Slashdot Mirror
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.)
In any other part of the world the next step would be riots followed by civil war.
Mostly the reaction seems to be a big "oh well" and a "let's move on".
For the UK - they remain united.
For Scotland - they get greater autonomy without the pain of going it alone.
For the Scottish people - their heritage and nationality received much attention (hell I didn't know there WAS a Scottish flag before this). They proved them selves to be paragons of peaceful demonstration and democracy.
For the Britons - the Welsh and Irish nationalities in the UK benefit from greater recognition as well. The English too!
The UK is an amazing and interesting union - and all should be proud to be a part. And who knows... maybe the next generation will decide Yes.
Such is the take of this American anyway.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
It is possible that they looked the issue over and decided to vote No. Just because some over 65 disagrees with you does not mean they are fools.
Sorry about the mess.
But the SNP already shifted the goalposts by allowing 16-17 year olds to vote (knowing they'd be big YES voters) even though voting age in the UK is 18. They even got the year 2014 selected as it's the 700th anniversary of Bannockburn. You rigged the game in your favour and STILL lost quite clearly, now is the time to STFU.
Maybe the over 65s are the ones that aren't taken in by the lies, misdirection and naive optimism of the fishy politicians in the SNP?
Perhaps they remembered that although Scotland didn't vote in the current Government, it did vote in the previous one which caused many of the current economic problems.
Could they even have noticed that despite all the calls of bullying the only bullies in the debate were members of the SNP?
Or possibly you're right, and it was all just media bias and an inability for the propaganda to reach them.
The problem with relying for support for separation from the younger generation, as Quebec separatists found out, is that the younger generation gets jobs, gets invested in the status quo, and then think "separatists - they're just young punks who don't know anything about real life."
And the next "younger generation" sees separation as something for old farts. Uncool.
The reality is that there's more people in the RoC (Rest of Canada) who would vote to kick Quebec out than there are Quebecers willing to pull the trigger on separation. You can only make a "knife to the throat" threat so many times before the other party says "don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out."
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Why? Scotland is not oppressed, it does not have severe racial/religious/ethnic divides with the rest of the UK. It was not conquered by England. Nobody has family members that have died because of the Union. In fact the Union has been ruled by Scottish PM's twice in recent history.
That makes splitting it out into a new country a largely technical matter of economics and future government policy. It's quite dry stuff. The Yes campaign chose to ignore this and attempted to whip up a notion of Scottish exceptionalism through the constant "fairer better society" rhetoric, but ultimately they lost because when people asked questions about the technical details of why Scotland would be better and whether it'd be worth the cost, they had no answers. Given that the primary impact of independence would be economic, this lack of planning proved fatal.
Having lived in the US for a decade now, I'm missing the UK more and more.
- A real non-half-assed health service, that provides long-term care without exception
- A dearth of mass-murders, especially school-shootings
- A police service which uses policing-by-consent rather than by-fear
- A university system that doesn't do its best to keep you in debt for life
- A foreign policy that doesn't make them hated around the world
- An attitude that doesn't revolve around "why should my taxes pay for you, just because you desperately need help" ?
- A church that isn't entirely based around making money for the "reverend" and isn't overwhelmingly politicised.
- Sensible views on evolution, science in general, abortion, gay marriage, and womens rights.
- And of course, the marked lack of guns in the general populace. An armed society is a polite society my arse. It's a *fearful* society.
As I said, I've been here for a decade now, and I work for a big company with great perks. It's been good for me, but now that I have a kid, the school-shootings thing is getting more and more worrisome. There's literally nothing I can do to prevent some moron raiding his mother's arsenal and killing my kid if that's how he wants to end his life.
The money is good, the people I meet are friendly, the weather is nice, and that used to be sufficient. But as time goes by, it's seeming more and more like a Faustian bargain.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!