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.)

Comments

Everyone loses

[AmiMoJo]

Everyone seems to have lost here. The Scottish will get screwed when the politicians renege on all the promises they made, and the rUK will get screwed when the politicians half deliver those promises at their expense. The question won't go away and will come back round in 15-20 years. The UK will as a whole remain very conservative and averse to change.

I'm not Scottish but I feel very sad today.

Re:Everyone loses

[Anonymous Coward]

I wanted to see that fascist Cameron eat crow.

Re:Everyone loses

[Anonymous Coward]

15-20 years should be enough for England to divest itself sufficiently from Scotland so when they vote for independence next time, it will not matter.

Re:Everyone loses

[JosKarith]

It was about 30 years since the last referendum on independance. In 30 years time Salmond will be long dead and the North Sea oil will have run out. Unless Scotland magically comes up with some other means of funding itself then independance will be a death sentence for them.

Re:Everyone loses

[Sockatume]

It's not Scotland that'll keep them in line, it's Northern Ireland and Wales. If they renege, then perhaps there won't be another Scottish referendum to worry about, but it'd certainly fire up the seperatist movements in the rest of the union. The only way to avoid that is to both keep their promises to the Scots, and to make similar offers to the other nations.

Federalism's coming.

Re:Everyone loses

[xfizik]

In 30 years, the way things are going the UK proper may as well be bankrupt, socially and racially divided, a shadow of its former glory, and Scotland might regret having not voted yes, even if their oil runs out.

Re:Everyone loses

[jc42]

Actually, there's quite a lot of history in various parts of the world when parts of a political entity split off. Sometimes this is done peacefully, sometimes it involves serious fighting and wars. An interesting recent case was in Switzerland, where in 1978 the Canton of Bern split, with the northern part forming the new Canton of Jura. You can read a lot about it online, including a couple of wikipedia articles. It's fairly well encoded in Swiss law, where similar votes happen every few years, typically involving a municipality with a large population that wants to secede from its canton and join another. The typical reason for such splits is as in Scotland, where the people in an area feel poorly served by the government, and think they can do better as part of a different county/state/whatever, or perhaps as an independent unit as Jura did.

Here in the US, we had a similar vote in 1863, which resulted in the new state of West Virginia being formed. This is often presented as part of the Civil War split off of the Confederacy. Historians tend to interpret it as more of a case of the western population feeling poorly treated by the remote state government in Richmond, which collect taxes in the mountains, but provided few government services in return. West Virginia did apply to the federal government for statehood, which was ratified after a few years. Unlike the Southern secession, this was done without (further) warfare. A funny aspect of the story is that now, several counties in the northeast of West Virginia have openly discussed seceding and joining either Virginia or Maryland, for pretty much the same reasons. Unlike Switzerland, though, the US doesn't have much in the way of official laws that deal with such political reorganization and redrawing of political boundaries.

The story in Scotland may work out as it often does in Switzerland, where many of the votes for secession fail. The reason is that the referendum functions as a "wake-up call" to the government. It's typical for a lot of public discussion to happen, and the government(s) make promises to fix the problems that triggered the referendum. Sometimes, as people have suggested here, the government reneges on its promises. This will be followed by another vote a few years later, which will often succeed. Or the government may fix many of the problems, which will satisfy the voters and repeated votes will fail.

The Scots would probably do well to continue discussing the issues publicly, and keep the London government aware that they can't continue to get away with everything without repercussions.

Re:Everyone loses

[drsquare]

Healthy growth? Wages plummeting, zero-hours contracts proliferating, real jobs replaced by involuntary 'self employment', debts soaring, bailiffs doing record business, food banks struggling to keep up with demand. If this is healthy growth I'd love to know what you consider unhealthy.

GDP is only of real relevance to economists and politicians. Ireland has a high GDP but its people still have to mass-emigrate because there is no work there.

Re:Everyone loses

[Space cowboy]

I live in CA too, and pay similar taxes. I don't have a problem with the taxes.

When I came to the USA, I was taken aback by just how money-orientated the churches are. I'm irreligious, but I attended church as a kid, and it was actually about the message, about community, and definitely not about the money. Church officials (rectors and curates) are pretty poor in the UK, at least where I grew up - they have housing provided for them, and they live on a meagre salary. They are expected to work long hours for low pay. I don't get that sense when I drive past a church in San Jose that has acres (literally) of parking space, flashy electronic signs, and is located in prime real-estate area. It's very different, trust me.

I've lived here in CA for almost a decade, as I said, it's been great. There's been a couple of local school-shootings in the last year or so. Understand that from a Brit's point of view *anyone* getting shot *ever* is big news. National, prime-time TV news, possibly for days. For it to be sufficiently commonplace that it doesn't even make it past local headlines is ... disturbing.

Your point about talking to people is a good one: if I talk to people from outside the US, our views tend to resonate, but if I talk to people who are US-born, there's way less agreement. I'm not sure if it's because this is "normal" to those born here, that they just haven't experienced anything else, that they think somehow "it couldn't happen to me", or what (sometimes it's definitely a case of USA! USA! USA!). Definitely there is a difference in outlook between natives and foreigners.

One more thing: I'm not trying to paint the UK as some sort of panacea - it's not, by a long chalk. Neither am I US-bashing for the sake of it - the above is just my observations over time. The UK has it's own issues no doubt, but bottom line: even as a white male living in an affluent area in the USA, I feel safer in the UK. And I definitely feel my son would be safer at school there. This is the fact that's weighing on me more and more.

Simon

Re:Free Willy!

[Anonymous Coward]

They vote for members of the Parliament in London

Except for the members of the House of Lords, which nobody votes for. If I had a Parliament like that and got to vote against it, I would.

and have their own Scottish Assembly

Which doesn't have all the powers that many people want it to have...

The over-65's swung it for No

[rapiddescent]

As a Scot living through the referendum, it has been a sea of optimism and YES flags and events. Many people, including myself woke up this morning very disappointed but also wondering how did this happen:

One of the biggest revelations was that The over-65's swung it for No whilst all age groups from 16 to 55 voted for independence. one of the key elements of the YES campaign is that none of the media TV channels or daily newspapers supported independence and so Scots could only get information from the internet. Twitter, websites such as Bella Caledonia, Wings over Scotland have been on the only places to find real information that hadn't been skewed heavily in favour of the No campaign.

The over-65's are the least internet connected and the most trustworthy of the BBC, even though the BBC has been accused of bias in an academic study from a survey of their entire news output over a 6 month period.

Also, the over-65's have the shortest time stake in this. plus have had the trappings of gold plated pensions that the generation behind them cannot look forward to. It's a disgusting state of affairs and as a Scot I am embarrassed for my country.

Re:The over-65's swung it for No

[drew870mitchell]

I'm not quite so sure 16-17 year olds can be written off as a horde of yesbots. I recall NPR reporting yesterday that the teenage demographic surprised most with how 'No' they were, and they interviewed a couple who made clear they were decently informed of the issues. Expanding the voter pool to include more rightful citizens, who are going to spend the rest of their lives affected by this decision, is not 'rigging the game'.

Re:The over-65's swung it for No

[rapiddescent]

oh no, I would never say my vote was more important, nor indeed that I am somehow more correct than my fellow Scot. The points I was making were:

There has been a well documented bias in the media. Even the media here agree with that. There has been a huge discussion here in Scotland about the role of social media in this referendum, not unlike Tunisia, Egypt and so on. Politicians have said that things were out of control as both campaigns became alive oin social media. The pro-Yes media (aparty from one sunday paper) were online and largely funded by indigogo public funding campaigns.

This was the first poll we've had in living memory that has not had an exit poll; Lord Ashcroft's poll whilst not perfect is the closest we have to understand the voting demographic.

I ws making the correlation (not causation) link that over-65's were also the least connected in society. I admit I was also a bit rude about the over-65's.

Since I last posted, the pledge from the parties behind the No campaign for more devolution powers have already fallen apart. A lot of people voted no because they were promised a more federalised UK

Re:The over-65's swung it for No

[inhuman_4]

The problem with have with giving 16 year olds the right to vote is that it was a one time thing. If Scottish government had come out and said that 16 is an appropriate voting age, and kept that age for all votes then that is okay.

But they didn't do that. They only set the age at 16 for this vote because they believed that the younger crowd would vote yes, which is the way they wanted. Whether or not young people actually voted yes doesn't change the fact that the Scottish government played fast and loose with the democratic system. I don't really see how this is any different than the gerrymandering that goes on the in the US.

Too bad

[plopez]

They could have told the EU to get out. After seeing what lack of control of your own currency did to Greece, Italy, and Spain I've come to the conclusion the tight economic binding which is the EU is a bad idea. There are also no firewalls. It creates a situation where a country as small as Greece, Italy, or Spain can threaten to take down the entire global economy.

Re:Free Willy!

[Anonymous Coward]

The house of lords arguably has a stabilising influence though. The MPs in the commons have to get voted in. That tends to mean they promise the world, and then find they can't live up to their promises. It also means they follow the most popular policies with short-term views. The lords have secure seats, so they get to focus more on the long-term impacts. It's not ideal, but it's not a terrible system.

Re:Free Willy!

[mrchaotica]

This is also a good argument that applies to the United States, too. It explains why the 17th Amendmennt was a mistake.

Re:Free Willy!

[IamTheRealMike]

Most importantly the Parliament Act allows the Commons to force a bill through Lords if it's been sent back twice already, regardless of what the Lords want. Therefore the most the HoL can do is slow things down.

Given this fact it's probably not surprising that nobody cares much about reforming it. It's another check/balance and all it can ultimately do is throw sand in the wheels, it has no real power.

Re:Free Willy!

[matbury]

An independent Scotland would already be in the EU, the message from Brussels was yes, they can, and the Euro or the Pound would work fine. The London-centric media is intensely unionist and propagated blatantly untrue FUD, backed by Coca Cola, Pepsi Cola, Microsoft, Accenture, IBM, Bayer, Daimler, EON Energy, Thyssen, XL Group, Alliance Trust, Bilfinger, and BMW, to scare Scottish voters into voting no. I'm English and have no particular affiliation to Scotland but it was shamefull how the English media, corporations, and Westminster politicians behaved during the referendum. Because of the hysteria, exaggerations, and lies implying increased crime and disorder as a consequence of the Independence Referendum, at one point Brian Docherty, Chairman of the Scottish Police Federation felt that they had to make the following public announcement:

“The Police Service of Scotland and the men and women who work in it should not be used as a political football at any time and especially so in these last few hours of the referendum campaign.

As I have previously stated the referendum debate has been robust but overwhelmingly good natured.

It was inevitable that the closer we came to the 18th of September passions would increase but that does not justify the exaggerated rhetoric that is being deployed with increased frequency. Any neutral observer could be led to believe Scotland is on the verge of societal disintegration yet nothing could be further from the truth.

Scotland’s citizens are overwhelmingly law abiding and tolerant and it is preposterous to imply that by placing a cross in a box, our citizens will suddenly abandon the personal virtues and values held dear to them all.

At this time it is more important than ever that individuals be they politicians, journalists or whoever should carefully consider their words, maintain level heads and act with respect. Respect is not demonstrated by suggesting a minority of mindless idiots are representative of anything. One of the many joys of this campaign has been how it has awakened political awareness across almost every single section of society. The success enjoyed by the many should not be sullied by the actions of the few.

Police officers must be kept free from the distractions of rhetoric better suited to the playground that the political stump. If crime has been committed it will be investigated and dealt with appropriately but quite simply police officers have better things to do than officiate in spats on social media and respond to baseless speculation of the potential for disorder on and following polling day”