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Scotland Votes No To Independence
An anonymous reader sends this news from the BBC:
Scotland voters decided to remain part of the United Kingdom on Friday, rejecting independence in a historic referendum. The decision prevented a rupture of a 307-year union with England, bringing a huge sigh of relief to the British political establishment. Scots voted 55.3 percent to 44.7 percent against independence in a vote that saw an unprecedented turnout. "Like millions of other people, I am delighted," Prime Minister David Cameron said in a speech outside 10 Downing Street on Friday morning. "It would have broken my heart to see our United Kingdom come to an end." Cameron promised new powers for Scotland in the wake of the vote, but also warned that millions of voices in England must also be heard, calling for a "balanced settlement" that would deliver more power to England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
(Somewhat related: according to a Reuters poll, one in four Americans want their state to secede from the union.)
Why would they renege, other than in some fantasy you've invented? Westminster has already set out the timeline for the new Scotland Bill to be written and presented to Parliament.
As for the rUK "losing" the only logical conclusion is for a federalised Union, where England gains it's own parliament and everyone, including Wales & Northern Ireland, get a similar set of devolved powers. That's both fair, a positive outcome for everyone in the UK, and neatly solved the West Lothian Question (because all sitting Westminster MP's become federal MP's, only dealing with federal issues).
You know that jus primae noctis has been abolished, right? Scotland is already free. They are part of the free country which is the UK. They vote for members of the Parliament in London and have their own Scottish Assembly. The YES vote blew it by failing to have any plan for the currency and stubbornly insisting they could join the EU when the message from Brusells was quite clearly ... no, you can't, not for years, and not until you renounce all the special treatment the UK squeezed out.
Actually, experience up here in Kanuckistan seems to indicate that everyone will win (if by "everyone" we mean everyone who isn't a politician or a dyed-in-the-wool separatist).
We've had two referendums, and they proved one thing - change IS possible. The separatist movement here has burned itself out, the generation who were pushing for it being seen as burned-out old farts. Go back to the UK in 40 years and tell me that everyone lost.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The vote was a 55-45 margin...and conducted in a safe manner without much in the way to dispute. No reason for riots nor civil war. I also don't think enough was on the line for anyone in Scotland to feel motivated to take up arms. Remember northern Ireland and the IRA? How did that work out for the common person?
45% x 85%(the turnout) x 95% (voter registration) = 36% - that's only just over 1/3rd of the population voted for independance. Lrn 2 Math.
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
You know that jus primae noctis has been abolished, right?
It actually hasn't been abolished because, you know, it's kind of hard to abolish something which most likely didn't actually exist.
It is not just that "jus primae noctis" (otherwise known as "Droit du seigneur") was abolished
it in fact never existed in the first place!
Taken from wikipidia -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_du_seigneur
from the section -- Literary and other references
Braveheart (1995); ius primae noctis is invoked by Edward Longshanks in an attempt to breed the Scots out. This was one of the many inaccuracies cited by critics of the film.
Oh, it's binding alright. Westminster ceded the necessary legal powers regarding the nature of the union through the Edinburgh Agreement.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Gitmo closed yet?
Like him or hate him, I hardly think you can blame Gitmo staying open on him. Congress basically refused to allow him to close it.
There has never been a referendum on independence in Scotland before. There were two referendums on devolution: the one in 1979 was narrowly in favour but failed because it did not reach the required 40% of the electorate, and the one in 1997 succeeded, establishing the Scottish Parliament.
Or Kosovo leave Serbia. The EU pretty much threw the match into the gasoline with that one, and now they're flailing their arms while they burn like human torches. The pedophile nazis in Brussels are drunk with power and they cannot see the shit caliphate coming.
Those foolish over-65s.
They voted reflexively, after reviewing trivial issues like:
- the SNP's assurances that Scotland would be a member of NATO and the EU were completely wrong (both the EU and NATO rebuffed the 'automatic membership' that the SNP was asserting they were entitled to)
- losing their currency (The British public was 2/3 against letting Scotland keep the pound. The Exchequer had said no, and most economists said the 'Sterling Union' proposed by the SNP was a stupid idea)
- The departure of most major Scottish business southward - hell, even the Royal BANK OF SCOTLAND was leaving if "Yes" won the vote...
- SNPs domestic agenda that pretty much amounted to a Socialist Utopia funded entirely on North Sea oil that they felt they would automagically inherit without contest (never mind revenues have been falling there for a decade or more)
Essentially the SNP's platform was "if everyone does what we say should happen, with the most optimistic interpretation of everything possible, nobody disagrees, and Britain pays for everything, it'll all be hunky-dory...probably" was an exercise in extended political farce that only had currency because Cameron (stupidly) gave it credibility.
Let's remember too that the referendum was NON-BINDING. There was promised a referendum, and then "we would act in the best interests of the Scottish people"....that's all.
Maybe - as has been abundantly proved in many other contexts - the 16-18s that got to vote were easily swayed by emotions, having not thought through the issues seriously and more likely the 65s just barely countered them?
FWIW, I think this would be a brilliant time to do as some conservative MP suggested and re-write the 1707 Act of Union to enfranchise each 'kingdom' within the UK equally, and no longer allow a bunch of whingers in Glasgow to play the tune.
I admire much about Scotland, but this referendum seemed to be playing to their stupid side.
-Styopa
In addition the house of commons creates the laws, then have to get it past the house of lords. So it doesn't mean any laws fail to get drafted. The lords are then under scrutiny to see what they reject and why. That pressure means they'll only do so if there are good reasons. As a result laws go back and forth a few times with adjustments until you get something that's actually workable rather than a kneejerk response.
People want to live in a country without paying for its upkeep. What's next, city-states?
What's your point? That Scotland won't be "contributing" when it remains a part of the United Kingdom, somehow?
Your comment on "city states" sounds far more reminiscent of the direction in which London is heading. It's already approaching an entity in its own right within England, increasingly unbalancing the United Kingdom and heavily influenced by tax-dodging multinational companies.
The "City of London" (a historic title which refers only to the financial "square mile" rather than the other several hundred square miles of London itself) is notoriously undemocratic, prominent way, *way* beyond its nominal area, and interferes on behalf of its corporate paymasters in the working of the UK in general:-
http://www.theguardian.com/com...
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Yeah, and aliens could land too, and there will be nuclear war, and the world will end also!
Oh wait, you were being serious? You used the words "the way things are going" but that's not actually the way things are going. Based on current trajectories the UK is showing the healthiest growth of just about all rich Western economies and it's doing so whilst maintaining a reduction in deficit too.
Further, a number of studies suggest it's likely to see itself increase in global rankings overtaking France, and maybe even Germany in the next 20 years:
http://www.theguardian.com/bus...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/busi...
So yeah, you may be right, maybe something drastic will happen and things will go into reverse again, but that's not what the current figures suggest so any such possibility is merely unfounded speculation.
Yeah, sure, Scotland could've chosen not to be part of that and that would've been their decision, but I think most Scots saw through the nationalist pessimism towards the UK and recognised that for all our faults, maybe things aren't so bad - we're growing faster than anyone else in the G7 and seeing drastic declines in unemployment to boot - find me a country without political issues, but as far as ours go they're pretty small fry compared to some of the issues some countries are having, we've been growing well for well over a year now and some of our neighbours are still slipping in and out of recession - right now and for the foreseeable future the UK is still a pretty good place to be.
Faster political change would be nice, many people think it's not happening at all, but it is. In recent years we've seen things like the exposure of the expenses scandal, we've seen the closeness of phone hacking and the political classes, we've seen an alternative voting system referendum that was lost, exposure of sexual abuse in parliament, we've seen a coalition for the first time in 60 years- now many people will view all these things are negatives, things that ended badly, didn't turn out well, but they're not, they're all part of a bigger picture- the tide is turning against entrenched Westminster, in the last 50 years most of those things listed above would've been unthinkable, the fact they're happening is evidence that the vested minorities that've had so much power for so long in Westminster are losing their grip. I'm normally a cynical, pessimistic person myself, but since I started to take a step back on this issue and piece it all together, rather than look at individual events in isolation, as well as looking at the wider world in general (i.e. the arab spring) it seems pretty clear that politicians are losing power to the people as part of a long slow, probably multi-decade process - it's slow but it's happening, and I'm optimistic that Westminster cannot and will not be able to carry on with business as usual for much longer- they're already faltering and I fully suspect that this independence referendum is another nail in the coffin for the old way of doing things.
God only knows I've hated my country long enough and thought about leaving enough times (thankfully I can easily obtain dual citizenship through my partner, or just make use of our EU membership to fuck off elsewhere in the EU) but right now I think the signs are good, I think change is happening, it's painfully slow but I'm not convinced this is something that you can fix overnight, I think it takes almost a generational change in politicians (which might explain why there has been some progress already- I believe last election that far more than half the MPs that were elected were completely new) but it's happening, and we're getting there.
More than a million homosexuals? Where do you come up with that number?
This is what wikipedia gives
"Between 1933 and 1945, an estimated 100,000 men were arrested as homosexuals, of whom some 50,000 were officially sentenced.[1] Most of these men served time in regular prisons, and an estimated 5,000 to 15,000 of those sentenced were incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps.[1] It is unclear how many of the 5,000 to 15,000 eventually perished in the camps, but leading scholar Rüdiger Lautmann believes that the death rate of homosexuals in concentration camps may have been as high as 60%."
So we're looking at less than 15,000 dead maybe as low as 3,000. Long way from a million.
While not a fan of homosexuality (I admit I find it strange and disgusting) I feel no particular hatred either. More like indifference. I definetly do not support persecution but the outright lies from proponents of that lifestyle are so fucking outrageous.