Yes for who?

On the same day as the news of their sudden narrowing of the polls gap, the Yes side may have blown any deserving to win. Unless they put something right, they have let it slip through their fingers just when your spirits were highest, tragically by a thoughtless piece of racist sloppiness from the ideas-conservative heart of the SNP.

The latest Yes paper, which came through my door today, states "all British citizens who were born here or live here on day one of independence will have a right to a Scottish passport." It said nothing at all about the diaspora born's position, it was written in a way that the public can read as meaning the diaspora born who can't move back here before independence day are not necessarily entitled at all. It presents the exile born as not counting if they are not already here, it does not present the diaspora as equal.

They may be kids who will only be adult after the date, or young adults stuck in the family economic dependence that is deliberate Tory policy,

I know the White Paper clarifies that the exile born for 2 generations can also register for a passport by right - btw a betrayal of Salmond's plan of only a few months previously, to make it 3 generations. But this point is about the public message, rather than the less known detailed facts. The presentation has suddenly sloppily slid back to the 1999 election, when the SNP made that crucial policy foul-up and was open to attack by Labour as dividing families. This may cause racist bullying, among the thick laddish type of adult, and among schoolkids some of whom are in the 16 franchise where already before this Yes was said to be trailing unexpectedly.

An interesting site linked to by Yes supporters on Facebook is "100 Artists and Creatives who support Scottish independence." The list includes diaspora born Lesley Riddoch. Were the folks in the campaign she supports remembering all their supporters when they wrote the paper?

Not time to call time yet

There would be no need for Gordon Wilson to say the vote is already lost, and there would be no need for opinion polled 16 year olds to turn out to be No supporters, if Salmond was willing to open the campaign to answering all the items that ordinary Scots want to bring up in it.

Like on our new state being open to zionist return from the diaspora. Showing a connection with the ordinary life level of how all Scots worldwide shall have access to making a new fair progressive Scottish community and living it. Not by Salmond's ever so controlling campaign strategy totally opposite to that, of avoiding opening any new issues to the uncertainty of public dialogue and of saying nearly everything will remain so identical to under the union as creates a mood of why bother.

He is blowing it, simply by being one of the political class who want to keep politics consisting only of a narrow controlled range of issues and views and discouraging all new thoughts. That's why he is blowing his great moment. What a legacy.

It's your future innit? Is it?

As was bound to happpen with any voting date announced far in advance with any fixed age limit on the vote, the young, the future, whose mood the Yes campaign want to lift and appeal to, find themselves or their friends excluded from a historic event, life scarringly narrowly, by chance of birth. Even with votes at 16 that is still the case. A case of turning 16 2 days after the now announced polling day of 18 Sep 2014 featured on Radio Scotland's current affairs phone-in this morning.

If you decide fear of ribaldry is what matters most to you, if you decide the knee jerk prejudice of adults with secure lives actually carries the day against including the whole country in this event, then the trauma for the rest of their lives for young Scots who lived through this referendum very narrowly too young to vote in it will also for the rest of history be what you did to the generation whose futures this vote swung. The only way not to do that it to follow the education reformer John Holt's model that each young person taking up voting and joins the register when they personally feel so ready and inclined.

EU mucked up

Nobody needs telling that Salmond has not had a happy day in the newspapers. Or in his party. Blink and savour having a majority government while it lasts, it may be over any minute.

Just when the SNP's years of tabloid law and order nastiness towards the young seemed to be starting to thaw, as he pledged a bill to make the voting age 16 properly. How will all that young bashing, the tightening up on pubs and their under-18 licensing, look in hindsight if the same party that did it makes some breathtakingly ironically British history by turning out to drive votes at 16 into place across all Britain's elections? After the half generation of nasty reluctance and faffing there has been by the British major parties, continuing not to do it, all through the new era of reform opportunities since Thatcherism ended in 1997?

Just when Salmond seemed to start turning a bit nicer to the young again, now that he needs their votes, he had to go and spoil his whole enterprise by the sneakiness over our continued EU membership, where the SNP has now been tripped up. To try to be popular he persisted in saying he would go along with the existing British system's narky old racist line of not joining Schengen. If we had to rejoin the EU as a new member we might have to join Schengen: GOOD - I want to join Schengen. So does any rational and humane person who fears the losability of travel documents and finds covering the world in apartheid passport barriers an obstacle to common sense life. Though Schengen only exists because the EU does, you can even belong to Schengen without belonging to the EU, like Norway, which is worth knowing if our membership gets interrupted.

It was not worth telling fibs and blowing trust for the whole Yes campaign when it was falling behind in support already, to get out of joining Schengen and pander to Tory passport racism. That will be a mortifying mortal failing for the Yes campaign to be remembered with in history.

OCT 26: Newsnet Scotland here has posted a story that was in the Herald, of the European Commission Vice-President saying EU citizenship once given can't be taken away. Yes supporters on Facebook can criticise the BBC for not majoring on this story, but they are seizing on it too eagerly, it does not establish Scotland would be in the EU, only that we would not lose our citizenship for travelling to the EU.

Wallace and foul-it

Jim Wallace says today 2 thoughts rather at odds.

He says, the referendum needs to be decisive, hence fair enough that the losing side can't cry foul. Said he remembers 1979 when the 40% rule was a foul and left the position unsettled. Good, he is right.

Then he says, for clarity we will have the same electorate as for the last Scottish election. Which means, not giving votes at 16. Excluding a population group who have more future life ahead of them to vote on than any of the present voters have. A group whose franchise is supported supposedly by his own party the Lib Dems as well as by the government calling the vote.

That will be a foul and will guarantee that foul is cried whatever the result! We know it's cynical bowing to the Tories. It is also a contradiction, and self defeating for him with his own admission on future record that any foul on fair play means an indecisive unsettled outcome.

tied to one time to win now

So the jostling for position between the 2 governments has forced Salmond now to pin down a date, autumn 2014 with the Commonwealth Games as a springboard, exactly as guessed by the conspiracy theorists. Who are not always wrong, you see.

It may be right, as the more sympathetic radio voices say, that by it he has stolen a headline for a day. So what? One done, he can't steal the headline on any more days with it. Now he is more boxed in than before. He has to make support go his way at one particular time, no longer any time in a 2 1/2 year range. With the polls presently showing a wobble away from Yes, he must spend the next 2 1/2 years trapped worrying about that gamble. It can't be fun. Some prize for his election landslide.

During their nerve wracking wait, the SNP critically should not want to alienate any population group. The way they have pushed around and picked on the young for the last few years, and socially oppressed them by making their access to pubs harder, is noticeable to the youngest voters ongoingly every day of their lives.

That is a potential nemesis for the SNP now. Deservedly so for the SNP, but not for the smaller pro-independence parties to have the SNP blow it for them.

It sits there conflicting with the new position on the young's side that the SNP is now in over the franchise. As a party that supports votes at 16, it is at least doing good now by holding out for that franchise for a vote that will affect even more of that age groups' future lives than for the older voters. But their recent years of youth bashing over pubs and in tabloid law and order rhetoric has a potential to work against them and undermine them over the youth franchise.