We are getting welfare devolved

In Tory conference week, the Scotsman has learned from UK civil service that yes we will get welfare powers devolved. To introduce new measures and to top up UK benefits, including disability.

It's from 2018, so there is the frustration of the foot dragging process of these things coming into effect, waiting through 3 years more of Tory measures (unless their tiny majority government falls before then). But the SNP have been insisting that we were not going to get this. Though such a detail as this was never in the vow, they have been using it to claim the vow is not being delivered. You can see it is being delivered. This is in the spirit of the Smith Commission.

The announcement's timing is to get around any economically diehard Tories wishing to be difficult about it. That shows their leaders wanting to get around them and secure the Union.

nat racists drove their own councillor out of their party

A Scotsman story on a councillor in the south who has left the SNP because she is Chinese and has suffered racism in the party for it: www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/chinese-snp-councillor-quits-amid-racism-claims-1-3852813

For "not being Scottish and organising a Scottish event"! Read the story, you will see it's about a bigoted nat culture of being anti-outsider and spitefully keen to call folks not Scottish.

Matching exactly the way I heard Pat Kane spin the meaning of their "Civic Nationalism" idea, and Hebrides MSP Angus Macneil's hate stirring against Scots who had not lived there, which I wrote to the islands' local paper about, during the ref. That they saw the whole Yes project as only for the benefit of the folks already living here, as an insular community looking into itself, and viewing everyone else, including the Scottish diaspora!! with paranoia as outsiders only to be given as much of a place as would serve the emplaced community's self interest.

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.

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.

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.

within snatching distance

There you are, Yes folks. Henry McLeish, one of our former Labour Prime Ministers

-let's call 'em that, none of this "First Minister" artificiality, after all Northern Ireland had Prime Ministers 1921-72 -

still as yet a No voter himself, says Yes is still winnable. Wrote it in the Scotsman. For all the stated practical reasons of keeping a socially just line on social services and staying in the EU, that you tell us is what you want to win it for. As good as concedes the Yes case, straight after that naff American pollster was calling its defeat. The No case is not inspiring anyone.

The Yes case is not inspiring anyone either. Leave it as it is, you will miss the chance McLeish has conceded you have. Stop compromising with the tabloids and make the campaign more participative, use the items folks sent in to your consultations instead of going with the British level's keeping them unpublicised, then folks could trust you, then you could snatch back your chances.

No-brainer. Always has been.

Yes the united savages

Jim Sillars fought the SNP from a labour inclined angle in the 70s, then became Salmond's deputy in the 90s. Now he is quick to voice common sense, that proposing to be a separate state that still shares the British benefits system is nuts, change with no change at a time when the Yes idea's most practical voter appeal is against the British savage policy on cuts and austerity.

It's just right. Nothing needs adding to the Scotsman's story. It could be the item that blows any chance of a Yes vote.

Chaos in a snapshot

Today's Scotsman is a complete snapshot of all the contradictory issues in collision, the whole smorgasbord of messing with we are getting from both sides.

"Salmond seizes high ground on welfare reform" its editorial says. Going for a campaign issue complete with mailshots to households, out of the welfare cuts process at British level. Going for the progressive consensus he keeps claiming exists in Scotland since the Tories ruined themselves here on constituional rather than welfare issues, and on the day when said fair minds will be alarmed by a result has been announced from the purge of Incapacity Benefit, when a third of its claimants have been pushed out of the benefits system into visibly much more precariously uncertain lives in the middle of a depression.

Intended message being - vote Yes if you have a conscience about benefits or a fear of being affected personally by their deconstruction. Yet news on the same day - the same day!! who managed that?!! - is that Salmond's government has passed the first stage of its undemocratic morally sinister Criminal Legal Assistance Bill, abolishing such a human rights basic as free legal defence against criminal charges, making criminal defence paid for. Even a proposal to refund the charge if you are found innocent got thrown out. Macaskill said it would make folks doubt the innocence of folks for whom the court decided not to refund it. But why would the court be given any power to decide that at all? That was not explained in the story.

Why was the story on this located under ordinary home news and away from the pages of referendum coverage? Do we have an elite wanting it not to become a referendum issue? After all, many lawyers and even the Edinburgh Bar Association were outside parliament demonstrating against the measure. As Salmond says vote Yes to protect the benefits system from getting destroyed, had he even noticed that the news on the same day said vote No to avoid living in a state to be founded with no tradition of a benefit of legal defence, where to suffer undeserved accusation of crime shall actually cost you money?

Who trusts a government capable of passing such a basic attack on human rights, with the human rights standards of a newly founded separate state?

This follows after Salmond's other recent show of ever so healthy ethics towards a question of law, his booboo on EU membership. This has affected the campaign oppositely than he wished. On the same day, in the same paper, a Labour No columnist, Brian Wilson, tells us that 60% of voters now appreciate that new state EU membership is not a bagged certainty, not "automatic" at all.

But what is the point of telling us that with the British EU referendum of 2017 hanging over us? Unless you can find a way to bring down the coalition and regain British government before the 2014 referendum and cancel the 2017 one, and be willing to cancel it despite its popularity with the racist vote? Assuming that hopeful scenario ain't in the offing and we are still stuck with these 2 votes in the wrong order, how you do even make a start on decide your vote by how to keep us in the EU when your vote is already being chaotically pulled opposite ways by the questions of how to protect our civil liberties and our benefits system?

How does a country with a progressive consensus end up with such an agonising and mucked up historic vote where there is no obvious progressive way to vote and either way will do nasty things to us? The civil liberty message to vote No has become, for safety in ordinary life, a pressingly urgent rival to the welfare message to vote Yes. While the EU membership message is no longer to vote Yes but may not yet be to vote No either. Who ever foresaw this scale of mess up?