Well this should be interesting - I'm in the front row of a meeting at work where David Cameron is going to be answering questions. Anything anyone wants me to ask? You've got about 20 minutes to get them in folks......
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White Paper (THE #indyref thread)
(2915 posts)- Started 11 years ago by Morningsider
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Posted 10 years ago #
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Well this should be interesting - I'm in the front row of a meeting at work where David Cameron is going to be answering questions. Anything anyone wants me to ask? You've got about 20 minutes to get them in folks......
Posted 10 years ago # -
How about
'How will you get your 'devomax' through Westminster on Gordon Brown's timetable?'
http://www.scotsman.com/news/george-kerevan-panic-cynicism-and-desperation-1-3536470
Posted 10 years ago # -
Well that was very very interesting. Random thoughts:
- PM is an exceptionally accomplished public speaker; no surprise there
- The line they will be using is "Family of Nations"
- He didn't use the word "independence" once. It's all "separation".
- The mood of the audience afterwards, from Yes/No/Undecided, was "this is what we should have been hearing all along." So although there is some scepticism about the sudden Westminster invasion I think people are glad to actually get it.
As background, we were all briefed beforehand that our company was offering a platform but not endorsing No and that if Yes had asked then they would have been given the same offer. We were also told that we could ask whatever we liked. There wasn't really any obvious bias in any of the questions asked; only one obviously Yes about Trident and another about achieving a fairer Scotland (which could be Yes or No).
General mood was very respectful, polite and genuinely interested to hear responses. I think this probably matches Gembo's and IWRATS's experiences when canvassing.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Forecast for next week -
I'm sure people (on both sides) will be able to read something into the change from this week!
- and the web address!
http://m.yr.no/place/United_Kingdom/Scotland/Edinburgh/long.html
Posted 10 years ago # -
@stickman - According to the Guardian, that means you work for Scottish Widows?
The man should be out meeting the people, and by that I mean the man/woman/child on the street, not invited staff who are well aware that rocking the boat wont do their career prospects any good.
And to be clear, I wouldnt rock the boat either if my company had arranged a platform for Cameron to speak.
The scaremongering in this sector continues today with the news (hardly earth shattering) from David Nish at Standard Life that they will implement new companies based in England if its a Yes.
As I say, hardly earth shattering, my company will undoubtedly do the same - but has been revised by the financial press down south as 'Standard Life will move OPERATIONS in the event of a Yes'.
Cue many Standard Life staff switching to No.
Shameful but predictable and in line with the ridiculously biased BBC reporting.
Posted 10 years ago # -
The scaremongering in this sector continues today with the news (hardly earth shattering) from David Nish at Standard Life that they will implement new companies based in England if its a Yes.
The similar threats as recorded in newspaper clippings from Standard Life before the 1997 Devolution referendum were doing the rounds on Twitter this morning.
The line they will be using is "Family of Nations"
This is an odd phrase that seems to have crept into use by the BT/No side and WM Politicians in the last year-to-18-months or so. I couldn't find it's use in google-spidered news articles prior to this, and I don't ever recall it being bandied about as a metaphor for the UK's constitutional arrangements.Prior to that it appears to have been used in the Marshall Plan and also early in the life of Israel.
It has a nice, warm, familiar ring to it and kudos to whichever speechwriter came up with it. But it doesn't really mean anything. Although, when it's not working, families move on. They get divorced, the kids move out, the grapdparents get put into a home. Sticking togehter "for the sake of the family" isn't neccessarily a reason to do it in itself.
Could we get a Cameron in the future making a plea to his party faithful not to "rip apart the family of nations" which is the European Union?
Posted 10 years ago # -
Aye, that family word again -
"
Tasmina Sheikh (@TasminaSheikh)
10/09/2014 13:38
The depth & breadth of the #Yes family @DennisCanavan @BlairJenkinsYes @patrickharvie @NaeFear @colinfoxssp #VoteYeshttp://pic.twitter.com/a9GlppWlpa
"
Posted 10 years ago # -
@kaputnik
I recently FoIed the 'family of nations' term from the 'HM Government' booklet we all got, asking where it came from and what other 'families of nations' they had looked at.
If I understand their answer correctly, the term originates in a speech by David Cameron. They refused to say which other 'families of nations' they had considered, leaving the possibilty that their claim that we live in the greatest one is true due to its being unique.
Posted 10 years ago # -
@Nelly
Standard Life staff are not as venal or lilly-livered as you may fear! I know of at least one who has only just finished his journey to Yes. He is nobody's fool.
Posted 10 years ago # -
The statements from 1997 that I've seen attributed to Scottish Widows on twitter are pretty badly reported. The journalist conflates devolution and independence but the quotes in the piece from Widows only refer to the impact of independence. To that extent the position now is consistent with 1997 and what came after.
Their statements then also seem consistent with the Yes campaign's (or the SNP's) desire now for the UK to remain a single market for financial services (currency union and everything that goes with it).
Posted 10 years ago # -
@stickman
You should have asked Mr Cameron for a bigger changing room at Port Hamilton. Barely room to swing a kitten in there.
Posted 10 years ago # -
@Instography
Widows in 1997 and now are totally different companies. It was an independent mutual then and a marketing brand of the partly state-owned Lloyds Banking Group now.
Europe will shortly assure a single market for financial services;
http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/top_layer/financial_capital/index_en.htm
Posted 10 years ago # -
@stickman
You should have asked Mr Cameron for a bigger changing room at Port Hamilton. Barely room to swing a kitten in there.
Ha! Although in the interests of balance then the Yes campaign would have to say what their policy is on changing room dimensions.
Posted 10 years ago # -
@stickman
Clothes are a UK body covering. Leaving the UK means leaving clothes. There will be no need for changing rooms in an independent Scotland.
Posted 10 years ago # -
It does take a bit of a brass neck for a UK prime minister to stand up in a financial services canteen and trumpet that jobs are safer in the UK, given the dramtic headcount cuts all the big organisations have made in the last 5 years and that cuts and restructurings are still on going. It's not really been a stable employment sector under either team Broon/ Darling or team Dave/Gideon.
Posted 10 years ago # -
@IWRATS
I wasn't commenting on the commercial structure of Scottish Widows only noticing that the statements that were purportedly the same as had been said about devolution didn't actually refer to devolution but only to independence. The journalist at the time had conflated the two and premusably the person circulating it today hadn't bothered to read past the headline.Posted 10 years ago # -
My local Labour party have just refused to canvass me. That about says it all.
I have their leaflet. It says that I am 'not to trust Salmond'. Given that I already don't particularly, you'd think we could have talked about it.
Very disappointing.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Did you ask to be canvassed or did they just walk past your house?
Posted 10 years ago # -
"
A new poll has put the No campaign ahead in the battle over Scotland's constitutional future.
The Survation research for the Daily Record put Better Together on 53% versus 47% for the Yes Scotland campaign when undecideds were removed.
With 'don't know' responses included, the results were 47.6% for No, 42.4% for Yes and ten per cent yet to make up their minds.
"
http;//news.stv.tv/scotland-decides/news/291584-new-poll-puts-no-ahead-by-53-to-47-in-independence-referendum
Posted 10 years ago # -
"
If the yes camp wins next Thursday it will be, in large part, because in addition to the SNP, this “non-party” broad coalition has inspired people. They use a mixture of social media and old-fashioned peer to peer information: word of mouth, informal canvassing.
"
http://blogs.channel4.com/paul-mason-blog/grassroots-groups-leading-indyref-debate/2263
Posted 10 years ago # -
To be fair to Survation, they've had the same 53 / 47 split since June, apart from that one post-debate poll that had Yes on 43% for a few weeks.
So, the oddness deepens with both Panelbase and Survation - the two throughout the campaign most likely to produce a high Yes figure - showing no movement over the period that YouGov and TNS - both considered "No-friendly" (though I hate the implication that the companies give a monkey's) - have shown substantial movement.
Posted 10 years ago # -
@IWRATS I tried to canvass a person with a Yes sticker on their door and he went mental.
better Together has a chap who will happily while away the hours with you - he likes to chat and is very knowledgable about Iraq. He is not labour though. I can send him round? The rest of us have to work a lot harder to cover the streets if he is out if we are to fulfil our quotas (joking, the South west better together mob are very team handed theses days but can't judge what it is like elsewhere - well the SSP were out in force at east end of princes street, in fact all five of them were there together yesterday)
Heard about teacher's wife who is Spanish <Andalusian) and talking about voting No on bus going through leith and she was told she should get off the bus as it was for Scottish people. This then attracted much abuse on the Internet when she or her partner posted and a Spanish friend expressed his support for her right to travel on Lothain buses without being harangued.
Posted 10 years ago # -
told she should get off the bus as it was for Scottish people
Well I was out leafleting a few days ago and was met at the door by some young women who said "...but we're not Scottish." I said you don't have to be Scottish, you just have to live here (not strictly true of course, you need to be UK, EU or Commonwealth citizen but the sentiment was clear).
Posted 10 years ago # -
So inevitably when I was out canvassing last night I crossed paths with the local Labour flyer team. They were six, I was working solo in a nice cul de sac.
Naturally I greeted them and shook a few hands, to demonstrate to all that our differences are political, no more. One of them then made the astonishingly ill-judged remark 'I'll sneak round behind him...'.
This caused me, quite by reflex, to square up, look him in the eye and wish him good luck with that enterprise. That kind of behaviour isn't really a frequent part of my life, but there was something primal about being outnumbered by adult males of another tribe. He was a little squit and backed down immediately.
Later on he came up and apologised. I told him I was just pulling his leg and wished him well, but in retrospect I really wasn't joking.
Strange days.
Posted 10 years ago # -
One of those vague-FB-former-acquaintance types of people (social circle at uni, not spoken to this century) was making "I'm Scottish but don't currently live there and am irritated I have no say in this" noises the other day.
Posted 10 years ago # -
From the BBC;
"Scottish independence: RBS confirms London HQ move if Scotland votes Yes "
When you read the statement to the markets, what it says is;
"...it would be necessary to re-domicile the Bank’s holding company and its primary rated operating entity (The Royal Bank of Scotland plc) to England".
The Headquarters it the building out of which the bank is run. That is not the holding company and neither is it the registered office. In fact RBS' registered office and (nominal) headquarters have been in different places for nearly 10 years. On paper the Headquarters is in Edinburgh but for all intents and purposes the bank is run out of London. It's where the CEO and his top team are based, it's where all the markets and international banking and most of the commercial and private wealth banking activity has always been based.
So the BBC's claim that RBS has announced it would move its headquarters is simply wrong. Lloyds is similar, there's a brass plaque on the Mound for the registered office but it's headquartered and run out of London.
The statement to market also says "...The vote on independence is a matter for the Scottish people... RBS intends to retain a significant level of its operations and employment in Scotland to support its customers there and the activities of the whole Bank.
". The BBC has conveniently missed that bit out of their article.The BBC also has conveniently missed out that since 2008, c. 21% of jobs have gone at the part-nationalised banks in Scotland. Why let such a reminder of Gordon Brown and Alistair Darlings "prudent" stewarship of the financial sector get in the way of a good scare story?
Posted 10 years ago # -
@wingpig I'm in England at the moment, amongst colleagues who I have known for many years, and am taken aback by the number of people who have collared me to express deep regret (even anger) that I have a vote and they don't. People who I had never thought of as Scottish or even having any connection to Scotland. Also a lot of northerners saying 'hope they vote no, but if they don't, then I'm emigrating".
Posted 10 years ago # -
@SRD
Feelings are now running both high and deep. We need to keep cool heads and accept that the 19th will see both grief and joy inside and outwith Scotland and behave in a way that is appropriate to that knowledge.
Posted 10 years ago #
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