On Belleveue Road Edinburgh where I am staying, the number of houses or apartments sporting yes posters had suddenly gone up from 13 to 23, including some great homemade efforts. The No count remained stationary at eleven. I noticed new yes posters in Broughton Street and Albany Street too. There seems a huge last minute proclamation of belief – which is precisely what Andy Murray has done too. In a last gasp of silly bias, the BBC claimed that his tweet was ambiguous, and then stopped reporting it at all. This is Andy Murray’s “ambiguous” tweet.
“Huge day for Scotland today! No campaign negativity last few days totally swayed my view on it. Excited to see the outcome. Let’s do this!”
People with Yes badges stopping and talking to each other on the street. The central belt looking very good indeed. Currently campaigning in Larbert, then Stirling, then Alloa.
Hearing over 90% turnout in many areas!
Gutter ;
First paragraph – failed attempt to mock your attribution of anything other than malice to Anon1. Rereading it, it doesn’t even make much sense to me. I think you are probably a doctrinaire Old Labourite, correct me if I’m wrong, and I think you are unaware that the Chicago School worked out how to defeat socialism decades ago – half of them were originally Trotskyites, but realised there was a killing to be made off the concept of flexible labour markets. Which ensured competition for jobs would trump worker solidarity.
Then… perhaps shouldn’t have qualified the Farage comment – we’re going to get him to some extent anyway. But my point was, don’t blame Yes or the SNP. Cameron, who is on the liberal wing of the Tories, could have headed him off with a devomax option, and didn’t. NuLabour presumably happy for the Tories to embarrass themselves, didn’t press for it either.
All missed the point:
“Just because you despise and loathe the Westminster political class please don’t think that is unique to you in Scotland. Most of us in England feel the same way too.”
Who dat?
Nigel Farage.
Ok, now it’s all over, what are your proposals for bringing down the machine? I’m up for unity – no option now. With what? The Party of Moderate Progress Within The Bounds of the Law? (thank you, Jaroslav Hasek). Workers Unite You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Zero-Hours Contract? Sorry to be facetious, but organised labour has had over a century (and the horrified reaction to two world wars) to get this fixed. Ideas, please.
Ba’al:
Thank you for your interest!
I’ve never been in the Labour Party, so you are wrong there, although I have a lot of time for old Labourites and I stand in awe of their past achievements – most of which are now being dismantled before our eyes.
Those achievements were made when the UK government was still highly centralised, after the war. I’m not sure they would have been possible otherwise.
Although regional self-determination is an attractive idea, too much fragmentation makes us weak and vulnerable, I think, hence my opposition to Scottish separatism. And I’m not keen on devolving major powers to the regions, either, for the same reason.
(What lies behind your enthusiasm for that?)
So I suppose my recipe for protecting ourselves from exploitation and plunder by global capitalism is to keep the state coherent, independent, and as far as possible self-reliant, and to have a politically savvy electorate who will want to keep it that way and will elect left-wing governments.
What’s your recipe?
And by the way, Ba’al, I find your idea that UKIP could be the answer to anything completely laughable. They are even worse than the established parties.
If you want to bandy quotations about, how about this:
“I would argue that the very existence of the NHS stifles competition… I would like to congratulate the coalition government for bringing a whiff of privatisation into the beleaguered National Health Service.”
Paul Nuttall, Deputy Leader of UKIP