I've no idea what they put in the coffee in the machines at work. I'm sure it never tasted this bad in the GDR.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
UKIP => yes to independence?
(189 posts)-
Posted 11 years ago #
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And not forgetting of course that there is a part of the United Kingdom where politics is so extreme that UKIP are too moderate to even get a foothold;
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-27616319
Staying with the UK means that these people get a say in our affairs. Hung parliament with the Ulster Unionists trotting around on all fours anyone?
Posted 11 years ago # -
Hmmm, careful there IWRATS, are these people to be considered as animals for their political beliefs, religious beliefs, or for their nation of birth?
Such a statement wouldn't appear out of character from a UKIP politician!
Robert
Posted 11 years ago # -
@roibeard
Quite right. My apologies - that was clumsy. How about 'a hung parliament with unreconstructed Ulster politicians holding the balance of power?'
I should add that I consider the UK's abandonment of Ulster to gangsterism and extremism as one of our greatest national disgraces.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Speaking of Norn Iron I note a couple of Shinners were elected as MEPs...
Posted 11 years ago # -
@Dave “It would stick in my craw to vote for independence as the SNP in general have blown it”
A very simple point:
The referendum in September is NOT a referendum on the SNP or Alex Salmond’s performance in government.
Likewise, a yes vote in the referendum is NOT a show of support for any of their current policies, other than independence.
It’s a vote to become an independent country.
For me, independence is a chance for fresh start, to escape a political system which, (however noble it’s pedigree), is now hopelessly broken.
Be honest with yourselves.
Who really, actually believes that solutions to climate change, social inequality, poor health, or even just the UK’s piss-poor cycling policy, are anything more than a pipe dream in our current political system?
Posted 11 years ago # -
that's the rub, angus
too many people in this country far too fearful about what they might stand to lose
just tick YES and lets all inch closer to personal armageddon
this is for the future
Posted 11 years ago # -
Good to have that cleared up.
Posted 11 years ago # -
If all clear can we get back to cycling?
Vote yes for king Alex and a Scottish pound underwritten by Bank of England.
If only there was a third option to the question
Do you believe Scotland should be an independent country?
yes, but not with Alex salmond in charge as he will be unbearably smug and not change anything
Or yes, but can we have 50% taxation and a social democratic Danish model with thirty years of hardship building a more egalitarian society
Posted 11 years ago # -
Sure.
He doesn't want to be king and it's as much our bank as Westminster's. If they claim the bank because of the name then we'll take New Scotland Yard. They can keep the Duke of Edinburgh though.
Westminster ruled it out. The FM left the option open for a year.
Yes.
I never got the smug thing but I don't vote for people based on whether I like them or not anyway and what changes would be up to us.
It looks like decades of austerity under Westminster and less egalitarian so…
Posted 11 years ago # -
Who really, actually believes that solutions to climate change, social inequality, poor health, or even just the UK’s piss-poor cycling policy, are anything more than a pipe dream in our current political system?
And who honestly believes we'll get anything different?
The people voting are the same, the people courting those votes are the same. A democracy gets the government it deserves and frankly the only reason we don't get more Torries up here is thanks to Maggie.
Once the Scottish Conservatives lose the London stench they'll start to attract more voters and the same policies that we get from Westminster will start to emerge here.
Little will really change, then we'll get absorbed by a federal Europe and be stuck in the same administrative district as EnglandandWales and Ireland; a few billion pounds deeper in debt and still taking orders from Brusels and London.
/Pessimistic mood...
Posted 11 years ago # -
I've made the journey from 'No' to 'Yes' gradually over the past year or so.
My base camp was as an instinctive, yet increasingly reluctant, Labour voter. One of the hurdles I've had to get over in that journey was a mistrust of the SNP in general and a personal dislike of Alex Salmond in particular. However, as Angus points out, the Indy vote isn't about Salmond or the SNP, it's about what sort of society we aspire to live in.
I think we have seen enough evidence from the post-Devolution Scottish Government's (of all shades) that, within that political settlement, we do things a little differently in Scotland. There is a much stronger, and I think innate, focus on social justice and welfare than we see in the Government of the UK as a whole (of all shades).
My arrival at 'Yes' has actually been as much to do with my despair at where the UK political establishment is taking us as it has with being certain of Scotland's bright new, independent future. The growth of UKIP and the inevitable pandering to the centre-right of the other mainstream parties that will follow this just confirms my views.
I believe that an independent Scotland will break us from that fate and give us an opportunity to vote in the Government that we want, and need. I'm actually looking forward to seeing what an Independent Scottish Labour Party might look like.
I'm not expecting it to be easy but I do believe it will be better than the alternative.
Posted 11 years ago # -
@steveo, and anyone else in a pessimistic mood - you need a dose of something cheery and positive like Lesley Riddoch's book Blossom. Borrow my copy if you like.
I'm recommending it because it shows how people have managed to escape the situation you describe so feelingly. When people run things for themselves, they can make a far better job of it than some remote government could ever do. She gives examples.
I could go on, because it's inspiring, but I'll stop myself. Take a look at the book instead.
You can get a flavour of it from this talk she gave:
Posted 11 years ago # -
I'm not expecting it to be easy but I do believe it will be better than the alternative.
This.
Independence is a process, not a destination. I am hopeful that the huge debate people are having right across Scotland will inspire folk to start taking back some power for themselves, to demand more accountability, further devolution of powers to local level, an active democracy worthy of the name.
It's not going to be easy, but it's sure as hell better than wallowing in cynicism and giving up hope that things will ever change. We have the chance to change something important here. We ought to take it.
Posted 11 years ago # -
@gembo
As you're politically active you'll doubtless know that Yes Scotland goes way beyond the SNP, so the whole 'King Salmond' meme doesn't help your case any. For what it's worth, no one mentions the current First Minister in either a positive or negative light on the doorsteps. Maybe it would be more productive to talk up the leader of whatever political party you belong to. Out of interest, and if it isn't intrusive, who is that?
I want to see a Scottish republic with its own currency. Voting Yes is an attempt to get to the point where I can participate in arguments like those about the nature of the country we live in. I don't expect paradise and I don't expect riches. Liberty, equality and solidarity would do it.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Am I too late to go back to the CAP bit of this?
There are three directions this can go, and we need to find a compromise somewhere.
You can have very little food produced in Europe and most of it imported from lower-wage countries.
You can have tariffs and barriers to prevent Europe being flooded with cheaper food so that we have our own food production, but then food would be hugely more expensive.
Or you can have food produced in Europe that can compete with food imported from outside Europe by subsidising it.
There's a sort-of triangle with those ideas at the three points, and the policy positions are somewhere in between.
Cutting subsidy without putting up trade barriers would devastate rural economies across Europe (with the worst impacts in places like Greece, southern Italy, Spain and Portugal) and see a massive amount of land go wild (which may not be a bad thing).
Cutting subsidy while putting up trade barriers/ tariffs would hugely increase the cost of food and force tens of millions into food poverty. Those already in food poverty would be up sh*t creek. Of course, governments would have the savings from CAP with which to alleviate the situation, but at £3Bn for the UK it wouldn't be enough. It could also be argued that it would be deeply regressive.
There's nothing about the CAP debate that's easy, and anyone who suggests there is is either a dogmatist or doesn't understand the complexity and the impacts that major reforms could have. My summary is extremely simplistic and skips all sorts of things - worst for me is that much of the benefit of the subsidy goes to supermarkets, not consumers or farmers. As the Irish would say, you wouldn't want to start from here, but now that we're here it's very difficult to find a sensible way out.
Posted 11 years ago # -
dg145, I went through something similar to you, but for me it happened 1994 to 1997. It began with Tony Blair becoming leader of the Labour Party (I was a member at that point) and ended with Jim Murphy effectively telling me I was a scrounger who was stealing money from pensioners because I thought student loans and tuition fees weren't a good idea.
It was clear to me that if Tony Blair was as far left as the UK electorate was prepared to go, then it was time to elect our own governments. I look back at everytyhing that's happened since 1979, look at how different it could have been for post-industrial Scotland, and frankly it makes me want to cry. I don't see any reason to think things will be any better in the UK in the coming decades, and I feel deeply sorry for the English working class, but we're no help to them inside the UK and maybe we could model a different path outside it.
Posted 11 years ago # -
@ Calmac, I went through something similar to you, but for me it happened 1994 to 1997
Oh yeah, of course. My discomfort with the Labour Party goes back way beyond there. I let my membership of the Party go in the late 80's when I felt Kinnock was 'modernising' the Party beyond where I felt comfortable.
Don't even get me started on Blair!
I've kept drifting back as a voter, though, and my great hope for independence is that it will give me back a Labour Party that I can feel at home around again.
Posted 11 years ago # -
@ Calmac, I went through something similar to you, but for me it happened 1994 to 1997
February 2003 for me. Marching with half a million Scots through Glasgow to try to stop the British state engaging in a stupid and unnecessary attack on a country quite unable to fight back.
Now it's a question of defending the 1945 settlement that my grandparents' generation won with their blood and sweat and which the British state is too pucilanimous to defend in the face of the rich.
Great Britain - strong enough to attack the weak, too weak to defend its own. The Labour party has become a creature that my grandmother, who fought blackshirts on the streets of Aberdeen with her fists, would not recognise.
Posted 11 years ago # -
I stopped voting Labour after Blair became leader. The dropping of Clause 4 was the final nail in the coffin for any pretensions Labour had of being a party of the left. Instead they became the SDP.
Voted SNP for a while but started to become concerned about many of their populist policies.
Started voting Green in 1999, and joined the Scottish Green Party in 2010 after the Tories were aided into government by the Lib Dems. I have never regretted the decision.
Posted 11 years ago # -
I was fine with Kinnock, I'm fairly pragmatic and want to get things done, which is probably why I've comfortable in the SNP (also, the activists in my neck of the woods are mostly lovely, hard-working, smart people). But Tony Blair...
And let's not forget, since October 1974 he's the only Labour leader that the UK has elected.
My grandfather told my mum, who told me, about turning up outside the shipyard each day and hoping not to be turned away. If you did anything to annoy the bosses - like ask for more pay, or sick pay, or safety equipment, or even got caught talking to your colleagues about these things you didn't work and your children went hungry. The only way that changed was by everyone standing together and saying "these are the terms and if you don't like it you can build your own bloody ships". If there were enough splitters, the bosses won and everyone lost. The only thing they had was each other, and they formed the Labour Party to make laws to help and protect them.
Late at night, when it's quiet, if you listen very carefully you can sometimes hear a sort of background hum. That's all the people like my grandfather spinning in their graves at what's happened to the party they built.
Posted 11 years ago # -
"my great hope for independence is that it will give me back a Labour Party that I can feel at home around again"
I suspect there are a lot of people who think like that.
Some will have voted for UKIP recently, others have not voted for anyone for some years. Some are voting for other parties and might return (post Yes) to a revived/revised LP.
Whether there is a Yes or No there will be some realignment of parties/politics.
If No it will partly depend on how close the Referendum is and also what happens at next year's GE.
If Yes, not a lot will happen (in a parties sense) for a while. The SNP will do its best to subdue the 'triumphalism' as there will be a lot of serious negotiating to be done.
The LD's may be further in decline. The Tories might be 'disappointed', but could well seize the opportunity to become 'the' centre-right party in Scotland - their elected 'strength' is already well established at Holyrood.
Labour will probably descend into serious 'recrimination mode' with slanging matches (not just in private) between Holyrood and Westminster 'factions' - and manoeuvrings (by some) to try to get seats in Holyrood.
Politically there is a great deal of overlap between the people and policies of the SNP and Labour - apart from 'the Union'.
As that will have been 'settled', there will be a lot of soul searching about the 'purpose' of a Labour Party in Scotland. There will be something similar in the SNP, but that will be delayed until 'separation negotiations' are completed.
The SNP contains people with a wider 'left-right' spectrum than Labour. It seems unlikely (but not impossible) that they will all stay together. Some may drift off from 'ends', but it's also possible that there could be unexpected alliances between some SNP and Labour people to create a new centre-left party.
It's possible (but unlikely) that the ScotTories and the new NotTheLabourParty would be dominant in the next 5-10 years.
Perhaps the SNP will just remain as the 'social democratic party of Scotland' still attracting the most votes and retain it's own internal coalition.
The Greens could gain in strength (they would have been on the 'winning side' and have noticeably different policies).
Perhaps more parties will emerge that aren't just realignments of the current players. Maybe the trade unions will want their own party - not just letting Labour continue to 'hold its nose and take the money', perhaps some 'faith based' parties would attract voters.
Perhaps non-voters will begin to vote.
The future is not really mapped out.
Posted 11 years ago # -
So much of a post-Yes future is hard to predict, and how Labour would respond is a fundamental question.
I had always thought that independence would allow Labour to cut free from the chains from London that pull them right of where they naturally ought to be. I also thought that the SNP would crumble away in chunks and pieces without the purpose that holds them together.
But Labour have still not recovered from or learned any lessons from their defeat in 2007. The people in charge of the party are badly lacking the intellect and vision required by their jobs. I can speculate on the reasons, but Lamont, Baillie, Iain Grey, all the rest of them, they are badly out of their depth. They are, at best, decent local MSPs. They are poisoned by an irrational hatred of the SNP and they cannot get out of that position.
If Labour were to take too long to get their act together then the SNP could just replace them as main the party of the left. This happened in rural north-east Scotland in the 70s-80s, it's been happening in the Highlands and eastern cities since the 90s, and now it's creeping in around Ayrshire, Falkirk, Stirling and the Lothians. If Labour don't do something to re-establish themselves on that turf then the SNP could keep it.
Maybe Labour live on as a smaller, leftier party based mostly in west-central Scotland and we get SNP-Labour coalition government.
It's very hard to make predications this side of the vote, but Labour are in an awful position, their grassroots have withered away to nothing in many areas, they rely on money from London and hundreds of thousands have lost the habit of voting for them. Independence offers them a huge opportunity but I question whether they'd have the ability to take it.
Posted 11 years ago # -
I'm of the opinion that a post-Yes future is actually more, not less, clear than a post-No future.
Despite some noises to the contrary, there's no plan being offered for a post-No world beyond "we'll have some negotiations" - which sounds a lot like Danny Alexander and that guy from the Scotchland Office (his name escapes me) want to come and decree their terms.
Yes, one might blame the SNP for marching us up to the top of the hill then pushing on over the other side so that everyone has to follow, however even if you're Better Together I don't think anyone can deny that constitutionally the UK is rather bust or that it's a fair or represntative democracy in upper or lower houses. Someone had to do it and it's probably the push that the UK needs to reform itself or risk falling further apart as it slides towards being the United Kingdom of London, Big Business & the South East.
Posted 11 years ago # -
slides towards being the United Kingdom of London, Big Business & the South East.
kappers, it's been that way since at least the 1980s.
Posted 11 years ago # -
But soon we can vote to become the independent republic of Edinburgh, Big Business & the South East
Posted 11 years ago # -
But business, big and small, will leave Scotland on the 19th of September!
Posted 11 years ago # -
But soon we can vote to become the independent republic of Edinburgh, Big Business & the South East
The political power of "Edinburgh" in the Scottish Parliament isn't great. It returns 8.1% of MSPs (I pro-rated the list MSPs based on relative electorate of Edinburgh in the Lothian electoral region) and has 8.7% of the electorate. It's also not the home (spiritual or otherwise) of either of the 2 main political parties/power blocs in the parliament.
As a modern democratic arrangement with both proportional representation, I'd take the Holyrood system over the Westminster system any day. I'd like to believe that the distribution of seats, boudnaries and constituencies isn't so open to political tinkering as the press would suggest it is in England.
I'd be all for more regional devolution of powers in the future. Western Isles, Orkney and Shetlands are already calling for this and why not. I don't want to see one model of unaccountable centralisation in a distant capital replaced by another.
Posted 11 years ago # -
It's not so much the distribution of seats, but the influence of other power groups (eg, "The City") that influences government. Inevitably, Edinburgh opinion will influence Holyrood. As will other blocks of opinion, "The Church", "The Oil", "The Puffed Up Wee Men In Their Bowler Hats"...
Posted 11 years ago # -
@kaputnik
Nicely put. And let's not forget that in iScotland, the capital city, the biggest city and the richest city need not all be one and the same.
The Fat Nazi/Dear Leader has already engaged to put the Energy Ministry in the Silver City. Thus ensuring that no-one can afford to move there to take up a job, but hey-ho.
Posted 11 years ago #
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