frank

Comedian Frank Skinner, in advance of coming up to the festival, has given a muddled view of the ref. Desperate nats could take it as a celeb endorsement of voting Yes, because he has said that from a selfish point of view he would vote Yes if he lived here. He happens to be factually wrong in that, he has listened to all the unevidenced propaganda that life under indy would not be, as it would, just as neocon as British life. But the muddle is, from the point of view of living in England he has also endorsed us to vote No, saying that would be better for them, that seriously telling argument of the fear of rUK being left more right wing by our departure.

A reply to him, as posted under the Herald article:

Mr Skinner esquire, You might not vote Yes if you lived here and had done some digging for yourself into Yes's plans in an are the campaign has not focussed on: citizenship. Being conceived in Scotland would not be enough for your son to get their favour. They intend to make it refusable by the state, not an innate right, for the Scots who were born in the rest of Britain and can't be resident here on indy day to inherit citizenship from their parent. I have often found decent but overfaithful Yes voters shocked to hear of this, and generated a few extra enquiries by it, but always with the same answer. With government, Yes campaigns national and local, including Helensburgh who checked it with a lawyer, and all the yes supporting parties, they won't budge - they won't make this class of citizenship unrefusable. This is a basic assault on family life, against ECHR article 8, and a new clearances, an intention to reject Scots from their country. If the British or European shared travel areas break down, citizenship will affect who can live here - and only last week, totally slipping the mask, we heard Sturgeon's seriously unpleasant threat to throw out all the EU citizens here if we hit any problem with rejoining the EU. The so-called "civic nationalism" they have claimed is wonderfully progressive and non-racist turns out to be so deeply racist and anti-outsider that it even kicks away Scots' extended families - for what it means is only caring about the population who chance to already live here. Even when emigration features in Yes arguments!

Dividing families is a very practical matter preventing them caring for each other or supporting each other against poverty and welfare troubles. Yet a stallholder for Radical Indy kept dodging answering this with the diversion "How far back would you go?" and called it good socialism to subject the exile-born children of our emigrants to the same filtering for skills as Yes proposes for migrants from anywhere with no roots here at all. To reject our children taking no account of life misfortunes, education systems working badly, abuses hushed up by punishment as was revealed in Savile, as causes of not having high value skills.

I have petitioned the EU not to accept the ref process as legitimate or a new state as mandated if the mass of voters were unaware of these sick plans. Now the Yes campaign especially its meetings consists of an ever more raving Project Fear threatening all sorts of lurid right wing prospects if we vote No, without any disproof that they would happen the same under indy too as our major parties are just as neocon inclined as the British ones. Everything they threaten is actually a reason to vote No, in order not to betray branches of our families who have already suffered life misfortunes to also suffer rejection by their country and being abandoned to suffer all the threatened things living in the rest of Britain, cut off also from the help of their families here unless they emigrate too, and shorn of our leftward impact on British elections. While in the union we can vote against right wing horrors instead of having them thrust on us by a big powerful neighbour with no say in it, let's take your endorsement of voting No for that reason.

in-British racism won't make a good unionist case either

Our new Lib Dem leader, Willie Rennie, was in the papers today saying Salmond might get the public all enthusiastic about new EU-supported services and thus sweep us all into voting for independence before we realise it. What is his brilliant example of why this would be terrible? That as a result, under EU rules against discrimination between its members' citizens, we would could no longer charge tuition fees to students "from" the other British countries, he would have to give them free higher education same as folks from the other EU countries already. Racial eqaulity and an improvement in the fairness of Europe as a community would be costly and terrible, he thinks. What a sodding right wing tabloid race card.

This is no way to distance perception of the Lib Dems from the coalition, is it? This is no new leadership to recover from their disaster. This is a racist form of unionism.

In particular, this is division between Scots. many of the students who live in the other British countries, who he wrongly terms "from" them, are Scots living there in exile, maybe not even willingly, a position I was once in and remember painfully. He is kicking away their participation in Scotland and a possible route for them to attain their ethnic right of zionism to come home from the diaspora.

The worst and most dangerous thing about the SNP has been its total disinterest in the diaspora and avoidance of making any issue of backing their return as a racial justice issue. If the unionist side kick the diaspora as well, and kick them worse than the SNP, where will that argument be left in the independence debate? Worse, where will the diaspora themselves be left? Inside or still outside their home? This tabloid bigoted move by the unionist side actively makes independence more attractive to the same nice thinking folks as have been disturbed by the tabloid way the SNP has been playing. Both sides want this fought at a rubbishy tabloid level, and the danger is it will come down to which side we feel worse about on the day

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.