Will the Electoral Reform Society prevent Yes peer pressure bias ?

To Juliet Swann the admin worker in Electoral Reform Society's 2-person Scottish office. Their director Willie Sullivan works for Common Weal and has long given the impression of being a Labour Yesser.

“If the Yes bias in yesterday’s session on citizen’s conventions was accidental, you will be happy to agree with measures to prevent its repetition. This event was supposed to be nothing to do with backing either side on independence. From the main speaker, it was: nothing wrong with the main speaker. The offender was the supporting speaker with a Canadian experience who came after her.

To prevent hijacking of events, a rule needs to be billed, saying: whenever a claim is made in favour of either side on independence and in the referendum, someone on the opposite side will be entitled to respond to it. Even though this is a diversion from the meeting’s intended topic.

Otherwise, speakers can use events supposed to be about other things, to project claims on behalf of one side as measured facts without having to justify them. The supporting speaker, you will remember, claimed to have measured that Yes voters were more likely to have researched their facts than No voters.

This was obviously intended to make No voters sound stupid and propagandise that the facts pointed to voting Yes, and it was presented in support of a pushily self-satisfied Yes voter in the audience who had expressed that prejudice already. We then had to make the most of our opportunity to contribute to the intended topic’s discussion, without getting any opportunity at whole-room level to give a No voter’s defence to the claim made against us. As a result, that Yes voter left believing she had picked up a scientific statistic in support of her prejudice, and she was not accessible in the informal time at the end either as she chose just to engross herself with a friend then leave. Any number of folks could have seen the spectacle of her prejudice confirmed and been swayed by it themselves too. These all left without ever knowing that a No voter present in the room thought they had missed a big fact when they researched their votes, and thought the statistic claimed was misleading because it did not consider whether voters chose reliable sources for their facts.

My counter to the statistic, as a No voter, would be: (1) it assumes the voters had available all the facts they needed, but facts of big importance to me on racism and citizenship were not easily available, (2) did these voters question the Yes campaign on facts and dig behind them, or just accept claims as facts because they wanted to believe? (3) some voters for a status quo may be choosing on the evidence of life experience, hence have less need to read up on it, this does not make their choice less intelligent. This just to show I have an answer – and if I slipped in claims for my side into an event about something else, you know the Yes voters would have an answer and would be indignant to have it heard.

This is a question of whether ERS events and their findings are reliable, or will be corrupted by bias towards the Yes movement’s undemocratic game of peer pressure. I find it necessary to circulate the question openly, so that future participants and the whole reform scene be alerted to watch out that you make the right choice to prevent hijack bias by always having a right of reply to it when it happens.

As you know, I raise this question already from a position of lapsed membership, because of the unanswered question on exactly where you shared our local group’s voter question action towards the 2 ref campaigns.”

This may be read by folks who never reached the meeting, so I would mention about that too. Why was there any need to do this relatively small meeting as a limited places book your place event? They told us there was a waiting list of folks who had not got places, they emailed asking we to tell them if we weren’t coming, yet by the chance of stormy weather on the day folks did not turn up and there were lots of empty seats without the waiting list folks having had a chance to be there. This was brushed aside quite trivially saying the weather would make them relieved. This is a totally unsatisfactory standard of practice towards inclusion in democracy! the very thing we were there for!

For 10 million global citizens

UNCHR launches campaign to end statelessness. The UN says a third of about 10 million stateless people are children, who can pass statelessness to future generations.

This comprehensive write-up is by Al-jazeera: www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2014/11/unchr-launches-campaign-end-statelessness-201411451131537335.html

My immediate response to UNHCR, pushing the idea of citizenship union:

" On statelessness and your campaign. The Scottish crisis has already led me to propose a new constitutional idea which fits perfectly with shifting the global culture away from the fragmentation of citizenship which causes much of statelessness. You might like to back it: a multi-country CITIZENSHIP UNION.

It seems very significant, that Al-jazeera comes from the non-Western postcolonial world, yet in its report on your campaign it has explained that "Statelessness results from people falling through the cracks when new countries are created". So that this a deliberate avoidable racist crime has accompanied the world's postcolonial shift to a large number of smaller states. Indeed that it seems to be a deliberate device to create enslavable populations.

The Scottish nationalists too were planning to betray the common sense principle of automatically inheriting citizenship. Their plans were going to make it refusable. But in Europe's present racist mood, the media and No side would not do anything to focus on and expose it. I lodged a petition to the EU, number 1448/2014, against accepting a Scottish state's valid mandate to exist if voters had been unaware of this. It has not been made redundant by our No vote, it still holds for all the other secession movements in the EU.

The interventions from 3 ex-British countries appealing to us to vote No in contradiction of their own seceded position, were what enabled me to propose citizenship union. I first proposed it in advance of our vote, to 6 countries. I have resubmitted it in the public submissions, at both British and Scottish levels, on where Britain's new settlement should go now.

It would close some of the holes of statelessness. It will not immediately close them all though by choice it could. It will be an enormous culture shift in the whole global nature of citizenship, away from it working in the single country ways that cause statelessness, and to a global community which the peoples of lots of countries will be attracted to seeing their country included in.

I have posted here before on the geopolitics of citizenship union: Divided world shut doors, on the geopolitics of citizenship unions. As Salmond pointed out instantly, for the 3 countries the contradiction is that they all became independent from us historically themselves, and now they have the accompanying divisions of citizenship. To make their appeal to us make any sense, to back up in practice their geopolitical concern to keep the British state and make its new settlement succeed, they need to be willing to go for this. To form a citizenship union, as many democratic countries as can be brought in would all simply agree, in one sentence, that all of each other's citizens are now their own citizens too. Any catching up by their own citizenship laws would be done after the treaty is made, to be bound by it instead of miring it.

There would only be one citizenship of the entire scheme, unlike in the EU's modest moves to citizenship union folks would not remain identified as just one member state's citizen. That way, racist reactions like UKIP's to undo the whole thing would be made totally impractical. But this would be between totally independent states still free not to join in each other's wars: and obviously folks can not have obligations for any type of compulsory service put on them by any one of the other states which they are not resident in nor have asked to have any connection with, so this structure will also be a good safeguard against such forms of service being able to exist in any of its members. The only margin of independence the members would lose, would be to act on enough of a scale at odds with the others geopolitically as hit ordinary citizens' lives adversely.

Divided world shut doors

As anyone on Facebook or following the proliferation of new Yes sites will know well, the loud mass of Yes supporters, their movement, are neither healing the divide nor accepting the outcome as holding for the longer term, at all. All the correct noises that they should do that, made by SNP leaders in the days after the result, have become a lot of hot air. They intend to pester and peer pressure the country non-stop, blame everything that happens on the No vote, and invent accusations of betrayal of the Vow no matter how much new devo we get, and starting before there has been time to do anything.

So we don't have to take any notice? Maybe, but there is a sinister detail their messages are now becoming tauntingly open about. If they can keep pestering the political culture to treat elections every couple of years as votes on indy, and/or if the SNP government continues and finds excuses to hold further referendums within a short time, even illicitly without British agreement, then they are looking for only one win. They intend to get their state by non-stop cultural persistence effecting a culture shift by the immoral means of peer pressure until they can cow the culture into considering the Vow broken even if it has not been, and win a vote that the system will accept. They are totally open - that after this they can take for granted that nobody will listen to any campaign to restore the Union. Indy once done will be perpetual.

This does not make sense, from the unionist point of view. To accept that the union could never be restored puts its defenders at a disadvantage which they don't need to volunteer to accept. It comes from the present post-Imperial world culture, the fragmentation of countries, and from ruthless neocon capitalism's culture that we all leave each other to sink or swim alone and don't help each other. Applying that to countries, it means that in the modern world there is no culture, as there was in 1707, for states to unite.

We have the EU, but it is a sharing, rather than a merging, of aspects of statehood by what remain independent countries. Its biggest problem is the conspiracy theory of a long term plan to be a single state. Hence even its measures towards a citizenship union are now suffering a disastrously inhumane racist reaction against them, that is so distressing to watch.

A nationalist movement which has turned out contemptuous of democracy and based on emotion, mob culture, intolerance, conformism, and able to produce threat feeling, must not have historical odds of winning handed to it on a plate by its opponents. If the world culture of the time has that effect, it must be changed.

Nats are keen on repeating that no country nowadays seeks to give up its independence. The world culture at present does not offer that option. When Bob Geldof backed the Union and the nats cried hypocrite because he is a citizen of independent Ireland, they complained he had not asked for it to rejoin Britain - but has anyone suggested the option exists? He could still historically wish it had not seceded, but see more nationalist trouble in trying to make it culturally possible to reverse that. As part of countries'selfish nastiness and excludingness towards each other's citizens, what the racists want to restore in Europe, states don't want to grow and take on other citizens.

The nats are wrong, in Lesotho landed by the postcolonial world with its awkward statehood inside South Africa, there is the People’s Charter Movement seeking annexation. They see Lesotho's statehood as just making it an economically disadvantaged ghetto, a reserve of vulnerable workers, excluded from citizenship equality in South Africa, who by fair common sense should be the same as all the surrounding peoples and have what they have. So to get it by union, by joining South Africa. But South Africa does not want to take them, cynically they would be an extra load of citizens to have to treat more fairly than now.

The nats are wrong to claim that no ex-British country has ever wanted to give up its independence - Newfoundland 1933, also for economic reasons. But see how long ago that was, it was before the present postcolonial culture. The concept was still allowed then. Zanzibar, in a not quite democratic way but that's the same as 1707, was able within the postcolonial culture to opt out of statehood and form a union with Tanganyika in 1964, Tan-zan-ia.

Contrary to the barriers between states that the nats are relying on, in my submissions at both Brit and Scot level to the devolution consultations I am proposing again what I did in the endgame, of the referendum - a full CITIZENSHIP UNION of as much of the free world as will join it. At minimum including the 3 countries that asked us to vote no but are ex-British themselves, they need to do it to make their position to us sensible and not contradictory. A citizenship union does not take away any participating country's independence, it does not require a union of government, it is simply a step in recognition of the humanitarian common sense of global culture and dispersed families and friends. It is simply an agreement between countries that all of each other's citizens are their own citizens too, and to no longer have citizenship exist of any one of them singly but only of their whole union.

they tested the water

SNP's UDI talk slapped down. It can hardly be a surprise to them that it would be, that we would assert referendums are part of the constitution.

We will need to always remember how naughty they were to test the water. It was calculating, wanting to find out whether they could avoid having one.

within 3 days of losing they rewrite the rules

Referendums are part of our constitution for any change in the governing system big enough to be a constitutional change. That has been well established since the 90s, since the present post-Thatcher wave of constitutional reform got going - but the precedent's establishing can be traced back to the first EU referendum in 1975. For which Tony Benn, though his side lost that vote, was credited with adding referendums to our constitution.

3 days after losing this referendum, Salmond and Sillars are talking of dropping the need to have one, and considering an election win for pro-indy parties in 2016 to establish secession on its own. No longer want to have to hold a referendum after the experience of losing this one.

It is neither legal to declare UDI, nor constitutional to do it only 20 months after losing a referendum. If they actually do this, the population of Scotland will be put in a civil war type dilemma between which state to hold is legit here and to affiliate to. Will we end up like Cyprus with populations fleeing to either side of a green wall or getting trapped in a rogue state against their will with loss of international rights?

To suddenly write of such prospects evokes disbelief in peaceful familiar Britain - so remember nobody imagined the Northern Ireland troubles before they slipped into them very quickly. We have lived through exceptional days of constitutional instability recently and now we have 20 months' notice to take a position on the rights and wrongs of ref losers announcing a unilateral constitutional change abolishing what they lost only 3 days after they lost it. This is getting mad. This is not a democratic movement this is getting ever more fanatical on the tide of mob emotion they stirred up. As the dream falls from their hands, they clutch out after it.

www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/salmond-we-don-t-need-referendum-for-independence-1-3548270
www.express.co.uk/news/uk/513637/Salmond-s-plan-for-indy-coup-as-he-claims-independence-possible-without-new-poll?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+daily-express-uk-news+(Daily+Express+%3A%3A+UK+Feed)

Trust it to be Sillars, the most extreme and racist of the leading nat voices, the same one as made that threat against No-voting businessfolks before the poll. That they lost, by a bigger margin than the polls had said, indicating there was a shy No's effect or a drawing back from the brink like in Quebec, was a morally great statement for democracy against intimidation and peer pressure. Long to be commemorated.

Never again, "for at least a generation", will voting SNP feel like a normal party choice. From now on it will be a vote for the intimidatory movement who frightened the country out of putting "No" posters in their windows then who began hunting for ways round democracy within 3 days after they lost.

Britain has clear notice of the nats' ravings, anyway. 20 months to prevent an illegal civil rebellion and a drift into violent troubles.

"Alex Salmond lost. It is not for him to try to overthrow the will of the Scottish people in some sort of coup." - Johann Lamont

LEAKED SNP MEMO EXPOSES MORE LYING

on debt, job cuts, public sector cuts, pension cuts, decline of oil, and British governments vetoing our budget. www.scotlandsaysnaw.com/leaked-swinney-memo/

it's the nats who have cut the NHS they are caught lying about

"The Daily Record has regularly reported on the impact of the SNP’s neglect of NHS budgets in Scotland.

We have exposed unacceptable waits for A+E treatment, missed waiting-time targets and chaos on wards. And the IFS also warned that falling oil revenues would mean an independent Scotland would be forced to slash health budgets further.

Even using the SNP’s widely-disputed oil figures, they say the Scottish NHS would be better off as part of the UK."

www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/independence-referendum-snp-cut-nhs-4207020

This is is exactly what those of us who have been on street stalls for No, of which there should have been more, have heard from health workers and from elderly folks whose clinics have been cut or had their waiting lists increased. Since the poll wobble we have now given ourselves a taste of economic life under Yes, a piece of real history we can always point back to. It's time to come back from the wobble.

SNP TRIED TO HIDE FROM US UNTIL,AFTER THE VOTE THEIR HALF BILLION £ OF HEALTH CUTS. THE WHISTLE HAS BEEN BLOWN, Jim Murphy speaks on it in a video: www.facebook.com/#!/video.php?v=728024090614568&set=vb.301783293238652&type=2&theater

stall mart

Both sides had stalls inside an Asda shop, at Chesser in west Edinburgh, on successive Sats. Both sides as a result have an ethical responsibility to their volunteers, to continue to lean on Asda for an answer, until it gives one, as to how safe we were. Politicans who supported or took part in the stalls need to do this, to make sure their own ethical position is secure for the future, to make sure it stands that they supported something ethcial and cared about participants' safety. In the postmorteming of the referendum, this scrutiny will be there.

The problem? It dates back to the 1990s without it having ever been exposed as a big consumer story and without it yet being known to have ended. There was an issue known to solicitors then, where Asda security would arrest anyone high-handedly on arbitrary accusation from anyone else without willingness to listen to any explanation. A solicitor in Fife recounted from an actual case, that they refused to admit even in court to a sheriff's question, that there had been any error of judgment in refusing urgent toilet access to a person they were holding, with the result of forcing him to defaecate on the floor, in a food shop.

Asda security still stride around in black slack uniforms with a heavy thuggish air unlike in any other supermarket. Their hand may have been stayed, protecting us, by the note I handed into customer service 20 minutes before we began, raising this. But they have never given any actual answer to it. Not while we were there, nor ever since. Undoubtedly they never want to. Sorting out all outstanding questions of campaign ethics from this campaign after it is over, which wil happen for both sides, will include forcing this question with Asda, getting them for broken ethics unless they give an answer that means the end of that bad corrupted security culture.

Among Asda's responsibilities to show we were safe, is to force the question that no one who has ever experienced that security culture shall fins they have any difficulty in visiting the US. Its position as an American-owned company, part of Walmart, helps in enabling it to do this. It arises because the US has long had a practice, in violation of the oldest basic human right of all, innocent until proved guilty, of judging foreign visitors from arrests where there was no conviction and asking them as a single question "Have you ever been arrested or convicted?" The lack of media focus on this, happening even to citizens of the US's closest allies, has always been a particular failiure in our political system. This is a moment of opportunity to work against it, so it must be seized.

The very bad economics of independence.

mobile.nytimes.com/2014/09/08/opinion/paul-krugman-scots-what-the-heck.html?smid=tw-share&_r=2&referrer

"I find it mind-boggling that Scotland would consider going down this path after all that has happened in the last few years. If Scottish voters really believe that it’s safe to become a country without a currency, they have been badly misled."


This is terrific too, comprehensively demolishes everything about Yes: Duncan Stephen, why i will be voting No Thanks

Astonishing chilling threat of mass deportations.

The SNP's threat issued on Jul 14, to take away residency from the EU citizens already living here, effectively a mass expulsion from the country, if we get trouble with rejoining the EU, was an eye opener and shocker for many. The mask dropped from how racistly the nats are willing to operate, all that means for what a new state would be like, and how it correlates with the shocker they are doing to families in their citizenship plan.

Could there possibly be any more to come, you were already wondering?

This has turned up, from Yes street activity, openly being offered to voters. A booklet produced by the famously English-based Yes blog Wings Over Scotland, called "The Wee Blue Book". A booklet of what they say are key point to convert you to Yes and supposed to be difficult for No supporters to answer - in fact they are all the scare claims and unevidenced assumptions you have heard before and very easy for No supporters to answer.

But on p61, in the chapter "Negotiations" on what would happen after a Yes vote, up pops this surprise:

" Scotland being out of the EU would certainly hurt Scotland, but it would massively damage the rUK too in several very obvious ways.

It would be disastrous for rUK businesses, but more to the point it would cause bureaucratic chaos the likes of which has never been seen on these islands, as 400 000 English, Welsh, and Northern Irish people suddenly lost the automatic right to live in Scotland and a similar number of Scots risked expulsion from the rest of the UK.

It is barely an exaggeration to say that the whole of Britain would grind to a halt. People wouldn't know who they could do business with and who might be deported the next day." - !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THIS IS A THREAT TO CARRY OUT A MASS DEPORTATION! A RACIST ATROCITY! IT IS IN THE CASE YES ACTIVISTS ARE NOW MAKING TO THE PUBLIC IN THE STREET! THERE IS NO THREAT ON THE BRITISH SIDE TO THROW ANYONE OUT, THIS COMES ENTIRELY FROM THE YES SIDE. DO WHAT WE WANT OR WE THREATEN TO OVERTURN THE LIVES AND TAKE AWAY THE LIVELIHOODS OF, AND DEPORT, THEY ACTUALLY SAY THEMSELVES DEPORT, HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE! WHO AT PRESENT LIVE PEACEFULLY IN A UNITED COUNTRY!

THIS IS THE NATIONALIST MONSTER ON AN INCREDIBLE SCALE!PRINT COPY AND SHARE THIS POST!And remembering that Yes's citizenship plans don't make it unrefusable by descent from a parent, and Alex Salmond himself would not tell me on his phone-in on Jul 29 it would be unrefusable, you can tell that by "English Welsh and Northern Irish" who would lose their residency and become subject to DEPORTATION!!! yes read it in there!!!! they likely count a good number of Scots by background and family too!

THIS IS A FRIGHTENING TIME OF HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCY. WHEN HAS BRITISH POLITICS EVER CONTAINED SUCH A BARBAROUS THREAT OF EXPELLING POPULATIONS????? VOTE NO, VOTE AGAINST THE SIDE THAT MAKES THIS THREAT, AND BE READY TO CHALLENGE THE LEGITIMACY IN INTERNATIONAL LAW OF ANY SECESSION PLAN INCLUDING THIS THREAT AT ALL.

the debate Better Together won

In the lives of ordinary voters, it's No supporters who win debates because the Yessers are fearful of debate, they only ever want their own points heard one-sidedly. Show you have an answer to them and they make a fast getaway.

Of course, the picture does actually favour us at the TV debates'level as well. Darling won the first debate, on actual substance, and what he established then about our chaotic unformed fiscal prospects in Salmond's hands still stands without any further answering in the second debate which consisted mostly of noise and shouting down by Salmond indulged by the host. Some one just said BBC Scotland want to be the head TV and Radio producer in Scotland and that is why they are leaning over backwards with the Yes voters: anyone hear this? Today's Times p4: "BBC Scotland have a proud history of ensuring that every audience is stacked with nationalists and that every question is plucked from the nationalists' greatest hits. They did themselves proud on Monday." Another source said "Alistair said he looked out and all he could see was folk growling."

But with the world of TV debates being a general turn-off, especially to swing voting women, and remote from our own lives, look at what debating with nats is like at grassroots level.

Here is what happened when Jim Murphy's speaking tour for Better Together visited South Queensferry last week. It took place outdoors, by some restaurant tables on the sea front. His message was well received by the voters who were there. A good natured discussion was going on, when there arrived 2 men wearing Yes badges, who asked to offer a couple of questions.

They proceeded to talk non-stop, and never paused to hear more than half a sentence of anything anyone on the No side said. They would promptly interject with another point of their own or even another question spontaneously changing the subject. They were simply hooligans, this approach was a disruption. Telling them so made no difference, they were practiced in this way of behaving and being in a pair as soon as one came to a halt the other would start.

It was more than disruption of a No event from taking place properly. The content of what they said was full of scaremongering Yes arguments of the type that could be stated quickly in brief. Their obvious purpose was a hope to influence some voters by it - and in a way where no reply arguments would be heard and no debate would happen. Also they made a false accusation that the event had not been advertised, which the voters present rebutted and took a dim view of hearing, and they performed a stunt of making a mobile phone call which they claimed was to an office number for Murphy's tour, who they claimed were not telling them where he would be next day - this when it was already billed online where he would be next day. We could not see who they were phoning if indeed anyone at all, or hear what was being said to them, there was no evidencing of their claims, they were able to entirely pretend the whole thing to attack the host's character. They did this in a tide of non-stop talking in the face of being told they were disruptive and needed to listen as well as talk.

They did not even stop when the whole group of us around Murphy regrouped further away from them. But here is when they did stop, straight after that. They got up and left VERY quickly - as soon as I showed I had an answer to their point on Tory governments and started to make it. THEY LOST THE DEBATE THEY STARTED, as they fled from treating it as a debate at all as soon as their question was answered.

This type of behaviour from nats matches the experience around Better Together street stalls. There is always a nat who comes along and picks a debate with individuals in the stall team, probing our strength, testing whether you can stand up to a set of prerehearsed statistical arguments. The last one I got blew his own argument when shown our economic arguments, just airily snapped "that's just propaganda" - entitling me to do the same to all his claims. Wanted his claims scrutinised but not willing to scrutinise ours - so lost the debate, again. That is the whole nat approach to debate. Shout down, disrupt, seek to generate peer pressure, run away from listening, have a double standard of expecting to be heard but not to hear the other side. That is not a character of movement fit to vote a country's future into their hands. That is not a democratic standard. How in their new state would they debate the country's problems and the austerity created by their own actions? That is a prospect to be repelled away from now, by the character they show trying to create a cultural pressure in their favour from intolerant behaviour.

how it trumps the nat line on Tory governments, economy, Trident, and everything

THE SCOTTISH REFERENDUM IS A HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCY.

THE YES SIDE IS SNEAKING PAST VOTERS UNAWARES A HORRIBLE RACIST PLAN TO DIVIDE FAMILIES, RUINING THEIR PRATCIAL ABILITY TO HELP EACH OTHER AGAINST POVERTY OR IN TIME OF MEDICAL NEED. A POWER FOR OUR NEW STATE TO TURN SCOTS AGAINST SCOTS BY REJECTING WHOLE GROUPS OF SCOTS FROM THEIR COUNTRY.

THEY WANT TO GET RID OF THE COMMON SENSE OF INHERITING CITIZENSHIP AUTOMATICALLY, AND TO MAKE IT REFUSABLE BY THE STATE FOR THOSE SCOTS WHO CAN'T ARRANGE TO LIVE HERE ON ONE PARTICULAR DAY, AND WHO WERE BORN OUTSIDE SCOTLAND TO EXPAT PARENTS, TO GET CITIZENSHIP. THAT WILL AFFECT THEIR ENTITLEMENT TO LIVE HERE, IF COMMON TRAVEL BREAKS DOWN. THEY WANT TO PUT EVERY POSSIBLE PREJUDICE IN THE WAY OF SCOTS' ENTITLEMENT TO LIVE HERE, AND TO MAKE CITIZENSHIP SO RESTRICTED IT AMOUNTS TO A PURGE OF THE NATION. IT IS A TOTAL BETRAYAL OF SCOTS WORLDWIDE.

I wrote this for those friends who tend to follow the organised lefty scene and are voting Yes on its tide of optimistic dreams, and kept sending me Facebook invites to Yes meetings. Always trusting that scene and anywhere its group, psychology leads, they simply have not noticed or thought to check up on Yes's plans for citizenship. They have trusted that all is bound to be well and non-racist with anything the lefty parties support. With good welcoming pro-immigration consciences, just like mine, they have only heard Yes's progressive sounding spin during 2013 on encouraging a certain number of new entry.

In Britain's present racist mood, neither side nor the media have seen fit to draw your attention to a betrayal of Scottish families against ECHR article 8 on family life, an anti-immigration hate crime on the Yes side. Do you have a real enough conscience to take pause and look into that when you hear of it, now? Not like the fanatical nationalists you know your conscience does not sit easily with, willing to vote for this betrayal just out of abstract national pride, like the 2 I got when leafletting in Dumfries who just shouted out "this is a disgrace, it's all lies" and probably will be too scared to check up and discover it's not.

Yes will make inheritance of Scottish citizenship from a parent refusable by the state. It will take away the common sense principle of family life of automatically inheriting the background citizenship from a parent's origins, of the country your family life might want to resume in. Folks who move away often intend to return, the prompters to move away economically reluctantly have even been cited as a Yes argument. So it makes no practical sense, it is spiteful racial hatred as bad as any other you have ever encountered in citizenship rules, to put a question mark over such returners bringing their offspring with them. No Scots who have moved away, mostly to rUK, in recent times and who have families there to be caught by present events, had any expectation that it would result in a threat to their offspring's entitlement to live here, this is the last thing they imagined possible to come actually from the nats who are supposed to care about us as a people.

But you will notice in hindsight that return of the diaspora, undoing the Clearances, is not a principle you have ever heard about from nats. It shows the betrayal has been long prepared, it is an electoral choice to appeal to a bigoted version of nationalism that is anti-outsider, motivated by fear of the world beyond our closed little huddle, that only likes or cares for the population already here. Hence, in a racist period, to jettison being associated with immigrant unpopularity for returners. This is hidden deceitfully in the concept "civic nationalism", a term that has been claimed to be ever so enlightened and avoidant of racial attitudes, but no attitude can be more racist and hating than the "civic nationalist" line that the whole project is only concerned with the folks who already live here. This is how Pat Kane, after a lecture he gave, came to tell me that he would be first to speak up and say "this is wrong" to making any further provision for the diaspora.

Is that what organised left optimism made you think you were voting for? I discovered the betrayal, and that No is the less racist vote, from enquiring into the White Paper plan that citizenship by descent can be registered for, giving evidence of the descent. From as soon as this came out, I went through all possible routes, the government, Yes campaign national and local, and the Yes supporting parties, asking to know simply that this registering would not be refusable. The registering provision covers grandchildren too, so simply by saying it was not refusable they could have put themselves in the position of offering a better deal for the diaspora than the status quo, and then, if the continuity of the principle of unrefusable inheritance was firmly built into the new state and under no threat, that would have made me vote Yes. I am a supporter of global free movement, I hate the global apartheid of any borders, and that points in favour of No that you have to think thrice before creating any new border, throwing away a well-integrated union of nations that already exists with a long history of free movement. But it can be right to do that if you are going to resist a racist move in the state you are dividing and make borders more open overall. What I most want from either side is the most humanitarianly generous borders we can get but specifically starting from the moral priority of our country's openness to its own diaspora. I have no innate loyalty to a state, on either side, so they were not wasting their breath on an already unbudgeable voter. Instead, they are the ones who showed they won't budge.

The answer, which you can check on by your own enquiries, is IT WILL BE REFUSABLE. It will affect who can live here if the common travel area breaks down as it easily can. Of people already living at the time of independence, only the ones who are preexisting British citizens, on top of chancing either to be resident here on one particular day or born here, get unrefusable citizenship. The system is not even tied to one form of prejudice, it mixes every form of prejudice you can think of to be as restrictive and anti-outsider as possible. Though it discriminates against exile-born Scots, it is not exactly what I call "birthplace racist" -the horrible school bully bigotry of regarding everyone's country as dictated by birthplace, which everyone exile-born has encountered as a form of racist bullying and which has been visibly wrong ever since the Babylonian exile of the ancient Jews. The system actually also rats on an old SNP pledge of citizenship for everyone born in Scotland, it requires inheritance of British citizenship too, some nationalism and an obvious appeal to racist voters. As a result they never gave any answer for a real cruelly treated person in America, who I have met online, who can't get British citizenship or live here because he was born in Glasgow just after a rule change in 1983 to parents who were only here on temporary student permissions - he was hoping for better from the indy movement, instead his case does not create the moral dilemma of owing to him to vote Yes because they have given him absolutely nowt. None of you however wishfully optimistic can look away from that revelation of Yes's real character.

So the system is residency-racist - designed to be only for the narrowest conservative view of the folks who are already here and who do not fall under any of several prejudices against belonging, and to make the rest of the world rejectable including the rest of Scots. That means to vote Yes is to vote for A NEW CLEARANCES, the massive hate crime of a rejection of Scots by a Scottish state, a hating xenophobic purge of the nation that will scar our history. It is more than just emotional, important though that always is against racism's impact, it goes directly to the practical economic survival of families. Families divided into different countries against their will are prevented from coming together to support each other against poverty, including by taking each other in, and in time of medical need.

The Yes argument of no more Tory governments, even if it was right, is totally answered and thrown away by this. Yes means creating a power to reject Scots in rUK, to abandon them to stay there, under governments made more often Tory by our departure, to suffer every hardship thrown at them cut off from any family support available to them. This of course impacts on the lives of families they have here, e.g. parents who left temporarily and have returned. In having a conscience against racism you have already swallowed that it's wrong to vote for hateful purges against parts of society even if the folks offering them also offer good economic promises for the other parts of society they favour, as the Nazis did. You have felt horror at that how that wins anti-immigrant parties votes. If you are a left winger and vote Yes because you want no more Tory governments, knowing what Yes intends for citizenship, you will do exactly the same thing, purge a country of a population group, as well as you will vote upon our own families and next of kin an actively increased vulnerability to Tory governments.

Besides, I actually heard at Common Weal's big day, which was Yes-supporting, a panel of lefties including SSP discuss post-Yes prospects and they expect indy to be such a shift in both SNP's and Labour's definition of themselves that both are bound to go through an uncertain period of redefining who they are and what they are for, which will be an electoral weakness for them at a time when the Tories, renamed, will be released from their unpopular association with distant-feeling British governments and will be well placed for a serious electoral challenge. So lefty Yessers themselves are not expecting no more Tory governments, it's just another of the SNP's many wishful myths, and in 2010 the SNP vote was 491386 and Tory vote was 412855, not that much different! And where is no more Tory governments in the nats wanting a gradual several years transition away from using the British benefits system, totally exploding every unevidenced claim that voting Yes might be an escape from austerity? As also do the impacts on trade and world ratings of us using another country's currency without permission or any role in running it or of a collapsed currency union. I learned only from a public debate, not from any media why? that you can't even join the EU without a central bank.

The other Yes argument usually popular with left wingers, and not half as popular with the whole country as nats used to keep saying, is Trident. Tommy Sheridan called Trident "scrap metal", on the reasoning that it will never be used. Look what moral perspective that puts the racism issue into - there would be nothing moral whatever in taking scrap metal as a morally driving reason for voting for the persecution and cruelties described above. This would be so even if CND's persistent wishful claim that us getting rid of Trident would result in it going completely, was right. You would never consider voting for far right types of racist persecution to get rid of Trident, so don't vote for this one either. But adding to that, you know anyway it's a clutching at straws dream whose high chance of not happening could leave you having voted for racial hatred for no gain at all. rUK has it planned out to build a new base and keep Trident temporarily in America until it's ready, and you have heard many nat voices wanting to trade keeping Trident for the currency union in which we also absurdly would not be fiscally independent and would still have our spending controlled by British Tory governments we could no longer vote against and will be more frequent as a result, again so much for no more Tory governments or for escaping from austerity.

That inherited citizenship will be refusable I first got admitted by SNP minister Alex Neil, at the first Yes meeting I went to - where there was no comeback to answers. He said it's because of keeping out undesirables. If you have any critical thinking capacity, your alarm bells would go off instantly, to ask exactly who the undesirables are and does it mean the poor or the unemployed? Absolutely key Yes figure Jim Sillars, who is doing loads of touring meetings for them, confirmed it probably does, he would would want it to, and he claims to be a socialist. To an audience to whom my question had already raised the thought of dividing families, he opened with the instantly familiar racist sentiment "We can't have an open door", where within the Union we already do have an open door, and he said he wants the exile-born to be subject to filtering for desirable skills exactly the same as is planned for migrants without any connections here at all. He openly told them "WE MUST NOT BE AFRAID OF THIS".

HAVE YOU EVER HEARD ANYTHING SO INHUMANLY RUTHLESS RACIST FROM ANY FIGURE OUTSIDE THE FAR RIGHT PARTIES? Yet SSP leader Colin Fox sitting beside him said not a word to disown it and has continued to do touring meetings with Sillars and call him a friend at them. This remains unknown to the Yes faithful who are not following this question, so it is hidden from them in plain sight. Sillars is anti-EU too and to have Yes making so much use of him as a speaker, to trade unions too and incredibly the exile-born Yes supporter Lesley Riddoch is doing a meeting with him in Livingston, points further against Yes's reliability towards the EU. Think of that as you remember Sturgeon's recent threat to throw out all the EU residents already here, they will "lose their residency rights", if we get any trouble rejoining. That was a scale of slipping of the mask on nat racism that if you ignore it to cling to a dream you are part of something worse then UKIP. When I first became No I was worried about Britain leaving the EU and had to check my conscience with a Polish friend, who to my interest turned out already to be a No voter. Now the duty to vote No to protect Polish friends from the racially ugliest agenda you have heard from a major party, is clear and uncontestable.

That the Yes we are faced with is as vicious as this is a humanitarian emergency in our history. Sillars's tooth and claw capitalist plan to divide families takes no account of bad education systems, troubled families and interventions/social work situations, unrecognised conditions like autism or dyslexia, or Savile-type hidden abuses in institutions, all as causes of not having high value skills. This in a political culture that is still utterly closed to allowing evidence on these things, like mine against damaging education methods, to be heard. So it is a plan to further punish for being victims, all abuse survivors and all folks who had their childhoods damaged by unscrupulous adults, by having their country reject them for it. To vote Yes knowing this, is to vote to add to the longer life toll of crimes upon children and to punish their victims.

Yet get this, I have even found a Radical Independence stallholder willing to defend Sillars and call this unprecedented racism good socialism. He argued it is racist to give anyone an advantage from their background connections and fair to treat everyone outside the country the same. So the Marxists of Radical Indy want to select workers like so much meat for their profit value to the rich, to abuse abuse survivors, and to hammer ordinary families' liberty to come together to protect each other from poverty. He knew this practical point was unanswerable for he kept avoiding it by diverting onto repeating, several times after I had already answered it, the racist question "How far back would you go?"

Friends in Fife invited me to a Yes meeting in Kirkcaldy with Tariq Ali. Is all of the above any background to accept the pathetic "I would hope so" that was all he was left able to say on trusting Yes's intentions on citizenship? Where was the trustworthiness in the written answers my early enquiries got if answered at all, the obvious evasion of just saying read the White Paper - to a question on clarifying it? Not until it became possible to use enquiries on the campaigning rules as a lever for clearer policy answers did I get any, and they totally leave it open for these horrors to happen:

Policy officer Nickola Paul who wrote the policy: "Legislation will be made to establish detailed rules for Scottish citizenship in time for independence. Therefore further details of the procedural requirements and administration of the relevant rules in relation to Scottish citizenship applications will be available when the legislation is drafted." So vote not knowing what they are going to do. Yessers often fall back on this: oh the White Paper is only proposals and we will we will only decide all this after winning the ref and you can help us write our constitution. Spiv trickery, selling you a product with no guaranteed content, saying gamble on the outcome to a process that will be full of folks who were willing to follow such evil lead plans. Compare it to No's deal where the Union includes the status quo certainty already existing of a united citizenship. I met some decent-seeming Yessers from their strong Helensburgh group who were concerned to get their lead answerer to take it to their lawyer and see what solution she could get me, she ceased to answer any more after only coming up with this: "Apart from birth, parental birth and residence on Indy day there is no automatic right to a Scottish Passport. Our law incorporates the ECHR as will our constitution. Our political and social culture is to bring families together and not divide them. Our political class reflects our society which is compassionate. However we have a duty to our nation and the wider world to police our borders and be measured and responsible in our security and international affairs. There can be no carte blanche on this matter.."

Which is just proof of everything I have written. The "parental birth" reference is to the White Paper's provision for future born children, which is tied up in spiteful complex strings: it also requires that if they are born in Scotland their parent must already be a permanently permitted resident at the moment of birth, and if they are born outside, requires that their parents chose to register the birth in the correct way, though it's not the baby's fault if they don't. More nasty tricks designed to pile up the maximum of range excuses for power to reject folks, totally in the character of the worst racist-influenced citizenship provisions in other countries that have justice campaigns going on against them, and not at all in the spirit of Yes's propaganda claiming to be liberal, rendering it lies.

If you are going to trust a political class at its word on being compassionate where it promises nothing at all except to breach the citizenship inheritance principle and refuse any shred of safeguards, you are hooked to a cult. Indy has become like the new communism the way folks' desperate dreams are vested in it. The way Yessers will go on about economic sufferings and poverty, it's the first thing they do in all their meetings, to create a peer pressure, without giving any evidence that they will disappear under indy with our 2 neocon major parties and the Tories easily strong enough to come back. They just take it for granted and go for peer pressure to mask the lack of evidence.

This fits with the well known pattern cited by J K Rowling, that every doubtful questioning of any Yes prediction gets called scaremongering. It's a cult selling unevidenced dreams and shouting down questions. All its policies and prosperity predictions based on predicting that other parties will do everything Eck hopes they will do, when they can easily choose not to. The cybernats, I have had 3 encounters with their sham debate groups on FB matching the experiences of many who have been turned on personally for having any other view than faithfully uncritically following Yes. The national feeling of intimidation that is preventing folks from displaying No posters. The dishonest cult-like in-group intolerant character, of the form of nationalist culture that has prevailed, bears out the character of movement that would betray the diaspora.

So I included Helensburgh in my "no to a new clearances" campaign, which mostly has been Borders targetted. For the British-wide racist crisis certainly worsens the Scottish emergency, I have had 4 newspaper letters on it published but largely the media and indeed the No campaign have not chosen to focus on it, because they know it could raise a good pressure upon the British parties too to become nicer about immigration than they want to be. So I lodged a European parlt petition, 1448, against accepting the ref process as fair or a new state as validly mandated in all the EU's dealings with it, if the mass of voters were unaware of Yes's citizenship plans. A duty to voter awareness. Not naive enough to depend on the petition getting formally upheld in order to succeed. This petition makes the challenge that not to do these things would be a bad precedent for the EU against what it is, so just by being lodged it has already succeeded, putting this challenge in the record always there to refer back to.

Herald wiping comments and manipulating debate ?

On the following page on Frank Skinner, www.heraldscotland.com/politics/referendum-news/comedian-fears-england-may-go-right-wing-if-scots-vote-yes.24817570, in the Disqus comments section is the Herald showing a manipulation of heard debate to favour Yes? It has excluded the following 2 posts from being posted:

• In answer to a racist called Alex who wrote "You are not in your country, unless you were born there":
  
  The school bully prejudice of claiming that birthplace dictates country divides siblings and has been visibly wrong ever since the ancient Jews' exile in Babylon. Tony Blair is English and was born in Scotland. Eamonn da Valera was born in America. The Silent Twins, Barbadian, were born in Yemen simply because their family was in the RAF there, left it at age 7 months and had no further connection with it in their lives. Among Scots, Alexander McCall Smith was born in Matabeleland, Fitzroy Maclean in Egypt, Edinburgh council leader Andrew Burns in Germany, Eric Liddell in China. Lesley Riddoch, Alec Home, the Queen Mother, and former Plaid Cymru leader Dafydd Wigley were born in England, while famously Norwegian author Roald Dahl was born in Wales.
• In answer to "Simon Harries, Cambridge" post beginning "I was born in Africa":
  
  "Simon - Yes has ratted on a former SNP pledge of automatic citizenship for everyone born in Scotland and is confining that to inherited British citizenship, in that negative way it is not defining citizenship by birthplace. But in another negative way it is. Scots who were born outside Scotland to emigrant parents, mostly in rUK, and can't arrange to be resident here on indy day, they won't budge on making their citizenship only discretionary and refusable. A humanitarian betrayal which will divide families, against ECHR article 8, preventing them coming together to support each other against poverty or in time of medical need, and means the Scottish nation rejecting and excluding a large part of itself.
  
  "Civic nationalism" has turned out to mean a selfish anti-outsider racism of only caring about the population who chance arbitrarily to already live here, thus totally hostile to moving around and orientated to making it harder. I got that from 3 sources at Yes events.
  
  Pat Kane told me he would be first to speak up and say "this is wrong" against any further openness to the diaspora. Jim Sillars, considered a leading nat speaker who is doing many meetings for them, answering my question on dividing families said he wants our exile-born children subjected to the same filtering for skills as migrants from anywhere with no roots here at all, and openly told an audience "We must not be afraid of this". Those of the exile-born who have suffered from bad education systems or corrupt abuses like Savile, and that is their reason for not having high value skills, will be further punished and rejected by their country for being abuse victims. A stallholder for Radical Indy, told about this, defended it and called it good socialism to treat all outsiders from everywhere the same and racist to give preference to "someone who happens to be descended..." and he never answered on the practical impact of dividing families, dodged it several times by just repeating the racist jibe "how far back do you go?"
  
  That the Yes we are faced with is as nasty as this is a humanitarian emergency in our history. But it's by enquiring and digging and going to meetings that I have discovered it, not by passive listening to the campaign. In the British-wide racist mood I can't make the media or No campaign focus on it, so have had to make personal efforts with a "no to a new clearances" campaign in the Borders, and a Euro petition against accepting a new state as fairly mandated if voters were unaware of this horror."

A Facebook link showing horrible cybernats giving a birthplace racist reaction to Rod Stewart, in their usual emotional haste forgetting that their position would apply against their own Lesley Riddoch too.

the side without credence.

BUSTED !

A Facebook photo from a No-voting page identifies planted SNP members faking at being indy-supporting Labour members.

www.facebook.com/#!/VoteNo2014/photos/a.177722718953393.48305.174186732640325/735570689835257/?type=1&theater

frank

Comedian Frank Skinner, in advance of coming up to the festival, has given a muddled view of the ref. Desperate nats could take it as a celeb endorsement of voting Yes, because he has said that from a selfish point of view he would vote Yes if he lived here. He happens to be factually wrong in that, he has listened to all the unevidenced propaganda that life under indy would not be, as it would, just as neocon as British life. But the muddle is, from the point of view of living in England he has also endorsed us to vote No, saying that would be better for them, that seriously telling argument of the fear of rUK being left more right wing by our departure.

A reply to him, as posted under the Herald article:

Mr Skinner esquire, You might not vote Yes if you lived here and had done some digging for yourself into Yes's plans in an are the campaign has not focussed on: citizenship. Being conceived in Scotland would not be enough for your son to get their favour. They intend to make it refusable by the state, not an innate right, for the Scots who were born in the rest of Britain and can't be resident here on indy day to inherit citizenship from their parent. I have often found decent but overfaithful Yes voters shocked to hear of this, and generated a few extra enquiries by it, but always with the same answer. With government, Yes campaigns national and local, including Helensburgh who checked it with a lawyer, and all the yes supporting parties, they won't budge - they won't make this class of citizenship unrefusable. This is a basic assault on family life, against ECHR article 8, and a new clearances, an intention to reject Scots from their country. If the British or European shared travel areas break down, citizenship will affect who can live here - and only last week, totally slipping the mask, we heard Sturgeon's seriously unpleasant threat to throw out all the EU citizens here if we hit any problem with rejoining the EU. The so-called "civic nationalism" they have claimed is wonderfully progressive and non-racist turns out to be so deeply racist and anti-outsider that it even kicks away Scots' extended families - for what it means is only caring about the population who chance to already live here. Even when emigration features in Yes arguments!

Dividing families is a very practical matter preventing them caring for each other or supporting each other against poverty and welfare troubles. Yet a stallholder for Radical Indy kept dodging answering this with the diversion "How far back would you go?" and called it good socialism to subject the exile-born children of our emigrants to the same filtering for skills as Yes proposes for migrants from anywhere with no roots here at all. To reject our children taking no account of life misfortunes, education systems working badly, abuses hushed up by punishment as was revealed in Savile, as causes of not having high value skills.

I have petitioned the EU not to accept the ref process as legitimate or a new state as mandated if the mass of voters were unaware of these sick plans. Now the Yes campaign especially its meetings consists of an ever more raving Project Fear threatening all sorts of lurid right wing prospects if we vote No, without any disproof that they would happen the same under indy too as our major parties are just as neocon inclined as the British ones. Everything they threaten is actually a reason to vote No, in order not to betray branches of our families who have already suffered life misfortunes to also suffer rejection by their country and being abandoned to suffer all the threatened things living in the rest of Britain, cut off also from the help of their families here unless they emigrate too, and shorn of our leftward impact on British elections. While in the union we can vote against right wing horrors instead of having them thrust on us by a big powerful neighbour with no say in it, let's take your endorsement of voting No for that reason.

Yes's hypocritical ranting Project Fear

Now that the Sunday Herald is a Yes propaganda paper, Iain Macwhirter's column has lost all pretence of objectivity and become a scaremongering rant every week. It is particularly hysterical today, threatening the worst right wing possible future that can be imagined for Britain in the short term, and using it as a base whence to call No voters naive to think we will have any electoral leverage upon major parties that all endorse increased devo to actually get any.

No mention of his own naivete in swallowing Yes's citizenship policy and remaining totally silent on how it affects the freedom of exile born Scots ACTUALLY LIKE HIMSELF, he was born in England, to move back here like he did and rejoin their families!! An entitlement they will need at a VERY PRACTICAL level to stand up to any economic woes caused by Tory governments. No explanation either of why we should assume that the type of future he paints for the Union could not also happen to us under indy, IT COULD. Lefty Yessers themselves speaking at Common Weal 2 weeks ago recognised that. The Tories were only 80K votes behind the SNP in 2010 and are totally serious challengers in the next Scottish election. The panel at Common Weal, Yes supporters, were seriously alert to that fear as both SNP and Labour would be caused existential crises by the change to indy and would have to redefine themselves as parties, and both are being pulled erightwards by financial forces, the Tories are ready to raname and seize a ready vacuum to makwe the same elctoral challenge based on social prejudices as they have done elsewhere.

Most of the Yes case is based on optimism and shouting down questions, hence on NAIVETE, and that is why the hypocritical and NEGATIVE PROJECT FEAR that Macwhirter is indulging in now, frantic to intimidate us into voting Yes over the head of all the questions he has not answered, won't wash. It has been apparent for months that he is a propaganda mouthpiece, he has never been opbjective over the EU issue either where Yes's claims continue to suffer deaspite his arbitrary confidence in them.

who's scaremongering now by 'eck?!

Posted by Vote No to Scottish independence and protect the Union in sharing an update about the EU that goes against the nat spin during the week: It only took 2 days:

Juncker's comments prove beyond any doubt that Scotland would have to reapply to the European Union as a separate state. Although Juncker did not specifically state Scotland in his speech, it is obvious that Scotland would treated as candidate for EU membership thus requiring us to comply with all membership criteria. Statements contrary to this position are a sign of complete and utter delusion; Scotland is not a special case and is no more important than any other country wishing to join the EU. This however is symptomatic of continuing nationalist arrogance which works on the view that "the world is watching" and that our resources would be a carrot too irresistible to the EU. The fact is the rest of the world couldn't care less about Scottish independence nor could it care about the result of it. We would just be seen as another country that would need to follow the rules just like anyone else. I have never understood this delusion of grandeur; our success is because of our role in the Union and it has nothing to with the nationalists or their narrow minded nonsense. In essence, they are trying to break up 300 years of success, not 300 years of failure. Retaining the Union is total common sense; breaking it up puts the people of Scotland right back to the end of the queue just like everyone else.

* Another post from the same page that really needs sharing and circulating, ti's a great insight. "I was on holiday recently. I was talking to this older gent from Glasgow. We got on to the subject of the referendum. He said that since the 60s he was a diehard SNP supporter. He said that Salmond had ruined the Yes campaign, by making it about himself and that he had stopped supporting the SNP since Salmond took over. He finished by saying as much as he hates Westminster, thinks that we are actually better off together. That coming from a man who supported the SNP for over 40 years says it all to me.

*And this piece of irony by Brian Wilson is about Europe too, that at this stage of the campaign it has totally become Yes and the nats whose campaign is negative and a fear project consisting of absurd clutching at straws scares !!!

XENOPHOBIC MASK TOTALLY OFF THE NATS NOW!!

From the Scotsman, www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/sturgeon-warns-europeans-could-lose-right-to-stay-1-3475453 - STURGEON WARNS EUROPEANS COULD LOSE THE RIGHT TO STAY if we find ourselves outside the EU with a hiatus in that same rejoining process that Salmond lied about having legal advice on.

A big serious mask has now slipped. Now displaying to all a seriously unpleasant scale of anti-outsider character to the Yes cause and its so-called "civic nationalism". This use of a new clearances as a political bargaining tool is a wake-up call against voting Yes! to all voters with European friends.

This comes as no surprise to all voters who had checked up on Yes's citizenship plans, who already know that they will not budge from planning to divide families and shockingly close Scotland to some Scots by not giving unrefusable citizenship to the children of our emigrants who are exile-born and not resident here on indy day. I have often found decent Yes supporters shocked to hear of that and unable to answer it. Many of them must now be further troubled trying to explain their side putting this shadow over European guests.

I suggest they change side. You will feel refreshed in conscience and know that was the right and best step you could take. As can be followed in the back posts here, as a voter whose moral priority is pro-immigration and border liberalism my conversion to No has copnsistently become ever more right, after I had leaned cautiously to Yes in the early part of the campaign in 2012-3, when before they had revealed any plans their rhetoric was in favour of border liberalism, all now long since totally thrown away.

yes there will be Tory governments under indy!

I went to Common Weal's big day in Glasgow. I was interested to observe where it is heading as a prospect for growing participative democracy, which will be good after a No vote too, but Common Weal is so selective about its content, to fit it to its predecided left wing vision, that it's doubtful it will contribute meaningfully to making democracy more participative, it will just be a lobby for its own point of view. Indeed, another reason for going was, in their too short discussion sessions from which no notes were taken so what will they achieve? to challenge Common Weal's non-use of an item I contributed about our parliament closing ranks to silence an item about pressure in education that I petitioned about, PE5.

As non-SNP lefties they are naturally conscious that the SNP is clearly neocon on corporation tax and selling out Menie to Trump. In the end session on post-Yes prospects, they predicted the SNP will be keen to swing rightwards quickly under international pressure, that the change will be a crisis for both our major parties to adapt to, and that already planned by Murdo Fraser, with a change of name a centre-right party will revive and find a space for its ideas.

This means something big and revealing. It means - lefty Yessers themselves don't think there will be no more Tory governments. The argument of no more Tory governments can have a bit of a moral pull, it can be a wrench to drop that prospect as you see how spivvily unpromissory the SNP's plans are and just as neocon as the British consensus they knock. It is a great relief, and further step in clinching the case for voting No, that the audience at Common Weal heard lefty Yessers themselves totally bury that argument of no more Tory governments. They are totally alert to and expecting every likelihood of an early Tory challenge.

No supporters both left and right retell this story when talking to anyone who has been tempted towards Yes by that argument. It is now demolished! Gone!! Another No supporter has shared with me the telling point that in the 2010 election the Tories got 416 000 votes in Scotland and the SNP got circa 480 000, similar figures!

fax democracy

This is really good:www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/22/scotland-vote-no-fax-democracy-alex-salmond-independence-westminster Norway is a "fax democracy" because it has to keep sending faxes to the EU asking to have the say it does not formally have because it is not as an EU member. Thus we would be in the same position under indy, in relation to all the aspects of the union Salmond wants to keep. We would be a fax democracy, a state opted out of any leverage towards the things we would ask other countries for.

Like the now exploded assumption that rUK would keep investing in renewable energy here to buy from us, just to make the nats' sums add up - the European Court of Justice has made a ruling that there is no such obligation between EU states and rUK would have no duty to invest in Scottish renewable energy. As Brian Wilson explains here in the ScotsmanSkittles of assertion falling down": "As I have repeatedly pointed out, it is completely irrational to assume that the UK Continuing would subsidise expensive Scottish renewables if we were a separate state, leaving Scottish consumers alone to pick up a tab which is currently spread across the whole UK."

It is in this nat culture of mirage, reckless claim, shouting down opponents, and as JK Rowling said, calling all contrary arguments scaremongering without actually answering their content, that the nats have not put right their citizenship policy either. They won't budge, they are sticking to their line of betraying the diaspora, even our closest next of kin diaspora, by making inheritance of citizenship from parents refusable and discretionary for the state to allow. A new clearances that would scar our history - by our own nationalists!!.

So it looks inescapable and now beyond any serious chance of changing, that the moral right has turned out to be with No. I started this blog without any such conclusion drawn in advance. During the period in 2012-3 when they were talking a lot of open borders rhetoric and before they had issued any policies, I was cautiously sympathetic towards Yes. That rhetoric was smoke and mirrors they have not honoured it, they have gone totally the other way. Their concept of "civic nationalism" has turned out to be a cover for an anti-outsider form of xenophobia even against our own close diaspora, a tribal cult-like intolerance, No supporters intimidated from putting up posters, and an unscrutinised emotionalised faith that every dreamy claim the Yes side makes must be right and all contrary information is scaremonering. A totally dismal picture. As these articles show, they have blown it big time.

All who care about their own and their friends' families, for all with a social conscience against hateful xenophobia, vote No.

A PETITION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

Submitted Jun 23. Accompanied by letters to 2 offices of the European Commission because they are responsible to have a position too.

TO WITHHOLD ACCEPTANCE OF LEGITIMACY FROM AN INDEPENDENT SCOTLAND UNLESS THE REFERENDUM CAMPAIGN MADE MOST VOTERS AWARE OF A CITIZENSHIP QUESTION AFFECTING FREE MOVEMENT: AND TO PUBLICISE THIS BEFORE THE POLL.

A petition on the EU's dealings with an independent Scotland if one results from the present referendum.

To urge that the EU and its institutions should not recognise the referendum as legitimately mandating and fairly conducted, and should deal with a new Scottish state on that basis in all its relations with it, if a question on citizenship does not receive a scale of media coverage in the referendum campaign so as to make overwhelmingly most voters aware that the question exists. This question is: whether applications for Scottish citizenship by descent, through a parent or grandparent, with the descent evidenced in any way at all, will or will not be refusable.

This has a bearing on the principle of free movement which is a defining concern of the EU. It could affect who is allowed to live here if united travel areas break down, and entitlement to public services. To make citizenship through a parent refusable appears inhumanely to breach ECHR article 8 on family life, by its potential to divide close family members in these ways.

Persons who have moved from Scotland within either the EU or UK did not anticipate such a threat to their offspring's citizenship position. It would be a bad precedent for the EU, conflicting with its nature as a union, to accept silently this occurring in any country.

It is an unfair distortion of national self-determination for voters to be unaware and uninformed that they are voting to remove the absolute unrefusable entitlement to residence here and citizenship, from their own or other families and a part of their society. Voters led to assume that no such prospect can exist, because their media select to be oblivious to it and the campaigns on both sides select not to address it, have not mandated it. They have not mandated the whole choice on statehood that includes it.

To date, this is the situation. The following supporting information evidences so, and that a position from the EU on its dealings and relations with Scotland, taken before the poll, could compel there to be sufficient scale publicising of the question to avert an illegitimately uninformed vote and the EU's difficulty of relating to a state created by that.

the popular will

news.stv.tv/scotland-decides/news/279363-survey-finds-more-scots-want-trident-to-stay-than-go-after-yes-vote/ Opinion Poll More want to keep Trident!! So much for Eck telling the pulse of public opinion.

There is something very unclear, very smoke and mirrors, about the new draft constitution they are consulting on. Because the consultation actually ends after the vote, so that it will presumably just have to be abandoned if No wins, none of the draft's contents are commitments or policies when we vote. this is particularly agonising to remember in relation to citizenship, where perhaps prodded by voter concerns about the diaspora, they have now used the word "entitlement" in relation to citizenship by descent, and having a "claim" to citizenship. Trouble is, this only refers to forms of descent which are not specified, in this draft they don't specify any details of how citizenship by descent would work, so it does not attach these words to the White Paper policy on parental and grandparental descent. "if either of their parents meets requirements set out in law" and "another connection with Scotland as set out further in law". Also left open for the constitution writers is what the "prescribed procedures" for applying will be. So it still remains that they need to say, and until they say it they have not said it, that applications on parental and grandparental descent evidenced in any way at all will not be refusable.

oh but how negative.

Interesting discovery from Tariq Ali's meeting in Kirkcaldy yesterday. In 1995 Bermuda voted No to independence.

It still has a colonial status, not a full inclusion in Britain including voting for its government as Scotland has. Indy is still unpopular there. The reason why - is visa rights into the EU.

Creating new barriers would mean new barriers to their own movement in this racially carved up divided world. It would put a barrier between them and a freedom it strongly matters to them to have, of access to other places. Much the same reason, borders and barriers, as for voting No here.

Yet the cybernats often say no other country has ever voted no and oh it would be pathetic and negative. No! it would be caring about inclusion and access across open borders, sensible and progressive.

I hope this answers your query

Never stronger time to feel furious as a voter than when pointedly told that the MSP hopes a quite long full reply answers you, and of course it does not. Because amid the effusion of other details making the reply look fulsome and worked on, your actual question has not been answered. That is spivvy. It must never slip past your notice.

Nowhere does the following reply from Colin Keir, SNP, say that qualifying applications for citizenship by descent WILL NOT BE REFUSABLE. NOWHERE. So you would have to be easily led to be shifted from voting No by this reply:

" You ask specifically about the matter of citizenship and seem to be, rightly in my view, concerned about the impact on immigration and citizenship of the UKIP agenda being followed by the Westminster focussed parties. As an SNP MSP I support an inclusive Scotland that as an independent nation will seek to welcome those who want to come to Scotland to contribute and be part of our society. As a country with an aging population Scotland needs to attract working age people to become citizens and contribute to the national economy. Therefore the Scottish Government proposes the following should the electorate vote for Independence in September,

An inclusive model of citizenship – current British Citizens habitually resident in Scotland will be considered Scottish citizens; others, following independence, can apply on grounds of descent if they have a parent or grandparent who qualifies for Scottish citizenship; those with a demonstrable connection to Scotland through living here for at least 10 years; migrants on qualifying visas will have the option of applying for naturalisation as a Scottish citizen. The Scottish Government will accept dual citizenship; indeed this is common in the current situation with many people throughout Scotland and the rest of the UK holding dual citizenship. There will still be the situation where nationals of other countries come to Scotland and do not take out citizenship here as is the case at present they will be covered by visas and treaties allowing them to live and work here.

I hope that this reply answers your query. "

As regards my effort to extract an answer about unrefusable citizenship through the campaign registering system, he has defined the system to avoid that. Though the question was about campaigning for a No vote unless a change on the citizenship position happens:

"Campaign groups will define where they sit in the debate (Yes or No) based on their desired referendum outcome. While there may be policy differences within the various groups that make up either side they will have chosen to support Yes or No as their preferred future for Scotland. If an organisation is not campaigning straightforwardly for a Yes or No vote I would not expect them to have to register with the Electoral Commission. For instance there will be a number of organisations that have views on the matters raised and will take part in discussions and debates but will not campaign for one side or the other."

room 101

It happens to be 101 days to go. The unanimous agreement to treat it as 100 today instead of tomorrow, as if Tuesdays are uncool, gives you no confidence in the campaign's relation to facts.

Total journalistic failiure by Radio Scotland's phone in this morning. They let the Yes speaker use emigration as an argument and talk of encouraging emigrants to return, without challenging him a shred in any way with the question of whether citizenship for our emigrants' children will be refusable. With Yes's betrayal of the diaspora. Do you still take seriously the common assumption that BBC is biased to No?????

Iain Macwhirter, ranting with less objectivity and more personal emotion than ever in the Sunday Herald yesterday about "who believes this stuff?" in relation to the No campaign, is still being allowed to get away with saying nothing about why he, being exile born, is a Yes supporter and is not making any fuss towards Yes on behalf of the exile born, to prevent betrayal of their citizenship and of the automatic right to live here that they have under the union.

Jun 11,, 99 days to go: The following bias challenge made to the BBC about that phone-in:

" c9:58 the Yes speaker was left unchallenged when he commented on the emigration rate from Scotland and encouraging expats to return.

Never in the entire programme was it mentioned, let alone the Yes side questioned on it, by either the presenter or a caller, that their citizenship policy does not guarantee unrefusable citizenship to the children of emigrants, to Scots born outside Scotland - those of them who neither chance to live here on independence day nor to be born after that date to a parent holding Scottish citizenship at the time. If they fall into either of those groups their citizenship is automatic. All the rest have a provision to "register" for citizenship, evidencing their descent, and ever since the White Paper came out, no Yes source will say to any voter enquiry that these applications will not be refusable. Alex Neil told the Yes meeting at Tynecastle High School, Edinburgh, on Mar 12 that it will be refusable. Nickola Paul, Policy Officer on Migration + Citizenship, told me by email May 27 that "any discretionary elements" in the citizenship policy, and even the evidence required of applicants, will only be decided after the referendum!

Willingness to divide families, against ECHR article 8, by excluding Scots from their own country for the chance of an exiled birth, is an obvious practical obstacle of family life against any encouraging expats to return. Bias that no BBC coverage at all has mentioned this issue's existence or questioned Yes on it.

second perception

A very perceptive letter in the Metro, on the UKIP election win, deserves passing on:

UKIP has less chance of gaining strength anywhere by Scotland staying with the UK. Any smaller country with a depleted electorate has more risk of extremists taking power. The Scottish vote would countermand the overall result. If ever there was a reason to vote No in the referendum this has to be it.

CONFIRMED, OUR NATS ARE BETRAYING OUR DIASPORA.

RECEIVED THIS MORNING FROM NICKOLA PAUL, POLICY OFFICER FOR MIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP:

Dear Mr Frank,

Thank you for your response of 9 May.

As you reiterate, citizenship by descent would also be available to those with a parent or grandparent who qualifies for Scottish citizenship. This will require the individual to supply evidence to substantiate their relation. Legislation would be made to establish detailed rules for Scottish citizenship in time for independence including both the evidence required and any discretionary elements. Therefore further details of the procedural requirements and administration of the relevant rules in relation to Scottish citizenship applications will be available when the legislation is drafted.

Kind regards,
Nickola Paul

OBVIOUSLY THIS MEANS VOTE NO. That could only change if the position got overturned as a result of being exposed, and it has taken this long since the White Paper even to extract it so clearly.

It took 2 mailings to them, linked to an enquiry to the electoral commission about registering rules, to get this, on a question I have pursued ever since the White Paper came out and never yet extracted this clear admission of what evasive answers had always indicated. They are refusing to make any commitment before the vote, that the Scottish offspring who were born in rUK to parents who moved there, and who are still there after independence day, can be sure of their citizenship. Hence, if common travel areas break down, sure of being allowed their natural right to live in their own country, as they are now under the union, which is not romanticism it is a humanitarian life practicality about dividing families.

A Labour broadcast in the 1999 election warned of this and was very effective. To choose not to learn from that, the nats must have some very sick forces they want to keep happy. has not learned from and happening again. This confirms our nats are xenophobically betraying the diaspora and prospectively dividing many families. This is an anti-outsider community hate politics worse than UKIP, it would be a new Clearances. Its timing is an ideal unionist answer to, and totally trumps, any scares about UKIP that the SNP still try on despite the election result's humiliation of their claim that we were immune to UKIP and splendidly different to England.

Why are journalists Lesley Riddoch and Iain Macwhirter still both Yes supporters, when they were both born in England so it is the Scots exactly like themselves whose racist betrayal they are now confirmed to be supporting?

Only a week ago, at Tom Devine's lecture at Glasgow university, I got in my question about betrayal of the diaspora and put it into the awareness of a big thinking audience many of whose own families stand to be divided by hate. Yet in the informal time after it, an inane smarmily smiling Yes supporter who works for Academics for Yes was introduced to me by one of those academics, who I know - and out of the blue he started banging on at me about the voting franchise, an issue I had never mentioned, and all about how "very progressive" the Yes side is to base that on residence. This was a severe example of a brainwashed fixed mind not listening. There was some time ago a diaspora-related controversy around the franchise, so just on hearing the word diaspora he had jumped top assuming that my question, which he had clearly not listened to, was about that, the question he was familiar with, instead of the very different question it actually was !!! What a dismal prospect of human stupidity at a time of humanitarian crisis against hate and division, in Scotland's life as much as in Europe's.

Eck says Yes to English rule

Metro front page, on all the buses and trains this morning. Salmond says the Bank of England will run our monetary policy when we are a separate state and we will just have an observer on its monetary policy committee. Not even a member any more, just an observer.

THIS IS STUPIDLY NOT INDEPENDENCE.

Nice people must hope that Yes's determination not to say that the position around citizenship by descent will be open and not divide families, has had something to do with the second thoughts of the voters in the surge in Yes support a month ago, in the change to a surge in No support now. If we are not even going to be economically independent, but hand over our economy to the monetary policy committee of a different country whose government we can no longer vote for, then dividing families and ill-treating our diaspora with Jim Sillars' xenophobic shut doors becomes the only item achieved by the Yes offer at all.

our polity is just as neocon

Made known by Inclusion Scotland and No supporters around the web.

SNP voted down a bid by Labour to introduce a Scottish Living Wage duty - which would make it mandatory for firms who wanted to win work from the public sector to pay their staff this rate. Totally scotches the claim that voting Yes offers a more caring political culture against neocon economic attitudes and poverty.

registered dilemma

With the formal campaign period's approach, I have been enquiring to the Electoral Commission about how any folks who share my voting position can register as campaigners. You can register to cover the possibility of big spend without having to already be committed to planning a big spend, and the benefit of enquiring about registering is towards getting answers in the campaign.

The system is that you have to register whether you are campaigning for Yes or No, so how is it possible to register for campaigning one single view that might mean either Yes or No depending on the govt's answer to a policy detail it won't answer?! i.e. the view that we have a humanitarian duty to vote for the side that will give the most open position towards the returning diaspora, the maximum citizenship entitlements for them subject to a priority of not taking automatic citizenship away from anyone who has it now. This will mean voting No if registrations for citizenship by descent, as described in the White Paper and qualifying with its terms, will be refusable, Yes if they won't be refusable.

I put to the commission, that they need to tell me whether this campaigning position should be registered a Yes or No, and in order to be able to tell me they have to make the govt tell them. They have tried to refer the question back to the govt and say, oh I understand your position but it's really for campaigners to choose which side they support. So I have asked back (and copied in a paper that might be hoped to take a neutral interest): right then, if the govt won't answer, "will it be illegal if we do not register that it is for Yes or for No, because it is for a single view whose logic means voting either Yes or No according to the government's answer to a policy detail it has not answered?"

This question is now for the electoral reform and democracy standards scene too: can participation be gagged by one side's withholding of information about its own policy?

Meanwhile, I have made a bit of progress by making this enquiry - At this time of asking govt what the position is, it's with the commission's backing as needing and expecting an answer so that anyone who agrees with me and wants to register as a campaigner can know whether to register as Yes or as No. So that, if govt still won't answer after the commission referred me to them for an answer, they are seen to commit a referendum irregularity. Already govt's first answer just said, full details are in the White Paper and descent citizenship will be "available", and "further details of the procedural requirements and administration will be available when the legislation is drafted." That of course is not an answer to voters now, and I have mailed back that they have only answered the question when they say what one word means. "Does "available" mean refusable or not refusable ?"

Meanwhile, the Sunday Herald, a week after backing Yes, has not chosen to answer the following, I had written in:

As part of backing Yes, you owe to the public, and you must want, to pin down as news any facts doubted by voters that will make the Yes case socially fair. Thus: any time you can report government or legally sourced, that registrations for Scottish citizenship by descent meeting the White Paper's terms will not be refusable and will all be entitled to acceptance, you will instantly convert from No to Yes any voters like me whose concern is to uphold the diaspora and their families.

On Apr 13 the Sunday Herald printed a letter that claimed to answer my concern about citizenship just by quoting the White paper, which without the clarification as above on refusability, does not answer it. They have shown they realise that by never printing any request for clarification. But why is their own Iain Macwhirter such a keen Yes supporter that he keeps crediting the White Paper and SNP with being pro-immigration, without this question clarified, when he was born in exile himself, he is exactly the type of diaspora child who my concern is about. he risks his position closing to others like him the door he found his way home through himself.

They have reported as a splash that Kenyon Wright now backs Yes, yet it takes other sources to point up the remarkable irony that he now lives in England and can't actually vote. How well informed is he, in his chosen exile, about citizenship policies in the way of future freedom to make the same type of cross-border move as he has chosen to make>?!

Sabre man or deliverer?

A Yes supporter with expat-born kids who will need to register for citizenship by descent, has told me this on Facebook:

• I don't 'trust' that the White Paper means what I think it means, what I'm saying is that I am confident that I can successfully argue that it means what I think it means. In court if necessary. It duplicates, and slightly extends, current arrangements with regard to British citizenship for Scottish-descended overseas residents. Specifically, it's not 'automatic' now either, they already have to apply. And some specific exclusion clauses have been left out, which is why my kids, who are not currently eligible, will be, post-indy.

He said this in defence of the interpretation that the registered-for citizenship will be an entitlement and if all the criteria are met for providing evidence the Scottish govt won't have a selective power to refuse the applications. Any ideas where we voters can get some info on how right he is about court, to show us it's not just bluster and he could stop in court a govt operating the White Paper citizenship policy from turning down his kids?

the voters who matter behind the fermenting polls

There was nothing in yesterday's (Apr 20) Sunday Herald to the above. Scottish govt and Yes campaign both seen to make no response to the enquiry put to them, and copied to the Sunday Herald: asking them to clarify to that paper's readers, whether the letter printed last week claiming the White Paper's existing content as an answer to my concern about citizenship, was accurate. They knew they were going to be seen as misleading the voters unless they clarified that the letter does not do that. They chose not to clarify. So they have let the suggestion stand of misleading the voters. Now it stands as an indication that Yes rhetoric on this subject is misleading the voters as to their actual policy.

The Scotland on Sunday's headline was that voters born elsewhere, which includes Scots born in exile as well as foreign guests, are now decisive in which way the close polls will tip. This heightens the importance to the Yes folks and SNP OF GIVING A STRAIGHT ANSWER.

The Sunday Post's headline also welcome, its poll finding that there is a crisis of trust in the whole campaign, with BOTH SIDES largely mistrusted, and so trying its new initiative "Independence On Trial" to focus on what concerns from the people have been missed in the campaign. It obviously should include this one on citizenship. This will come under "Would Scotland’s relationship with the rest of the UK and the world be better or worse?" and "Would Scotland be a fairer place to live?"

May 4:The above was the background to which the Sunday Herald has now declared as supporting Yes.

Will you write in and confirm to the readers?

Yesterday in the Sunday Herald, a letter from John Jamieson of South Queensferry claimed to refute the claim that the White Paper will not give automatic entitlements to citizenship by descent. To do this, he just quoted what the White Paper says about registering for citizenship. the Yes campaign itself has never said it means an entitlement, and at their public meeting in Gorgie Edinburgh on mar 12 Alex Neil said it does not.

So there is a question of campaign propriety, over whether they will mislead voters, over whether the Yes campaign will take ownership of this letter that has been written on their behalf and will confirm that what it implies is accurate.

I have mailed back to Yes, and copied it to the Sunday Herald, and to Lesley Riddoch's Nordic Horizons as she is an exile born Scot whose support for Yes is absurd unless this issue is fixed the right way:

" The above refers to a letter in today's Sunday Herald. It has pledged for you, publicly, a line on White Paper citizenship policy that you have never been willing to say to any voter's enquiry by me, and that Alex Neil told us the contrary to at your Tynecastle High School public meeting.

Is Mr Jamieson right? Did he write from you? Or will you recordedly let voters be misled in your name? Will you write in and confirm to the readers: will there be any power at all for the state to select to refuse any application for citizenship by descent, which meets precisely defined terms of supplying evidence of having a parent or grandparent who qualifies for Scottish citizenship? "