exile

This is the man whose political career was hanging by the proverbial ba' hair, by the Scottish electorate, and was spared. Yet he has absolutely nothing to say to connect with the people of Scotland. He's just talking party politics, preaching to the converted with a crass reference to Braveheart. 'Evidence is growing that independence is "not what people in Scotland want"' What evidence would that be, Mr Cameron? Thursday was the biggest ever expression of desire for independence. And since then, thousands have joined the SNP.

"I, and others in the No camp with me, believe Scots are best within the union. I am glad that Scots voted No. But if we were lied to and the government of the day reneges on ‘The Vow’, the vote was a fraud and the UK is corrupted beyond repair." - Eric Joyce MP http://wingsoverscotland.com/a-lie-wont-fly/

The bank that likes to say yes?

Maybe someone can invent a web app that collects and and balances rates news somehow, shows the spread of opinion, different sources reporting the same event, rating from 'Salmond has the world in his hand' to 'He didn't answer the question' - and all the reports in between

I suppose someone could investigate it but I suspect it would not be possible to lay a finger on the BBC as they can just say they followed their guidelines, (even if their guidelines for impartiality don't cover against being institutionally unionist - institutionally British - yes the clue is in the name). The Iraq war inquiries - what did they find? On a party political level, I suppose the SNP etc can't afford to be seen as bad losers. However, if the public feel cheated then that doesn't stop people channelling that to put pressure on politicians that the issue has not gone away, or to act to vote with feet wherever it's possible to defy the BBC or find alternatives...

There's also the Scottish Building Society "now the only independent building society based in Scotland" Based in Edinburgh, though; Airdrie seems a more solid territory to keep your money, those Edinburgh financial types always seem to be threatening to leave with their brass plaques.

Sorry I must have missed that!

People may also wish to join the greens or socialists...

If everyone put their money there, it could become the Central Bank... And it's in North Lanarkshire, handy for getting to the capital.... Glasgow.

Why stop at 45s? There must be lots of sympathisers outside the voters roll - expats around the world and others - who could join up. Well, maybe a few...

Well... you could say that the Yes/No set-up never disallowed that the No side could offer tempting devolution options short of independence. And in fact they did so, earlier in the year. However these never amounted to 'Devo Max' as I'm sure others can confirm. And they were never agreed between the parties. Then in the last panic, Gordon Brown suggested a timetable, and the whole thing was spun as a sort of Devo Max package, as if it was the 'middle option'. But of course as we know, those powers were never agreed, and they're still not agreed, and there's no guarantee of what will be delivered will be anything like true Devo Max - meaning, in a three way ballot, the Brown/Vow package could probably have come third. In a three way ballot with the current Brown/Vow, it would not necessarily be Scotland's favourite (depending on if a singe transferable vote...) and it would have split the anti-indy vote... So the problem, once more, - at the risk of labouring it yet again - was the way the London media leapt on Brown's proposal, and spun it as Devo Max, uncritically, and the BBC in particular (the London presenters anyway) kept repeating that it was more powers like Devo Max. Devo Max was presented as the solution to save the union, but had no scrutiny of the white paper. Still, people were prepared to take it on faith, even if they didn't know what exactly was being offered. It gave an excuse to vote No and still get 'something' out of the deal but with less risk. You could do a psychological analysis on this. The book Predictably Irrational has some examples of consumer choice behaviour http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational From memory it shows how you can 'rig' a three option scenario with A, B and C so that A looks definitely better than B, and C can't be compared with either, so people choose A just because they know, at least, it's better than B. There is not an exact parallel here, with the referendum, but you can see how it works. Another example of this type: Status Quo - you get nothing different, you risk nothing Devo Max - you get something (or close to something), you risk nothing (or next to nothing) Independence - you get something, you risk something The middle option is going to look good, the closer it gets to getting something for nothing. From the politicians' point of view, it's just a matter of adjusting the 'something' given away as little as possible, for the voters to bite p.s. Of course, Cameron didn't even want to offer 'something' at the start, so did not allow the middle option but when it became clear 'something was required, that was added in. The problem was the timing, as it gave people no time to evaluate how big the 'something' was, and how big the risk was - these things only now coming under scrutiny, after the event. This is certainly a problem.

Tim Berners Lee Imagine waking up after 1979, and the only things you can read or follow are the papers and TV telling us to be good unionists, it's all over, done for a generation, or forever.

I think there is a role for everyone, anywhere. The Scottish debate was 'kettled' in Scotland or reported (to rest of UK and world) mostly via London media. England was shocked by the Sunday Times poll as activists struggled and shifted opinion; shocked to find Britain could be unilaterally shattered. That's why people panicked, the markets sank, and the press panicked (even though a large proportion of rUK would not care too much or notice if Scotland left). For the next time, maybe more could be done to prepare the ground down south for a more harmonious exit, that has a degree of mutual consent about it. Get the Billy Braggs and others sympathetic to self-determinism and fairness and respect. Wales and Northern Ireland knew, of course, but also seemed on the sidelines. How could Northern Ireland be reconciled in a council of the isle arrangement? And the rest of the world... as far as I can tell, every actual country who expressed an opinion was against independence. (Except North Korea, apparently. Argentina may have had a sneer at its old adversary splitting up, but that is different). Only separatist regions spoke up for independence. There could be more of an effort somehow to prepare the ground with links internationally - among the 45% or the beyond 45% who couldn't vote as they live abroad - doing what exactly I don't know, just a thought. Maybe before, independence was a minority stance, and people kept their heads down. When nearly half the country wants it, it's reasonable for anyone anywhere to be more vocal about it. It's not for politicians to tell us that in some gentleman's agreement, the issue is dead for a generation.

Maybe, but the leadership of the 'Exit' campaign could assure the voters of England that they were already subsiding Scotland and the oil was running out anyway. Then the leadership of the 'pro EU' camp would need to keep schtum or admit that there was lots of oil under Scottish seas. All very hypothetical of course....

Seems Scottish nationalism is still not stone dead?

You mean if there is a majority of Scottish will to stay in EU, within the UK poll? That would be fun if it also applied to Wales and NI, and we 3 could all stay in Or... what if the England was a narrow 'out' vote but UK as a whole was 'in'. Then England would be frustrated by its pesky smaller siblings shackling it to the EU, and could ask for independence from us and EU.

are there figures or a story somewhere? I look forward to the "voters flock to join Yes parties and overtake Labour in Scotland" headlines

The No campaign and all the No-supporting media are acting as if the BBC and the rest of them did nothing wrong Worse than that, they have even suggested it was wrong to complain! "No's efforts were helped when Alex Salmond blundered badly at the critical moment. Behind the wheel of a bandwagon he needed to persuade people to jump on board, to join his winning side, travel with him and make history. Instead he took his eyes off the road, picking an unnecessary fight with the BBC that produced only damaging images of a mass protest outside the corporation's Clydeside HQ." http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/columnists/party-time-as-the-old-enmities-resurface.25342080 And let us not forget the CBI, the BBC happy to be affiliated to a partisan organisation.

Regretters are just Are-You-Yes-Yetters, who arrived a day late. The Yes side need to get them on board and move forward.

Thinking about this a bit more. To your scenario, let's add in: UKIP do well in Gen Election, on the back of stoking The English Question, and voters deserting labour UKIP egg on Tories to press for a tough deal on Europe Dave goes to EU to make a deal, but EU sense his weakness and doesn't give concessions They simply say, put up or shut up, daring him to leave Dave comes back from Brussels with a weak deal or no deal The 3 main Westminster parties struggle to sell the benefits of the Union to people Like the UK union, but without even the patriotic passion UKIP learn the positive lessons of Yes campaign, but also backed by vocal sections of the media Add Boris in to the mix somewhere Shock vote to exit EU could happen In the circumstances, could a new Scottish referendum called; this time the Yes side would ironically have arguments for strength and security of the larger Union (EU) staying with the larger trading bloc of EU, being internationalist and not 'narrow nationalist' also, being biggest English speaking nation in the EU I don't know about currency though... could Scotland have a currency union with rUK and also be in EU? If so, the rUK might welcome a CU and do a deal?

Agreed. As said on another thread, anyone who wants a yes vote in future should not be scaring off the middle ground of people whose hearts may have been yes but whose heads or fears drove them to no. By hysteria I thought you meant people emoting and grieving in public (who are feeding the schadenfreude of others)

Well I suppose there's some sort of a collective catharsis going on here - an opportunity to get away from the news and papers full of the majority british points of view. Some people need to express their angst in public and others come along and feed off it. Something to do on a sunday morning if there is nothing better to do

Did she get to 'Paul' in the end?

These people seem to be getting abuse - 'they get what they deserve' - but they are exactly those who would need to be relied on to vote yes next time, and not scared off by cybernats. They are just 'Are You Yes Yets' who were a day late.

Presumably, for official reasons the Yes political parties need to be seen to accept the result, and a continuing YS organisation would be as against the spirit of the Edinburgh agreement as a post-indy Better Together organisation. However, you can;t just stimulate a national mass grassroots movement and expect everyone to disband themselves. Something lives on here, so it's a question of how to channel it