Osbourne says no to currency union.

Wouldn’t surprise me if BenCooper is a paid member of the SNP/Yes campaign, popped on this forum to drum up some support. Stranger things have happened I’m sure.

No, Ben is a long standing member of STW and a well respected bicycle builder (albeit it with a strange obsession with small wheel sizes) as a quick look at his posts would immediately show.

Wouldn’t surprise me if BenCooper is a paid member of the SNP/Yes campaign, popped on this forum to drum up some support. Stranger things have happened I’m sure.

I could get paid for this?!

The No side do pay people – £25 per day is the standard rate to go leafleting and door-knocking – but they’ve got lots of money to do that and no grass-roots support. The Yes side can’t afford that, it’s all done by volunteers.

albeit it with a strange obsession with small wheel sizes

I’ve moved on – in fact I should stop chatting and go build a 29+ wheel 😀

Or when a woman was kicked in the stomach after challenging what a speaker was saying in Argyle St, it was reported as a scuffle between the two sides.

Actually I believe what happened first was that she tried to grab a loudhailer off the no campaigner. So scuffle is fairly accurate.

Or perhaps spinning or not fully reporting the facts so readers jump to conclusions?

Oh teh ironing.

The Yes side can’t afford that, it’s all done by volunteers.

Ah the poor valiant Yes campaigners – who only have billionaire bigot Brian Souter to fund them. 🙄

You really will find any excuse to justify your ‘Yes campaign good, No campaign evil’ narrative won’t you.

The No side do pay people – £25 per day is the standard rate to go leafleting and door-knocking – but they’ve got lots of money to do that and no grass-roots support. The Yes side can’t afford that, it’s all done by volunteers.

It’s normal for those that want change to be more eager/ready & motivated to campaign for it.
What do you want – THIS
When do you want it – WE ALREADY HAVE IT!!
To say they have no grassroots support is a bit much as if the polls are to be believed they have the support of around 50% of the population of Scotland.

The No side do pay people – £25 per day is the standard rate to go leafleting and door-knocking – but they’ve got lots of money to do that and no grass-roots support. The Yes side can’t afford that, it’s all done by volunteers.

Pretty well documented that the Yes campaign is better funded ? Didn’t the lottery winners give £5m ?

and warn the press specifically about stirring up animosity.

Kirsty Wark was sat interviewing her guests

Or when Jim Murphy is hit with an egg, it gets four days of rolling coverage. When a Yes shop is spraypainted with Swastikas, no media coverage.

Jim Murphy was attacked live on camera with the guy slapping an egg hard onto his back and then slinking off. That’s always going to feature on TV

@ben, welcome back we missed you 🙂

Pretty well documented that the Yes campaign is better funded ?

Nope, the No campaign raised £1m more, in fact they announced they had enough money and didn’t want any more donations, I presume because they’d hit their spending limits:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/scottish-independence/scottish-independence-no-campaign-receives-1m-more-in-campaign-donations-than-yes-9735514.html

@ben, welcome back we missed you

Missed you too 😀

Also looking forward to being able to go back to talking about something else…

BTW I’ve just been up in Scotland for a few days and while there’s a lot more Yes banners around the place, from chatting to people and overhearing other conversations I think the Yes campaign has absolutely no chance. Not very scientific I know…

Murphy has claimed a million pounds in expenses since 2001/2. I would have boiled the egg before I slapped it “hard” onto his back.He is pretty unpopular and I always wondered if his 100 days tour was designed to noise up the yessers as much as possible.

What would be really nice is when Salmon man has his dream ripped away from him….all the journos disappear and never talk to him again! Now wouldn’t THAT be lovely! (unlikely, but lovely)

Also looking forward to being able to go back to talking about something else…

Hear hear!

Murphy has claimed a million pounds in expenses since 2001/2. I would have boiled the egg before I slapped it “hard” onto his back.He is pretty unpopular and I always wondered if his 100 days tour was designed to noise up the yessers as much as possible.

I thought it was only the evil No campaign that was in favour of violence, bullying and intimidation. 😕

Whatever you think of Murphy, what you are advocating there is assault.

Also looking forward to being able to go back to talking about something else…

It’s my nightmare that actually we will be talking about this for many years to come.
Yes vote we will have years to argue about how the split works, then years more on the consequences with As doing a “Robert Mugabe” and blaming everything that goes wrong on the English (or in Mugabe’s case the whites)
No vote will have the SNP trying to get another referendum year in year out

Also looking forward to being able to go back to talking about something else…

You won’t though will you? You’ll be muttering into your beer for years to come!

Whatever you think of Murphy, what you are advocating there is assault.

Aww you poor wee flower. I am sure you would be horrified that the assaults have been in the main on yes campaigners.Oh and read it again, my opinion is based on Murphy claiming £4000 a year for dining out,while people who voted for him use food banks,not because he is a public face of no.

So more than 12,000 posts will be in this thread before voting begins, hugely impressive amount of hot keyboards (and tablets, phones etc) 🙂

hugely impressive amount of hot keyboards air

FTFY

What you can’t deny is that there are loads more Yes posters/stickers/badges etc. but which ever way you look at it the country is fairly evenly split. So how does that happen? Most No voters I have spoken to say it is because they perceive that they would be vulnerable to attack if they showed themselves to be No in public. That perception may be misguided but you have to admit that it is pretty widespread. Furthermore, the journos who have all shown up in Scotland in the last week or so seem to have felt the same thing. That atmosphere is coming from somewhere. You only need to look at the aggression shown in some of the posts on here to see what it can be like on the street.

jambalaya – Member

@Northwind, as I said you can join if you sign up for everything and follow the process. If during the process (outside the EU) Scotland tries to block fishing then the veto / stand off will come.

Eh, Scotland’s never implied it will as far as I know- sadly that boat’s sailed (or rather been scrapped), the scottish fisheries were sold out long ago and the common fisheries policy is here to stay. There are some pro-independence people who hope for a change there but realistically, it’s a condition of membership (most seem to be anti-eu too)

The irony is that the lost fishing rights are now a strong reason for some EU members (particularly Spain) to want us in seamlessly. Unintended consequences.

mikewsmith – Member

except you can’t play your hand that early it leaves you stuck in a corner.

That particular hand had to be played by last week- they’ve chosen not to use it, to the great surprise of nobody.

Embassies are generally secure places from an intelligence/communications perspective, why would we let a foreign country inside our secure areas ?

This point plays to a concern I hadn’t appreciated until recently. Most of the arguments for and against yes are largely neutral to my life in England. Whilst the loss of oil revenues wouldn’t be ideal we aren’t reliant upon them as an economy, and as long as Scotland truly separated (i.e. didn’t keep attached to the teat of rUK government banking and economic guarantees as Salmond seems to think) then it seems obvious that the economic pain would be felt in Scotland.

However, on reflection the implications for the defence of the UK are immense and really do have a tangible impact on my security and that of everyone else in the UK.

Not only is Trident at risk (don’t bother trying to argue that the deterrent doesn’t exist, or that Scotland has not benefited from the umbrella when it suited) but we appear to be looking at thousands of miles of coastline and borders left open thanks to the insularity of the SNP. A tiny amount of troops and a couple of fast jets in iScotland in reality means that rUK will have to maintain a defensive force covering Scotland as well, i.e. more freeloading from Salmond. If we don’t then we are open to increased risk.

I’m guessing some of you think this is a good thing, i.e. you want to see a diminished UK. Some might think this is a reasonable sacrifice because in reality who is going to attack Scotland to get at the UK. However, can anyone say what geopolitics will look like in 10 years time? I wouldn’t have put money on the recent actions of Russia 2 years ago.

Any views on this? Should I be worried that iScotland opens up an undefended flank of my country which hasn’t been invaded since 1066?

Actually the UK has been successfully invaded on a number of occasions since1066 .That is one of those myths we all like to believe.

Last sentence added to trigger some Colonel Blimp accusations. What about my overall question?

@Northwind – no you didn’t say Scotland would block Spanish/EU fishing boats but its sort of implied from the statement that Spain would want Scotland in the EU in order to secure fishing, if the opposite is true you have to defend those waters.

@bainbrge, no we are not going to get invaded through Scotland but the border might not be as secure (eg terrorism or smuggling), depends on Scottish border control from outside the UK. The impact on UK defense wise is we are going to have to pay for the same sized military but with 10% less tax payers or we will have more defense cuts.

There is a concern to some degree, but I’d expect them to operate together for a lot of defence work, to the extent that I’d expect Scottish troops to go to war alongside rUK ones and elsewhere. Lets face it, it is mutual beneficial to work together. The only thing is an iScotland would now probably be under close watch from GCHQ, NSA etc.

It is one of the problems I have with the Yes vote who say they wouldn’t have been dragged into illegal wars. iScottish troops would have certainly gone to Afghanistan and I’d say it’s 50:50 whether they would have gone to Iraq in Gulf War 2.

I wouldn’t have put money on the recent actions of Russia 2 years ago.

Really? Georgia?

You only need to look at the aggression shown in some of the posts on here to see what it can be like on the street.

STW is remarkably civilised on this – you should see what it’s like over on Mumsnet 😀

Or if you want to see real aggression, have a look at the BritNatAbuseBot:

Tweets by BritNatAbuseBot

jambalaya – Member

Pretty well documented that the Yes campaign is better funded ?

Very well reported. But not true- £1.8 million for Yes, £2.7 for No. I was surprised tbh, I’d bought the media coverage too. I had a righteous defence prepared and everything 😆

Yes. I agree that t is really surprising, take out the lottery winners and Brian Souter, Yes don’t seem to have raised much cash at all. Genuinely quite strange.

Any views on this? Should I be worried that iScotland opens up an undefended flank of my country which hasn’t been invaded since 1066?

Sorry if you had forgotten, but, the UK has had a long land border with a foreign power since 1922. The only incursion I can remember across it was done from North to South by a certain Ian Paisley and a couple of hundred of his cronies about 1979. They only marched up and down a bit and went home again.

Well all the SMPs are campaigning on tax payer salaries ? Given the SNP has a majority I think we can assume the tax payer is spending more on Yes than No ?

It is one of the problems I have with the Yes vote who say they wouldn’t have been dragged into illegal wars. iScottish troops would have certainly gone to Afghanistan and I’d say it’s 50:50 whether they would have gone to Iraq in Gulf War 2.

@dragon exactly, IMO any UK prime minister would have gone into Iraq (inc Brown etc). I also find the whole concept of legal vs illegal wars strange, IMO all war is illegal in some sense.

jambalaya – Member

@Northwind – no you didn’t say Scotland would block Spanish/EU fishing boats but its sort of implied from the statement that Spain would want Scotland in the EU in order to secure fishing,

Ah, maybe I wasn’t clear, it’s 2 different things. Scotland in the EU has really no hope of changing fisheries policy, lost battle and mostly accepted. So Spain knows that by keeping Scotland in the EU, they can keep that access.

But the cfp only applies to eu states, so it’s a natural consequence that with Scotland outwith the eu, Spain loses the right they have to fish in our EEZ.

Just a nice wee microcosm of the whole process- lots of people stand to lose out if Scotland’s transition isn’t fast and clean. It’s not part of the negotiations, but a possible outcome.

@WackoAK well excuse me Mr Kissinger for my lack of foresight! My point is that unexpected things happen and in my view it is unwise to intentionally weaken your defensive position for no good reason.

@Jambalaya and Dragon I would hope to agree that cooler heads would prevail, but why assume that Scotland would cooperate? Not many politicians in the yes camp are obviously open to foreign intervention. Additionally, from a fiscal perspective they can’t support a military force equal to those currently stationed there.

You mention GCHQ etc. as well but would anti-terrorism efforts be as effective in an iScotland with separate institutions? Seems like the best solution would be to retain the current structures (intelligence/policing/military) as we have already(!).

@midlifecrashes that is food for thought. For some reason I feel like a sea barrier between mainland and Ireland mitigates against this risk though.

I’m starting to feel like I should be stockpiling baked beans now, thanks Alex Salmond!

Not only is Trident at risk (don’t bother trying to argue that the deterrent doesn’t exist, or that Scotland has not benefited from the umbrella when it suited)

I agree with this. Especially when you consider things like this:

I wouldn’t have put money on the recent actions of Russia 2 years ago.

Who knows what the World is going to look like in 5 years nevermind 20.

I await the normal flaming from the unilateral disarmers and appeasers on here.

didn’t think gordon had this in him:

I await the normal flaming from the unilateral disarmers and appeasers on here.

Yes you’re right, appeasement is the cowards way out. Better to blow up the whole world and take us back to the stone age. At least we’ll have our pride 🙄

What would happen if the Shetlands voted unanimously to stay as part of the UK in the event of a yes vote?

Silly Tom. Shetland is way too small to have any say in its own future.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/9794268/SNP-warned-off-outrageous-Shetland-oil-grab.html

Scotland would have been somehow involved in Afghanistan because just look at the list of countries involved many with far less ties to the UK/USA than Scotland.

Operation Enduring Freedom

GCHQ isn’t there for terrorism that’s spin to justify their budget, they are primarily there for military and political intel. So oddly an iScotland would become both an ally and a foe. Not hard imagine a situation where one GCHQ department is feeding iScotland info on threats and the other tapping the phone of the 1st Minister and his office.