Not listening makes us blue.

How fair will it be for an election to be swung by the psychology of "don't understand"?

Today's Tory press are trying to muddle with the situation around a Labour government's relation to the SNP. Following Miliband's renunciation 2 days ago of any deal with other parties, now several front pages saying: oh look, we've caught them out, they will do a deal. This is based on some of the Shadow Cabinet explaining that a minority government would go from vote to vote talking to other parties to get as much as it can of its own business through. That is not a deal. That is what Miliband already explicitly explained that that is not a deal. It is exactly what happens when there is not a deal, it is the way any minority government has to function, the other parties can jostle with it on passing or not passing each item of its business. It's the way the SNP minority government of 2007-11 worked, getting business through with Tory support so often that to be logically consistent these papers should accuse it of having a deal with the Tories, exactly what is terrible for the SNP ever to be seen by its voters to have. But logically consistent is what these headlines have an interest in not being. To understand what it or is not a deal takes willingness to listen to explanations and understand the system. For the real human minds of many voters, knee jerk prejudice is easier and saves mental effort. Oh look, this headline has made it sound like this means a deal, so it probably does, so it does. Conclusion reached, end of story, mind closed to further listening.

.Because the story is written to fit prejudice that what the politician says is likely to be lies, the voter leaps to the simple conclusion that it is indeed lies in this case. To make any effort to understand the system would be an unwelcome mental effort. It could threaten 2 things for the voter, (i) a prejudice, (ii) their self-esteem of being right in leaping to the hasty conclusion. because these things are threatening, they must be shut out of mind, by insisting: no no no, I DON'T UNDERSTAND. Even if they would understand perfectly well if they chose to listen. So now, anyone trying to explain the technicality of why a minority government's work to pass each vote is not a deal, and why these shadow ministers have not confessed there will be a deal, will just get "I don't understand", and based on it an impatient refusal to listen. And that psychology in enough voters could change the election's outcome.

The voting reform referendum in 2011, already, appeared swung by a "don't understand" prejudice. The argument that the proposed new system took more effort to understand, succeeded in appealing to voters to reject it. That worked better as an argument than the case that it was a fairer system. So this is irrational psychological process is totally capable of swinging election outcomes.

The atmosphere towards Labour is now frighteningly like 1992. SHOULD AN ELECTION BE GIVEN TO THE TORIES BY A KNEE JERK PEER PRESSURE AND A PSYCHOLOGY OF REFUSAL TO LISTEN TO SIMPLE EXPLANATIONS?!! That is the present danger.

Shout down all other parties.

A selection of the words of SNP supporters at present.

Labour's Kezia Dugdale in yesterday's daily record thought voters need to contemplate that this is who the present SNP are, on this wave of emotion:

• Candidate known on Twitter as "Paco McSheepie" calls No voters quislings, thinks pensioners should not have the vote, and says an SNP majority in this election would be grounds to declare independence unilaterally.
• Candidate in Paisley says an SNP win of over 30 seats would be grounds to call a second referendum. Called that "the rope that a hung parliament hangs on."
• Candidate in Inverness: "Never mind the referendum, just declare independence."
• Candidate in Midlothian: "It wasn't a No vote, just a not yet."

There was more talk of UDI in the latest Scots Independent pamphlet, not one you see on the newsstands, I saw it on the reference shelf of a library in Edinburgh. Gordon Wilson, former SNP leader, whose anti-gay religious views hardly make him seem the SNP's radical wing, is another one writing of a UDI without a referendum. So radical it's treasonable, he wrote for the nats to prepare to do that if a British referendum on the EU goes for leaving it.

Then there's this I found through Facebook. A vision of democracy tweeted by one "Mulder1981":
"The SNP winning another landslide victory shows that Scotland wants change. The SNP should shout down all other political parties in Scotland and self-govern the nation towards independence. It's the will of the people who are politically engaged and care about the country's future and potential. Alba gu braith."

This line is familiar from some well known nationalist histories just across both the Irish and North Seas from us. Not good ones.

Common travel binned already: try visiting Ireland.

Britain has been breaking the British Isles common travel area with Ireland, affecting both parts of it, without admitting so in any prominent political outlet.

Since 2010, shows this paper from when they started it, www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/257182/cta.pdf, they have done immigration checks on the crossings from Northern Ireland to the mainland. It is shocking to see it, as I did on the Belfast to Cairnryan crossing, with "immigration enforcement" on their uniforms, checking identity and asking exactly immigration type questions about where you were travelling to - on a domestic travel route that is wholly inside the UK. It is not caused by NI's history, any extra security because of that would be security rather than open explicit immigration checking. Dangerously it does not make NI feel treated like part of the union, does it? The idea behind it is supposed to be, that the Republic is more liberal on immigration, and the Irish peace requires there to be easy crossing into NI by road an appearance of open border between the 2 parts of Ireland, so Britain will let the Republic's policy govern who can reach NI but it will still put a trap in an unexpected place to catch folks trying to reach the British mainland. This is why it is only being done in one direction, coming from Ireland, not going to it.

A friend who has visited family in the Republic reported that he was asked for his passport when crossing into NI on public transport! This is exactly what is not supposed to happen under the common travel area, and all our media debate on the EU and during the referendum took as common knowledge that it does not happen, that we have a happy little passport-free travel area with the Irish Republic. Googling, you can find stories since 2011 of this happening. It's not being publicised in media and politics, it's only folks who travle to Ireland and experience it who are getting to know this is happening.

As a No voter who is migration liberal and has no love at all for Britain's present border culture, I'm writing against Britain's practices here and accusing that they weaken the union. But this revelation is more of a problem for nats than unionists, because during the referendum the Yessers relied heavily on claiming they could predict that rUK would keep the common travel area with us because it would be rational. They insisted cavalierly that we could dismiss as bluff all contrary talk. Some Yessers actually relied on this, to argue that my anger at Yes's citizenship plan betraying the Scottish diaspora was unnecessary, because the common travel area resolved it. Predicting common travel's certainty to remain in place would mean, all the Scots born in the rest of Britain to emigrant parents and still living there at the date of indy, who Yes intended to betray without unrefusable citizenship of their own country, would still always be free to move home as part of common travel. So it would not matter how deficient and full of loopholes Yes's rules for Scottish citizenship were. This is clearly disproved by what is happening to Ireland. If intrusive migration checks are now capable of being intruded sinisterly upon civil liberties even inside the UK, between its nations, and if we are illicitly and dishonestly breaking the travel area with the Irish Republic too, both of these shocks show how easy and casual it would have been for rUK to put them onto a new Scottish state's border.

It's obviously another reason not to vote Conservative if you care for the union.

which scare wins?

In this campaign, opponents of each of the 2 British major parties are bound to seek to portray the other as a threat to the Union. After all, the Union is popular, as we know: it was chosen in a referendum quite recently.

None of the right wing newspapers accusing Labour of risking the Union simply by being willing to cooperate with the SNP on economic issues in a hung parliament, have itemised exactly what risking effect this is supposed to have upon the Union? But when a Tory sympathetic paper, the Sunday Times, runs in a front page column that the Conservatives would give Scotland financial home rule, fiscal independence, separation from the security and mutual support of the shared British budget, that is the one to be scared of.

It makes the Conservatives a worse threat to the Union. Fiscal independence fits with Tory attitudes on self-reliance and anti-welfare, make Scotland pay for itself jolly good eh what? No, and not what we voted No for. They are the ones who have been disturbingly leaning to this idea ever since the Smith process, when you will remember it was Labour who stepped in to say no that's too far in separation. It's Labour who are holding the line against fiscal separation.

Labour has it right

None of you riding on the nationalist fire stoked by the Tory press are going to get any goodies from it, when you find you have let the Tories back in. It's in their clear electoral interest to feed all this poll frenzy against Labour.

What could be better than the version of the Vow including benefits devolution which Jim Murphy and Gordon Brown have arrived at for Labour? It has something for everyone. It addresses any conern there was with Smith about whether enough of welfare was being devolved. It deserves to be popular.

It's not a contradiction of Labour's previous line at all, the way the already hostile letter writers are painting. Labour was against separating the welfare budget from the union, it was against budgetary separation, fiscal independence, which would carry all the same economic vulnerabilities for Scotland as actually indy. It still is. Labour's policy is still keeping the British welfare budget united. So it remains backed up by the union. At the same time as doing that, they have found a way to save us from it meaning that welfare rates and terms will all be in British Tory governments' power to determine. We will get a Scottish power to top them up. To do our own thing, not from a position of budgetary separation, but as a top-up. Extra measures of our own that we can do on top of still having most of it delivered by the union.

This is a clever piece of common sense. Vote for it. You have no sensible reason not to. You won't have to choose between keeping the welfare system's united economic security or about having a Scottish power to be more generous with it than the Tories. Whichever of those you care most about, whichever side you are on of the debate between them, does not matter, because you will get them both!!!!!!!!!!!!

YOU WILL GET THEM BOTH!!! IT'S BRILLIANT.

There was nothing in the cross-party Vow that vowed this, but it was in Gordon Brown's Labour picture of what the Vow should be, in the final phase of the referendum. And yes Labour is delivering his picture. The best of all worlds for folks on both sides!! So vote for it. Stop being part of this irrational poll flip against Labour that should have happened in the New Labour period in the noughties, not now.

Will the Electoral Reform Society prevent Yes peer pressure bias ?

To Juliet Swann the admin worker in Electoral Reform Society's 2-person Scottish office. Their director Willie Sullivan works for Common Weal and has long given the impression of being a Labour Yesser.

“If the Yes bias in yesterday’s session on citizen’s conventions was accidental, you will be happy to agree with measures to prevent its repetition. This event was supposed to be nothing to do with backing either side on independence. From the main speaker, it was: nothing wrong with the main speaker. The offender was the supporting speaker with a Canadian experience who came after her.

To prevent hijacking of events, a rule needs to be billed, saying: whenever a claim is made in favour of either side on independence and in the referendum, someone on the opposite side will be entitled to respond to it. Even though this is a diversion from the meeting’s intended topic.

Otherwise, speakers can use events supposed to be about other things, to project claims on behalf of one side as measured facts without having to justify them. The supporting speaker, you will remember, claimed to have measured that Yes voters were more likely to have researched their facts than No voters.

This was obviously intended to make No voters sound stupid and propagandise that the facts pointed to voting Yes, and it was presented in support of a pushily self-satisfied Yes voter in the audience who had expressed that prejudice already. We then had to make the most of our opportunity to contribute to the intended topic’s discussion, without getting any opportunity at whole-room level to give a No voter’s defence to the claim made against us. As a result, that Yes voter left believing she had picked up a scientific statistic in support of her prejudice, and she was not accessible in the informal time at the end either as she chose just to engross herself with a friend then leave. Any number of folks could have seen the spectacle of her prejudice confirmed and been swayed by it themselves too. These all left without ever knowing that a No voter present in the room thought they had missed a big fact when they researched their votes, and thought the statistic claimed was misleading because it did not consider whether voters chose reliable sources for their facts.

My counter to the statistic, as a No voter, would be: (1) it assumes the voters had available all the facts they needed, but facts of big importance to me on racism and citizenship were not easily available, (2) did these voters question the Yes campaign on facts and dig behind them, or just accept claims as facts because they wanted to believe? (3) some voters for a status quo may be choosing on the evidence of life experience, hence have less need to read up on it, this does not make their choice less intelligent. This just to show I have an answer – and if I slipped in claims for my side into an event about something else, you know the Yes voters would have an answer and would be indignant to have it heard.

This is a question of whether ERS events and their findings are reliable, or will be corrupted by bias towards the Yes movement’s undemocratic game of peer pressure. I find it necessary to circulate the question openly, so that future participants and the whole reform scene be alerted to watch out that you make the right choice to prevent hijack bias by always having a right of reply to it when it happens.

As you know, I raise this question already from a position of lapsed membership, because of the unanswered question on exactly where you shared our local group’s voter question action towards the 2 ref campaigns.”

This may be read by folks who never reached the meeting, so I would mention about that too. Why was there any need to do this relatively small meeting as a limited places book your place event? They told us there was a waiting list of folks who had not got places, they emailed asking we to tell them if we weren’t coming, yet by the chance of stormy weather on the day folks did not turn up and there were lots of empty seats without the waiting list folks having had a chance to be there. This was brushed aside quite trivially saying the weather would make them relieved. This is a totally unsatisfactory standard of practice towards inclusion in democracy! the very thing we were there for!

For 10 million global citizens

UNCHR launches campaign to end statelessness. The UN says a third of about 10 million stateless people are children, who can pass statelessness to future generations.

This comprehensive write-up is by Al-jazeera: www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2014/11/unchr-launches-campaign-end-statelessness-201411451131537335.html

My immediate response to UNHCR, pushing the idea of citizenship union:

" On statelessness and your campaign. The Scottish crisis has already led me to propose a new constitutional idea which fits perfectly with shifting the global culture away from the fragmentation of citizenship which causes much of statelessness. You might like to back it: a multi-country CITIZENSHIP UNION.

It seems very significant, that Al-jazeera comes from the non-Western postcolonial world, yet in its report on your campaign it has explained that "Statelessness results from people falling through the cracks when new countries are created". So that this a deliberate avoidable racist crime has accompanied the world's postcolonial shift to a large number of smaller states. Indeed that it seems to be a deliberate device to create enslavable populations.

The Scottish nationalists too were planning to betray the common sense principle of automatically inheriting citizenship. Their plans were going to make it refusable. But in Europe's present racist mood, the media and No side would not do anything to focus on and expose it. I lodged a petition to the EU, number 1448/2014, against accepting a Scottish state's valid mandate to exist if voters had been unaware of this. It has not been made redundant by our No vote, it still holds for all the other secession movements in the EU.

The interventions from 3 ex-British countries appealing to us to vote No in contradiction of their own seceded position, were what enabled me to propose citizenship union. I first proposed it in advance of our vote, to 6 countries. I have resubmitted it in the public submissions, at both British and Scottish levels, on where Britain's new settlement should go now.

It would close some of the holes of statelessness. It will not immediately close them all though by choice it could. It will be an enormous culture shift in the whole global nature of citizenship, away from it working in the single country ways that cause statelessness, and to a global community which the peoples of lots of countries will be attracted to seeing their country included in.

I have posted here before on the geopolitics of citizenship union: Divided world shut doors, on the geopolitics of citizenship unions. As Salmond pointed out instantly, for the 3 countries the contradiction is that they all became independent from us historically themselves, and now they have the accompanying divisions of citizenship. To make their appeal to us make any sense, to back up in practice their geopolitical concern to keep the British state and make its new settlement succeed, they need to be willing to go for this. To form a citizenship union, as many democratic countries as can be brought in would all simply agree, in one sentence, that all of each other's citizens are now their own citizens too. Any catching up by their own citizenship laws would be done after the treaty is made, to be bound by it instead of miring it.

There would only be one citizenship of the entire scheme, unlike in the EU's modest moves to citizenship union folks would not remain identified as just one member state's citizen. That way, racist reactions like UKIP's to undo the whole thing would be made totally impractical. But this would be between totally independent states still free not to join in each other's wars: and obviously folks can not have obligations for any type of compulsory service put on them by any one of the other states which they are not resident in nor have asked to have any connection with, so this structure will also be a good safeguard against such forms of service being able to exist in any of its members. The only margin of independence the members would lose, would be to act on enough of a scale at odds with the others geopolitically as hit ordinary citizens' lives adversely.