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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Unless Salmond can find a way of turning the oldies in the remaining 14 days independence will be lost
We all know that the older you are the more likely it is that you’ll be on the electoral register and the greater the chance it is that you’ll actually vote.
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On the other hand, wandering around Edinburgh, I was reminded that Scotland is really dominated by a regiment of small, stern-faced, grey-haired ladies. They have fierce Presbyterian views, hats, walk at great speed, and regard all politics as ‘damn nonsense’. When they finally take over the country, I tell you, it’s going to be a very different place.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-week/diary/9298272/andrew-marrs-diary-seeing-shadows-of-syria-in-limousins-ghost-village/
There is no question that the oldies are a key part of BT though. I think this is because they remember a time when the UK was a lot more United in the pre-devolution days. At the meeting I was at in Dundee last week Archie MacPherson, the old BBC football commentator was the star turn by a distance.
Pensions have also been an underrated issue in the campaign. The technical problems that would cause enormous problems for private sector pensions now in deficit in Scotland (pretty much all of them) have probably passed them by but the risks of having your pension paid by something you are no longer a part of has not.
There was an excellent debate in Dundee yesterday compered by Victoria Derbyshire which my daughter was at. What I found noticeable watching it (and her) on the I-player last night is that as we come to the crunch all of the issues are fading away somewhat and this is becoming a question of whether you want to be British or simply Scottish.
One of the sources of my nervousness about this is that I am not sure that BT have been positive enough about this throughout the campaign. They have spent their time and energy knocking down the latest gibberish from Salmond and demonstrating its idiocy. In the last 2 weeks they really need to make it clear that we are British and damned proud of it. Archie had no doubt about that and neither do I.
You have to be without heart not to be a bit lefty when you're young and without a mind not to be a righty when you understand the world later in life.
Absolutely Certain to Vote:
16-24: 80
25-39: 79
40-59: 88
60+: 89
Net Would be better off 60+ (OA)
Personally: -40 (-20)
Country: -23 (-9)
Net Trust 60+ (OA)
Salmond: -41 (-23)
Cameron: -31 (-50)
Darling: -6 (-28)
The next few polls should tell us if Yes really has momentum or just a bounce.My feeling is that if there's further movement, however slight, to Yes then they will get a narrow win
The higher the turnout the more important the working-age voters become. Keep your hats on. This is gonna be a heck of a ride.
Yes 11/4 (various)
No 3/10 (various)
I don't think the battle is generational, it's class. The poorer you are the more likely you are to vote yes. The have less skin in the game when it comes to maintaining the status quo
The guesstimates I've seen are around the 10% level, and a significant number of them are Yes voters.
Both against - UK born in yesterday's YouGov 31:69
It's a lot of ground to make up.
The worst possible outcome would be a very narrow result, either way. Can you imagine the problems if we have Florida 2000 style result, with endless court cases and recounts. The danger is both sides could try and create facts on the ground.
imagine, if there was less than 100 votes in it either way.
When you see some of the areas I have been canvassing it is not hard to see why they might want to believe that. This is a painfully unequal country and far too many lives are blighted by poverty, poor living conditions and public sector squalor caused by a combination of a lack of funds and neglect.
It is the height of naivety to believe this would be better in an independent Scotland and a failure of imagination to appreciate that it might in fact get a lot worse as the tax base diminishes and spending cuts are demanded by the markets reluctant to lend to a country without a track record whose leadership talk so glibly of default.
But it is not hard to understand why this snake oil (pun intended) sounds so tempting. (Am I spending too much time with Labour party activists?)
"With the ancient is wisdom; and in length of days understanding".
http://www.indexmundi.com/map/?t=0&v=97&r=eu&l=en
Who next when this bollocks proves wrong
Yes Lead:
M: +4
F: -16
Trust Salmond (net)
M: -6
F: -35
While the poor may feel they have less to lose by change, No must continue with the currency issue. Either of a currency union or sterlingisation means that the rUK would set Scottish interest rates and borrowing, so indirectly all tax and spending limits. Independence can only alter the lives of the poor if there is an independent Scottish pound.
On the 18% non-Scots born: many of these would have been born in rUK of scots parents, and many of the non rUK also. One of the oddities of birth stats is that we have many German and Cypriot born citizens, born to families of Brits serving abroad. One of my own Scottish cousins is of Hong Kong birth, with a sibling born in Derry, for just this reason. The overseas born Scots are a diverse group, and many will have very Scottish roots. Many more would easily pass the Scottish equivalent of Norman Tebbitts cricket test.
They want a change and independence gives them at least a chance of something different, looks like people are going to grasp the nettle and go for HOPE rather than NO hope.
And then the fun would start.
If the slippage has become a slide in the Scottish Labour vote to YES then bye bye 300 year old union.
In the event of a Yes vote, would a (re)Unionist party get off the ground? If so would it get 1% of the vote, or 20%? It could be quite significant if such a party was regionally strong (eg the Borders).
Many of us in England (myself included) feel the same - the mainstream parties have let us down and are letting us down.
Where I differ from you is that I feel it's not necessary to break up our British family in order to do this. They're not listening to the people but there are plenty of other political and voting reforms I'd put first.
This is a strange quality, but once in full flood it can be difficult to make it change direction. Is it with YES in Scotland at the moment - hard to judge as I am not on the ground there.
However, in rUK, there seems to be little doubt that UKIP has seized the momentum - helped greatly by the Rotherham report and ensuing revelations.
This is illustrated by today's YouGov, where the answer to the question of "What is the most important issue facing the country today", Asylum a& Immigration tops the poll with 58% (+2) with the economy on 48% (-2). However, the female support is 63/43 (Immigration/economy) whilst the male is 53/53. Similarly the C2DE support is 64/42 whilst the ABC1 is 54/53. Only Scotland and London do not put Immigration first.
When asked, "What is most important issue facing you and your family today", economy is first 42 (-5) and immigration drops to 4th at 19 (0). It remains first only with UKIPers at 52 whilst they put economy at 33.
Looking at the 2010 splits for September, there are first signs of some of the RedLDs going to UKIP, but need more polls to confirm this trend.
Then it'll be 'But its our pound too!'......or 'The English robbed us of it'........
For someone living in Glasgow, Stirling, Dumfries, Perth, Inverness, Aberdeen, Dundee or Edinburgh, are the decisions affecting your life better taken in Edinburgh by Scots or in London by people who often couldn't care less about Scotland? Very difficult to argue against that line.
The genie is out of the bottle, a majority do not have pensions, savings, mortgages , etc worth caring about and do not feel Better Together , they feel left behind and abandoned as they see these troughers from Westminster lying to them that they care. They have had 60 years to do Better Together and failed miserably.
After YES you will see a similar phenomena in England as people go to UKIP in the hope they are something different from the lying troughers.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scottish-independence/11070471/Scottish-independence-What-will-it-take-to-persuade-Scots-to-say-no.html
Thought therefore needs to be given to the source of the No side’s message, as well as its content – and attention paid to the fact that YouGov’s poll shows that Labour supporters are much more inclined to trust Gordon Brown in the debate about Scotland’s future than they are his successor, David Cameron.
For all that the referendum matters to his political future, the Prime Minister would do better to accept that he should rely on others to fight the battle for him, difficult though that may be for him to do. After all, Labour has just as much to lose as the Prime Minister should Scotland opt to vote Yes.
But clearly belief drives votes more than competence. There's a very good Ted Talk about this. It jokes that Martin Luther King said 'I have a dream' not 'I have a plan'. Electors buy in to conviction. And if you have the gift of the gab then you can built alot of conviction (witness Blair, Obama, etc) no matter how incoherent of incompetent your policies and execution may be.
The YESsers have a dream. They don't have a plan. But they don't care. This is a potentially powerful and dangerous combination for those who vote with their head.
Having listened to people like Castro and the recordings of Hitler, the people often followed the passion more than the facts, but came to rue their choice in the end.
Much has been said of the ensuing poverty due to the benign neglect by Labour in parts of Scotland.
The hymn, "All things Bright & Beautiful" contains a verse that is now usually omitted due to political correctness.
"The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly,
And ordered their estate."
Wherever I have been on this globe and whether the regime is communist, fascist, dictatorship or democracy, the people at the top usually arranged things (to a greater or lesser degree) that they were the rich ones and the rest were the poor. So if Yes or No wins, I would not expect the rich/poor situation to change markedly in Scotland or rUK.
The only people who will move across economic boundaries are those who have the initiative and determination to do so, waiting for any form of government to do it for you is a a very false hope.
If we vote NO it will be for NO HOPE and the cartel will continue on across the whole UK. YES is a very important vote for England's future as well.
Brown: +20
Darling: +13
Miliband: +5
Lamont: +2
Davidson: -19
Cameron: -50
Sturgeon: -65
Salmond: -73
This week day 3 and typically
1) The first test for the national football team under new captain Wayne Rooney- not my nation or my team
2) Free school meals issue for all primary schools- not relevant to Scotland where children don't even attend primary school for the same length of time as in England, 7 years in Scotland.
3) Back to school- well no actually Scots schools went back last month.
4) Hospital parking charges- well no we haven't had them in Scotland for several years
5) London Estuary Airport- little relevance here. Recently on a trip to Inverness to discuss flight connectivity with local business and council leaders, the MD of Heathrow had to fly to Glasgow and then drive to Inverness because there are no flights between Inverness and Heathrow! They were removed several years ago so the slots could be used for USA flights. We can however fly from Inverness to the main airport of 2 other EU members, Dublin and Amsterdam.
I could go on. We simply have very little in common with England any more.
Same applied to the STV debate last night, it gets more apparent every debate.
As we are getting closer people are moving to YES.
Scottish 16-18 year olds are incredibly engaged in the whole IndyRef debate. For me among the most interesting comments about the Salmond v Darling debates came from teenagers who said that if they were representative of the men leading Scottish politics, we would be better off without them and their shouting bad tempered rants.
And that doesn’t send a positive message.
The problem for BT is that lots of comments coming up from England (or perhaps, really London) suggest that life in the UK isn’t good. “People don’t like being in the EU, and that nasty clique in Westminister are stopping us leaving". And so on. Energy firms ripping off customers, Rotherhams, top jobs reserved for an elite, the list at the moment seems endless.
The SNP are offering a way out. Do it ourselves, with our people at the top.
It would tempt me if I were in Scotland. A country where my children and grandchildren could get to the top from an “ordinary background”.
the bulk of your day to day decisions are being taken in Edinburgh and to me at least by politicians who are just as self-serving as those anywhere else.
If you live in the Midlands or Northern England the politicians are just as distant as Scotland but you don't have local respresentation and the celts get to vote on what happens to you.
As for the news well back home in Ulster we have local channels I'm sure you have the same in Scotland so if you want local news try watching them. They'll be full of exciting fare like whingeing politicians, gripping news on bus timetables and farmers who can fart Hip Hop.
London Estuary doesn't have any effect on me but I am interested in what's happening my neighbours. Have Scots become so inward looking that they lost that capacity ? If you've lost interest in your largest trading partner you're kind of screwed already.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scottish-independence/11071210/Gordon-Brown-and-John-Reid-to-lead-Labour-fightback-against-nationalist-surge.html
"They should put oldies down at birth."
The issue of interconnectivity to onward flights is why the 3rd runway at Heathrow/Boris Island discussion is relevant to Scotland. It would still be true of an indy Scotland, but Scots voters could no longer have their MPs agitate for it.
Personally, in the East Midlands I prefer to fly internationally via Schipol as 4 flights a day from Birmingham. The short flight is better than the M25!
Well, well.