Papagena, who just want to shack up together and have a million kids. It's all underpinned by a fourth strand in the person of the sorcerer Sarastro, who runs what can only be called a think-tank. This is an institution that promotes the same equal...

If you think this post is going to be a rant about unredeemable bigotry among those that fought under the butcher's apron, think again. We need to be more nuanced than that. My wife and I had an encounter with a non-indy person after the march, two Saturdays ago, as we were coming out of the Mitchell Library (ah, the arcane leisure pursuits of the Byres Road glitterati!). He'd been leaning on the balustrade by the kerb opposite the outside door, smoking, and walked across the pavement to speak to us, a bearded and tidily turned-out man in his twenties. "See this march," he said, making eye contact. No doubt he'd noticed the SNP badge throbbing yellow on my lapel. "Ah don't haud wi' a' that." We raised an eyebrow. "See me, Ah'm a soldier," he said. "Ah wiz sent by Blair and Bush to Iraq, and when I came back, there was no help of any kind for me. Naethin, not from the British Government nor from the Scottish Government. So t...

Reblogged from Wings Over Scotland , 8th May 2019. Mac says: Just had my account banned at the Guardian for this posting… I am wondering whats wrong with it. Any clues? My country has sucked the good years from my bones and rewarded me with a brittle poverty in retirement. I paid for bishops and lords I didn’t elect and illegal wars that I didn’t support. I fired expensive missiles at foreign families in a rich man’s oil war. I paid for duck moats for dick wads to control me, and bonuses for bankers to break the fabric of our financial system. I bailed banks that were resold at a loss to me. I watched our political system lord over decades of financial and cultural incompetence. A system not fit for the purposes and needs of a modern world, hampered by ancient tradition, debilitated by class stricture and structure. A system choked by nationalistic pomp and circumstance and run by an ossified establishment. It’s a heavy burden for an ordinary man. As I struggled to secure a roof and ed...