Slashdot Mirror

and the BNP is similar to the SNP, both are mostly racists/nationalist parties.

Speaking as an active member of the Scottish National Party, born in England of English parents, please could you explain to me (and perhaps also to the current Minister for External Affairs and International Development) in exactly what way the SNP is a racist party?

hey the scottish gov is not backing them but is against the laws http://www.snp.org/media-centre/news/2012/apr/snp-condemn-uk-government-surveillance-plan yet another reason to vote yes when the referendum comes.

oddly the government of scotland is http://www.snp.org/media-centre/news/2012/apr/snp-condemn-uk-government-surveillance-plan not that the bbc will ever mention it though.

Hey the system would work if the mean stream media, including the bbc were woth shit. On party, the biggest in one of the nations of the UK has stood up. http://www.snp.org/media-centre/news/2012/apr/snp-condemn-uk-government-surveillance-plan but don't expect the bbc to make note of it...or any of the mainstream media. Yeah wer'e used to being ignored up here.

Labour will back it, but oddly the biggest party in scotland stands opposed http://www.snp.org/media-centre/news/2012/apr/snp-condemn-uk-government-surveillance-plan Hey another resaon to desolve the act of union.

Oil deposits in the North sea have been propping up the British economy for decades now.

which has rather annoyed the Scots themselves who have the odd situation where the Scots have elected a nationalist government (who support an independent-from-the-uk scotland) but cannot get independence itself because the English vote is 9 times the size of the Scottish vote. The UK won't let Scotland go because of the oil revenue but since the 1980's Thatcher government has moved as many national assets as it can out of Scotland, e.g. in the last 20 years (coinciding with the rise in strength in independence movement) military assets have been moved from Scotland to England losing over 200,000 jobs (out of a 4.9m pop'n).

There is huge mistrust over the figures for oil tax receipts that the UK exchequer cashes in; and each year the UK run Scotland Office (which is based in England!) tries to make a case that the oil isn't worth that much and Scotland could never survive on its own.

I spoke to a drilling engineer in the pub a few months ago and he was telling me that there are huge numbers of corked deep water wells in the north west coast of Scotland that they have found, assessed and are waiting for the right time to exploit.

To be fair, all the opposition parties (Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, SNP) oppose ID cards and say they would scrap them, if elected.

Sorry, I don't follow. What does what a party says pre-election have to do with what it does if it gets into power? Once the businesses that want to cream another GBP93 (about US$170) from every person in the country offer some healthy party donations to whoever is in power, pre-election promises will quickly be abandoned.

The GBP93 is an old figure; http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/may/25/immigrationpolicy.idcards -- it's probably more by now. And it doesn't seem to take into account the annual running costs estimated in 2005 to be GBP584m (about £10 -- US$18 -- for every man, woman and child in the country. Even if there were no civil liberties argument, I would resent having to pay that for something that appears to offer no benefit whatsoever except for lining the pockets of a couple of businesses.

the Conservatives look even more prone to SnakeOil salesman that the incumbent idiots.

To be fair, all the opposition parties (Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, SNP) oppose ID cards and say they would scrap them, if elected. Labour are trying to hurry things through before the next election, in the hope of getting far enough that it will be hard to turn back.

There are other choices. http://lp.org/

Exactly! Or Scottish Nationalist, for example.

i am not sure about how the MEP stuff works... but i know that most voters don't realise that certain candidates are up for EU election and think to themselves "i like the tories, im voting for this guy" when in actual fact thta candidate maybe never be doing a thing in his local area.

the local candidate i was refering to in edinburgh was this guy, i have emailed him several times, and he has known every little detail about aeverything and has always already begun forming an initiative against mad IP moves the EU makes. unfortunately he is a scottish nationalist, and seperation from england is their big thing... coming from northern ireland, i would be really annoyed if scottish people started coming over and voting for one of the hard-line parties without knowing the full score. so i feel guilty voting for him. but he does share my views on the copyright battles in the EU, and he stands every chance of getting in every year. (and ironically, was knighted by the queen)

Why is it that political or foreign-relations stories get all the responses with Bush-bashing and America-bashing? I would like to have an accurate poll as to how many of these 'informed' slashdot posters actually voted.

I voted. For Malcolm Fleming of the Scottish National Party. Oddly enough, there are 180 odd countries in the world which are not the United States, and which do not conduct foreign policy by a mixture of ignorance, arrogance and petulance.

Some of us even live in countries where for the brother of one of the candidates in an important election to be in charge of the administration of the vote, even in a local area, would be considered improper. As a representative of the Zimbabwean government was quoted as saying after the United States last presidential farce, if they had conducted an election like that in Zimbabwe, the American's would have been the first ot condemn it as neither free nor fair.