How will an independent Scotland defend itself if the Russians decide the North Sea oil platforms are in Russian territorial waters?
Given that in such a scenario the Russians would first have to neutralize a NATO member - Norway - it is a frankly daft question. Mind you you are in good company. A few weeks ago a journalist from the Guardian contacted a Scots colleague of mine to ask if he knew anyone who could advise on the consequences of a Russian attack on an independent Scotland.
It is worth pointing out that Russian military vessels regularly move up and down through the North Sea, happily ignoring any disruption they might cause to oil activity and have in the past shut down helicopter flights by launching fighter aircraft and helicopters from their carriers whilst in the oil fields.
More to the point, how will the Scots keep European fishing boats out of their territorial waters?
LOL. That one really is a laugh given that we have singularly failed to do that ourselves for the last 40 years.
That's as maybe. But Mr Salmond has stated that one of the reasons that Scotland will be allowed into the EU automatically is so that European countries can gain access to fishing grounds. If they can do that anyway, though, because the Scots cannot stop them, that does rather limit Scotland's negotiating position.
William Hill - What Colours Will The Union Flag Be If Scotland Votes Yes To Independence?
Red And White EVS Red White And Blue 11/4 Green Red And White 4/1 Black White And Red 6/1 Blue, Yellow And White 50/1 Orange, White And Red 50/1 Pink Green and Purple 500/1
Surely continuity is the best value. What are the rules?
I agree. There is no need to change except for possibly an offiocial change to the blue colour and width of the white cross.
Given the Union Flag pre-dates the Act of Union, there is no reason for it to change subsequent to independence.
That's a bit disingenuous. The Union Flag was created as part of James VI/I campaign to create an Act of Union between England and Scotland.
Unless England is forever going to pine for recreating the Union with Scotland then we have to move on and change the flag.
I have seen no serious suggestion from the Yes side that they are intending to end the Union of the Crowns. In which case by your own argument there is no need for a change in the flag.
The flag represents the political construct not the monarchical one. That is why it did not include St Patrick's cross before the Act of Union with Ireland in 1801, despite the fact that the Kings of Great Britain had long called themselves the King of Ireland.
Her Majesty will continue to have a Scottish emblem on her Royal Standard to represent the Union of the Crowns but to have the cross of the patron saint of Scotland on the flag of a political Union that no longer included Scotland would be risible.
Berwick is a historically Scottish town that will still be part of the UK. Therefore, in the same way that retaining Ulster lets us keep the Cross of St Patrick, Berwick will let us keep the Cross of St Andrew.
That should satisfy you.
Love it!
Nah.
The whole referendum is a Welsh plot to try and get on the flag in some form.
What kind of result do we all think will no longer be a 'close' result? Surely if it was 55-45 either way that is not that close is it? A 10% gap? Or has all sense of what is a close result been lost?
Someone made a comment about Dundee having a thriving journalism industry that has now gone a day or two ago.
I know that historically the Beano and the Dandy were produced from Dundee, and presumably d.c. thompson published other more serious publications there. Has this all gone now or are they still going up there?
Is this going to be similar to their 2011 'exit poll' which was just a resurvey of the same 3000 people they polled in their last poll before the vote?
Most of my staff have yet to vote but plan to and will predominately vote No. The work rush is the last big unknown. For the Yes side, workers tend to be younger, for the No side, workers tend to be more scared about losing their job and more assets to fall in value if it all goes wrong. Workers are not predominately male. In the public sector 69% are female.
Doesn't take the brains of an archbishop to work out .
Uh-oh. Hope Socrates et.al. aren't around or we could be back to last night's theological seminar.
How will an independent Scotland defend itself if the Russians decide the North Sea oil platforms are in Russian territorial waters?
Given that in such a scenario the Russians would first have to neutralize a NATO member - Norway - it is a frankly daft question. Mind you you are in good company. A few weeks ago a journalist from the Guardian contacted a Scots colleague of mine to ask if he knew anyone who could advise on the consequences of a Russian attack on an independent Scotland.
It is worth pointing out that Russian military vessels regularly move up and down through the North Sea, happily ignoring any disruption they might cause to oil activity and have in the past shut down helicopter flights by launching fighter aircraft and helicopters from their carriers whilst in the oil fields.
More to the point, how will the Scots keep European fishing boats out of their territorial waters?
LOL. That one really is a laugh given that we have singularly failed to do that ourselves for the last 40 years.
Even worse now the Nimrods have gone without any replacement on the horizon AFAIK.
What kind of result do we all think will no longer be a 'close' result? Surely if it was 55-45 either way that is not that close is it? A 10% gap? Or has all sense of what is a close result been lost?
The losers will have it as close, the winners as clear and comfortable. I think anything over a 6 point lead certainly shouldn't be called close.
Someone made a comment about Dundee having a thriving journalism industry that has now gone a day or two ago.
I know that historically the Beano and the Dandy were produced from Dundee, and presumably d.c. thompson published other more serious publications there. Has this all gone now or are they still going up there?
Still there as far as I know. Ironically they bought 'This England' a few years ago and I believe that is published from Dundee although they give Surrey as their registered office. .
I think as ever the hype about the nation being radically changed if there is a no, is overdone. Scotland will get some more powers, not sure how substantial, but what has been promised is far short of what could be considered devo max, they will probably raise less than 40% of their own revenue. England will get EV4EL, probably devolution for some big cities in the longer term. Wales and Northern Ireland will go on as before. The UK in 10 years time will not look much different to today.
How will an independent Scotland defend itself if the Russians decide the North Sea oil platforms are in Russian territorial waters?
Given that in such a scenario the Russians would first have to neutralize a NATO member - Norway - it is a frankly daft question. Mind you you are in good company. A few weeks ago a journalist from the Guardian contacted a Scots colleague of mine to ask if he knew anyone who could advise on the consequences of a Russian attack on an independent Scotland.
It is worth pointing out that Russian military vessels regularly move up and down through the North Sea, happily ignoring any disruption they might cause to oil activity and have in the past shut down helicopter flights by launching fighter aircraft and helicopters from their carriers whilst in the oil fields.
More to the point, how will the Scots keep European fishing boats out of their territorial waters?
LOL. That one really is a laugh given that we have singularly failed to do that ourselves for the last 40 years.
That's as maybe. But Mr Salmond has stated that one of the reasons that Scotland will be allowed into the EU automatically is so that European countries can gain access to fishing grounds. If they can do that anyway, though, because the Scots cannot stop them, that does rather limit Scotland's negotiating position.
Er. No. If Scotland were in the EU then the fishing situation would be exactly as it is now unfortunately. As it is they will almost certainly be able to have a few fisheries protection vessels of their own and given the lack of UK protection they currently 'enjoy' due to cut backs they will probably end up better off than they are now.
In 2011 the Russians anchored up off the Moray Firth. We had to send a ship from Portsmouth to intercept them and the only reason we knew they had turned up there was because the Russians posted the fact on social media.
At least we could send a ship up there to dislodge them. What would Indy-Scotland do? Play the "Complete Speeches of Chairman Alex" on loudspeakers until they left?
The ability to pretend to have power whilst demonstrating you have none is no different whether Scotland is inside or outside the UK. That applies equally to fishing and Soviet incursions.
30 years ago you would probably have had a point. Now it is moot.
Someone made a comment about Dundee having a thriving journalism industry that has now gone a day or two ago.
I know that historically the Beano and the Dandy were produced from Dundee, and presumably d.c. thompson published other more serious publications there. Has this all gone now or are they still going up there?
Still there as far as I know. Ironically they bought 'This England' a few years ago and I believe that is published from Dundee although they give Surrey as their registered office. .
The Dandy closed down a little while ago. A shame.
Yes supporters are saying if the turnout is 85% they should win. It'll be interesting to see whether that conditional proves correct.
Sporting Index suspended their turnout market at 83%/84.5%. Since the direction of travel from the start was upwards, it's safe to assume that a high turnout is bad for them. It's also likely that if they were not afraid of a very high turnout, they would have kept the market open to draw in some low-turnout punters.
I'm beginning to suspect that our previous estimate of 83% may be on the light side.
Btw, who are these 'Yes Supporters' who infer a good result from high turnout? I know Stuart Dickson put this theory forward, but without any supporting evidence. The logic appears questionable to me and I suspect it was just Stuart being Stuart.
Peter the argument is: At normal elections roughly 60% vote. This number includes older people and ABC1 mostly. C2DE rarely vote in large numbers, hence safe Labour seats tend to elect MPs on a much lower vote.
Roughly 200,000 people (almost 5% of the electorate) who have never registered to vote (ignoring the 100,000 16/17yr olds) have registered this time taking the total electorate to 97% or 4.25 million. The vast majority of these newly registered voters will be C2DE including a fair number who didn't vote in the 1980s and early 90s to avoid incurring liability for the poll tax which was largely based on the voters roll.
If turnout is 80+%, the bulk of the extra 20% are people who have never voted before. These people have not been motivated to register to vote to keep the status quo. They are motivated to bring change.
That is why the higher the turnout, the more likely the result will be YES.
Very interesting that the electoral roll in Edinburgh is only estimated at 90% but in Glasgow 97%.
Thats not so daft. World war 2 actually started in the early '30s with more localised regional wars eg Japan invading Manchuria.
Quite so. A pity that Western leaders appear all to be Chamberlain types rather than Churchill/Roosevelt ones.
Pre WW2 leaders were less keen on war, not including Herr Hitler and friends, and wanted to negotiate a peace deal. In part this was from personal experience of an extremely aggressive response to an assassination 25 years previously.
The lesson is not to appease, but also not to destroy the people and fabric of the continent by over reaction either. We should learn from both wars, not just the more recent one.
Do we have any more info on this YouGov "exit" poll that's rumoured to be going on?
Further, was ICM's earlier "we were asked but it's not worth doing it unless it's done properly" a little dig at YouGov for accepting the contract....?
No vote rock solid in Dundee and we are getting more than half the late deciders. We are closing the gap on yes here. Lots of rumours about elsewhere but no hard data.
Thats not so daft. World war 2 actually started in the early '30s with more localised regional wars eg Japan invading Manchuria.
Well, it's certainly true that the series of conflicts that became WWII started in the early '30s, but AJP Taylor makes a good argument for saying that WWII itself didn't start until 1941, with the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour [or the American oil blockade earlier in the year].
So it sort of depends on your view of definitions, really, a bit like this discussion we've had about the Union Flag... [which I'll leave now, but thanks for your opinions, gives me a bit to think about]
How will an independent Scotland defend itself if the Russians decide the North Sea oil platforms are in Russian territorial waters?
Given that in such a scenario the Russians would first have to neutralize a NATO member - Norway - it is a frankly daft question. Mind you you are in good company. A few weeks ago a journalist from the Guardian contacted a Scots colleague of mine to ask if he knew anyone who could advise on the consequences of a Russian attack on an independent Scotland.
It is worth pointing out that Russian military vessels regularly move up and down through the North Sea, happily ignoring any disruption they might cause to oil activity and have in the past shut down helicopter flights by launching fighter aircraft and helicopters from their carriers whilst in the oil fields.
More to the point, how will the Scots keep European fishing boats out of their territorial waters?
LOL. That one really is a laugh given that we have singularly failed to do that ourselves for the last 40 years.
That's as maybe. But Mr Salmond has stated that one of the reasons that Scotland will be allowed into the EU automatically is so that European countries can gain access to fishing grounds. If they can do that anyway, though, because the Scots cannot stop them, that does rather limit Scotland's negotiating position.
Er. No. If Scotland were in the EU then the fishing situation would be exactly as it is now unfortunately. As it is they will almost certainly be able to have a few fisheries protection vessels of their own and given the lack of UK protection they currently 'enjoy' due to cut backs they will probably end up better off than they are now.
Well, we'll find out soon enough. I am not sure additional spending on fishery protection vessels has yet been promised by the SNP, but I am sure it will be if someone asks. Of course, if a Scotland outside the EU does somehow manage to block boats from accessing its fishing waters, the obvious response from EU member states will be to make the price of fish caught by Scottish fishermen unaffordable
Yes supporters are saying if the turnout is 85% they should win. It'll be interesting to see whether that conditional proves correct.
Sporting Index suspended their turnout market at 83%/84.5%. Since the direction of travel from the start was upwards, it's safe to assume that a high turnout is bad for them. It's also likely that if they were not afraid of a very high turnout, they would have kept the market open to draw in some low-turnout punters.
I'm beginning to suspect that our previous estimate of 83% may be on the light side.
Btw, who are these 'Yes Supporters' who infer a good result from high turnout? I know Stuart Dickson put this theory forward, but without any supporting evidence. The logic appears questionable to me and I suspect it was just Stuart being Stuart.
Peter the argument is: At normal elections roughly 60% vote. This number includes older people and ABC1 mostly. C2DE rarely vote in large numbers, hence safe Labour seats tend to elect MPs on a much lower vote.
Roughly 200,000 people (almost 5% of the electorate) who have never registered to vote (ignoring the 100,000 16/17yr olds) have registered this time taking the total electorate to 97% or 4.25 million. The vast majority of these newly registered voters will be C2DE including a fair number who didn't vote in the 1980s and early 90s to avoid incurring liability for the poll tax which was largely based on the voters roll.
If turnout is 80+%, the bulk of the extra 20% are people who have never voted before. These people have not been motivated to register to vote to keep the status quo. They are motivated to bring change.
That is why the higher the turnout, the more likely the result will be YES.
Very interesting that the electoral roll in Edinburgh is only estimated at 90% but in Glasgow 97%.
Thanks Easterross for explaining the logic.
I'm not sure it's without flaws, but if it is, Yes is home and hosed.
Yes supporters are saying if the turnout is 85% they should win. It'll be interesting to see whether that conditional proves correct.
Sporting Index suspended their turnout market at 83%/84.5%. Since the direction of travel from the start was upwards, it's safe to assume that a high turnout is bad for them. It's also likely that if they were not afraid of a very high turnout, they would have kept the market open to draw in some low-turnout punters.
I'm beginning to suspect that our previous estimate of 83% may be on the light side.
Btw, who are these 'Yes Supporters' who infer a good result from high turnout? I know Stuart Dickson put this theory forward, but without any supporting evidence. The logic appears questionable to me and I suspect it was just Stuart being Stuart.
Peter the argument is: At normal elections roughly 60% vote. This number includes older people and ABC1 mostly. C2DE rarely vote in large numbers, hence safe Labour seats tend to elect MPs on a much lower vote.
Roughly 200,000 people (almost 5% of the electorate) who have never registered to vote (ignoring the 100,000 16/17yr olds) have registered this time taking the total electorate to 97% or 4.25 million. The vast majority of these newly registered voters will be C2DE including a fair number who didn't vote in the 1980s and early 90s to avoid incurring liability for the poll tax which was largely based on the voters roll.
If turnout is 80+%, the bulk of the extra 20% are people who have never voted before. These people have not been motivated to register to vote to keep the status quo. They are motivated to bring change.
That is why the higher the turnout, the more likely the result will be YES.
Very interesting that the electoral roll in Edinburgh is only estimated at 90% but in Glasgow 97%.
And it's quite possible that these new voters have completely slipped under the pollsters radar.
How will an independent Scotland defend itself if the Russians decide the North Sea oil platforms are in Russian territorial waters?
Given that in such a scenario the Russians would first have to neutralize a NATO member - Norway - it is a frankly daft question. Mind you you are in good company. A few weeks ago a journalist from the Guardian contacted a Scots colleague of mine to ask if he knew anyone who could advise on the consequences of a Russian attack on an independent Scotland.
It is worth pointing out that Russian military vessels regularly move up and down through the North Sea, happily ignoring any disruption they might cause to oil activity and have in the past shut down helicopter flights by launching fighter aircraft and helicopters from their carriers whilst in the oil fields.
More to the point, how will the Scots keep European fishing boats out of their territorial waters?
LOL. That one really is a laugh given that we have singularly failed to do that ourselves for the last 40 years.
That's as maybe. But Mr Salmond has stated that one of the reasons that Scotland will be allowed into the EU automatically is so that European countries can gain access to fishing grounds. If they can do that anyway, though, because the Scots cannot stop them, that does rather limit Scotland's negotiating position.
Er. No. If Scotland were in the EU then the fishing situation would be exactly as it is now unfortunately. As it is they will almost certainly be able to have a few fisheries protection vessels of their own and given the lack of UK protection they currently 'enjoy' due to cut backs they will probably end up better off than they are now.
Well, we'll find out soon enough. I am not sure additional spending on fishery protection vessels has yet been promised by the SNP, but I am sure it will be if someone asks. Of course, if a Scotland outside the EU does somehow manage to block boats from accessing its fishing waters, the obvious response from EU member states will be to make the price of fish caught by Scottish fishermen unaffordable
Yep and that is bound to work with England who will be falling over themselves to impose EU sanctions on their neighbour... or not.
It's the No side that seem to be posting more optimistically on various boards, social media etc. But that could just be because the Yes activists are out actually getting out the vote...
Yes supporters are saying if the turnout is 85% they should win. It'll be interesting to see whether that conditional proves correct.
Sporting Index suspended their turnout market at 83%/84.5%. Since the direction of travel from the start was upwards, it's safe to assume that a high turnout is bad for them. It's also likely that if they were not afraid of a very high turnout, they would have kept the market open to draw in some low-turnout punters.
I'm beginning to suspect that our previous estimate of 83% may be on the light side.
Btw, who are these 'Yes Supporters' who infer a good result from high turnout? I know Stuart Dickson put this theory forward, but without any supporting evidence. The logic appears questionable to me and I suspect it was just Stuart being Stuart.
Peter the argument is: At normal elections roughly 60% vote. This number includes older people and ABC1 mostly. C2DE rarely vote in large numbers, hence safe Labour seats tend to elect MPs on a much lower vote.
Roughly 200,000 people (almost 5% of the electorate) who have never registered to vote (ignoring the 100,000 16/17yr olds) have registered this time taking the total electorate to 97% or 4.25 million. The vast majority of these newly registered voters will be C2DE including a fair number who didn't vote in the 1980s and early 90s to avoid incurring liability for the poll tax which was largely based on the voters roll.
If turnout is 80+%, the bulk of the extra 20% are people who have never voted before. These people have not been motivated to register to vote to keep the status quo. They are motivated to bring change.
That is why the higher the turnout, the more likely the result will be YES.
Very interesting that the electoral roll in Edinburgh is only estimated at 90% but in Glasgow 97%.
Thanks Easterross for explaining the logic.
I'm not sure it's without flaws, but if it is, Yes is home and hosed.
Indicators are that turnout is high - but the yes price is drifting.
The high turnout = good for yes doesn't seem to be universally accepted.
Yes supporters are saying if the turnout is 85% they should win. It'll be interesting to see whether that conditional proves correct.
Sporting Index suspended their turnout market at 83%/84.5%. Since the direction of travel from the start was upwards, it's safe to assume that a high turnout is bad for them. It's also likely that if they were not afraid of a very high turnout, they would have kept the market open to draw in some low-turnout punters.
I'm beginning to suspect that our previous estimate of 83% may be on the light side.
Btw, who are these 'Yes Supporters' who infer a good result from high turnout? I know Stuart Dickson put this theory forward, but without any supporting evidence. The logic appears questionable to me and I suspect it was just Stuart being Stuart.
Peter the argument is: At normal elections roughly 60% vote. This number includes older people and ABC1 mostly. C2DE rarely vote in large numbers, hence safe Labour seats tend to elect MPs on a much lower vote.
Roughly 200,000 people (almost 5% of the electorate) who have never registered to vote (ignoring the 100,000 16/17yr olds) have registered this time taking the total electorate to 97% or 4.25 million. The vast majority of these newly registered voters will be C2DE including a fair number who didn't vote in the 1980s and early 90s to avoid incurring liability for the poll tax which was largely based on the voters roll.
If turnout is 80+%, the bulk of the extra 20% are people who have never voted before. These people have not been motivated to register to vote to keep the status quo. They are motivated to bring change.
That is why the higher the turnout, the more likely the result will be YES.
Very interesting that the electoral roll in Edinburgh is only estimated at 90% but in Glasgow 97%.
Thanks Easterross for explaining the logic.
I'm not sure it's without flaws, but if it is, Yes is home and hosed.
Indicators are that turnout is high - but the yes price is drifting.
The high turnout = good for yes doesn't seem to be universally accepted.
By Tory Cityboy schmucks with more money than brains....
It's the No side that seem to be posting more optimistically on various boards, social media etc. But that could just be because the Yes activists are out actually getting out the vote...
And how much is that is due to the elderly vote (who disproportionately vote before 5pm, and are more likely to be No)
If we're in the business of rumours, they're saying Muirhouse in Edinburgh, a pretty run-down area, had already surpassed its turnout for the entire 2010 General Election - 30% today against 25% then.
Yes supporters are saying if the turnout is 85% they should win. It'll be interesting to see whether that conditional proves correct.
Sporting Index suspended their turnout market at 83%/84.5%. Since the direction of travel from the start was upwards, it's safe to assume that a high turnout is bad for them. It's also likely that if they were not afraid of a very high turnout, they would have kept the market open to draw in some low-turnout punters.
I'm beginning to suspect that our previous estimate of 83% may be on the light side.
Btw, who are these 'Yes Supporters' who infer a good result from high turnout? I know Stuart Dickson put this theory forward, but without any supporting evidence. The logic appears questionable to me and I suspect it was just Stuart being Stuart.
Peter the argument is: At normal elections roughly 60% vote. This number includes older people and ABC1 mostly. C2DE rarely vote in large numbers, hence safe Labour seats tend to elect MPs on a much lower vote.
Roughly 200,000 people (almost 5% of the electorate) who have never registered to vote (ignoring the 100,000 16/17yr olds) have registered this time taking the total electorate to 97% or 4.25 million. The vast majority of these newly registered voters will be C2DE including a fair number who didn't vote in the 1980s and early 90s to avoid incurring liability for the poll tax which was largely based on the voters roll.
If turnout is 80+%, the bulk of the extra 20% are people who have never voted before. These people have not been motivated to register to vote to keep the status quo. They are motivated to bring change.
That is why the higher the turnout, the more likely the result will be YES.
Very interesting that the electoral roll in Edinburgh is only estimated at 90% but in Glasgow 97%.
Not necessarily. The baseline should be the recent polls which gave ~52% NO. Their sample was weighted by demographic group. Their sample self-reported a 90%+ likely turnout.
The risk, however, is that the poll's samples weren't representative of actual voters i.e. missing / under-representing groups likely to vote YES. This is entirely possible and indeed I suspect the YES odds are much too high. But high turnout doesn't make this any more likely.
Yes supporters are saying if the turnout is 85% they should win. It'll be interesting to see whether that conditional proves correct.
Sporting Index suspended their turnout market at 83%/84.5%. Since the direction of travel from the start was upwards, it's safe to assume that a high turnout is bad for them. It's also likely that if they were not afraid of a very high turnout, they would have kept the market open to draw in some low-turnout punters.
I'm beginning to suspect that our previous estimate of 83% may be on the light side.
Btw, who are these 'Yes Supporters' who infer a good result from high turnout? I know Stuart Dickson put this theory forward, but without any supporting evidence. The logic appears questionable to me and I suspect it was just Stuart being Stuart.
Peter the argument is: At normal elections roughly 60% vote. This number includes older people and ABC1 mostly. C2DE rarely vote in large numbers, hence safe Labour seats tend to elect MPs on a much lower vote.
Roughly 200,000 people (almost 5% of the electorate) who have never registered to vote (ignoring the 100,000 16/17yr olds) have registered this time taking the total electorate to 97% or 4.25 million. The vast majority of these newly registered voters will be C2DE including a fair number who didn't vote in the 1980s and early 90s to avoid incurring liability for the poll tax which was largely based on the voters roll.
If turnout is 80+%, the bulk of the extra 20% are people who have never voted before. These people have not been motivated to register to vote to keep the status quo. They are motivated to bring change.
That is why the higher the turnout, the more likely the result will be YES.
Very interesting that the electoral roll in Edinburgh is only estimated at 90% but in Glasgow 97%.
Thanks Easterross for explaining the logic.
I'm not sure it's without flaws, but if it is, Yes is home and hosed.
Indicators are that turnout is high - but the yes price is drifting.
The high turnout = good for yes doesn't seem to be universally accepted.
By Tory Cityboy schmucks with more money than brains....
Well that will be easy to confirm or disprove at 9 am tomorrow .
Thats not so daft. World war 2 actually started in the early '30s with more localised regional wars eg Japan invading Manchuria.
Quite so. A pity that Western leaders appear all to be Chamberlain types rather than Churchill/Roosevelt ones.
Pre WW2 leaders were less keen on war, not including Herr Hitler and friends, and wanted to negotiate a peace deal. In part this was from personal experience of an extremely aggressive response to an assassination 25 years previously.
The lesson is not to appease, but also not to destroy the people and fabric of the continent by over reaction either. We should learn from both wars, not just the more recent one.
Indeed: it has been credibly argued that Chamberlain did what he did in 1938 in order to buy time for the rearming that was by then taking place.
I am not gung ho for war but I do think that we need leaders who have a clear understanding of the threats we face. Once they have that they can then more clearly determine how best to deal with them. Overreaction is not a good answer, I quite agree.
I don't think that we do have leaders who have such a clear understanding and because of that I think we are more likely to do nothing when something is needed or overreact too late. Obama is a bit of an empty suit as far as I'm concerned.
Well, the punters say it's a No and the money men agree.
FTSE up half a percent on the day.
The £ trading a cent higher.
I guess that's it. Welcome back Jockland.
Yes. And they are being overly optimistic of the chances of a NO. I suspect the implicit likelihood of YES is even lower than on BetFair. ...which suggests the best way to bet on YES is to take a short GBP position - a NO may well mean no real change, while a YES has to drive a big fall...
Yes supporters are saying if the turnout is 85% they should win. It'll be interesting to see whether that conditional proves correct.
Sporting Index suspended their turnout market at 83%/84.5%. Since the direction of travel from the start was upwards, it's safe to assume that a high turnout is bad for them. It's also likely that if they were not afraid of a very high turnout, they would have kept the market open to draw in some low-turnout punters.
I'm beginning to suspect that our previous estimate of 83% may be on the light side.
Btw, who are these 'Yes Supporters' who infer a good result from high turnout? I know Stuart Dickson put this theory forward, but without any supporting evidence. The logic appears questionable to me and I suspect it was just Stuart being Stuart.
Peter the argument is: At normal elections roughly 60% vote. This number includes older people and ABC1 mostly. C2DE rarely vote in large numbers, hence safe Labour seats tend to elect MPs on a much lower vote.
Roughly 200,000 people (almost 5% of the electorate) who have never registered to vote (ignoring the 100,000 16/17yr olds) have registered this time taking the total electorate to 97% or 4.25 million. The vast majority of these newly registered voters will be C2DE including a fair number who didn't vote in the 1980s and early 90s to avoid incurring liability for the poll tax which was largely based on the voters roll.
If turnout is 80+%, the bulk of the extra 20% are people who have never voted before. These people have not been motivated to register to vote to keep the status quo. They are motivated to bring change.
That is why the higher the turnout, the more likely the result will be YES.
Very interesting that the electoral roll in Edinburgh is only estimated at 90% but in Glasgow 97%.
Thanks Easterross for explaining the logic.
I'm not sure it's without flaws, but if it is, Yes is home and hosed.
Indicators are that turnout is high - but the yes price is drifting.
The high turnout = good for yes doesn't seem to be universally accepted.
Maybe so, although I'd be interested as to their reasoning - high turnout favouring Yes seems to be a very strong argument and hard to rebut.
It's going to be a rough day and a bit - due to illness only had about 3 hours sleep last night, and now I'm supposed to sleep until 5am or so? Not likely.
No vote rock solid in Dundee and we are getting more than half the late deciders. We are closing the gap on yes here. Lots of rumours about elsewhere but no hard data.
Do you think Yes are still favourites to win in Dundee?
Yes supporters are saying if the turnout is 85% they should win. It'll be interesting to see whether that conditional proves correct.
Sporting Index suspended their turnout market at 83%/84.5%. Since the direction of travel from the start was upwards, it's safe to assume that a high turnout is bad for them. It's also likely that if they were not afraid of a very high turnout, they would have kept the market open to draw in some low-turnout punters.
I'm beginning to suspect that our previous estimate of 83% may be on the light side.
Btw, who are these 'Yes Supporters' who infer a good result from high turnout? I know Stuart Dickson put this theory forward, but without any supporting evidence. The logic appears questionable to me and I suspect it was just Stuart being Stuart.
Peter the argument is: At normal elections roughly 60% vote. This number includes older people and ABC1 mostly. C2DE rarely vote in large numbers, hence safe Labour seats tend to elect MPs on a much lower vote.
Roughly 200,000 people (almost 5% of the electorate) who have never registered to vote (ignoring the 100,000 16/17yr olds) have registered this time taking the total electorate to 97% or 4.25 million. The vast majority of these newly registered voters will be C2DE including a fair number who didn't vote in the 1980s and early 90s to avoid incurring liability for the poll tax which was largely based on the voters roll.
If turnout is 80+%, the bulk of the extra 20% are people who have never voted before. These people have not been motivated to register to vote to keep the status quo. They are motivated to bring change.
That is why the higher the turnout, the more likely the result will be YES.
Very interesting that the electoral roll in Edinburgh is only estimated at 90% but in Glasgow 97%.
Not necessarily. The baseline should be the recent polls which gave ~52% NO. Their sample was weighted by demographic group. Their sample self-reported a 90%+ likely turnout.
The risk, however, is that the poll's samples weren't representative of actual voters i.e. missing / under-representing groups likely to vote YES. This is entirely possible and indeed I suspect the YES odds are much too high. But high turnout doesn't make this any more likely.
But IIRC those polls showed YES supporters had a higher certainty to vote than no.
So would not a low turn out favour YES ?
Or do all turnouts favour YES ? (turning into malc here..)
Do the Americans or anybody else celebrate "Separatism Day" and would they not be legitimately offended if you thus refered to it?
You KNOW it is pejorative, that is why it is used :-)
If I were you, I'd just be happy that "Yes" (note the speechmarks) have been allowed to manipulate the entire terminology of the debate to suit their side. There is nothing independent about a state that cedes legal supremacy to the EU; it is an utter abuse of the term. Then there's the response to the question, which could have been -"Do you wish Scotland to remain within The United Kingdom 'Yes' or 'No'" -then the unionists could have been the ones moaning about 'negative campaigning'.
How will an independent Scotland defend itself if the Russians decide the North Sea oil platforms are in Russian territorial waters?
How would the UK as it exists today? The RN is not actually over endowed with deployable assets and has a very limited anti-surface warfare capability and I think that the RAF no longer has any anti-ship capability at all.
Indicators are that turnout is high - but the yes price is drifting.
The high turnout = good for yes doesn't seem to be universally accepted.
One thing it should do is make polling more accurate.
On the other hand, if the weighting systems used are formulated for lower turnout, pollsters could have been weighting away accuracy in the event of high turnout.
How will an independent Scotland defend itself if the Russians decide the North Sea oil platforms are in Russian territorial waters?
How would the UK as it exists today? The RN is not actually over endowed with deployable assets and has a very limited anti-surface warfare capability and I think that the RAF no longer has any anti-ship capability at all.
Really?
I don't think they are a credible threat. Putin only has a single aircraft carrier iirc.
UK does have anti-surface capability from surface and air according to Prof Wiki, never mind those hunter-killer subs.
Mr Salmond would shout at them through a toilet roll from a pedalo, and they would have no choice other than to obey because he would be Imperator Scotus Maximus, just as Germany, Spain, France, Italy and the rest of the EU will obe him, and the UK will give him CU because he says so.
Matt
Sorry, Mr. W.. I have obviously missed something what anti-shipping capability does the RAF, have? For that matter what the Fleet Air arm have? A few but not all RN ships have Harpoon missiles (1970s stuff) and of course a gun of at best middling calibre. Aside from the very, very good submarines (of which we might have four or five ready for deployment at anyone one time), the RN looks a bit thin for fighting off a battlegroup from another fairly modern navy.
In fact I really did laugh when a few months ago a RN destroyer, a Type 45 no less and a billion quid ago, was sent to escort a Russian battlegroup through the Channel. Offensive capability of the RN escort one 4.5 inch gun.
Talking of the Labour Party conference - if tonight's result is No, will Miliband push Gordon Brown front and centre next week as the former PM is now seen as something of a oratorial and tactical colossus?
Yes please! I want Miliband and Brown all over the telly in May. :-)
Do you think the Tories will have selected a new permanent leader by then, or will they go for a caretaker?
If it's a YES I think Dave is indeed likely to be toast. Hague steps in as PM on acting basis while Tories elect new leader / PM (at least until May). If it's a NO Dave survives - until the issue of Barnett / EVFEL / WLQ and Dave's reluctance to do the right thing causes some sort of rupture with his party and he's ejected. Then it's Hague etc as above. If it's a NO and Dave drafts legislation to give Scotland Devomax / Barnett unchanged but also builds WLQ / EVFEL / FUK resolution into the legislation he puts himself back in the party's good books for shafting Labour and doing the right thing for the English -and survives altogether.
So...I think Dave's survival now depends wholly on what he does for England. Not what he does for Scotland.
I agree Cameron should be toast if he loses the referendum. However, the only thing I think he will doin the event of a no vote is say he's going to put X into the Tory manifesto for England.
He has no majority in Westminster to give England anything and only if the Libdems back him and why would they could he force changes through (assuming Labour would oppose any solution to the political aspects of the English Question).
There is also not time in the 8 months to the election to adequately address the English Question. There is not time in just 8 months to adequately address devomax either and if they do it will be a total dog's dinner just as the original devolution bill was.
EIther way though he's screwed because Barnett is the deal breaker. He cannot defend people losing their benefits, being fed from Foodbanks, not receiving the necessary but expensive treatment purely so Fred Goodwin can get free prescriptions and JK Rowling or any Brussels bureaucrat can send their kid to University in Scotland for free when Engllsh kids have to pay.
He might of got away with some sort of fudge of the political aspects such as EVfEL (even though it unravels in seconds once you consider how resources are allocated to specific devolved areas) if not for the economic implications of Barnett. Now he's made jointly that most rash and premature of knee-jerk commitments to Scotland he's going to get hammered whatever.
Given there is some talk every now and then of moving a bank holiday to the autumn, should No win (which I will continue to doubt until about 2 weeks after the vote, that's how pessimistic I am), has anyone suggested turning 18 Sept into Union Day, or 19 Sept perhaps? It would not be celebrated of course, like most other public holidays, but a nice gesture perhaps.
It's the No side that seem to be posting more optimistically on various boards, social media etc. But that could just be because the Yes activists are out actually getting out the vote...
Thats not so daft. World war 2 actually started in the early '30s with more localised regional wars eg Japan invading Manchuria.
Quite so. A pity that Western leaders appear all to be Chamberlain types rather than Churchill/Roosevelt ones.
Pre WW2 leaders were less keen on war, not including Herr Hitler and friends, and wanted to negotiate a peace deal. In part this was from personal experience of an extremely aggressive response to an assassination 25 years previously.
The lesson is not to appease, but also not to destroy the people and fabric of the continent by over reaction either. We should learn from both wars, not just the more recent one.
Yes, what roaring successes both wars were, millions dead and loaded with debt. Those recent wars in the Middle East and the Balkans sure panned out too. It shame so few of our current leaders have experienced the horror of war.
The real lesson of both wars is to ensure people have the right to self determination, be they Serbs, Slovaks or Germans. Europe has largely been at peace as we finally have borders that make sense and the empire's are gone.
In the event of a draw in the referendum, does the status quo prevail as at Westminster?
What is the probability of a draw?
If the probabability of a voter voting YES or NO is exactly equal (0.5), the probability of a tie is SQRT(2/(PI*N)). With about 3.5 million voting, this gives a probability of about 0.04%.
However, if the probability of a voter voting YES is only fractionally greater (or lesser) than 0.5, the probability of a tie becomes infinitesimal, of the order of winning the lottery many times in a row...
A tense time. I have money on 'Yes', but am beginning to think that this is one bet I'd be willing to lose to avoid the chaos. On the other hand gives more chance of my Hague for PM outside bet.
"Or do all turnouts favour YES ? (turning into malc here..) "
No. The Stuart Dickson thesis was clear. The higher the turnout the more likely a Yes vote. I cannot recall the exact figures he gave but I think it was something to the effect that >80% and a Yes vote was likely, >85% and it was a certainty.
This must be karma - on the day of the Scottish independence vote my Scottish wife got a letter from USCIS telling her that she will become a US Citizen next Monday.
Thats not so daft. World war 2 actually started in the early '30s with more localised regional wars eg Japan invading Manchuria.
Quite so. A pity that Western leaders appear all to be Chamberlain types rather than Churchill/Roosevelt ones.
Pre WW2 leaders were less keen on war, not including Herr Hitler and friends, and wanted to negotiate a peace deal. In part this was from personal experience of an extremely aggressive response to an assassination 25 years previously.
The lesson is not to appease, but also not to destroy the people and fabric of the continent by over reaction either. We should learn from both wars, not just the more recent one.
Yes, what roaring successes both wars were, millions dead and loaded with debt. Those recent wars in the Middle East and the Balkans sure panned out too. It shame so few of our current leaders have experienced the horror of war.
The real lesson of both wars is to ensure people have the right to self determination, be they Serbs, Slovaks or Germans. Europe has largely been at peace as we finally have borders that make sense and the empire's are gone.
We entered the second world war because Germany had invaded non-German Czechoslovakia and Poland. We entered the first world war because Germany had invaded non-German Belgium to dominate non-German France after Austria-Hungary tried to establish non-German Serbia as an unofficial electorate. We were entirely right both times.
Given there is some talk every now and then of moving a bank holiday to the autumn, should No win (which I will continue to doubt until about 2 weeks after the vote, that's how pessimistic I am), has anyone suggested turning 18 Sept into Union Day, or 19 Sept perhaps? It would not be celebrated of course, like most other public holidays, but a nice gesture perhaps.
Not necessarily. The baseline should be the recent polls which gave ~52% NO. Their sample was weighted by demographic group. Their sample self-reported a 90%+ likely turnout.
The risk, however, is that the poll's samples weren't representative of actual voters i.e. missing / under-representing groups likely to vote YES. This is entirely possible and indeed I suspect the YES odds are much too high. But high turnout doesn't make this any more likely.
But IIRC those polls showed YES supporters had a higher certainty to vote than no.
So would not a low turn out favour YES ?
Or do all turnouts favour YES ? (turning into malc here..)
I don't think turnout will be predictive of the result.
If, say, the final polls had self-reported, say, 75% likely turnout, then an actual, say, 85% turnout would warrant adjustment. It would argue that the polls had mis-weighted the population & the outcome may be different to that predicted.
But this just isn't true. As of now, turnout seems likely to be very high, but this is entirely consistent with the final polls. Hence turnout isn't a reason to think they are wrong.
Other issues may be, however. Again, I think the odds on YES are too high...
Yes supporters are saying if the turnout is 85% they should win. It'll be interesting to see whether that conditional proves correct.
Sporting Index suspended their turnout market at 83%/84.5%. Since the direction of travel from the start was upwards, it's safe to assume that a high turnout is bad for them. It's also likely that if they were not afraid of a very high turnout, they would have kept the market open to draw in some low-turnout punters.
I'm beginning to suspect that our previous estimate of 83% may be on the light side.
Btw, who are these 'Yes Supporters' who infer a good result from high turnout? I know Stuart Dickson put this theory forward, but without any supporting evidence. The logic appears questionable to me and I suspect it was just Stuart being Stuart.
Peter the argument is: At normal elections roughly 60% vote. This number includes older people and ABC1 mostly. C2DE rarely vote in large numbers, hence safe Labour seats tend to elect MPs on a much lower vote.
Roughly 200,000 people (almost 5% of the electorate) who have never registered to vote (ignoring the 100,000 16/17yr olds) have registered this time taking the total electorate to 97% or 4.25 million. The vast majority of these newly registered voters will be C2DE including a fair number who didn't vote in the 1980s and early 90s to avoid incurring liability for the poll tax which was largely based on the voters roll.
If turnout is 80+%, the bulk of the extra 20% are people who have never voted before. These people have not been motivated to register to vote to keep the status quo. They are motivated to bring change.
That is why the higher the turnout, the more likely the result will be YES.
Very interesting that the electoral roll in Edinburgh is only estimated at 90% but in Glasgow 97%.
And it's quite possible that these new voters have completely slipped under the pollsters radar.
How will an independent Scotland defend itself if the Russians decide the North Sea oil platforms are in Russian territorial waters?
Given that in such a scenario the Russians would first have to neutralize a NATO member - Norway - it is a frankly daft question. Mind you you are in good company. A few weeks ago a journalist from the Guardian contacted a Scots colleague of mine to ask if he knew anyone who could advise on the consequences of a Russian attack on an independent Scotland.
It is worth pointing out that Russian military vessels regularly move up and down through the North Sea, happily ignoring any disruption they might cause to oil activity and have in the past shut down helicopter flights by launching fighter aircraft and helicopters from their carriers whilst in the oil fields.
How the Russians choose to operate their aircraft would appear to be no different to any other carrier operating navy.
As for your comments about social media and ships moored in the Moray Firth during a storm, the Russian ships movements were known in advance, and they had been tracked upon leaving port. Try not to over dramatise. It's a minor miracle that ship even made it back to port - it's a floating scrap heap.
Totally O/T but thee Yorkshire Cricket Captain seems to be being done for racial abuse of an opponent. Apparently he called said opponent a "Kolpack".
No other abusive words appear to have been used. Is that really "racist" abuse?
It seems a very strict interpretation, clearly. I would imagine their reasoning is it could be used as a generic term for a foreign person, but it's incredibly strict.
I think people are overstating this pledge by Cam/Mili/Clegg.
There is no proposal to devolve VAT, NI, Corporation Tax, CGT, Inheritance Tax.
They are only talking about Income Tax and here, Miliband is only offering the ability to vary it.
It's actually far, far more Mickey Mouse than people realise.
It's not going to cost England anything.
That's even worse then, as England will be up in arms about what they think is being given, and the Scots will be up in arms about not getting as much as they think was promises, and indeed what English people are saying was promised.
No. The Stuart Dickson thesis was clear. The higher the turnout the more likely a Yes vote. I cannot recall the exact figures he gave but I think it was something to the effect that >80% and a Yes vote was likely, >85% and it was a certainty.
Obviously if turnout is higher in some areas than others that messes things up.
Thats not so daft. World war 2 actually started in the early '30s with more localised regional wars eg Japan invading Manchuria.
Quite so. A pity that Western leaders appear all to be Chamberlain types rather than Churchill/Roosevelt ones.
Pre WW2 leaders were less keen on war, not including Herr Hitler and friends, and wanted to negotiate a peace deal. In part this was from personal experience of an extremely aggressive response to an assassination 25 years previously.
The lesson is not to appease, but also not to destroy the people and fabric of the continent by over reaction either. We should learn from both wars, not just the more recent one.
Yes, what roaring successes both wars were, millions dead and loaded with debt. Those recent wars in the Middle East and the Balkans sure panned out too. It shame so few of our current leaders have experienced the horror of war.
The real lesson of both wars is to ensure people have the right to self determination, be they Serbs, Slovaks or Germans. Europe has largely been at peace as we finally have borders that make sense and the empire's are gone.
We entered the second world war because Germany had invaded non-German Czechoslovakia and Poland. We entered the first world war because Germany had invaded non-German Belgium to dominate non-German France after Austria-Hungary tried to establish non-German Serbia as an unofficial electorate. We were entirely right both times.
But in the First World War, we lost our status as leading world economy and lender of last resort, handing it over to America, whose insular 'beggar thy neighbour' economic policies, contrasting with Britain's relatively skilfull handling of the world economy, turned the 20th century into the economically devastating and conflict ridden disaster that it became. It was also the birth of the USSR. Unless you look after yourself first, you're not in a position to help anyone else. 'Rightness' in this case may have given us a warm glow, but it was of little help to the world in the longer run.
Indicators are that turnout is high - but the yes price is drifting.
The high turnout = good for yes doesn't seem to be universally accepted.
One thing it should do is make polling more accurate.
On the other hand, if the weighting systems used are formulated for lower turnout, pollsters could have been weighting away accuracy in the event of high turnout.
That's not how the weighting works - they should adjust flawlessly to the change in turnout.
The issue is more about whether the people they sample are properly representative.
Let's suppose for a moment that they don't normally reach a subset of the population that is poorer than average and normally very unlikely to vote. This doesn't normally matter, because these people don't normally vote, and so the GE polls are reasonably accurate. It would matter now if these people really do vote and they aren't being sampled by the opinion polls.
If we look at - for example - the YouGov weighting data then we can see that YouGov didn't poll enough young, C2DEs, who read a tabloid and don't identify with a political party or normally vote. So they upweight the responses they do have, which is fine if the people in that demographic group that they talked to are representative of the people they didn't.
They might be and they might not be. You might call it a known unknown.
It's not that the weightings are wrong, it's that if your sample is missing bits of the population who vote differently to the bits you do have in your sample then no amount of weighting will correct it.
This must be karma - on the day of the Scottish independence vote my Scottish wife got a letter from USCIS telling her that she will become a US Citizen next Monday.
So it's an omen that Scottish people in general are about to go through a change in their official nationality? Damn. Congrats though - is it really hard to gain citizenship over there?
After a long lunch back for the evening shift. So far in this Aberdeen polling station about 45% have voted so far. Interesting that that the old are clearly for NO whereas younger men are mainly YES though we haven't seen many yet.
Comments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._C._Thomson_&_Co.#The_company
http://www.torquayheraldexpress.co.uk/Krankies-think-fan-dabi-dozi-Scotland-stays-UK/story-22946822-detail/story.html
Completely O/T. Are any bookies offering a market on Jens Voigt's hour record attempt which kicks off in just over an hour?
30 years ago you would probably have had a point. Now it is moot.
At normal elections roughly 60% vote. This number includes older people and ABC1 mostly. C2DE rarely vote in large numbers, hence safe Labour seats tend to elect MPs on a much lower vote.
Roughly 200,000 people (almost 5% of the electorate) who have never registered to vote (ignoring the 100,000 16/17yr olds) have registered this time taking the total electorate to 97% or 4.25 million. The vast majority of these newly registered voters will be C2DE including a fair number who didn't vote in the 1980s and early 90s to avoid incurring liability for the poll tax which was largely based on the voters roll.
If turnout is 80+%, the bulk of the extra 20% are people who have never voted before. These people have not been motivated to register to vote to keep the status quo. They are motivated to bring change.
That is why the higher the turnout, the more likely the result will be YES.
Very interesting that the electoral roll in Edinburgh is only estimated at 90% but in Glasgow 97%.
The lesson is not to appease, but also not to destroy the people and fabric of the continent by over reaction either. We should learn from both wars, not just the more recent one.
He's a great guy, and good luck to him.
So it sort of depends on your view of definitions, really, a bit like this discussion we've had about the Union Flag... [which I'll leave now, but thanks for your opinions, gives me a bit to think about]
@tnewtondunn: Latest intelligence on Scots vote: turnout is very high in big No areas. Growing confidence in @UK_Together now that they will win.
Thanks Easterross for explaining the logic.
I'm not sure it's without flaws, but if it is, Yes is home and hosed.
The high turnout = good for yes doesn't seem to be universally accepted.
The risk, however, is that the poll's samples weren't representative of actual voters i.e. missing / under-representing groups likely to vote YES. This is entirely possible and indeed I suspect the YES odds are much too high. But high turnout doesn't make this any more likely.
FTSE up half a percent on the day.
The £ trading a cent higher.
I guess that's it. Welcome back Jockland.
I am not gung ho for war but I do think that we need leaders who have a clear understanding of the threats we face. Once they have that they can then more clearly determine how best to deal with them. Overreaction is not a good answer, I quite agree.
I don't think that we do have leaders who have such a clear understanding and because of that I think we are more likely to do nothing when something is needed or overreact too late. Obama is a bit of an empty suit as far as I'm concerned.
...which suggests the best way to bet on YES is to take a short GBP position - a NO may well mean no real change, while a YES has to drive a big fall...
Yes, I thought it was a safe enough crack given our record in such matters.
It's going to be a rough day and a bit - due to illness only had about 3 hours sleep last night, and now I'm supposed to sleep until 5am or so? Not likely.
So would not a low turn out favour YES ?
Or do all turnouts favour YES ? (turning into malc here..)
On the other hand, if the weighting systems used are formulated for lower turnout, pollsters could have been weighting away accuracy in the event of high turnout.
I don't think they are a credible threat. Putin only has a single aircraft carrier iirc.
UK does have anti-surface capability from surface and air according to Prof Wiki, never mind those hunter-killer subs.
Mr Salmond would shout at them through a toilet roll from a pedalo, and they would have no choice other than to obey because he would be Imperator Scotus Maximus, just as Germany, Spain, France, Italy and the rest of the EU will obe him, and the UK will give him CU because he says so.
Matt
Sorry, Mr. W.. I have obviously missed something what anti-shipping capability does the RAF, have? For that matter what the Fleet Air arm have? A few but not all RN ships have Harpoon missiles (1970s stuff) and of course a gun of at best middling calibre. Aside from the very, very good submarines (of which we might have four or five ready for deployment at anyone one time), the RN looks a bit thin for fighting off a battlegroup from another fairly modern navy.
In fact I really did laugh when a few months ago a RN destroyer, a Type 45 no less and a billion quid ago, was sent to escort a Russian battlegroup through the Channel. Offensive capability of the RN escort one 4.5 inch gun.
He has no majority in Westminster to give England anything and only if the Libdems back him and why would they could he force changes through (assuming Labour would oppose any solution to the political aspects of the English Question).
There is also not time in the 8 months to the election to adequately address the English Question. There is not time in just 8 months to adequately address devomax either and if they do it will be a total dog's dinner just as the original devolution bill was.
EIther way though he's screwed because Barnett is the deal breaker. He cannot defend people losing their benefits, being fed from Foodbanks, not receiving the necessary but expensive treatment purely so Fred Goodwin can get free prescriptions and JK Rowling or any Brussels bureaucrat can send their kid to University in Scotland for free when Engllsh kids have to pay.
He might of got away with some sort of fudge of the political aspects such as EVfEL (even though it unravels in seconds once you consider how resources are allocated to specific devolved areas) if not for the economic implications of Barnett. Now he's made jointly that most rash and premature of knee-jerk commitments to Scotland he's going to get hammered whatever.
The real lesson of both wars is to ensure people have the right to self determination, be they Serbs, Slovaks or Germans. Europe has largely been at peace as we finally have borders that make sense and the empire's are gone.
Jock Aye!
Nae Ta!
Smoked Salmond
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/18/9-things-scottish-referendum-campaign-taught-us?CMP=twt_gu
Curiously, he remained silent on whether there were any lessons for Ed Miliband.....
What's the worst that could happen? Cameron throws up his arms and says 'my party won;t wear it, and neither will England'
However, if the probability of a voter voting YES is only fractionally greater (or lesser) than 0.5, the probability of a tie becomes infinitesimal, of the order of winning the lottery many times in a row...
No other abusive words appear to have been used. Is that really "racist" abuse?
"Or do all turnouts favour YES ? (turning into malc here..) "
No. The Stuart Dickson thesis was clear. The higher the turnout the more likely a Yes vote. I cannot recall the exact figures he gave but I think it was something to the effect that >80% and a Yes vote was likely, >85% and it was a certainty.
The risk, however, is that the poll's samples weren't representative of actual voters i.e. missing / under-representing groups likely to vote YES. This is entirely possible and indeed I suspect the YES odds are much too high. But high turnout doesn't make this any more likely.
But IIRC those polls showed YES supporters had a higher certainty to vote than no.
So would not a low turn out favour YES ?
Or do all turnouts favour YES ? (turning into malc here..)
I don't think turnout will be predictive of the result.
If, say, the final polls had self-reported, say, 75% likely turnout, then an actual, say, 85% turnout would warrant adjustment. It would argue that the polls had mis-weighted the population & the outcome may be different to that predicted.
But this just isn't true. As of now, turnout seems likely to be very high, but this is entirely consistent with the final polls. Hence turnout isn't a reason to think they are wrong.
Other issues may be, however. Again, I think the odds on YES are too high...
There is no proposal to devolve VAT, NI, Corporation Tax, CGT, Inheritance Tax.
They are only talking about Income Tax and here, Miliband is only offering the ability to vary it.
It's actually far, far more Mickey Mouse than people realise.
It's not going to cost England anything.
As for your comments about social media and ships moored in the Moray Firth during a storm, the Russian ships movements were known in advance, and they had been tracked upon leaving port. Try not to over dramatise. It's a minor miracle that ship even made it back to port - it's a floating scrap heap.
Yes - 6.4
No - 1.18
No 1.18 - 1.19
Yes 6.4 - 6.6
The issue is more about whether the people they sample are properly representative.
Let's suppose for a moment that they don't normally reach a subset of the population that is poorer than average and normally very unlikely to vote. This doesn't normally matter, because these people don't normally vote, and so the GE polls are reasonably accurate. It would matter now if these people really do vote and they aren't being sampled by the opinion polls.
If we look at - for example - the YouGov weighting data then we can see that YouGov didn't poll enough young, C2DEs, who read a tabloid and don't identify with a political party or normally vote. So they upweight the responses they do have, which is fine if the people in that demographic group that they talked to are representative of the people they didn't.
They might be and they might not be. You might call it a known unknown.
It's not that the weightings are wrong, it's that if your sample is missing bits of the population who vote differently to the bits you do have in your sample then no amount of weighting will correct it.