Union mandate !

3 Unionist parties 1 364 656
2 Nat parties 1 326 194

That is not a ref2 mandate, that is a Union mandate! Unionism won the popular vote. Our voting system of Additional Member may be PR but it's still not 1-2-3- preferential. Split votes on the same side can't be undone by the voters' second preferences. Hence, the side that is more split across parties can win the popular vote yet lose the election in seats.

Sturgeon of course knows those numbers. As popular vote, direct number of votes, determines a ref, we know quite safely tnat she does not want one now. Neither side can afford to risk one, as it does not take professorship for John Curtice to tell us. Sturgeon can't hold the SNP together without a nominal show of confrontation for one, but has just kicked safely imto next year any parliamentary action on it. Most of her followers understand that first she will try to whip up more support by grievancemongering, and see if they can climb out of thus 50-50 divide of the voters.

The Alba Party's failure suggests that nat voters are mostly on their movement's cautious side, not the emotionally raving militants' side. They are not bursting to force a ref2 when they know its result would be a complete gamble. This election was the first time that has been actually tested, between 2 nat parties with different views on speed of action.

Notable that Tommy Sheridan, who since 2017 has made speeches at indy rallies demandihg tnat ref2 be called unilaterally, joined the Alba Party.

Curious that both the Alba Party, and its Unionist counterpart George Galloway's All For Unity Party, both led apparently from the left, both chose to blow it with progresssive voters in the same socially reactionary way! Both supported the anti-transgender reaction against the self-identification law. Alba did it in a trans-excluding feminist way, you could find it on Youtube, women demanding a biological reality definition of women. All For Unity did it by arguing a family values line like the 1990s Major government, you could find it on its own site and Facebook, including a nasty sinister oppressive line for parents to have power to decide what to allow their kids to know. There was leafers' hubris in doing that. For Salmond, a recent survivor of the unjust witch'hunting of men, it ws surprising and seems illogical to side with the angrier more excluding type of feminism! Exactly the type that sides with the witch-hunting more fervently.

Labour comes out of the election best. Quite unlike the concerns of an unsure position that afflicted it in the Corbyn period, Labour stood on a definite manifesto line against a ref in this term of govt, and held its candidates to that line, with strong pre-election purging of candidates who haf aberrated from it.

search yourself Lesley Riddoch

Riddoch has written a National column seizing on the opinion poll of Brexit-raving Tory menbers, that found a majority polling as preferring to lose Scotland than drop Brexit. Symptomatic of what Brexit has done to the Tories, and some commenters have suggested it comes from the weight of Brexiters who have joined the Tories to influence the leadership election. But the nats are all falling over it with glee.

They and Riddoch are making a logical fallacy typical of them, in declaring this the end of unionism. They are assuming that all u ionists are Tories. A piece of mud they would sneakily love to stick, and which makes no sense alongside what they often say on low Tory support here. i.e. the majority of Unionists are not Tories, and their Unionism is completely logically unaffected by the Tories' collective crack-up.

Here are Riddoch's words asked back to her. As I asked them back to her in a National site comment.

SHE WROTE

>
• As Stuart Campbell [Wings over Bath] pointed out: “Tories in Scotland and Northern Ireland are clinging to a nation from which their own Conservative colleagues would drop them like a ticking time-bomb ... at the first inconvenience.”
• Who knows if that revelation prompted any heart-searching amongst Union-supporting Scots ? ... So the question is worth asking again.
• Knowing that “fellow” arch Unionists would throw you and your nation to the wolves rather than miss the chance to trash their own economy by cutting ties with the European Union – how do you feel about the Union now? Indeed, how do you rate the thought processes of your erstwhile colleagues?
• What on earth are we waiting for? Even Scotland’s No voters must be asking themselves the very same question.

ASKED BACK TO HER

Lesley: you are a diaspora-born Scot who belongs to your nation by family. The White Paper does not give, and ever since it SNP and Yes have refused to give, unrefusable citizenship by the family connection route, parental descent. For 6 years you have faced the question, and you evaded it when asked by me at a meeting you did in Edinburgh Friends' Meeting House during the indyref:

• Why are you an eager leading voice of a movement that is racist against yourself ?
• Yessers who either are, or care about family/friends who are, parental descent Scots, are clinging to a nation from which their own Yes colleagues would drop them like a ticking time-bomb, by dogma without even waiting for an inconvenience.
• Who knows if that revelation prompted any heart-searching amongst indy-supporting Scots? So the question is worth asking again.
• Knowing that "fellow" arch Nats would throw you and your subset of your nation to the wolves rather than miss the chance to trash their own economy by cruelly dividing families in breach of ECHR article 8 - how do you feel about indy now? Indeed, how do you rate the thought processes of your erstwhile colleagues?
• As of Perth's recent hustings, Green leader Maggie Chapman has come round on parental descent citizenship. What are you waiting for? Even Scotland's SNP voters must be asking themselves the very same question.

still fighting fantasies

Ordinary nats are still fighting as they were during the ref, to get unverified fantasies taken as fact, and still calling it lies and scares to point out the truth that a fantasy has no basis.

That is still the level where a nat writing in the Metro this week is at. he called it a unionist scare and lie that there would be any border control with rUK, because there isn't any with the Irish Republic. He slags unionist readers and confidently calls all this unionist lying. And exactly the same facts still stand now as stood during the ref, that makes it the nats who are lying about this and unionists are simply citing facts sensibly:

* It is not Scotland's sole say for there not to be border control. Either state on either side of a border has the power to put control on. Relations with Ireland for no constitutional precedent at all.
* Yes there are identity checks in entering and leaving Ireland, and at present regular travellers to the Republic find it sensible to take their passports to avoid difficulties over whether whatever other form of identity they are carrying is accepted. Not only that, because the Republic has at present has a milder line on immigration than Britain has and Britain does not want to impact Irish politics by being too heavy on the border with the north, there are actually immigration checks when you cross from Northern Ireland to the mainland on the Belfast-Cairnryan ferry! I experienced this in April. The ferry tells you to carry identity, for that reason.

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.

demanding

See again? We are not gonna get a currency union. The UK has told us that again.

Quite apart from how silly it is to want one, how it's unionist and not real self-government. The Czech Republic and Slovakia tried to have one following their separation in 1993, and it lasted 33 days.

Be part of silly

Gordon Bennett. Just blimey and gasps. When is SNP unionism ever going to stop?

The lagging polls show folks already need more imaginative inspiring motivating to vote Yes than they are getting. The campaign has already made itself sound silly with the whole palaver of we are going to keep a currency union with the country seceded from, on demand and even though they say they won't agree to it. The strongest reason the Yes folks have held onto, have not toed the British line on, have kept rightly telling us is where there could be a big difference to be gained from going our own way, has been on social conscience standards of welfare and escape from the British austerity agenda.

The reason why real folks in Scotland have to continue to suffer trashed disability benefits, unemployment sanctions lasting 3 years, the bedroom tax, and pension worries, for over a year to come, has always been so that we will be convinced to vote against continuing to suffer them. (Hasn't it?)

And now, when we are already in the middle of a mood of hollow scepticism that independence is really intended to mean it at all - Sturgeon turns round and accepts a naff proposal, FROM HER GOVERNMENT'S OWN ADVISORY GROUP EVEN, that we should stay in a union of welfare systems with Tory Britain for a so-called "transitional period" whose length is not even defined, that is open ended. A Guardian story places it at at least to 2019 !!! where it far exceeds the Cameron government's full term so still inflicts its whole austerity programme on us. Through it, we would still get the social wrongs that most practically of all we are being asked to vote against still getting.

Silly silly silly. Who conceivably has been increased in belief in the whole Yes offer by this? In the Scottish National Party having the confidence to separate our state from the British state, which is supposed to be the whole point innit? "Be part of better", they told us. The Silly No Party, who just want to throw every last strand of our statehood away!!

See, folks might conclude this is a handy way for the SNP to make sure they can keep us neocon, the same as every major party wants to do. Just the same as Labour about this. So what do the other Yes supporting parties have to say? Are they going to be part of silly?

Explain why don't we have to get out to stay in?

Tony Blair today says independence is bad for the same reasons as leaving the EU is bad. Cutting ourselves off into a small bubble instead of being cushioned by belonging to a bigger whole in an era when economics works on the big scale. Okay, follow his own reasoning?

What happens in the event that Britain chooses not to listen to him and continues its anti-EU drift that has so swiftly accelerated to such a serious scale that nobody expected. We will see Britain heading for the separatist choice, and largely for racist reasons that will make it a very ugly scenario for many of our continental friends who live here and have important places in our lives. Already it includes right wing moves against the principle of human rights. Then exactly in order to choose against separation we would have to choose to separate from Britain. In order to follow Blair's advice on the EU and stay in that European bigger whole, we would have to leave the British bigger whole, so as not to be included in its leaving of the EU?

With the 2 decisions forced on us in the wrong order, the Scottish decisison happening before the British EU decisison and not informed by its result but forced to gamble on what it will be, won't it be a safer way of following Blair's own reasoning that we separate from Britain for fear of it separating from Europe, and we seize on the support of figures like Blair for the desirability of not shrinking the EU, to use in fighting our way back into it if we get the accession problems the unionists are having us threatened with? Blair obviously would not say it was bad that smaller countries, Slovenia, Croatia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, separated out from the former bigger unions of Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union, and have joined the bigger EU instead contributing to its expansion, before it was possible for them to bring the whole of the unions they left into the EU. Scotland will be in exactly the same moral position if we buck a very nastily anti-democratic swing to Euro-hate by Britain.

This surely is the only really strong argument the Yes side can use to climb out of the hole the SNP's secret economic nerves have put them in, also today! It means being strong on human rights to differentiate from, and to raise clear alarm against, the way England is turning. But that will only work if it overturns the SNP's own eagerness to attack human rights arm in arm with the Tories, if the Yes side disown and cease to be burdened by Macaskill making you pay for a court defence when charged with a crime. Otherwise, being part of big or small wholes ain't what it's about at all. Survival of free society and getting out of the hole that both sides at once have thrown our civil liberties into, will be the primary item to vote on.

Alex goes south

The Olympic Games are a conceptual absurdity. Their modern revival was supposed to be a promoter of peace, and that is what the symbol with the interlocking rings is supposed to show. Yet nothing is less peaceful to raw hurting human egos, than competition, victory, defeat. That is what competitive games do to people, and they showcase nations' posturing pride which goes back to possessive or territorial animals' aggressive displays to each other.

We hear Alex Salmond was there. Why the hell? It was a feast of unionist propaganda, Britain telling its self-promotional story. Like, look how wonderful we are for creating the NHS, to make the outside world find it harder to believe we are destroying it. No Highland Clearances in there.

Scotland is not even competing as an entity, only Britain is.Who has the man who says he wants to vote Britain away gone to its capital, in its greedy third hosting of the Olympics instead of a British bid going to a different city this time, to show his support for?

He went to Wimbledon too. Alex really really luvs going to England.

3 way vote is a must now

Nice to see letter against birthplace racism in the Scotland on Sunday today.

Yes Henry McLeish let's have devo max on the ballot. He is right about that, he is being a decent reformer on the unionist side. On both sides the reasons for not having it are to manipulate the situation by using lack of choice to force the people's hands.

It is said devo max will save Salmond's face. It won't save his face at all if he chooses to go against caring about a fairness issue and that is seen to result in independence losing and devo max winning. So devo max can be a lever on the SNP concerning its responsiveness to issues concerning life here at its ordinary level. * Concerning Salmond supporting Trump. * Concerning zionist return to Scotland from the diaspora, the ethnic injustice of any economic obstacles to it, and having no immigration barriers to it. * Concerning the British state mistreating diaspora returners and trying to sabotage their returns, as in my story from 1995 of the police lying to me against my newly bought house's area on the eighth day of my return.

If the independence offer does not look like helping just outcomes to these items of ethnic justice for the nation, then devo max will be a good choice. Or, to have to offer a devo max settlement levers the unionist side into having to show progress on these items of ethnic justice if we vote against independence, otherwise make a case for voting for it.

It is natural that the widest spread of choice for the voters increases the chance for both sides of their favourite option losing unless they respond to this type of issue. As well as actually letting each option get voted on which is undemocatic not to give us. Mandate legitimacy now requires the 3 options to be in the vote.

Unionist move's oppression of the young

The office of Scottish secretary was supposed to be abolished when devolution came in? All voices were quite certain it would be. So what happened? Ooh it feels quite useful to have a focal point in the Cabinet for putting up barriers to what the devolved government can do, as an layer of insurance for the union. That was the Labour government who first made that choice, so it's only thanks to them that Cameron has a Scottish secretary at all.

So today the said Michael Moore has been offering terms for a referendum, if held on a faster timescale than Salmond wants, to have a binding result. Is this necessary? Generally no referendum's result is binding unless the British parliament has passed a law saying it is, because default sovereignty is with parliament. But where national self-determination is involved, so is international law. At United Nations level going back to the decolonisation era and the UN's early principles against conquering countries, in votes on independence the country concerned has a sovereign decision: self determination. That stands over any British law on competent status to call the vote.

The present unionist position is going against that international law. But any problems with courts striking down the referendum, as today's papers are full of imaginings of, will also be the SNP's fault if the SNP continues to ignore the court change described twice in this blog. The court change, the development since 1999 that court decisions are always open-endedly faultable on their reasoning and are no longer ever final, is exactly what the SNP needs to stand up to any unionist court antics to declare void a Yes result to a vote called by the SNP.

A vote imposed from British level should also be held void, illegitimate, if its franchise excludes any population groups who would have a vote anywhere in the world. The Tories are following their demographic as the home of narky old bigots against youth, they are against votes at 16 and their proposed terms for an authorised referendum by 2013 specifically exclude votes at 16. Though Moore himself is a Lib Dem and going along with this. Folks with the vote's result ahead of them for a lifespan will live with the memory of contemptuous rejection from taking part in it, when they have the vote in the Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey, Austria, Nicaragua, and Brazil. To have self determination be a sovereign principle of international law, for votes on it that can happen anywhere in the world, means having all votes on it held on no lesser a franchise than exists anywhere. A No vote on an 18 voting age will absolutely not legitimise the union, nor a Yes vote legitimise its end. It will not be a conclusive outcome, it will not be visibly sovereign.

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