Jie Bie
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Posts posted by Jie Bie
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If Salmond had been able to provide a convincing answer to the currency question Yes would have won, of that I have no doubt. Think back to the Better Together Slogan - Your Pound, Your Pay, Your Pension.
Even if Cameron gets back in with a majority Tory government I still reckon we'd lose if we were to go for a re-run in September 2015 (not that it will happen) because there are too many people who might like the idea of independence, but aren't convinced it will actually work.
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One interesting point was that Scottish power pay National Grid around £40million per year to connect Longannet to the grid. Which is in start contrast to similar plants in the south east of England, who are actually paid by National Grid to connect.
On the radio yesterday I kept hearing this figure of £40 million being paid by Scottish Power to keep Longannet connected to the grid, whereas if it was located near London they would probably expect to be paid around £4 million a year instead.
But this doesn't seem to be the full story in terms of the finances. Does anyone know if Longannet makes a profit for Scottish Power, even with the £40 million a year charge being levied on them? Or is the plant currently loss making?
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Been a member since the day after the 2007 election.
I know there was a cut off date for new members being able to vote on this. I signed my 5 month old son up and used my email address for him. I am wondering if his membership missed the cut off date and that is why no email has been sent to that address, even though there are two memberships listed under the same email address.
Could well be something like that - maybe they produced a list of all the e-mail addresses then stripped out the ones relating to new members before sending the voting e-mail?
Either that or it's lurking in your Spam folder! Might be worth contacting your branch or HQ if you don't hear anything soon...
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Still no email here
How long have you been an SNP member for?
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Just received the following mail from the SNP:
Depute Leadership Ballot - Voting Open!Voting is now open for the position of Depute Leader. This is your chance to have a say in who you would like to work with Nicola Sturgeon to take the Party forward, building on the momentum established over the past 2 years and working towards our goal of independence.
To vote, please visit https://www.mi-vote.com/snp and then enter your unique voting code to vote:
Here you will also find details of the candidates for the depute leadership.
Voting will close at 5pm on the 12th November and the results will be announced at the Party's Annual Conference.At this point I have no idea who will be getting my vote - does anyone know if there are hustings planned in the Glasgow area?
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Have they even bothered to give any rationale why farage would be invited when others with more MPs and more members would be excluded?
The other day I heard the BBC justifying the inclusion of UKIP for the following reasons:
1 - They won the largest share of the vote in the most recent national election (2014 EU elections)
2 - They have finished in second place in 5 out of the last six Westminster by-elections, and of course they won the other one.
3 - UKIP have also been doing very well in recent council elections.
If the BBC want to include them then fair enough, but they shouldn't broadcast it in Scotland IMO.
Instead they should show a Scottish leaders debate at the same time.
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Gallus for us then subway from Kelvinhall to the game...
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Who are loaves and fishes?
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Canada at Easter Rd was the first Scotland game I attended!
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A few people I know aren't going on Saturday as £45 is a ridiculous price for a home game against Georgia. I agree with them completely.
The only reason me and the group I go with are going is because we've already paid £190 for the six game season ticket. Sure it is expensive but at £32 per game it isn't a total rip-off.
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The same Jack Straw who wants to enshrine the Union in law, ensuring that it would require a UK wide referendum to annul it?
Senile old git apparently never thought about the effect of that on the Good Friday agreement.....
Good point! I was trying to think of anyone in the shadow cabinet who looks prime minister material!
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Milliband just doesn't have the gravitas or statesmanship you'd expect from a potential PM.
He looks like a lost wee schoolboy. Labour would have been better off appointing someone like Jack Straw as leader, despite his involvement in the Iraq war.
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One of the interesting points of the referendum was that it confirmed that the 'middle ground' in Scottish politics is everything.....the Yes campaign lost in part because it never, ever managed to hold the middle ground. The media and the No campaign often succeeded in painting the drive for independence as simply a group of extremists trying to radicalise the rest of the Scottish population....that instantly puts a lot of people off. The No campaign, for right or for wrong, was portayed as the 'normal'....they had the middle ground.
There's a lesson there to be learned.
In the last 7 years in Scotland, the SNP have held the middle ground when it comes to Scottish government, and it's vital they continue to hold that position. It's great that so many have joined in the last week, but if the SNP start to be portayed as attracting the disaffected and extremists, or have an image as 'the party of protest', or start to look like they're instantly fighting the referendum all over again, they they'll lose a lot of support from the 'silent majority' (and I make no apologies for using that phrase) who have voted for them in the last couple of elections.
This is a vital point in Scotland, and the SNP's, history. They must make sure that they have cool, calm, responsible heads, and that they tackle the issue of more devolution with the whole of Scotland in mind, not just the wishes of a passionate 50,000.
It's the middle ground that's vital. I trust Nicola Sturgeon to make sure that come the next elections, it's the SNP who have grabbed it.
Quite right rossy. If anyone from the SNP is asked about another referendum then they should simply reply "that is a decision for the people of Scotland. If the people of Scotland decide that they want another referendum we will offer them one."
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If we're all entitled to our opinion then my opinion is to shun no voters where ever I can.
Hope you respect that opinion.
Not sure why you would do that. Most No voters I speak to aren't dead-against the idea of an independent Scotland, to them voting Yes was a leap of faith that they weren't prepared to make, primarily due to the currency issue.
We still want independence, and in the wake of last weeks loss DevoMax seems like a reasonable stepping stone to get there. But we can't do that by shunning No voters, we need to convince them to ditch Lab/Lib/Con and vote SNP.
Of course there are some No voters who we will never be convinced to vote SNP - but they are the minority and we will just need to focus our efforts on the ones that can be persuaded.
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Jim Traynor parody account tweet has made it to Newsweek!
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Glasgow breakdown.
https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=22501&p=0
All areas Yes. Some more than others. Surprised there wasn't an overall No area. Anniesland was very close
Cheers for that. Pleased to see Glasgow Cathcart voted Yes 53-47.
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George Orwell, Animal Farm:
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100011h.html
That should pretty much cover it...
Tories = Humans
New Labour = Pigs
We are right at the end of the book now. The people of Scotland are looking into the farmhouse (Westminster) and we can't tell the pigs from the humans any more.
However, unlike the animals, we aren't going to let them keep our farm much longer.
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I don't think I can join a party which supports cutting corporation tax and joining NATO, but even I'm tempted as a means to an end.
What's the main reason for some TAMBers not wanting to join NATO? In terms of smaller nations their membership includes Belgium, Canada, Czech Rep, Denmark, Iceland, Holland, Norway, Portugal, Slovakia and Slovenia. I think Scotland would fit in pretty well amongst those countries. Of course, after independence it would be up to the people of Scotland to decide.
Wrt corporation tax, if reducing it leads to more jobs and a corresponding increase in income tax receipts that would be fair enough to me - although I accept the risk in getting involved in a race to the bottom.
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Meanwhile, Scottish Labour - which backed a No vote - also said it had seen a boost in numbers since the referendum.
A spokeswoman said: "We don’t give out exact details on our membership figures but I can confirm that numbers have gone up since the referendum and those numbers are in the hundreds."
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Spot on, but can see quite a few saying thats a sell out.
If anyone says going for devo max is a sell-out they need to take another look at the referendum result.
For the time being our best bet is to fight for full autonomy within the UK. Longer term it will give us a better platform for a future vote.
Talk of UDI and holding another referendum on independence at this stage (before the parties down south have even had a chance to break "the vow") will just turn people away from voting SNP.
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The next election should be fought on the basis of the SNP negotiating for devo max within the UK.
I think that would be a vote winner for the SNP. If we get a decent number of MP's and the UK parliament refuses to play ball with them then the people of Scotland will be pissed, and vote SNP again in 2016.
At that point if Westminster still refuses home rule / devo max a fair number of the 55% will be regretting their choice of vote, and we might start to see calls for a re-run in 2020...
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None of the No voters in my work have done any gloating.
Most of them seem to have been relieved, rather than pleased, at the result.
I get the feeling most of them would prefer for the issue to go away entirely.
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But whats the good of all that if we only get to spend 14% of our own taxes? we can devolve decision making all we want but without control of the financials we remain impotent and still impacted by decisions made elsewhere.
An English parliament will further accelerate the breakup of the UK IMO, so that's a good thing.
However, the setting up of regional assemblies across England with the same powers as the Scottish parliament would probably be a bad thing from our point of view, as thanks to last week's No vote we would end up as just another region.
Screw Frank Field and his bandwagon jumping … some of us have been pointing this out for years: http://taboard.com/archive/index.php?showtopic=137751&p=2147353
The German model wouldn't work, partly for the asymmetric reasons Pool Q points out, and partly from the different histories of the two states. I don't have time to get into this, but it was all foreseeable and so it's shameful that the politicians had nothing more concrete up their Jermyn-Street-tailored sleeves...
Yep, he admitted on the radio that most politicians don't have the stomach for constitutional reform, and he doesn't sound particularly confident in whatever we get being anything other than a half-baked solution.
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Frank Field was on the radio this morning saying the referendum result had set in motion the creation of a Federal UK.
He wants to see the House of Commons converted into an English MP only assembly with the same powers as the Scottish Parliament. The House of Lords would be abolished and converted into a democratically elected UK senate. This new senate would be where all non-devolved powers (e.g. defence and foreign affairs) would reside.
From the sounds of things he wants us to follow the German model. I'd be reasonably happy if what he suggested came to pass, but I doubt there's any chance of the above being proposed in a draft bill prior to next years GE.
Project Stop The Jocks!
in Anything Goes - Other topics not covered elsewhere
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I'm hoping we can get to 30 as it would give the SNP a majority in terms of Scottish MPs which would be very symbolic. Any more than that is a bonus.
Hopefully the SNP can force the largest party to push through full home rule following such a victory as part of a confidence and supply deal. Although whether or not they could countenance doing so with the Tories is an interesting question (and one I hope doesn't need to be answered).