twin dilemma

A Better Together paper just came through my door, a lot of its content over several pages focused on British overlapping feelings of nationhood. It's good that after the White Paper they are seeing a chance to force the campaign's emotive level to start focusing more on that question. Among all the to and fro claims about economics there had seemed a risk of both sides slipping past us the due focus on this basic fairness question of making sure you get to belong to your own home. With the Yes side being slippery and spivvy on the issue, will it take the No side's pressure to make them address it more properly?

But will voters notice how selective the No side is being? They mention a lot about how many folks in the British countries are from each other's country. They select to mention nothing at all of the same about EU countries - when exactly the same arguments apply to them.

They feature a Scottish father who was born in exile with a family with a multiplicity of births, and they quote figures for how many folks in Scotland were born in the rest of Britain and vice versa. But this statistic is misleading, if you are a Scot who was born in the rest of Britain there is every good chance you disliked your exile and are pleased to be home, it does not make you necessarily want to keep the Union at all. Only if there is a weakness on the Yes side here, only if there are enough holes in their citizenship policy to cause there to be any exiles whose return to Scotland independence could make harder and any less of an automatic right, should this No argument have any effect. At present, after the shambles of the White Paper contradicting itself on citzenship and being full of gobbledygook about forbears and where they lived on independence day and its unclairty on where to deem thast they would have resided if they had not died, the Yes side is choosing unecessarily to be weak enough on this issue to constitute a betrayal of Scottish history, and deserves to have the No side attack on this. But our EU citizen residents don't deserve to be put in more danger, by it, of right wing British nationalism turning on them after Scotland fails to vote itself out of that process.

They feature a family with twins born on each side of the border because of the circumstances when the mother's labour began during as journey. It's an excellent case study against birthplace racism, the evil of all bigots who would deem these twins to belong to different countries if they don't personally identify so. It's morally right that it should turn anyone against loopholes in the citizenship policies, on both sides. But what is the No side's answer to the case, you could have just as easily, of twins born one in Britain one across the Channel? Do they agree with their own argument's implication that we should not vote to belong to a country that leaves the EU in an ugly mood of nationalist racism?

define Scottish students

All over the news today, the SNP's education minister Mike Russell in trouble with the EU for a policy of charging differently for going to university for Scottish and other European students. Policy of Scottish students getting it free and others charged a graduate fee. Amid the talk of discrimination, the most obvious discrimination question of all is being missed, neither the SNP nor the BBC and papers are mentioning it: what does Scottish students actually mean?

Given that there is no exact definition of Scottish. It is possible for the same person both to be Scottish and to live in, hence be "from", another EU country or another British country. How does the policy impact on them?

The policy seems designed to focus on folks who live in Scotland. By that, it is defining out of being Scottish, a historically key part of the Scottish nation: its diaspora. Adding to their pain.

In the imminent election, this should be a racism and human rights concern, that the SNP is required to answer or stand seen as wronging some of the nation they are supposed to exist to stand up for. Plenty of resident-Scottish voters have family or friends in the diaspora, or used to be diaspora ourselves and have returned home. The SNP will claims that the independence referendum was frustrated by parliament, instead of that they never held it because they expected to lose it, and they will try for more support for it so that they can hold and win it this time. This prospect should not be attractive or win anyone's support if the SNP are not playing fair to all Scots, treating them all the same re opportunities.

Some students living in, and/or "from", the countries to be affected by this policy, are in ethnic fact Scottish. Does the SNP want them to have access to their own heritage and to opportunity for zionist return? Yes or any other answer? Any other answer places the SNP as not upholding Scots being entitled to belong in their own homeland. The only way for their position not to be this, is if their answer on this is committal not noncommittal. Noncommittal evidences doing it. Only a committal position of not doing it means not doing it.