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.

Yeah - and?

www.facebook.com/VoteNo2014/photos/a.177722718953393.48305.174186732640325/658717074187286/?type=1&theater

Summed up perfectly by the SNP's incredible non-reply, on TV last night, just of "Yeah - and?" to the point that their policy is to surrender sovereignty into a union! and by these Facebook comments on it:

• When Annabel Goldie asked Fiona Hyslop about the ceding of sovereignty a currency union would create, she had a very simple response "Yeah....and?", It now seems like SNP ministers don't have much to say on some of the most important issues in this debate!
• So, having won your Independence, you're going to give some/all of it back to the people you've just won it from, except WITHOUT any input into ANY decisions that will be taken on your behalf by those very same people. Is it just me or is this a totally bonkers suggestion!
• At last an honest response from an Independence supporter. It's a shame it's a mere foot-stamping, petulant response worthy of a teenager who has just been found when she lied.
• Wanting both to use the pound and have the Bank of England setting your fiscal policies for you. That is Independence so light it is verging on Featherweight.

What a way to run a railroad to London

Oh no they don't mean anything they say, they mean what I want them to say. Whatever I want it to be that they said, of course really they said it, just TRUUUST me and take it from me, you don't need to actually listen to their words saying the opposite.

You can't go through life communicating like that. It's unconvincing and silly. it's wishful thinking. I don't like what someone said so really they meant the opposite, really they meant what I wanted them to say - consider how that works out - no more toys means more toys, no consent to sex means consent to sex, we voted Yes but it means No. IT DOESN'T WORK. Would you buy a used car on that basis?

The referendum has become a shambles and tragedy. Alex Salmond, who called it, has determined on the following tragicomic place in history. He will go right up to poll asking you to vote for a statement of faith that his silly unionist idea that contradicts independence, currency union with the country you are leaving, you can ignore the No clearly given to by the entire political class of Britain and believe what the cheery salesman wants them to say. He's not going to railroad them.

This is the Yes campaign that is so caring about our ordinary lives it has not answered about the issue in the last post, the citizenship of Scottish exiles who can't return before indy day. On the Facebook Yes pages you can read yeards and yards of emotionalism about a great natiomnal moment to seize.

To continue the Clearances' logic by the moral obscenity of taking automatic citizenship away from some Scots, to make indy a way of shutting our door in some of our own people's faces, to want to tie us to the austerity programme through servitude to the Bank of England without a say over it, to call for an extra year of Tory government instead of the next British election on time during the indy process, to shut his eyes and make this ridiculous spivvy assertion that we can take his word that 3 parties don't really mean they won't do what he wants, and what he wants is unionist anyway.... WHAT WAY IS THIS TO RUN A YES CAMPAIGN?? A unionist, implausible, ludicrous, people betraying, spivvy way. AAAAAAAAAAH. If there was any national opportunity moment it's this SNP leadership who threw it away.

The sensible non-SNP wings of the Yes campaign who never wanted a currency union now need to split with Salmond and his train crash of nonsense.

Vote and seek

On the Scotsman's news page about the White Paper, a unionist commenter has already gone straight for the jugular, and correctly. Quoting: 11. Will an independent Scotland have control over monetary policy?

Day-to-day monetary policy would be decided independently of government by the Bank of England as it is now, taking account of economic conditions across the Sterling Area. The Scottish Government would seek formal input into the governance and remit of the Bank of England.

Effectively: we're bought and sold for English gold, such a parcel of rogues in a nation. An independent state will "seek" formal "input" into the central bank of another state, indeed of the state it has just seceded from. Sadly so ludicrous, and so unionist, it will be remembered all down Scottish history to come as suggesting Alex wants to lose.

Spot on question

Well done Johann Lamont, getting Salmond with the right question at PMQs yesterday.

Yes I will call it PMQs, the contrivance of "first minister" was never used for colonial Prime Ministers or the Canadian provinces or for Northern Ireland's in 1921-72, and a Prime Minster is a first minister.

Salmond needs to be more factual, in his position, than to make up speculations and claim they will happen because they sound sensible to him. Otherwise voters will start to feel he is selling them a dud. Saying that after independence, outside and separated from the UK, we could make the UK give us a seat in the bank of England's structure for issuing the UK's currency. Totally silly. Exactly as Lamont said, he was just crossing his fingers and hoping for the best: and trying to bounce it, too. Most voters, without needing to follow politics, know you can't take for granted without asking, a foreign country will provide you with a facility on demand just because you say it would be sensible. No wonder the Bank of England has said no.

Campaign questions intimately related to the question of honesty over the SNP filtering the public availability of consultation responses. Does Salmond listen to any items voters raise on the position around independence? Will voters get any position out of him on other issues than just those he has chosen for a fudged feelgood campaign for a statehood not fully explained in many of his aspects? So does he actually care where ordinary folks' state of life will be?

bank manager

Salmond's latest wheeze today: we are going to be independent but demand a seat at the central bank of the state we have split from.

Huh? Constitutionally emeshed in the workings of Britain, in deciding on a British economic policy and interest rates. Rates that can't be called anything else than UNITED. Scotland having a seat in deciding the rates for England. While calling itself a separate sovereign country, a foreign state, yet taking part in deciding the rates for England and the remaining UK. Get this - THAT IS A UNION !!

That is not independence. That is Britain still functioning as one entity. Just with Scotland's place in it made less of an obvious entitlement so less to be relied on. That is a con. It's silly.