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

The next referendum must be protected from the last one's failings

So as the AV referendum ends, defeated by the irregular disparity allowed to happen between each campaign's reach to voters, and the media and money power behind No, so from the same day the SNP's majority victory makes the independence referendum a live issue considered certain to happen. Salmond wants to wait a few years for fear he would lose it now, but some Conservatives, including Michael Forsyth in the Scotsman today, have spoken of raising the bill in the British parliament to call the referendum now, in hope of a Unionist win.

All the more reason why public availability of all the info that was submitted to the Scottish govt in its consultation on the referendum, matters for purposes of informing the voters in their coming decision. Why, as is the point of this blog, none of the submissions to that consultation must stand censored, and mine stands made public in the second post made at the beginning of this blog.

The SNP's landslide is also all the more reason why accountability for its actions matters. This is one to keep an eye on, especially for (1) the voters believed to have voted SNP as a presently preferred government without being convinced on independence, or (2) the voters who prefer another party's picture of independence, e.g. Green or SSP, than Salmond's economically conventional picture.

When the new MSPs get sworn in, they should all be asked what safeguards they support for the referendum's fair conduct, in the light of what we have just experienced this week. It is also an issue for MPs, as from today, with the declared possibility of a referendum bill in the British parliament. I have just mailed my Lib Dem MP and asked if he backs the following measures, to be enacted as conditions of any referendum being legitimate. See if they raise a smile:

* That both sides should be required, and fully funded with parity, to send a booklet mailshot on their position to every household in the country that is voting. This surely was established constitutionally as a precedent for a campaign's fair parity, by the referendum in 1975 when the government arranged for these 2 mailshots to happen.

* That any factual claim made by one side's campaign about the other's position, the other campaign should be entitled to an equal scale of distribution to voters, in all ways, of their answer to the claims, as the original claim had.

* That if, either during polling hours or after them, the winning side lets it be known, either voluntarily or by an admission under questioning, that one of the factual claims made in their campaign, against the other side's position, had been false, then the result should not stand as valid.

minging towards the AV referendum

Given the fact that we are in Britain and nobody can forsee when we might leave it, our access to accountability and half-decent treatment by decision makers is affected by the Alternative Vote referendum, open endedly into the future. The SNP has always, always except 1974, been disappointed with its results in British elections, and been a squeezed smaller party, so it has an obvious interest in AV.

So it is completely stupid that SNP flyers are ignoring the referendum. After urging you for their vote, they just mention, there is a third ballot paper which is on the British election system this has nothing to do with the Scottish election. Not a word about voting Yes, just this has nothing to do with the Scottish election. Just contemptuous.

That does not show caring about your interests, for all of the unknown future duration of the Union. There is no gain to the independence campaign made by doing this, nothing would be lost to it by supporting a Yes vote in this other referendum. They are just being emotional and minging because it is a British issue.

The censored referendum this blog was concerned with was the independence referendum: but it is worth mentioning that the AV referendum is also effectively censored, in the balance of its reach to households all over Britain. No provision has been made for the Yes campaign to get literature sent to every household, and that is not happening, it is being left to volunteer leafletters to reach where they can, while the No campaign has been amply funded by the Conservatives to do a national mailshot of a booklet to every household. This is not parity, and it will pose a challengeability to how the referendum has been conducted. It breaks the precedent of the EU referendum in 1975, when both the Yes and No campaigns were resourced to mailshot a booklet to every household.

As one of the volunteer leafletters, I have had to make a complaint to the NHS in Fife, [update: who have made a proper check and now confirmed these nurses were not NHS] against a nurse who was arriving at a house to do a home visit at the same time as I reached it in my leafletting, and who put on authoritarian airs trying to stop me leaving a leaflet, entirely on her own without the householder knowing let alone authorising it. The Yes campaign is up against illegal interference like that, to No campaign is not.