Nats not wanting budgetary home rule!

No there should not be a devolving of the power to call a repeat of a ref you've already had recently, away from the British polity having any say in it. It would be a dumb thing for them to vote for that ib the Scotland Bill, vote away any power to stop the fanatics from keeping us voting and never accepting any result until it's their way. It is totally constitutionally right to dismiss Salmond's nerve in proposing this. His own predecessor Gordon Wilson has already told him, talk of a second ref annoys No voters and gives false hope to Yes voters, earning the votes of neither.

No it is not a unionist trick to devolve lots of strong income tax powers, as some tricky jerk was just arguing on Radio Scotland. The argument was that income tax is a power no government electorally likes to exercise, so that it's not real home rule to give us a power we won't want to use. AND IT'S NOT REAL BELIEF IN SELF-GOVERNMENT TO BE UNWILLING TO USE IT! It's a total contradiction of nationalism, it's what you would have to do in your own state. What happened to saying we have a more left wing culture more eager to vote for tax and redistribution? What price every moan the SNP government makes about supposed budget cuts, when it has never chosen to use the devolved tax power of 3p that has existed ever since the 1997 referendum? Was it worth devolving that power? To sustain the claim of a left wing culture you have to say it was.SO WHY HAVE YOU NEVER USED IT, innit?

rallying call?

The unionist press today are all jubilant that the rally was so small. They are bound to be, but they are probably right. The audience fitted into the close vicinity of the Ross Bandstand under Edinburgh castle, slightly overspilling the actual seating. I was there, not in the audience of supporters, but in the outer watching fringes suitable for agnostic voters.

Much as the rally was filled with typical SNP history-patriotism, it was very clearly a fearful occasion. In over 2 hours of speeches and music, never was one word said about the zionist return entitlement for all the Scottish diaspora. Instead of the historical reawakening claimed, it was a historical betrayal to watch that omission happen. It meant the rally was not addressed to the Scottish people in our full number 25 million. It had the same most serious omission as the Yes campaign as a whole has. This is even though there was a "New Scots" speaker speaking up for the racial pluralism of our new state and the adopted Scottish identity of folks who have come to us from elsewhere. That is good in itself and one way our political culture is less nasty than England's at present - but see the contradiction between this and the total omission of talking about all the Scots in exile and their opportunity to come back.

A song about that silly lump of monarchism the Stone of Destiny said "How can anyone wipe away the tears of 700 stolen years?" - as if the centuries of statehood we still had during the stone's captivity don't count! Far more practical to real lives is the personal question for the disapora, about growing up in exile: How can anyone wipe away the tears of 26 stolen years?

The best point was made by the Green leader Patrick Harvie, who said the Yes campaign can't expect to sell just a Scottish version of the status quo as worth voting for, as the SNP has so clearly been trying to do, it has to float more radical possibilities for why independence would make a beneficial practical difference. There won't be agreement on what these should be, so different conflicting possibilities must be floated and will be issues in future Scottish elections. Entitlement for all the diaspora to return, is one such possibility that Harvie did not mention, but is the key radical difference determining whether independence really is even nationally just at all or not.

It was an entirely left wing occasion. What is strongly part of Harvie's radical agenda, and was in all the speakers' agenda, was the Yes side's wearyingly constant assumption that its new Scotland will be against the Bomb. No contrary voice to that was heard, though a contrary view to the SNP's on NATO was heard. With Isobel Lindsay speaking too, the rally was totally dominated by CND and it gave a dismal picture of the Yes campaign itself being controlled by them.

At the back of the garden, on the Princes Street railings, there was a disturbing banner about Padania, an alleged nation in north Italy that was only invented in 1992 by the Northern League there - which has a terribly anti-immigration reputation and of being the bad type of nationalism. Was there anything official about their presence? Actually maybe not, because there was a rally speaker from the Venetian nationalists, whose territorial claim directly contradicts Padania because would just be arrogantly included in it. It shows how you have to sort out the historical authenticity of nation claims before leaping to embrace all secessionist movements as your allies.

Who is signing up?

20% of us are called "the persuadables". Because we have not said firmly yes or no, it is open to the SNP to convert us if they say the right things.

Consider what your own self regard as a thinking voter means. It must not take just a hip sounding campaign to win you over, where what is said remains within the crappy bounds of what campaigns always say. To win you over must take committal definite answers to every issue you want to raise. It must take a participative enough form of campaign to show you you have the means to actually extract those answers. It must be the opposite of a controlled filtered respectable message. It must be the opposite of what the SNP did when they said they would not put all the responses to their first consultation onto public record. They showed then a closed up filtering of their message. To watch and point out its continuation was the point of starting this blog.

• Until that filtering has stopped,
• until they do take a definite absolute position in favour of an immigration right to the Scottish diaspora descended from any number of generations returning here from anywhere in the world,
• until they do take a definite absolute position on the specific story of police lying to newly returned diaspora that their newly bought home is in a rough area,

I shall not be attracted from the ranks of the persuadables to sign Salmond's gimmicky people's declaration "saying Yes to an independent Scotland".

Among the signatories you can see today in the Sunday Herald is John McAllion, SSP and formerly Labour when he chaired the petitions committee in the 1999 parliament. As chair of the petitions committee he openly broke parliament's rules at the time by excluding a petition from the agenda and the record, for calling for a restriction on the committee's powers. "I have discussed this with the committee chairman, who is not inclined to include the petition on the agenda for a committee meeting." This was an act of corrupting the rules and dishonest record within parliament's first few months of existence. By the ever so neat rule that such breaches have to be challenged through an MSP and no MSP would pursue it, this dishonest act of class power was allowed to happen within parliament's first few months of existence. Unless Salmond answers this, how well does that bode for the new state whose creation McAllion now signs for? Also there is Margo Macdonald, who has a public writing platform herself as a newspaper columnist yet who was one of the MSPs who declined to act against McAllion on grounds that she agreed with the committee's view against petitioning for things to be published. Against public platform for any facts and info that are outside the already existing class filtered approved view of reality.

Then in 2004 on an SSP platform for their now forgotten declaration of Calton Hill", McAllion called the world's longest running one party state, Castro's Cuba, "a worker's democracy". You notice how it was a hard lefty, an apologist for communism, who committed an act of class power for MSPs to control and filter what content is heard in politics and what issues popularly recognised to exist?

former leader wants a bigot weighted vote

Narky old Gordon Wilson, eh? SNP's former leader was on the oppressive minds' demo against gay marriage. Saying Salmond should not risk support in the referendum over supporting fair recognition for part of society in case they are unpopular. Scary sort of country Wilson would want us to say Yes to.

Salmond has pursued an equally tabloid agenda against teenagers, making it harder for them to go in pubs and blaming them for law and order issues exactly like nasty old sods enjoy believing. That is how Salmond lost my vote, not that he missed it last time: I wish he would be as morally solid against bigots, for teenagers, as for gay marriage. The difference presumably is, that the SNP's top circles contains no teenagers, established career politicians are all older than that, and no residents of Menie either, to motivate him to be moral against Trump. But the top circles do contain careers wedded to the PC left who are on the morally correct side over gay marriage, which means in favour of it, and Salmond would be weaker placed in the party if he crossed them over it.

The referendum would be a frightening exercise in group hate if Wilson got his way. Young voters scrutinising this should consider that it already is an exercise in group hate towards them. A good referendum is one whose attitudes are not directed by the right wing press. That should be a particularly easy principle to watch out for and defend, in a country where both major parties are left wing?