I wouldn't expect David Herdson to understand the popularity of childcare. He is not the target audience.
He certainly has zero knowledge on the independence debate and what is happening. Totally out of his depth today. Nearly as clueless as Carmichael was the other night.
Go on then - forensically pick your way through the thread and say why.
Or you could just stick to playing the man. Far easier.
Easy with Carmichael, he had nothing to say , he could not give any assurance of what policies the unionists would have if we vote NO, he was given several points to give his position , one being child poverty , and failed to be able to give any answer. Devoid of policies.
Why should Carmichael have policies for a post-referendum Scotland? He is SoS in the UK Government, most domestic matters are decided by the Scottish government.
Although personally I would prefer the UK government to be neutral on the independence issue. We pay them to run the country, not tell us what that country should be. And I would get rid of Carmichael's job.
Paul Lewis (@paullewismoney) 30/11/2013 08:10 How big is Africa? As big as most of the rest of us put together. This jigsaw map shows The True Size of Africa goo.gl/uUXj1h
James Mansell (@jdcmansell) 30/11/2013 09:13 @paullewismoney see cartographers for social equality on the west wing youtu.be/n8zBC2dvERM making a similar point
It's much easier to play the you're not Scottish so have no clue card. It's weak and pathetic but it's what he'll do.
I'm quite happy to state definitively that you not having a 'clue card' (whatever that is) has absolutely nothing to with your non-Scottishness.
Good Point, apart from the fact I was born in Falkirk. Yes that Falkirk.
Does not mean you have a clue , you could have been born in Timbucktoo and know more. I see you have ignored the fact that I did indeed reply on david's dream of the reality in the debate in Scotland , despite your sneering post. Are you still in Falkirk and in the UK Labour Party then
You made no attempt to address his points. I no longer live in Falkirk, I joined the brain drain and left Scotland and the weaker members of the herd behind (this gratuitous insult stuff is fun, I can see why you do it so much).
So you have nothing to add to the debate other than personal insults , 2 out of 2 so far. Scottish IQ must have soared with you out of the equation. You are indeed a saddo.
pleased to see your self awareness bypass was successful.
I wouldn't expect David Herdson to understand the popularity of childcare. He is not the target audience.
He certainly has zero knowledge on the independence debate and what is happening. Totally out of his depth today. Nearly as clueless as Carmichael was the other night.
Go on then - forensically pick your way through the thread and say why.
Or you could just stick to playing the man. Far easier.
Easy with Carmichael, he had nothing to say , he could not give any assurance of what policies the unionists would have if we vote NO, he was given several points to give his position , one being child poverty , and failed to be able to give any answer. Devoid of policies.
What's clear is that Carmichael had got YES rattled.
The way the SNP try to portray anyone who's against the as being "UN - Scottish" shows how they feel threatened.
Classic straw-man argument. Nobody has said that Carmichael is un-Scottish. But a lot of people, including a lot of Unionists, have said that he is simply not up to the job.
Mike, rather that just digging deeper into the hole you commenced a few weeks ago, why not just lift your eyes and take a good long look at your man Carmichael. You could start with that hilarious STV debate against Sturgeon. I believe from several Unionist comments on here that he was also dire on Any Questions, although I haven't seen it myself.
@malcolmg The No campaign don't need a joined-up message. All they need is to get a majority against the specific proposal put forward by the Yes campaign.
As it happens, I believe the Yes campaign would be capable of getting a majority supportive of the SNP's vision for Scotland (and you're right to say that no part of the No campaign has yet expressed an alternative vision with any energy), but that it would only get a positive vote if it had neutralised the process questions by the time of the vote. So far it has failed miserably to do that. And pretending that some points are unarguable when they are either transparently arguable or in some cases an uphill struggle to make the case for those points is harming the Independence cause, not helping it.
Agree , YES has a hard task as many people are scared of change and having to make decisions. However unless NO start to get their act together , which is close to impossible given they hate each other , they are in for big trouble. The trend at the moment is to YES and it could become a torrent if they are not careful.
Angus Robertson MP argued that it would make sense to delay the May 2015 contest for a year so there was not a change of UK Government while separation discussions with Scotland were taking place.
The SNP’s Westminster leader said UK ministers would risk being “diverted” by an election, whereas all the negotiations would be completed and Scotland would be independent by May 2016.
Interesting story I just saw the headline of on Googlenews. Angus Robertson, of the SNP, has apparently called for the UK General Election to be postponed if there's a Yes vote.
Interesting story I just saw the headline of on Googlenews. Angus Robertson, of the SNP, has apparently called for the UK General Election to be postponed if there's a Yes vote.
Isn't that something to do with the precedence of walking over running in the order of things?
I'm more than happy for the No campaign to continue to make facile and incorrect assumptions and comparisons to justify the continuation of their current strategy.
To that end I'll let those in scotland draw their own conclusions about the vaildity and just how out of touch the thinking is by some tories on here by the obliviousness displayed here.
"If Yes lose in Scotland, that'll be that for the time being just as it was in 1979 even though Yes actually won the vote."
Another one who does not get it , the point of the childcare was the aspiration to make the country a better place, unlike the current country that is run by London for London. The chance of them allowing Scotland to spend its own money is laughable. What we want is a better , fairer country and we will never have that as long as we are shackled to London.
If That's really the case why not just do it now? They have the powers to do so.
Because they are on fixed pocket money from London , so would need to cut other things and the resulting benefits of extra tax, NI etc would go to London. Hence the need for independence so that they can use our money for what we want rather than it being used on what London wants , ie illegal wars , trident , etc
malcolm
Relieved and pleased to see you alive and kicking this morning.
But wouldn't the SNP be better spending Trident savings on a new air traffic control system rather than childcare for all?
Avery , that is in poor taste , at least 6 dead and not for making jokes about old chap.
Don't worry, Malcolm, I am fully aware that the joke was in the poorest taste and I thought carefully before posting it.
I decided to go ahead because I believe that black humour is as legitimate a response to tragedy as any collective expressions of conventional sentiment.
Why, whenever such accidents occur, do we want to assume that the pilot acted "heroically"?
The more likely circumstance in a helicopter crash is that when an engine fails and the rotor blades stop turning a pilot has little or no control over the subsequent flight path. As an eye witness in Glasgow has said: "the helicopter's engine stopped and it then fell vertically"?
It is however a natural human response to deny this most probable of outcomes and substitute in its place a more comforting story of survival against the odds or of heroic saving of lives. People don't want to accept that accidents are most often arbitrary and that consequential deaths are indiscriminate.
Similarly, there is a tendency to downplay the probability or even possibility that human error might have been the cause of such accidents. Such conclusions tend to be left to distant and far less reported inquiries. No one wants to accept at the time of an accident that people might have died as a result of negligence or mistaken action.
And people witnessing such accidents generally tend to react similarly in response to them. When you run towards a danger in order to rescue or assist, it is not generally a conscious decision to act heroically. It is a natural and spontaneous and, in most cases, unthinking response. Yet again we want to mitigate the impact of the accident by elevating the role of the bystander to that of selfless hero. We can't cope with grieving for or even focussing on the dead, we need to worship and find comfort in the saviours.
Sometimes a joke in bad taste is necessary to puncture the complacency of conventional response.
The FSB found 75% of SME businessmen will vote No. I have not met one who will actually vote Yes or would admit to it.
As for my home town.
"The Yes Scotland campaign has been dealt a blow after thousands of schoolchildren voted no in a mock referendum exactly one year before the official vote.
In total, 11,653 secondary school pupils in Aberdeenshire took part in the vote on Wednesday. A total of 8718 voted against an independent Scotland with 2847 voting for independence, with a turnout of 79.9%.
The results mean that 75.3% of school children do not support the notion of independence. Only Carronhill School in Stonehaven, voted in favour of independence by eight votes to five."
Yes and most of them being children will not have a vote, strange that Aberdeenshire should choose to ask S1-S6 to vote on it. In all other ones seen to date , ie university debates , surprisingly YES has won comfortably. .
Not sure about that. My eldest son is at Glasgow university where they had a debate and No won about 70/30. My youngest is at a secondary school school in Renfrew where a similar vote went 80/20 in favour of no.
Exactly , plenty go either way , good as a minor diversion but little to how the real vote will go and debatable how they are run , many will just reflect the teachers viewpoint. Hard to see what a few schools debates will mean in reality.
Angus Robertson MP argued that it would make sense to delay the May 2015 contest for a year so there was not a change of UK Government while separation discussions with Scotland were taking place.
The SNP’s Westminster leader said UK ministers would risk being “diverted” by an election, whereas all the negotiations would be completed and Scotland would be independent by May 2016.
Interesting story I just saw the headline of on Googlenews. Angus Robertson, of the SNP, has apparently called for the UK General Election to be postponed if there's a Yes vote.
Sounds very sensible, they will be far too busy to be electioneering.
"If Yes lose in Scotland, that'll be that for the time being just as it was in 1979 even though Yes actually won the vote."
If there is a no I imagine there will be a proper constitutional settlement with all the nations of the UK.
I imagine raising what happened after 1979 couldn't be more damaging to the No cause but I'm delighted to see that's the kind of thinking displayed on here.
Another one who does not get it , the point of the childcare was the aspiration to make the country a better place, unlike the current country that is run by London for London. The chance of them allowing Scotland to spend its own money is laughable. What we want is a better , fairer country and we will never have that as long as we are shackled to London.
If That's really the case why not just do it now? They have the powers to do so.
Because they are on fixed pocket money from London , so would need to cut other things and the resulting benefits of extra tax, NI etc would go to London. Hence the need for independence so that they can use our money for what we want rather than it being used on what London wants , ie illegal wars , trident , etc
malcolm
Relieved and pleased to see you alive and kicking this morning.
But wouldn't the SNP be better spending Trident savings on a new air traffic control system rather than childcare for all?
Avery , that is in poor taste , at least 6 dead and not for making jokes about old chap.
Don't worry, Malcolm, I am fully aware that the joke was in the poorest taste and I thought carefully before posting it.
I decided to go ahead because I believe that black humour is as legitimate a response to tragedy as any collective expressions of conventional sentiment.
Why, whenever such accidents occur, do we want to assume that the pilot acted "heroically"?
The more likely circumstance in a helicopter crash is that when an engine fails and the rotor blades stop turning a pilot has little or no control over the subsequent flight path. As an eye witness in Glasgow has said: "the helicopter's engine stopped and it then fell vertically"?
It is however a natural human response to deny this most probable of outcomes and substitute in its place a more comforting story of survival against the odds or of heroic saving of lives. People don't want to accept that accidents are most often arbitrary and that consequential deaths are indiscriminate.
Similarly, there is a tendency to downplay the probability or even possibility that human error might have been the cause of such accidents. Such conclusions tend to be left to distant and far less reported inquiries. No one wants to accept at the time of an accident that people might have died as a result of negligence or mistaken action.
And people witnessing such accidents generally tend to react similarly in response to them. When you run towards a danger in order to rescue or assist, it is not generally a conscious decision to act heroically. It is a natural and spontaneous and, in most cases, unthinking response. Yet again we want to mitigate the impact of the accident by elevating the role of the bystander to that of selfless hero. We can't cope with grieving for or even focussing on the dead, we need to worship and find comfort in the saviours.
Sometimes a joke in bad taste is necessary to puncture the complacency of conventional response.
Avery , Yes and given that at 500-700 feet he would have had between 1 and 2 seconds to do anything it means that he had little part to play in where it landed.
I wouldn't expect David Herdson to understand the popularity of childcare. He is not the target audience.
He certainly has zero knowledge on the independence debate and what is happening. Totally out of his depth today. Nearly as clueless as Carmichael was the other night.
Go on then - forensically pick your way through the thread and say why.
Or you could just stick to playing the man. Far easier.
Easy with Carmichael, he had nothing to say , he could not give any assurance of what policies the unionists would have if we vote NO, he was given several points to give his position , one being child poverty , and failed to be able to give any answer. Devoid of policies.
Why should Carmichael have policies for a post-referendum Scotland? He is SoS in the UK Government, most domestic matters are decided by the Scottish government.
Although personally I would prefer the UK government to be neutral on the independence issue. We pay them to run the country, not tell us what that country should be. And I would get rid of Carmichael's job.
"most domestic matters are decided by the Scottish government" are they? You have clearly never perused the astoundingly long and detailed list of Reserved Powers in the Scotland Act.
There are sound arguments in favour of a postponement, but also arguments against.
For: The biggest one for me is that it would avoid the morally indefensible situation where we could have Scottish politicians on both sides of the negotiating table It would also mean that politicians can focus on negotiation rather than electioneering (as per the Angus Robertson argument)
Against: I think this would look bad in the non-Scottish UK for two reasons. Firstly, politicians giving themselves longer in power never looks good. When was the last time it happened? WWII? Secondly, the English, Welsh and Northern Irish electorate may very well want to influence the direction of negotiation by voting for the party that best represents their opinion on separation
Interesting story I just saw the headline of on Googlenews. Angus Robertson, of the SNP, has apparently called for the UK General Election to be postponed if there's a Yes vote.
It sounds a bit unlikely they'll finish the thing on the SNP's timetable anyway, especially if they need to involve the EU at that stage. There would be a case for bringing the UK election forward, though.
most domestic matters are decided by the Scottish government.
Depends how you define 'most'. You don't think immigration, taxation, welfare and pensions constitute a very large part of domestic policy?
They do (although if you are in the EU of course you don't have full control over much of your immigration policy). But surely it's up to a future Scottish government to request patriation of powers. Although it would be better if it was responsible for raising the cash for all matters within its own remit.
Personally I am neutral on Scottish independence. My preference would be for Devo-Max for all 4 countries of the Union and for the UK government to have relatively little to do - independence, foreign affairs, currency, etc.
My preference would be for Devo-Max for all 4 countries of the Union and for the UK government to have relatively little to do - independence, foreign affairs, currency, etc.
Makes the UK a bit pointless though, doesn't it? Why not just let the EU do all that stuff and cut out the middleman?
Interesting story I just saw the headline of on Googlenews. Angus Robertson, of the SNP, has apparently called for the UK General Election to be postponed if there's a Yes vote.
Isn't that something to do with the precedence of walking over running in the order of things?
A UK Government spokesman said: "Parliament has legislated for fixed-term parliaments and the next general election will be in May 2015. The Scottish Government knew this when they chose the referendum date."
Quite. Its Salmond's mess - why should 92% of the UK be inconvenienced for 8%?
I'd tell them Independence is May 2015 & they'd better get on with it.
Another one who does not get it , the point of the childcare was the aspiration to make the country a better place, unlike the current country that is run by London for London. The chance of them allowing Scotland to spend its own money is laughable. What we want is a better , fairer country and we will never have that as long as we are shackled to London.
If That's really the case why not just do it now? They have the powers to do so.
Because they are on fixed pocket money from London , so would need to cut other things and the resulting benefits of extra tax, NI etc would go to London. Hence the need for independence so that they can use our money for what we want rather than it being used on what London wants , ie illegal wars , trident , etc
malcolm
Relieved and pleased to see you alive and kicking this morning.
But wouldn't the SNP be better spending Trident savings on a new air traffic control system rather than childcare for all?
Avery , that is in poor taste , at least 6 dead and not for making jokes about old chap.
Don't worry, Malcolm, I am fully aware that the joke was in the poorest taste and I thought carefully before posting it.
I decided to go ahead because I believe that black humour is as legitimate a response to tragedy as any collective expressions of conventional sentiment.
Why, whenever such accidents occur, do we want to assume that the pilot acted "heroically"?
The more likely circumstance in a helicopter crash is that when an engine fails and the rotor blades stop turning a pilot has little or no control over the subsequent flight path. As an eye witness in Glasgow has said: "the helicopter's engine stopped and it then fell vertically"?
It is however a natural human response to deny this most probable of outcomes and substitute in its place a more comforting story of survival against the odds or of heroic saving of lives. People don't want to accept that accidents are most often arbitrary and that consequential deaths are indiscriminate.
Similarly, there is a tendency to downplay the probability or even possibility that human error might have been the cause of such accidents. Such conclusions tend to be left to distant and far less reported inquiries. No one wants to accept at the time of an accident that people might have died as a result of negligence or mistaken action.
And people witnessing such accidents generally tend to react similarly in response to them. When you run towards a danger in order to rescue or assist, it is not generally a conscious decision to act heroically. It is a natural and spontaneous and, in most cases, unthinking response. Yet again we want to mitigate the impact of the accident by elevating the role of the bystander to that of selfless hero. We can't cope with grieving for or even focussing on the dead, we need to worship and find comfort in the saviours.
Sometimes a joke in bad taste is necessary to puncture the complacency of conventional response.
Avery , Yes and given that at 500-700 feet he would have had between 1 and 2 seconds to do anything it means that he had little part to play in where it landed.
Why are you even bothering with someone who embarrassed themself so acutely? Were it tim or any left wing posters making such an idiotic 'joke' the PB tories on here would be beside themselves. Double standards is the rule on here.
Another one who does not get it , the point of the childcare was the aspiration to make the country a better place, unlike the current country that is run by London for London. The chance of them allowing Scotland to spend its own money is laughable. What we want is a better , fairer country and we will never have that as long as we are shackled to London.
If That's really the case why not just do it now? They have the powers to do so.
Because they are on fixed pocket money from London , so would need to cut other things and the resulting benefits of extra tax, NI etc would go to London. Hence the need for independence so that they can use our money for what we want rather than it being used on what London wants , ie illegal wars , trident , etc
malcolm
Relieved and pleased to see you alive and kicking this morning.
But wouldn't the SNP be better spending Trident savings on a new air traffic control system rather than childcare for all?
Avery , that is in poor taste , at least 6 dead and not for making jokes about old chap.
Don't worry, Malcolm, I am fully aware that the joke was in the poorest taste and I thought carefully before posting it.
I decided to go ahead because I believe that black humour is as legitimate a response to tragedy as any collective expressions of conventional sentiment.
Why, whenever such accidents occur, do we want to assume that the pilot acted "heroically"?
The more likely circumstance in a helicopter crash is that when an engine fails and the rotor blades stop turning a pilot has little or no control over the subsequent flight path. As an eye witness in Glasgow has said: "the helicopter's engine stopped and it then fell vertically"?
It is however a natural human response to deny this most probable of outcomes and substitute in its place a more comforting story of survival against the odds or of heroic saving of lives. People don't want to accept that accidents are most often arbitrary and that consequential deaths are indiscriminate.
Similarly, there is a tendency to downplay the probability or even possibility that human error might have been the cause of such accidents. Such conclusions tend to be left to distant and far less reported inquiries. No one wants to accept at the time of an accident that people might have died as a result of negligence or mistaken action.
And people witnessing such accidents generally tend to react similarly in response to them. When you run towards a danger in order to rescue or assist, it is not generally a conscious decision to act heroically. It is a natural and spontaneous and, in most cases, unthinking response. Yet again we want to mitigate the impact of the accident by elevating the role of the bystander to that of selfless hero. We can't cope with grieving for or even focussing on the dead, we need to worship and find comfort in the saviours.
Sometimes a joke in bad taste is necessary to puncture the complacency of conventional response.
Avery , Yes and given that at 500-700 feet he would have had between 1 and 2 seconds to do anything it means that he had little part to play in where it landed.Its always sad to read of 'pilots battling heroically to avoid school' when in the vast majority of cases its no longer in their hands...the reports do suggest some sort of fuel starvation - and mercifully no post-crash fire which would have made casualties orders of magnitude worse....
Another one who does not get it , the point of the childcare was the aspiration to make the country a better place, unlike the current country that is run by London for London. The chance of them allowing Scotland to spend its own money is laughable. What we want is a better , fairer country and we will never have that as long as we are shackled to London.
If That's really the case why not just do it now? They have the powers to do so.
Because they are on fixed pocket money from London , so would need to cut other things and the resulting benefits of extra tax, NI etc would go to London. Hence the need for independence so that they can use our money for what we want rather than it being used on what London wants , ie illegal wars , trident , etc
malcolm
Relieved and pleased to see you alive and kicking this morning.
But wouldn't the SNP be better spending Trident savings on a new air traffic control system rather than childcare for all?
Avery , that is in poor taste , at least 6 dead and not for making jokes about old chap.
Don't worry, Malcolm, I am fully aware that the joke was in the poorest taste and I thought carefully before posting it.
I decided to go ahead because I believe that black humour is as legitimate a response to tragedy as any collective expressions of conventional sentiment.
Why, whenever such accidents occur, do we want to assume that the pilot acted "heroically"?
The more likely circumstance in a helicopter crash is that when an engine fails and the rotor blades stop turning a pilot has little or no control over the subsequent flight path. As an eye witness in Glasgow has said: "the helicopter's engine stopped and it then fell vertically"?
It is however a natural human response to deny this most probable of outcomes and substitute in its place a more comforting story of survival against the odds or of heroic saving of lives. People don't want to accept that accidents are most often arbitrary and that consequential deaths are indiscriminate.
Similarly, there is a tendency to downplay the probability or even possibility that human error might have been the cause of such accidents. Such conclusions tend to be left to distant and far less reported inquiries. No one wants to accept at the time of an accident that people might have died as a result of negligence or mistaken action.
And people witnessing such accidents generally tend to react similarly in response to them. When you run towards a danger in order to rescue or assist, it is not generally a conscious decision to act heroically. It is a natural and spontaneous and, in most cases, unthinking response. Yet again we want to mitigate the impact of the accident by elevating the role of the bystander to that of selfless hero. We can't cope with grieving for or even focussing on the dead, we need to worship and find comfort in the saviours.
Sometimes a joke in bad taste is necessary to puncture the complacency of conventional response.
Avery , Yes and given that at 500-700 feet he would have had between 1 and 2 seconds to do anything it means that he had little part to play in where it landed.And to be homest, I am not sure a pub is a "better" target, it apparently had about 120 people in it, they would have been concentrated, and some of them drunk. Hitting a block of flats may have caused more damage to property, but to threaten that number of people yopu would have had to destroy about 25-50 flats, depending on how many people were out on a Friday night.
Mick, you've been previously warned about swearing at other posters.
Wrong. I was warned about raising John Major, Back to Basics, and reference to "links" with Cameron and Osborne (whatever that's supposed to mean) and the Flowers story.
Any further transgressions and your comments will automatically go into the pending folder.
For the avoidance of doubt, that includes words with asterisks etc.
For the avoidance of doubt is this yet another in an ever growing list of strictures aimed at just me or does it apply to other posters using less than polite language?
My preference would be for Devo-Max for all 4 countries of the Union and for the UK government to have relatively little to do - independence, foreign affairs, currency, etc.
Makes the UK a bit pointless though, doesn't it? Why not just let the EU do all that stuff and cut out the middleman?
Er... I'm British. Also the EU is even more undemocratic than the UK, I don't like how it is run and I have no real way of influencing it.
Mick, you've been previously warned about swearing at other posters.
Wrong. I was warned about raising John Major, Back to Basics, and reference to "links" with Cameron and Osborne (whatever that's supposed to mean) and the Flowers story.
Interesting story I just saw the headline of on Googlenews. Angus Robertson, of the SNP, has apparently called for the UK General Election to be postponed if there's a Yes vote.
It sounds a bit unlikely they'll finish the thing on the SNP's timetable anyway, especially if they need to involve the EU at that stage. There would be a case for bringing the UK election forward, though.
I don't see a problem. There are a lot of things we are not in control of. For example, I don't see how we can stop the Scots using our currency, and I don't see how they can make us agree to a currency union. Negotiations will proceed, if they have not reached a stage the Nats are happy with by their proposed independence date they are either going to have to postpone it or declare UDI.
We pay our government to run the country, that includes negotiating independence with anyone who wants to leave the Union. It doesn't actually include electioneering, so if they don't have much time to do that, tough.
Talk of postponing or bringing forward elections is just an excuse for people who don't like the idea of fixed term elections in the first place, and who would prefer the government to be run for the benefit of politicians rather than the voters.
It is a pity there isn't any sort of English government, if there was, then one possible response to a Scottish Yes might be a proposal for the English to withdraw from the Union in advance of that and leave Scotland negotiating with Wales and Northern Ireland. (Or it might be that the legal entity is still England-and-Wales which would leave Scotland with all those Ulster Scots. Sweet.)
"The Australian referendum on whether to declare a republic was lost in no small part not because Australians wanted to retain the Queen as head of state but because the specific alternative was seen as worse."
That was always John Howards's intention. He was a strong monarchist and saw that the republican movement was gaining a head of pressure. He set up a commission to propose a specific Republic Model which would be put forward as a referendum.
I always thought it would have been very close if the question were simply "Do you want Australia to become a Republic", but only half of those who wanted Independence were prepared to vote to have a president chosen by the Prime-minister.
take a good long look at your man Carmichael. You could start with that hilarious STV debate against Sturgeon. I believe from several Unionist comments on here that he was also dire on Any Questions, although I haven't seen it myself.
Quite.
Some of those commenting on the buffoon Carmichael's dire performances were doing so after seeing him flounder badly on QT. He was rubbish on that, make no mistake, but "bruiser" Carmichael was utterly destroyed and eviscerated on the STV debate which made his dire QT performance look like a triumph.
How the lib dem spinners could possible justify dumping Moore for his poor performance after Carmichael's nightmare of a week is utterly astonishing. Calamity Clegg and his ostrich faction keep proving just how incompetent and out of touch they are not just by making Carmichael Sec of State for scotland but by keeping him there now.
I think the English underestimate the effect of being ruled by a Cameron led government.
Scotland's dislike of the Tories can be accurately measured by their number of Tory MP's.
I ask myself how I would vote if my Prime Minister was Nigel Farage and the government largely UKIP?
The answer is I'd vote for anything that gave me an out. I suspect the same might be true of Scotland.
The more Cameron and co get their feet under the table the less the Scots feel part of the union.
True.
If it looks likely that Cameron is going to get re-elected (and at the moment it doesn't) then No are going to have an extremely tough sell. "More of the Same" doesn't sound very attractive when you are getting yer arse skelped.
If the Tories ever tried being nice to the Scots they might get on a bit better. However, it would take several decades for it to seep into the public consciousness, so far too late for them to bother now. (The last time they tried it, with Michael Forsyth's faintly ridiculous ceremonial repatriation of the Stone of Destiny, it did them not one iota of good.)
Avery , Yes and given that at 500-700 feet he would have had between 1 and 2 seconds to do anything it means that he had little part to play in where it landed.
More like 6 seconds, but it sounds like he had little control anyway from the witness accounts.
Another one who does not get it , the point of the childcare was the aspiration to make the country a better place, unlike the current country that is run by London for London. The chance of them allowing Scotland to spend its own money is laughable. What we want is a better , fairer country and we will never have that as long as we are shackled to London.
If That's really the case why not just do it now? They have the powers to do so.
Because they are on fixed pocket money from London , so would need to cut other things and the resulting benefits of extra tax, NI etc would go to London. Hence the need for independence so that they can use our money for what we want rather than it being used on what London wants , ie illegal wars , trident , etc
malcolm
Relieved and pleased to see you alive and kicking this morning.
But wouldn't the SNP be better spending Trident savings on a new air traffic control system rather than childcare for all?
Avery , that is in poor taste , at least 6 dead and not for making jokes about old chap.
Don't worry, Malcolm, I am fully aware that the joke was in the poorest taste and I thought carefully before posting it.
I decided to go ahead because I believe that black humour is as legitimate a response to tragedy as any collective expressions of conventional sentiment.
Why, whenever such accidents occur, do we want to assume that the pilot acted "heroically"?
The more likely circumstance in a helicopter crash is that when an engine fails and the rotor blades stop turning a pilot has little or no control over the subsequent flight path. As an eye witness in Glasgow has said: "the helicopter's engine stopped and it then fell vertically"?
It is however a natural human response to deny this most probable of outcomes and substitute in its place a more comforting story of survival against the odds or of heroic saving of lives. People don't want to accept that accidents are most often arbitrary and that consequential deaths are indiscriminate.
Similarly, there is a tendency to downplay the probability or even possibility that human error might have been the cause of such accidents. Such conclusions tend to be left to distant and far less reported inquiries. No one wants to accept at the time of an accident that people might have died as a result of negligence or mistaken action.
And people witnessing such accidents generally tend to react similarly in response to them. When you run towards a danger in order to rescue or assist, it is not generally a conscious decision to act heroically. It is a natural and spontaneous and, in most cases, unthinking response. Yet again we want to mitigate the impact of the accident by elevating the role of the bystander to that of selfless hero. We can't cope with grieving for or even focussing on the dead, we need to worship and find comfort in the saviours.
Sometimes a joke in bad taste is necessary to puncture the complacency of conventional response.
Why Mr Pole you are still with us, I was beginning to think you'd gone AWOL.
The more Cameron and co get their feet under the table the less the Scots feel part of the union
You say that Roger, but it seems to me its labour that finished the union off. The Scots wanted some payback for finally getting their team in power and for 13 years all Blair and co. worried about was pleasing swing voters in English marginals.
The Scots have clearly concluded that if they weren;t getting a fair crack of the whip under a dominant labour government with a number of very heavyweight Scots, they weren't ever going to get a fair crack of the whip.
I'm sure their expectations of the cameron government are much lower.
MG..I have been in a total wipe out chopper crash, by the time you register you are no longer flying you are heading in..nothing can stop it ..They have the flying capabilities of a building brick when those blades stop turning...
Angus Robertson actually on R4's Week at Westminster at the moment, presumably the recording that the postponed GE kerfuffle is based on. He prefaced his opinion by saying it would be up to the UK parliament. I think he'll be happy with lots of (fairly meaningless) discussion revolving around a hypothetical win for Yes.
I think the English underestimate the effect of being ruled by a Cameron led government.
Scotland's dislike of the Tories can be accurately measured by their number of Tory MP's.
I ask myself how I would vote if my Prime Minister was Nigel Farage and the government largely UKIP?
The answer is I'd vote for anything that gave me an out.
Wouldn't it be a bit stupid of you to vote for an irrevocable change that you didn't really want, for a short term gain - and when you would get the chance to vote for a new government in less than 5 years anyway? I suppose it might sway people who are very undecided "oh yes, it will mean we don't get twats like that running the country in future" (sorry, Moderator) but it's not a very good argument per se.
And many people might think that following a No vote they are likely to be able to get more powers devolved to Scotland, which would mean that the UK government has even less relevance in Scotland.
take a good long look at your man Carmichael. You could start with that hilarious STV debate against Sturgeon. I believe from several Unionist comments on here that he was also dire on Any Questions, although I haven't seen it myself.
Quite.
Some of those commenting on the buffoon Carmichael's dire performances were doing so after seeing him flounder badly on QT. He was rubbish on that, make no mistake, but "bruiser" Carmichael was utterly destroyed and eviscerated on the STV debate which made his dire QT performance look like a triumph.
How the lib dem spinners could possible justify dumping Moore for his poor performance after Carmichael's nightmare of a week is utterly astonishing. Calamity Clegg and his ostrich faction keep proving just how incompetent and out of touch they are not just by making Carmichael Sec of State for scotland but by keeping him there now.
Cameron has made a serious mistake in delegating all his power in Scotland to Darling and Carmichael. Darling is up to the job, but the other half of the pantomime horse cannot even lift its hooves off the ground and is acting as an anchor on the entire No outfit.
Where is Charlie Kennedy when the No side so obviously need him? Nowhere to be seen. Like David Steel's wife Judy, one wonders if Charlie has not been a Scottish patriot all along?
Relieved and pleased to see you alive and kicking this morning.
But wouldn't the SNP be better spending Trident savings on a new air traffic control system rather than childcare for all?
Avery , that is in poor taste , at least 6 dead and not for making jokes about old chap.
Don't worry, Malcolm, I am fully aware that the joke was in the poorest taste and I thought carefully before posting it.
I decided to go ahead because I believe that black humour is as legitimate a response to tragedy as any collective expressions of conventional sentiment.
Why, whenever such accidents occur, do we want to assume that the pilot acted "heroically"?
The more likely circumstance in a helicopter crash is that when an engine fails and the rotor blades stop turning a pilot has little or no control over the subsequent flight path. As an eye witness in Glasgow has said: "the helicopter's engine stopped and it then fell vertically"?
It is however a natural human response to deny this most probable of outcomes and substitute in its place a more comforting story of survival against the odds or of heroic saving of lives. People don't want to accept that accidents are most often arbitrary and that consequential deaths are indiscriminate.
Similarly, there is a tendency to downplay the probability or even possibility that human error might have been the cause of such accidents. Such conclusions tend to be left to distant and far less reported inquiries. No one wants to accept at the time of an accident that people might have died as a result of negligence or mistaken action.
And people witnessing such accidents generally tend to react similarly in response to them. When you run towards a danger in order to rescue or assist, it is not generally a conscious decision to act heroically. It is a natural and spontaneous and, in most cases, unthinking response. Yet again we want to mitigate the impact of the accident by elevating the role of the bystander to that of selfless hero. We can't cope with grieving for or even focussing on the dead, we need to worship and find comfort in the saviours.
Sometimes a joke in bad taste is necessary to puncture the complacency of conventional response.
Avery , Yes and given that at 500-700 feet he would have had between 1 and 2 seconds to do anything it means that he had little part to play in where it landed.
Its always sad to read of 'pilots battling heroically to avoid school' when in the vast majority of cases its no longer in their hands...the reports do suggest some sort of fuel starvation - and mercifully no post-crash fire which would have made casualties orders of magnitude worse....
It reminds me of Branson's comments at the time of the Greyrigg train crash - that the driver struggled to keep the train on the rails, or steered it out of trouble. Although the comments may have been responses to media questions.
"Our driver could have run from his seat and dashed to the next carriage, where he might well have been safe,' said Sir Richard. "Instead, he tried to steer the train to safety. He ended up quite badly injured. I am honestly not worried at this moment who is to blame. If it was a faulty line, then we have to make sure it never happens again."
Such incidents often show the general public at their best. They rarely show the media at their best.
"If the Tories ever tried being nice to the Scots they might get on a bit better. However, it would take several decades for it to seep into the public consciousness"
So the break up of the union might be Thatcher's one lasting legacy? What a disaster she was.
MG..I have been in a total wipe out chopper crash, by the time you register you are no longer flying you are heading in..nothing can stop it ..They have the flying capabilities of a building brick when those blades stop turning...
Richard, Only been in a helicopter a few times and they certainly do not feel very safe and as you say any issue and its no hope.
take a good long look at your man Carmichael. You could start with that hilarious STV debate against Sturgeon. I believe from several Unionist comments on here that he was also dire on Any Questions, although I haven't seen it myself.
Quite.
Some of those commenting on the buffoon Carmichael's dire performances were doing so after seeing him flounder badly on QT. He was rubbish on that, make no mistake, but "bruiser" Carmichael was utterly destroyed and eviscerated on the STV debate which made his dire QT performance look like a triumph.
How the lib dem spinners could possible justify dumping Moore for his poor performance after Carmichael's nightmare of a week is utterly astonishing. Calamity Clegg and his ostrich faction keep proving just how incompetent and out of touch they are not just by making Carmichael Sec of State for scotland but by keeping him there now.
Cameron has made a serious mistake in delegating all his power in Scotland to Darling and Carmichael. Darling is up to the job, but the other half of the pantomime horse cannot even lift its hooves off the ground and is acting as an anchor on the entire No outfit.
Where is Charlie Kennedy when the No side so obviously need him? Nowhere to be seen. Like David Steel's wife Judy, one wonders if Charlie has not been a Scottish patriot all along?
Don't agree on darling, whilst much better than Carmichael , if he gets pressured at all he is useless , starts twitching and stuttering. Only good when allowed to spout without opponent.
I went flying all over Glasgow in a helicopter with someone called George who I think did the traffic every morning for local radio. He doubled up as a location finder. We had many interesting hours around the West of Scotland
"If the Tories ever tried being nice to the Scots they might get on a bit better. However, it would take several decades for it to seep into the public consciousness"
So the break up of the union might be Thatcher's one lasting legacy? What a disaster she was.
Jeez Roger get over her, you're just showing your age. When you die will your tombstone read "killed by Thatcher" ? A politician who was last in power 23 years ago and who is now dead, isn't the root cause of everything.
Cameron has made a serious mistake in delegating all his power in Scotland to Darling and Carmichael. Darling is up to the job, but the other half of the pantomime horse cannot even lift its hooves off the ground and is acting as an anchor on the entire No outfit.
Where is Charlie Kennedy when the No side so obviously need him? Nowhere to be seen. Like David Steel's wife Judy, one wonders if Charlie has not been a Scottish patriot all along?
But, given the electoral advantage that will accrue to the Conservatives if Scotland votes Yes, I wonder if Cameron (a) agrees with this assessment of Carmichael's abilities, and (b) sent him in to battle for No anyway. It'd be a clever way of Cameron making Yes more likely without it being obvious that's what he's doing...
Interesting that the Nat posters on the board are clearly worries by Carmichael . Fortunately , we have Stuart Dickson's favourite measure to judge how effective he is , the Scottish opinion poll subsample . Populus Friday Lab 37 SNP 31 Con 14 Lib Dem 13
It is clear that their obsessive desire for Independence leads the Nat posters on here to be completely out of touch with the thoughts and concerns of the majority of their fellow Scots . . .
take a good long look at your man Carmichael. You could start with that hilarious STV debate against Sturgeon. I believe from several Unionist comments on here that he was also dire on Any Questions, although I haven't seen it myself.
Quite.
Some of those commenting on the buffoon Carmichael's dire performances were doing so after seeing him flounder badly on QT. He was rubbish on that, make no mistake, but "bruiser" Carmichael was utterly destroyed and eviscerated on the STV debate which made his dire QT performance look like a triumph.
How the lib dem spinners could possible justify dumping Moore for his poor performance after Carmichael's nightmare of a week is utterly astonishing. Calamity Clegg and his ostrich faction keep proving just how incompetent and out of touch they are not just by making Carmichael Sec of State for scotland but by keeping him there now.
Cameron has made a serious mistake in delegating all his power in Scotland to Darling and Carmichael. Darling is up to the job, but the other half of the pantomime horse cannot even lift its hooves off the ground and is acting as an anchor on the entire No outfit.
Where is Charlie Kennedy when the No side so obviously need him? Nowhere to be seen. Like David Steel's wife Judy, one wonders if Charlie has not been a Scottish patriot all along?
Compared to the rest on offer he may be considered to be up to the job but the big question around Darling is that it's fairly obvious it may not be the job he wants. He appears infrequently on independence usually during big moments spending the rest of his time lobbing 'helpful' suggestions about little Ed's policy direction along with other nuggets of wisdom on what labour should be doing at westminster.
Kennedy told Clegg in no uncertain terms what would happen to the lib dems in scotland after a coalition government with the tories. He was politely ignored for the most part even though he was subsequently proved 100% correct. I suspect Clegg views him with mistrust as Kennedy was the only senior lib dem who didn't support the coalition with the tories and Clegg is far more interested in keeping those close to him him happy (like Carmichael) whilst keeping those he may consider a threat marginalised. Kennedy could indeed have some sympathy with the aims of Yes but I also wouldn't rule out that he just wants to wait until after the carnage of the lib dems in 2015 and pop back up as a pair of 'clean hands'.
We will know that Cameron is trying to throw the vote when he sends Jacob Rees-Mogg to argue the Case for Scotland to be grateful that England subsidises it via the Union.
Cameron has made a serious mistake in delegating all his power in Scotland to Darling and Carmichael. Darling is up to the job, but the other half of the pantomime horse cannot even lift its hooves off the ground and is acting as an anchor on the entire No outfit.
Where is Charlie Kennedy when the No side so obviously need him? Nowhere to be seen. Like David Steel's wife Judy, one wonders if Charlie has not been a Scottish patriot all along?
But, given the electoral advantage that will accrue to the Conservatives if Scotland votes Yes, I wonder if Cameron (a) agrees with this assessment of Carmichael's abilities, and (b) sent him in to battle for No anyway. It'd be a clever way of Cameron making Yes more likely without it being obvious that's what he's doing...
Interesting that the Nat posters on the board are clearly worries by Carmichael . Fortunately , we have Stuart Dickson's favourite measure to judge how effective he is , the Scottish opinion poll subsample . Populus Friday Lab 37 SNP 31 Con 14 Lib Dem 13
It is clear that their obsessive desire for Independence leads the Nat posters on here to be completely out of touch with the thoughts and concerns of the majority of their fellow Scots . . .
A Scottish subsample on Westminster VI used to support the efficacy of a Libdem SoS in the independence debate? That's molecule rather than straw clutching.
"I am fully aware that the joke was in the poorest taste and I thought carefully before posting it."
Don't apologize Avery. It was light and funny and as you so rightly point out good natured humour at even the blackest of moments should always be welcome as long as they aren't personally offensive and that wasn't
Cameron has made a serious mistake in delegating all his power in Scotland to Darling and Carmichael. Darling is up to the job, but the other half of the pantomime horse cannot even lift its hooves off the ground and is acting as an anchor on the entire No outfit.
Where is Charlie Kennedy when the No side so obviously need him? Nowhere to be seen. Like David Steel's wife Judy, one wonders if Charlie has not been a Scottish patriot all along?
But, given the electoral advantage that will accrue to the Conservatives if Scotland votes Yes, I wonder if Cameron (a) agrees with this assessment of Carmichael's abilities, and (b) sent him in to battle for No anyway. It'd be a clever way of Cameron making Yes more likely without it being obvious that's what he's doing...
Everybody knows Cameron is hiding and hoping that Labour and Lib Dems get all the blame
Interesting that the Nat posters on the board are clearly worries by Carmichael . Fortunately , we have Stuart Dickson's favourite measure to judge how effective he is , the Scottish opinion poll subsample . Populus Friday Lab 37 SNP 31 Con 14 Lib Dem 13
It is clear that their obsessive desire for Independence leads the Nat posters on here to be completely out of touch with the thoughts and concerns of the majority of their fellow Scots . . .
Mark, go watch the debate on STV player and then come back and say we are worried by him. He begged the presenter 3 times to help him , it was harrowing to watch.
Given UK General Elections are only delayed because of war it would be a constitutional outrage for the election to be delayed by a year. I expect Mr Robertson knows this. He's just looking for a way to annoy the English into saying 's*d off Scotland'. It's not working right now as most in England are pretty apathetic about the whole thing.
Cameron has made a serious mistake in delegating all his power in Scotland to Darling and Carmichael. Darling is up to the job, but the other half of the pantomime horse cannot even lift its hooves off the ground and is acting as an anchor on the entire No outfit.
Where is Charlie Kennedy when the No side so obviously need him? Nowhere to be seen. Like David Steel's wife Judy, one wonders if Charlie has not been a Scottish patriot all along?
But, given the electoral advantage that will accrue to the Conservatives if Scotland votes Yes, I wonder if Cameron (a) agrees with this assessment of Carmichael's abilities, and (b) sent him in to battle for No anyway. It'd be a clever way of Cameron making Yes more likely without it being obvious that's what he's doing...
Everybody knows Cameron is hiding and hoping that Labour and Lib Dems get all the blame
Cameron so far is refusing to take the Nat bait. Eck's now caught in his own trap. Having demanded everyone else keeps out he's now looking a bit of a tit by demanding they all inervene. Funny that after all those PB Nat posts demanding no outside "interference", that's exactly what they're hoping for to revive a moribund campaign.
I rarely post, mostly just lurk. I'm amazed at the posts today criticizing the no campaign as if yes were miles ahead in the polls. Simply no sense of reality. Personally, I'm English and could not care less about the whole issue - a view shared I expect by most people, possibly even in Scotland itself.
Interesting that the Nat posters on the board are clearly worries by Carmichael . Fortunately , we have Stuart Dickson's favourite measure to judge how effective he is , the Scottish opinion poll subsample . Populus Friday Lab 37 SNP 31 Con 14 Lib Dem 13
It is clear that their obsessive desire for Independence leads the Nat posters on here to be completely out of touch with the thoughts and concerns of the majority of their fellow Scots . . .
So your favourite measure is to confuse the question "who would you vote for to run the country" with "how will you vote in the IndyRef?"
I am a Tory voter in national elections but not at all sure how I would vote in the Referendum if I was a Scot, or an Englishman living in Scotland.
(Although if I was living permanently in Scotland I may have given up on the Tories and joined the malcolmg wing of the SNP, I suppose)
Interesting that the Nat posters on the board are clearly worries by Carmichael . Fortunately , we have Stuart Dickson's favourite measure to judge how effective he is , the Scottish opinion poll subsample . Populus Friday Lab 37 SNP 31 Con 14 Lib Dem 13
It is clear that their obsessive desire for Independence leads the Nat posters on here to be completely out of touch with the thoughts and concerns of the majority of their fellow Scots . . .
Mark, go watch the debate on STV player and then come back and say we are worried by him. He begged the presenter 3 times to help him , it was harrowing to watch.
Malcolm , you should know and acknowledge that people view these things through tinted spectacles of their own persuasion . When you watch these debates , you think all the supporters of Independence are speaking transparent words of wisdom and those anti are gibbering idiots and cannot see that others will view things in a diametrically opposite way .
Since we're discussing Scotland, I really do think more attention should be paid to England only polling. The latest ICM had Lab 41 Con 31 LD 12 UKIP 12 Green 3. Given England makes up the vast majority of the sample we can consider it fairly accurate.
For Scotland it was Lab 32 Con 14 LD 2 SNP 48 UKIP 3 Green 2.
Baxter could do with having separate England and Scotland swing models.
Malcolm , you should know and acknowledge that people view these things through tinted spectacles of their own persuasion . When you watch these debates , you think all the supporters of Independence are speaking transparent words of wisdom and those anti are gibbering idiots and cannot see that others will view things in a diametrically opposite way .
Given UK General Elections are only delayed because of war
It could be arranged...
Given your location I wonder how Cameron's 'burgeoning' relationship with China looks? I can't see him prostrating himself at the feet of the Party will go down too well with our allies.
I do hope that the pro-YES folk on here are right about all these fundamental mistakes that they state the No campaign is making. Presumably we will be seeing the polls start registering a majority for YES before March 2014?
Regarding image, Carmichael does look like a lump of lard, maybe that will lose votes?
No holiday of bracing seaside air, ar. The reason is far less exciting: sullying my hands with work. And it will go on to Christmas too with only short respites.
A story.
When Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko was appointed General Secretary of the CPSU of the Soviet Union in 1984, the Finnish Foreign Secretary asked the Soviet Ambassador to Helsinki how to pronounce correctly his new leader's name. The Ambassador responded: "however you wish but always with the deepest respect".
A question.
For the Scotch Nats.
I did see QT on Thursday and noted that dear old Annabel Goldie, unlike Alistair Carmichael, was listened to by the audience with "the deepest respect". This was in spite of the fact that no more than a handful of the audience agreed with anything Goldie said.
Like Finland's attitude to Russia, the relationship between England and Scotland, and, by transference, the Tories and Scotland appears highly complex and not easily explained in caricature.
The word "Finlandisation" was coined during the Cold War to describe "the process by which which one powerful country strongly influences the policies of a smaller neighboring country, causing the smaller country to become like Finland (was perceived by many in the West to be) during the Cold War.
So to the questions. Are not English Tories to the Scots not like dominant fathers to rebel teenagers? Listened to with respect but fought against at every opportunity? Is not the Independence movement really a process of Finlandisation?
I could only take 5 mins but you can see the problem. Nicola is talking domestic politics (and very parochial ones at that) Carmichael is foolishly defending a Tory government.
Infact if they hadn't said otherwise I'd have thought he was a Tory. Big mistake from the 'no' camp putting up a Tory/LibDem minister.
So to the questions. Are not English Tories to the Scots not like dominant fathers to rebel teenagers? Listened to with respect but fought against at every opportunity? Is not the Independence movement really a process of Finlandisation?
No, that's almost entirely down to Aunty Bella's personality, Ruth Davison would get the same pelters as Carmichael.
I do hope that the pro-YES folk on here are right about all these fundamental mistakes that they state the No campaign is making. Presumably we will be seeing the polls start registering a majority for YES before March 2014?
Regarding image, Carmichael does look like a lump of lard, maybe that will lose votes?
I do hope that the pro-YES folk on here are right about all these fundamental mistakes that they state the No campaign is making. Presumably we will be seeing the polls start registering a majority for YES before March 2014?
Regarding image, Carmichael does look like a lump of lard, maybe that will lose votes?
I do hope that the pro-YES folk on here are right about all these fundamental mistakes that they state the No campaign is making. Presumably we will be seeing the polls start registering a majority for YES before March 2014? Regarding image, Carmichael does look like a lump of lard, maybe that will lose votes?
Wrong , he looks nothing like Pickles .
Pickles is not fronting the No campaign. Maybe Carmichael is suffering from a lack of practice in having to defend an incumbent party in Govt? Being Chief Whip for the LDs maybe poor training for his current role?
Comments
Although personally I would prefer the UK government to be neutral on the independence issue. We pay them to run the country, not tell us what that country should be. And I would get rid of Carmichael's job.
Paul Lewis (@paullewismoney)
30/11/2013 08:10
How big is Africa? As big as most of the rest of us put together. This jigsaw map shows The True Size of Africa goo.gl/uUXj1h
James Mansell (@jdcmansell)
30/11/2013 09:13
@paullewismoney see cartographers for social equality on the west wing youtu.be/n8zBC2dvERM making a similar point
Mike, rather that just digging deeper into the hole you commenced a few weeks ago, why not just lift your eyes and take a good long look at your man Carmichael. You could start with that hilarious STV debate against Sturgeon. I believe from several Unionist comments on here that he was also dire on Any Questions, although I haven't seen it myself.
The trend at the moment is to YES and it could become a torrent if they are not careful.
Angus Robertson MP argued that it would make sense to delay the May 2015 contest for a year so there was not a change of UK Government while separation discussions with Scotland were taking place.
The SNP’s Westminster leader said UK ministers would risk being “diverted” by an election, whereas all the negotiations would be completed and Scotland would be independent by May 2016.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10484844/SNP-urges-general-election-delay-for-Scottish-separation.html
To that end I'll let those in scotland draw their own conclusions about the vaildity and just how out of touch the thinking is by some tories on here by the obliviousness displayed here.
"If Yes lose in Scotland, that'll be that for the time being just as it was in 1979 even though Yes actually won the vote."
Don't worry, Malcolm, I am fully aware that the joke was in the poorest taste and I thought carefully before posting it.
I decided to go ahead because I believe that black humour is as legitimate a response to tragedy as any collective expressions of conventional sentiment.
Why, whenever such accidents occur, do we want to assume that the pilot acted "heroically"?
The more likely circumstance in a helicopter crash is that when an engine fails and the rotor blades stop turning a pilot has little or no control over the subsequent flight path. As an eye witness in Glasgow has said: "the helicopter's engine stopped and it then fell vertically"?
It is however a natural human response to deny this most probable of outcomes and substitute in its place a more comforting story of survival against the odds or of heroic saving of lives. People don't want to accept that accidents are most often arbitrary and that consequential deaths are indiscriminate.
Similarly, there is a tendency to downplay the probability or even possibility that human error might have been the cause of such accidents. Such conclusions tend to be left to distant and far less reported inquiries. No one wants to accept at the time of an accident that people might have died as a result of negligence or mistaken action.
And people witnessing such accidents generally tend to react similarly in response to them. When you run towards a danger in order to rescue or assist, it is not generally a conscious decision to act heroically. It is a natural and spontaneous and, in most cases, unthinking response. Yet again we want to mitigate the impact of the accident by elevating the role of the bystander to that of selfless hero. We can't cope with grieving for or even focussing on the dead, we need to worship and find comfort in the saviours.
Sometimes a joke in bad taste is necessary to puncture the complacency of conventional response.
Don't worry, Malcolm, I am fully aware that the joke was in the poorest taste and I thought carefully before posting it.
I decided to go ahead because I believe that black humour is as legitimate a response to tragedy as any collective expressions of conventional sentiment.
Why, whenever such accidents occur, do we want to assume that the pilot acted "heroically"?
The more likely circumstance in a helicopter crash is that when an engine fails and the rotor blades stop turning a pilot has little or no control over the subsequent flight path. As an eye witness in Glasgow has said: "the helicopter's engine stopped and it then fell vertically"?
It is however a natural human response to deny this most probable of outcomes and substitute in its place a more comforting story of survival against the odds or of heroic saving of lives. People don't want to accept that accidents are most often arbitrary and that consequential deaths are indiscriminate.
Similarly, there is a tendency to downplay the probability or even possibility that human error might have been the cause of such accidents. Such conclusions tend to be left to distant and far less reported inquiries. No one wants to accept at the time of an accident that people might have died as a result of negligence or mistaken action.
And people witnessing such accidents generally tend to react similarly in response to them. When you run towards a danger in order to rescue or assist, it is not generally a conscious decision to act heroically. It is a natural and spontaneous and, in most cases, unthinking response. Yet again we want to mitigate the impact of the accident by elevating the role of the bystander to that of selfless hero. We can't cope with grieving for or even focussing on the dead, we need to worship and find comfort in the saviours.
Sometimes a joke in bad taste is necessary to puncture the complacency of conventional response.
Avery , Yes and given that at 500-700 feet he would have had between 1 and 2 seconds to do anything it means that he had little part to play in where it landed.
For:
The biggest one for me is that it would avoid the morally indefensible situation where we could have Scottish politicians on both sides of the negotiating table
It would also mean that politicians can focus on negotiation rather than electioneering (as per the Angus Robertson argument)
Against:
I think this would look bad in the non-Scottish UK for two reasons. Firstly, politicians giving themselves longer in power never looks good. When was the last time it happened? WWII? Secondly, the English, Welsh and Northern Irish electorate may very well want to influence the direction of negotiation by voting for the party that best represents their opinion on separation
SNP's case has more holes than Emmental cheese.
Personally I am neutral on Scottish independence. My preference would be for Devo-Max for all 4 countries of the Union and for the UK government to have relatively little to do - independence, foreign affairs, currency, etc.
Quite. Its Salmond's mess - why should 92% of the UK be inconvenienced for 8%?
I'd tell them Independence is May 2015 & they'd better get on with it.
Any further transgressions and your comments will automatically go into the pending folder.
For the avoidance of doubt, that includes words with asterisks etc.
Clearly the guy was not around when The Challenger Space Shuttle broke up. Needless to say sickpedia has the warped jokes for those who want to look.
Why are you even bothering with someone who embarrassed themself so acutely?
Were it tim or any left wing posters making such an idiotic 'joke' the PB tories on here would be beside themselves. Double standards is the rule on here.
Wrong. I was warned about raising John Major, Back to Basics, and reference to "links" with Cameron and Osborne (whatever that's supposed to mean) and the Flowers story.
Bad language was never raised. For the avoidance of doubt is this yet another in an ever growing list of strictures aimed at just me or does it apply to other posters using less than polite language?
Other posters in the past week have had their posting privileges revoked for bad language.
Scotland's dislike of the Tories can be accurately measured by their number of Tory MP's.
I ask myself how I would vote if my Prime Minister was Nigel Farage and the government largely UKIP?
The answer is I'd vote for anything that gave me an out. I suspect the same might be true of Scotland.
The more Cameron and co get their feet under the table the less the Scots feel part of the union.
We pay our government to run the country, that includes negotiating independence with anyone who wants to leave the Union. It doesn't actually include electioneering, so if they don't have much time to do that, tough.
Talk of postponing or bringing forward elections is just an excuse for people who don't like the idea of fixed term elections in the first place, and who would prefer the government to be run for the benefit of politicians rather than the voters.
It is a pity there isn't any sort of English government, if there was, then one possible response to a Scottish Yes might be a proposal for the English to withdraw from the Union in advance of that and leave Scotland negotiating with Wales and Northern Ireland. (Or it might be that the legal entity is still England-and-Wales which would leave Scotland with all those Ulster Scots. Sweet.)
That was always John Howards's intention. He was a strong monarchist and saw that the republican movement was gaining a head of pressure. He set up a commission to propose a specific Republic Model which would be put forward as a referendum.
I always thought it would have been very close if the question were simply "Do you want Australia to become a Republic", but only half of those who wanted Independence were prepared to vote to have a president chosen by the Prime-minister.
Some of those commenting on the buffoon Carmichael's dire performances were doing so after seeing him flounder badly on QT. He was rubbish on that, make no mistake, but "bruiser" Carmichael was utterly destroyed and eviscerated on the STV debate which made his dire QT performance look like a triumph.
How the lib dem spinners could possible justify dumping Moore for his poor performance after Carmichael's nightmare of a week is utterly astonishing. Calamity Clegg and his ostrich faction keep proving just how incompetent and out of touch they are not just by making Carmichael Sec of State for scotland but by keeping him there now.
If it looks likely that Cameron is going to get re-elected (and at the moment it doesn't) then No are going to have an extremely tough sell. "More of the Same" doesn't sound very attractive when you are getting yer arse skelped.
If the Tories ever tried being nice to the Scots they might get on a bit better. However, it would take several decades for it to seep into the public consciousness, so far too late for them to bother now. (The last time they tried it, with Michael Forsyth's faintly ridiculous ceremonial repatriation of the Stone of Destiny, it did them not one iota of good.)
Don't worry, Malcolm, I am fully aware that the joke was in the poorest taste and I thought carefully before posting it.
I decided to go ahead because I believe that black humour is as legitimate a response to tragedy as any collective expressions of conventional sentiment.
Why, whenever such accidents occur, do we want to assume that the pilot acted "heroically"?
The more likely circumstance in a helicopter crash is that when an engine fails and the rotor blades stop turning a pilot has little or no control over the subsequent flight path. As an eye witness in Glasgow has said: "the helicopter's engine stopped and it then fell vertically"?
It is however a natural human response to deny this most probable of outcomes and substitute in its place a more comforting story of survival against the odds or of heroic saving of lives. People don't want to accept that accidents are most often arbitrary and that consequential deaths are indiscriminate.
Similarly, there is a tendency to downplay the probability or even possibility that human error might have been the cause of such accidents. Such conclusions tend to be left to distant and far less reported inquiries. No one wants to accept at the time of an accident that people might have died as a result of negligence or mistaken action.
And people witnessing such accidents generally tend to react similarly in response to them. When you run towards a danger in order to rescue or assist, it is not generally a conscious decision to act heroically. It is a natural and spontaneous and, in most cases, unthinking response. Yet again we want to mitigate the impact of the accident by elevating the role of the bystander to that of selfless hero. We can't cope with grieving for or even focussing on the dead, we need to worship and find comfort in the saviours.
Sometimes a joke in bad taste is necessary to puncture the complacency of conventional response.
Why Mr Pole you are still with us, I was beginning to think you'd gone AWOL.
You say that Roger, but it seems to me its labour that finished the union off. The Scots wanted some payback for finally getting their team in power and for 13 years all Blair and co. worried about was pleasing swing voters in English marginals.
The Scots have clearly concluded that if they weren;t getting a fair crack of the whip under a dominant labour government with a number of very heavyweight Scots, they weren't ever going to get a fair crack of the whip.
I'm sure their expectations of the cameron government are much lower.
comment on Guido.
I think he'll be happy with lots of (fairly meaningless) discussion revolving around a hypothetical win for Yes.
And many people might think that following a No vote they are likely to be able to get more powers devolved to Scotland, which would mean that the UK government has even less relevance in Scotland.
How the lib dem spinners could possible justify dumping Moore for his poor performance after Carmichael's nightmare of a week is utterly astonishing. Calamity Clegg and his ostrich faction keep proving just how incompetent and out of touch they are not just by making Carmichael Sec of State for scotland but by keeping him there now.
Cameron has made a serious mistake in delegating all his power in Scotland to Darling and Carmichael. Darling is up to the job, but the other half of the pantomime horse cannot even lift its hooves off the ground and is acting as an anchor on the entire No outfit.
Where is Charlie Kennedy when the No side so obviously need him? Nowhere to be seen. Like David Steel's wife Judy, one wonders if Charlie has not been a Scottish patriot all along?
"If the Tories ever tried being nice to the Scots they might get on a bit better. However, it would take several decades for it to seep into the public consciousness"
So the break up of the union might be Thatcher's one lasting legacy? What a disaster she was.
Where is Charlie Kennedy when the No side so obviously need him? Nowhere to be seen. Like David Steel's wife Judy, one wonders if Charlie has not been a Scottish patriot all along?
Don't agree on darling, whilst much better than Carmichael , if he gets pressured at all he is useless , starts twitching and stuttering. Only good when allowed to spout without opponent.
Any Glaswegians know if he's still doing it?
-If Labour is largest party after General Election but short of majority, what course of action would candidates select.
-What future for Academies and Free Schools in Greenwich?
-if you were invited to join the Cabinet, what portfolio would you like to hold?
Roger - air brusher in chief of labour's 13 years in government.
The Scots clearly feel that, labour or tory, they get the same old sh*t from Westminster.
" Isn't that already costed in, given that Cameron has been PM since 2010. Not sure how he can get his feet more under the table than that."
He can look like he might win next time and as ever the collective will of the Scots can do nothing at all about it
Populus Friday Lab 37 SNP 31 Con 14 Lib Dem 13
It is clear that their obsessive desire for Independence leads the Nat posters on here to be completely out of touch with the thoughts and concerns of the majority of their fellow Scots . . .
The English often see it differently, with government spending per head being higher in Scotland, and the Scottish tail wagging the English dog.
It is a matter of perception, and not one that will easily be resolved.
Have you been visiting Cousin Seth ?
"Jeez Roger get over her, you're just showing your age. When you die will your tombstone read "killed by Thatcher" ?"
God that's tempting! The only downside is I'd probably make it onto the front page of the Daily Mail
Where is Charlie Kennedy when the No side so obviously need him? Nowhere to be seen. Like David Steel's wife Judy, one wonders if Charlie has not been a Scottish patriot all along?
Compared to the rest on offer he may be considered to be up to the job but the big question around Darling is that it's fairly obvious it may not be the job he wants. He appears infrequently on independence usually during big moments spending the rest of his time lobbing 'helpful' suggestions about little Ed's policy direction along with other nuggets of wisdom on what labour should be doing at westminster.
Kennedy told Clegg in no uncertain terms what would happen to the lib dems in scotland after a coalition government with the tories. He was politely ignored for the most part even though he was subsequently proved 100% correct. I suspect Clegg views him with mistrust as Kennedy was the only senior lib dem who didn't support the coalition with the tories and Clegg is far more interested in keeping those close to him him happy (like Carmichael) whilst keeping those he may consider a threat marginalised. Kennedy could indeed have some sympathy with the aims of Yes but I also wouldn't rule out that he just wants to wait until after the carnage of the lib dems in 2015 and pop back up as a pair of 'clean hands'.
(Sound of Nats heads exploding with apoplexy!)
"Soho based director's immigrant lover forces house price plunge in Cote D-'Azur love nest"
throw in a reference to Diana and you'll make the Express too.
"I am fully aware that the joke was in the poorest taste and I thought carefully before posting it."
Don't apologize Avery. It was light and funny and as you so rightly point out good natured humour at even the blackest of moments should always be welcome as long as they aren't personally offensive and that wasn't
"Soho based director's immigrant lover forces house price plunge in Cote D-'Azur love nest"
I was recently nearly run over by a learner driver wearing a burqa. I think that would have done it
I am a Tory voter in national elections but not at all sure how I would vote in the Referendum if I was a Scot, or an Englishman living in Scotland.
(Although if I was living permanently in Scotland I may have given up on the Tories and joined the malcolmg wing of the SNP, I suppose)
'Everybody should watch this. It may be difficult viewing if you're a unionist, but necessary. Poor @acarmichaelmp http://news.stv.tv/politics/250647-sturgeon-and-carmichael-cross-examine-each-other-on-independence/ …'
Two politicians constantly interrupting each other and not answering the questions?
For Scotland it was Lab 32 Con 14 LD 2 SNP 48 UKIP 3 Green 2.
Baxter could do with having separate England and Scotland swing models.
Regarding image, Carmichael does look like a lump of lard, maybe that will lose votes?
A story.
When Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko was appointed General Secretary of the CPSU of the Soviet Union in 1984, the Finnish Foreign Secretary asked the Soviet Ambassador to Helsinki how to pronounce correctly his new leader's name. The Ambassador responded: "however you wish but always with the deepest respect".
A question.
For the Scotch Nats.
I did see QT on Thursday and noted that dear old Annabel Goldie, unlike Alistair Carmichael, was listened to by the audience with "the deepest respect". This was in spite of the fact that no more than a handful of the audience agreed with anything Goldie said.
Like Finland's attitude to Russia, the relationship between England and Scotland, and, by transference, the Tories and Scotland appears highly complex and not easily explained in caricature.
The word "Finlandisation" was coined during the Cold War to describe "the process by which which one powerful country strongly influences the policies of a smaller neighboring country, causing the smaller country to become like Finland (was perceived by many in the West to be) during the Cold War.
So to the questions. Are not English Tories to the Scots not like dominant fathers to rebel teenagers? Listened to with respect but fought against at every opportunity? Is not the Independence movement really a process of Finlandisation?
'Everybody should watch this. It may be difficult viewing if you're a unionist, but necessary. Poor @acarmichaelmp http://news.stv.tv/politics/250647-sturgeon-and-carmichael-cross-examine-each-other-on-independence/ …'
I could only take 5 mins but you can see the problem. Nicola is talking domestic politics (and very parochial ones at that) Carmichael is foolishly defending a Tory government.
Infact if they hadn't said otherwise I'd have thought he was a Tory. Big mistake from the 'no' camp putting up a Tory/LibDem minister.
Is there an 'Aunty' equivalent to paternalism?