"how you qualify for citizenship of most European countries"

From Paul Kavanagh's "Wee Ginger Dug" page in the National:

" It's quite likely tbat an independent Scotland will extend citizenship to every British citizen resident in Scotland when independence is achieved, and to everyone born in Scotland or who has a Scottish parent. That is, more or less, how you qualify for citizenship of most European countries."

This is not yet the atrocious racism problem in the last indyref solved. "Quite likely" of course is not certainty. But welcome, and record and keep, that a columnist in the National, the nats' own paper, has put in print that he finds parental descent citizenship natural and an axiomatic likelihood. Has he forgotten the White Paper or is he a welcome vanguard of the nats deciding to change it? Are they going to comply next time with the ECHR human right to family life? This writer has chosen encourage a spark of hope for it.

Herald wiping comments and manipulating debate ?

On the following page on Frank Skinner, www.heraldscotland.com/politics/referendum-news/comedian-fears-england-may-go-right-wing-if-scots-vote-yes.24817570, in the Disqus comments section is the Herald showing a manipulation of heard debate to favour Yes? It has excluded the following 2 posts from being posted:

• In answer to a racist called Alex who wrote "You are not in your country, unless you were born there":
  
  The school bully prejudice of claiming that birthplace dictates country divides siblings and has been visibly wrong ever since the ancient Jews' exile in Babylon. Tony Blair is English and was born in Scotland. Eamonn da Valera was born in America. The Silent Twins, Barbadian, were born in Yemen simply because their family was in the RAF there, left it at age 7 months and had no further connection with it in their lives. Among Scots, Alexander McCall Smith was born in Matabeleland, Fitzroy Maclean in Egypt, Edinburgh council leader Andrew Burns in Germany, Eric Liddell in China. Lesley Riddoch, Alec Home, the Queen Mother, and former Plaid Cymru leader Dafydd Wigley were born in England, while famously Norwegian author Roald Dahl was born in Wales.
• In answer to "Simon Harries, Cambridge" post beginning "I was born in Africa":
  
  "Simon - Yes has ratted on a former SNP pledge of automatic citizenship for everyone born in Scotland and is confining that to inherited British citizenship, in that negative way it is not defining citizenship by birthplace. But in another negative way it is. Scots who were born outside Scotland to emigrant parents, mostly in rUK, and can't arrange to be resident here on indy day, they won't budge on making their citizenship only discretionary and refusable. A humanitarian betrayal which will divide families, against ECHR article 8, preventing them coming together to support each other against poverty or in time of medical need, and means the Scottish nation rejecting and excluding a large part of itself.
  
  "Civic nationalism" has turned out to mean a selfish anti-outsider racism of only caring about the population who chance arbitrarily to already live here, thus totally hostile to moving around and orientated to making it harder. I got that from 3 sources at Yes events.
  
  Pat Kane told me he would be first to speak up and say "this is wrong" against any further openness to the diaspora. Jim Sillars, considered a leading nat speaker who is doing many meetings for them, answering my question on dividing families said he wants our exile-born children subjected to the same filtering for skills as migrants from anywhere with no roots here at all, and openly told an audience "We must not be afraid of this". Those of the exile-born who have suffered from bad education systems or corrupt abuses like Savile, and that is their reason for not having high value skills, will be further punished and rejected by their country for being abuse victims. A stallholder for Radical Indy, told about this, defended it and called it good socialism to treat all outsiders from everywhere the same and racist to give preference to "someone who happens to be descended..." and he never answered on the practical impact of dividing families, dodged it several times by just repeating the racist jibe "how far back do you go?"
  
  That the Yes we are faced with is as nasty as this is a humanitarian emergency in our history. But it's by enquiring and digging and going to meetings that I have discovered it, not by passive listening to the campaign. In the British-wide racist mood I can't make the media or No campaign focus on it, so have had to make personal efforts with a "no to a new clearances" campaign in the Borders, and a Euro petition against accepting a new state as fairly mandated if voters were unaware of this horror."

A Facebook link showing horrible cybernats giving a birthplace racist reaction to Rod Stewart, in their usual emotional haste forgetting that their position would apply against their own Lesley Riddoch too.

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.

A PETITION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

Submitted Jun 23. Accompanied by letters to 2 offices of the European Commission because they are responsible to have a position too.

TO WITHHOLD ACCEPTANCE OF LEGITIMACY FROM AN INDEPENDENT SCOTLAND UNLESS THE REFERENDUM CAMPAIGN MADE MOST VOTERS AWARE OF A CITIZENSHIP QUESTION AFFECTING FREE MOVEMENT: AND TO PUBLICISE THIS BEFORE THE POLL.

A petition on the EU's dealings with an independent Scotland if one results from the present referendum.

To urge that the EU and its institutions should not recognise the referendum as legitimately mandating and fairly conducted, and should deal with a new Scottish state on that basis in all its relations with it, if a question on citizenship does not receive a scale of media coverage in the referendum campaign so as to make overwhelmingly most voters aware that the question exists. This question is: whether applications for Scottish citizenship by descent, through a parent or grandparent, with the descent evidenced in any way at all, will or will not be refusable.

This has a bearing on the principle of free movement which is a defining concern of the EU. It could affect who is allowed to live here if united travel areas break down, and entitlement to public services. To make citizenship through a parent refusable appears inhumanely to breach ECHR article 8 on family life, by its potential to divide close family members in these ways.

Persons who have moved from Scotland within either the EU or UK did not anticipate such a threat to their offspring's citizenship position. It would be a bad precedent for the EU, conflicting with its nature as a union, to accept silently this occurring in any country.

It is an unfair distortion of national self-determination for voters to be unaware and uninformed that they are voting to remove the absolute unrefusable entitlement to residence here and citizenship, from their own or other families and a part of their society. Voters led to assume that no such prospect can exist, because their media select to be oblivious to it and the campaigns on both sides select not to address it, have not mandated it. They have not mandated the whole choice on statehood that includes it.

To date, this is the situation. The following supporting information evidences so, and that a position from the EU on its dealings and relations with Scotland, taken before the poll, could compel there to be sufficient scale publicising of the question to avert an illegitimately uninformed vote and the EU's difficulty of relating to a state created by that.

nationalists continuing the Clearances

NATIONALISTS CONTINUING THE CLEARANCES !! Yes, you read that right.

Before campaign details and policy crystallised, the Yes position offered great possibilities of helping the diaspora and producing a more liberal regime over citizenship than the British one. That is all utterly extinguished now. In the time since the White Paper came out, the Yes campaign has turned very ugly and sinister. It seems to be pandering to the racist vote now popular in all British politics, and to an anti-outsider racist strand in the SNP's support. It is betraying and backstabbing the Scottish diaspora, in ways that actually form a continuance of the clearances, dividing families and taking Scots' country away from them.

Have already mentioned here how the latest circulated Yes paper described the terms of automatic Scottish citizenship as not including the children of exile, the Scots born in what we now call "rUK" (rest of Britain) if they can't move home before indy day to qualify for citizenship by the absurd arbitrariness of living here on that one day. Already mentioned that neither they nor any of the Yes supporting parties have answered enquiries about it, about interpretation of the provision for "may register for citizenship."

Now something has happened that clinches a turn to a sinister appeal to outsider hate on the Yes side. An SNP MP has actually denied that the folks at stake in this issue are Scottish. It was in this Sunday Post story yesterday.

ON WHAT ENTIRE BASIS, SQUARED WITH THIS, ARE THE SNP PLANNING TO HOLD A HOMECOMING FESTIVAL ????? This Angus Macneil, MP for the Outer Hebrides, may be remembered in history as the exploder of every decent opportunity this referendum could ever have been and its association instead with dividing families, with hate between siblings, with dividing Scot against Scot, with tearing a whole section of the nation out of it, absolutely the stuff of the clearances and racial persecution.

In the Yes campaign's absurd party of wishful thinking, saying just choose not to believe anything that gets in our way, they are all wrong and bluffing, just believe whatever Salmond wants to be true, they might answer this point by claiming that the pledge for the common travel area and an open English border means that foul play upon the Scottish diaspora does not matter. this is of course convenient wishful thinking and wrong. The EU common travel area might cease to include either country, either one, we know there are uncertain futures around that attaching to voting either way. rUK might put a closed border on, it has said so, it owes nothing to make Salmond's inconsistent promise, to belong to the British common travel area yet have an independent border policy, work. So exclusion from citizenship can translate into exclusion from living here.

So until he and the Yes campaign pledge automatic right citizenship for the children of exile without our new state having any power even in theory to say no to any of them as citizens, and they have been totally reluctant to do that as yet, many many Scottish families with cross border links now know that the practical and moral position has been totally swung to voting No. Done actually by nationalists' own attitudes to thwe world community of Scots.