An Independent Scotland?

True enough, from past experience the tighter you try to make the rules the more loopholes you create. I like the idea of a trigger point, combined with electronic 'voting' it could work but I suppose even that is open to subversion by some.
 
A young guy called Stephen Paton has been doing a weekly videoblog (up to week 10 now) highlighting some of the main issues each week, worth a listen/watch.

 
What price promises? As part of the no campaign the Westminster parties have all been promising 'extra powers' including tax raising powers if Scotland votes no.

In a letter to Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander has confirmed that the policy of the UK Government was to prevent parts of the UK from setting independent tax rates in each band to prevent one part of the UK benefitting "at the expense of the UK as a whole"

http://www.newsnetscotland.com/inde...e-as-lib-dems-rule-out-different-uk-tax-rates
 
We can have written into the the Constitution that major events such as taking us to war must be subject to a referendum. I think that would help calm the fears of folk who like me believe that governments who have too much power (Westminster being a case in point) become corrupted by that power. I think it's a more workable solution than D.D.
Doing that using current methods of ballot box and polling stations would be cumbersome but the technology exists to make it much easier with online/electronic voting.
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It's a nice idea, but a bit too slow.
If any Government got into power on that basis, they'd tie their own hands for far too long. So, for example, Libya when clearly something needed doing, and that wasn't a 4 week campaign and vote.
You'd also need to overcome the treaty obligations to say NATO, an attack on one Country in the Alliance is an attack on all. Oh, hang on we'll have to vote on that.......Doesn't really work does it?

referendums can work, Norway (I think, or if not one of the other Countries up there) does it on major issues, but not on deployments of troops as I recall. But they are expensive.
 
And yet we've stood by for far too long as thousands are butchered in Iraq? But now that they've seized the oil.....oh look, here we come! lol Then there's Israel/Palestine.....

With today's technology it wouldn't take long to hold a vote if the protest trigger had been exceeded and I don't see a problem with it being electronic as there's already plenty of secure stuff done online now such as PAYE, VAT, CT etc. You could having a voting window of as little as a day if you wanted and if people were concerned enough then they'd make sure they made the effort to vote.

There would obviously have to be some exceptions such as defending our own country and various states of emergency such as riots, actual terrorist attacks etc. But even having some form of Direct Democracy, even if it's minimal, would surely be better than nothing and the public having to wait 5 years but only to have the crappy choice of a few alternative parties.
 
It's live, votes changing all the time. No idea how representative it is.
 
But where is the place that people are voting to create the movement?
 
It was 75% 23% 2% when I voted
 
It could be a whole load of English voting Yes for Scotland to b****r off! lol
 
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The trouble with direct democracy is that it disenfranchises a chunk of the population. Rapid response direct democracy would be even worse. I'm not saying they aren't good ideas, but there are some serious and legitimate complaints which need to be addressed before such a scheme could be deployed.
 
In what respect does it do this?
 
The trouble with direct democracy is that it disenfranchises a chunk of the population. Rapid response direct democracy would be even worse. I'm not saying they aren't good ideas, but there are some serious and legitimate complaints which need to be addressed before such a scheme could be deployed.
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Even if it doesn't disenfranchise, what happens if the referendum question is only answered by 20 people, 11 for, 9 against? Hardly an endorsement for either side, so it wouldn't legitimize either way.
 
It can be based on a % of population to trigger the vote. If that many are going to protest then you will certainly get a large amount voting. Bit of a pointless topic though as no politician will want to give away any power if they can help it, no matter how sincere they pretend to be.
 
Bit of a pointless topic though as no politician will want to give away any power if they can help it, no matter how sincere they pretend to be.
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I'd agree, but to play devils advocate, theres also the issue that very little would ever get done as a result. Can't please all the people all the time, and it's protesters who are most likely to vote.
 
StewartR said:
The trouble with direct democracy is that it disenfranchises a chunk of the population. Rapid response direct democracy would be even worse. I'm not saying they aren't good ideas, but there are some serious and legitimate complaints which need to be addressed before such a scheme could be deployed.
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gman said:
In what respect does it do this?
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Sorry, I wasn't very clear at all. What I meant was that the kind of direct democracy which was bring discussed here (where people vote online etc) is potentially disenfranchising. A lot of elderly people aren't online and never will be. In 25 years time that won't be much of an issue, but it is now.
 
True Stweart but it would be easy enough to set up electronic polling stations, a polling card with a qr code and a screen set up like a ballot paper. Press the button next to your choice, check and press 'vote'.
 
Another aspect to that is....

"You know, comrades," says Stalin, "that I think in regard to this: I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how."

Which is why I will never trust e-voting - it makes it FAR too easy. You don't even need to nobble the voters or vote counters, just the chap who writes / signs off the software.
 
Steep said:
A young guy called Stephen Paton has been doing a weekly videoblog (up to week 10 now) highlighting some of the main issues each week, worth a listen/watch.

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It would might be worth it if it wasn't so heavily biased towards one side.
 
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He's a pro independence campaigner if that doesn't suit you get your own balance, if you want to hear the no side find someone giving it and bobs your uncle. Post links here if you want to.
 
Moadib said:
Another aspect to that is....

"You know, comrades," says Stalin, "that I think in regard to this: I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how."

Which is why I will never trust e-voting - it makes it FAR too easy. You don't even need to nobble the voters or vote counters, just the chap who writes / signs off the software.
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It would be easy enough to have safeguards in place. Electronic voting is going to come probably sooner rather than later as paper elections are very expensive to run.
 
StewartR said:
I might have. But as I'm resident in England, I don't get a vote.

Here's the exchange which affected my thinking - a link to an online opinion piece posted by (of course) @Steep, and my reaction to it:

I'd like to invite 'No' voters to reply to this.
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But the opposite of that equally holds true.

Don't want a socialist regime for the next 20 years and voted yes, tough, your own fault.
Don't want a bloated public service controlled by the central belt vote, tough
Don't want to be living in a high tax, low growth, high unemployment environment, tough you voted for it.
Don't want more welfare cuts (because they'll have to come anyway) tough, you voted for it.

I'm still genuinely torn. I want to say yes but couldn't stomach the political environment we'd end up with.
 
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dod said:
But the opposite of that equally holds true.

Don't want a socialist regime for the next 20 years and voted yes, tough, your own fault.
Don't want a bloated public service controlled by the central belt vote, tough
Don't want to be living in a high tax, low growth, high unemployment environment, tough you voted for it.
Don't want more welfare cuts (because they'll have to come anyway) tough, you voted for it.

I'm still genuinely torn. I want to say yes but couldn't stomach the political environment we'd end up with.
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Don't want a socialist regime? You're not likely to get one unless a great mass of the Scots vote is for it. PR ensures a much fairer spread of representation, it's one of the reasons why you probably voted yes in the first place.
Bloated public service?? all the wisdom says it would be leaner and more efficient as per most other small population countries.
High tax, low growth high unemployment? not if we get it right, certainly more likely if we stay in UK.
Believe me welfare cuts haven't started yet in the UK, wait until after the next WM elections, the Tories have said there's another £25billion of austerity cuts coming.

Dod you need to stop (as I believe you are) thinking of this in terms of the SNP, other parties and groups have as much say in the yes movement as they do and people who vote SNP now may not do so after independence, me for one.
 
dod said:
As Maggie said, the problem with Socialism is that, sooner or later, you run out of other peoples money.
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More than a bit two faced of her, all governments do is spend other peoples money, hers included.
 
Steep said:
More than a bit two faced of her, all governments do is spend other peoples money, hers included.
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Now there's a comment from Hugh that I can like ;)
 
Steep said:
Don't want a socialist regime? You're not likely to get one unless a great mass of the Scots vote is for it. PR ensures a much fairer spread of representation, it's one of the reasons why you probably voted yes in the first place.
Bloated public service?? all the wisdom says it would be leaner and more efficient as per most other small population countries.
High tax, low growth high unemployment? not if we get it right, certainly more likely if we stay in UK.
Believe me welfare cuts haven't started yet in the UK, wait until after the next WM elections, the Tories have said there's another £25billion of austerity cuts coming.

Dod you need to stop (as I believe you are) thinking of this in terms of the SNP, other parties and groups have as much say in the yes movement as they do and people who vote SNP now may not do so after independence, me for one.
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1. Maybe not socialist per se but too left wing for my liking
2. So you support further cuts?
3. I disagree
4. That's needed, although I wouldn't necessarily agree that it's always impacting on the right people, bedroom tax being a good example.


Steep said:
More than a bit two faced of her, all governments do is spend other peoples money, hers included.
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The difference being that the left think it's their duty to spend it.
 
Steep said:
It would be easy enough to have safeguards in place. Electronic voting is going to come probably sooner rather than later as paper elections are very expensive to run.
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Mmmm, we may need to agree to differ. I read up a lot on this after the Bush/Kerry debacle, and the ease of voting makes for equal ease of fraud and manipulation.

Would you trust an electronic vote next month? Given what's at stake, I absolutely wouldn't.
 
dod said:
The difference being that the left think it's their duty to spend it.
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These days both seem to. For example in the U.S. Bush was leading the "drunken sailor on shore leave" spending sweepstakes, but Obama has trumped him. Each simply spends more than the last, whatever the party or colour (red rosette, blue or yellow). But the increase in debt is a must in order for the financial system to "work", so perhaps in that sense they are simply performing a necessary function.
 
There was an interesting programme on BBC2 last night about what Scottish independence might mean for the rest of the UK. It was presented by Andrew Neil who I believe is against independence, and the general tone was that it probably wouldn't be very good for us in a whole variety of ways. That might have been a biased viewpoint, but the issue has had very little coverage down here (a point Neil himself stressed) and without much first-hand experience of the debate it was hard to tell whether or to what extent the concerns might have been exaggerated. I think there was some negativity. For example on defence it seems fairly obvious that partitioning our military assets and institutions need not leave the defence of the UK in a state where it is less effective, but it might well be less cost effective. Most of the problems the programme brought up were, to my mind, soluble.

But the really interesting discussion was about the future of Faslane/Coulport. On the one hand, there is no site in the rest of the UK which could be made suitable to take over the roles of Faslane/Coulport within the timescale the Scottish Nationalists have set out, and possibly not within any timescale whatsoever. On the other hand, the UK government will not allow the country to be bounced into unilateral disarmament by the actions of a foreign country, even a close ally which Scotland would obviously be. Something very fundamental has to give here, and I think it would be very very interesting.
 
StewartR said:
There was an interesting programme on BBC2 last night about what Scottish independence might mean for the rest of the UK. It was presented by Andrew Neil who I believe is against independence, and the general tone was that it probably wouldn't be very good for us in a whole variety of ways. That might have been a biased viewpoint, but the issue has had very little coverage down here (a point Neil himself stressed) and without much first-hand experience of the debate it was hard to tell whether or to what extent the concerns might have been exaggerated. I think there was some negativity. For example on defence it seems fairly obvious that partitioning our military assets and institutions need not leave the defence of the UK in a state where it is less effective, but it might well be less cost effective. Most of the problems the programme brought up were, to my mind, soluble.

But the really interesting discussion was about the future of Faslane/Coulport. On the one hand, there is no site in the rest of the UK which could be made suitable to take over the roles of Faslane/Coulport within the timescale the Scottish Nationalists have set out, and possibly not within any timescale whatsoever. On the other hand, the UK government will not allow the country to be bounced into unilateral disarmament by the actions of a foreign country, even a close ally which Scotland would obviously be. Something very fundamental has to give here, and I think it would be very very interesting.
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From what I have read on this issue finding another site like faslane would be difficult but it wouldn't be impossible. Ideally the government would hope to convince an independent Scotland to keep Trident and offer some concession as an incentive. The problem here is the Nationlists believe that Sterling would be that concession and I feel that is a serious mistake.
 
jakeblu said:
From what I have read on this issue finding another site like faslane would be difficult but it wouldn't be impossible.
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Faslane - difficult. Coulport - very very very very difficult, and perhaps impossible. The all-party Scottish Affairs Committee at Westminster concluded that it could take "up to 20 years or longer to develop a long-term replacement for Coulport", and noted that "you would have to sustain your political will and funding for a very long time".

That's a very big issue for negotiation. On the one hand it's an important principle and the Scots would surely expect the UK to concede important principles in return. On the other hand it's an awful lot of money and the UK would surely want that on the table when the overall financial settlement is discussed. This one issue could end up dwarfing everything else in the negotiations.
 
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