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Indyref 2: This time it's personal.

Planigale said:
In 2018 /19 the UK will still be in the EU. So things will not have changed. We may or may not know what the future holds, but we certainly will not know in the run up to an 18/19 referendum.

Part of the driver to have an early referendum is that the thought is the UK government will be distracted by Brexit leaving an 'unopposed' case for Scotland leaving the UK. I think that this is obviously a good reason for those who believe independence is the right thing as anything that shifts the odds in their favour is obviously right. However it is not the correct thing. The timing of the referendum should be post Brexit.

An unsuccessful pre-Brexit referendum will result in a post Brexit referendum on the grounds that the political situation has changed. Rather than having a referendum every four years it should be stretched out to eight years then a decision can be made noting the consequence of Brexit (if it has happened).

Hopefully an independant Scotland would hold a referendum on joining the EU, so even the status of an independent Scotland in the EU is unknown.
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Sorry but this is Trump-esque in its denial of reality.

We are negotiating our exit from the EU- the situation is already different. Now we are waiting to see what the future terms of Scotland's relationship with the EU. At that point it is the best time to then decide if we like those terms or want to take another route.

Post Brexit the entire situation changes - not least of such an approach would give carte blanche to Westminster to barter away all of Scotland's goodies to the EU in return for a nice deal on other matters they actually care about.

Your argument has no basis in anything other than you not wanting a referendum.
 
Planigale said:
Of course the people of an independent Scotland may not wish to join the EU, like their neighbours in Norway, Iceland, Greenland, Faroes, and England! You would have to say that it does not look like the EU is that popular amongst nations on the North Atlantic seaboard!
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Well the recent vote suggests that the vast majority are very happy in the EU. Seriously, where do you get your information from? Stop talking to that guy in the pub. He's obviously a weirdo.
 
Planigale said:
No how many times do I need to say I was alluding to the practice in the USSR of declaring dissidents mad and detaining them in asylums. Your insistence on trying to personalise this is tiresome. Move on.
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I didn't personalise the issue. You did that, and in quite strong terms too. Is "this is tiresome, move on" an attempt at a justification or amend for that? If so, it's an unusual approach.

Now you're frantically trying to change the subject, and launching a whole series of issues, not related directly to world government, Scottish independence, or Brexit.
Can I ask you how you feel about the treatment of the ethnic Russians in the Baltic states? Should the EU have allowed countries to join who deny citizenship to a significant minority of their population? I assume that you support the existence of a divided Ireland from what you write?
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As to Ireland, I'm willing to guess that you assume no such thing - as I have stated the opposite - and that you are merely trying to be provocative. The other points are subjects for other threads, if you wish to initiate them.
 
Planigale said:
Part of the driver to have an early referendum is that the thought is the UK government will be distracted by Brexit leaving an 'unopposed' case for Scotland leaving the UK. I think that this is obviously a good reason for those who believe independence is the right thing as anything that shifts the odds in their favour is obviously right. However it is not the correct thing. The timing of the referendum should be post Brexit.
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You've stated several times that Indyref2 should be "post Brexit", but what do you mean with that?

In a few days time (29 March?), Teresa May will invoke article 50. Well, if it's not postponed again, because Cameron had promised that already in June last year. That invocation puts the UK on an irreversible path to Brexit.

After that, one of three things happens:
1) after two years, so on 29 March 2019, the UK is kicked to the curb by the EU because no agreement has been reached within the two years deadline.
2) magically, negotiations go so well that within two years an agreement is reached that then is presented to parliament for ratification.
3) no agreement is reached within two years, but, magically, all 27 EU members agree to an extension of the deadline.

So which date do you mean with "Brexit"?
a) 29 March 2017, the day that article 50 is invoked
b) the fairytale date that an early agreement is reached between the UK and the EU
c) 29 March 2019, the day the UK is kicked out of the EU
d) the fairytale date after that prolonged negotiations reach a result
 
So we now have a majority in the Scottish Government vote to seek a formal agreement with Westminster to hold a referendum. Theresa May will now have to formally deny it, Approve it or bluster her way through again.

I predict the latter.
 
Archie Gemmill Goal said:
So we now have a majority in the Scottish Government vote to seek a formal agreement with Westminster to hold a referendum. Theresa May will now have to formally deny it, Approve it or bluster her way through again.

I predict the latter.
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Judging by today, showing her legs off works as a distraction, and there's always the blame Corbyn/Brown/Keir Hardie line the tories bandy around every other day.
 
It's gone a bit quiet now. Appreciate Theresa has other things to worry about right now but wonder if her plan here is genuinely to ignore it and hope it goes away. That might be about the least bad of her bad options right now
 
Some good news seems to be that the press have finally caught up with the truth and are reporting that Spain would not veto Scotland becoming a full EU member. Another Unionist lie bites the dust it appears.

If wonder if the usual suspects will now stop parroting the line that's as Spain won't allow it?
 
They're reporting it as a u-turn even though it's just a clear statement of the position Spain has been more delicately articulating all along, and the spokesman himself said straight out that the statement was issued to "correct misinformation".

Even now, some papers are reporting that the statement only says Spain wouldn't "initially" block Scotland's application, or not "in the first instance" when in fact the original Spanish text doesn't say that at all. I've read Spanish speakers trying to explain it and it seems that the wording meant something like "and for the first thing..."

It's interesting the way newspapers and broadcast media will grab on to a mistranslation and push it forcefully if it supports the view they want to take of the issue in question. It reminds me of the time Abdelbaset al-Megrahi said on his deathbed that "they exaggerated my name". He was speaking in Arabic and his meaning was that the investigators had made him out to be something (a Libyan spy and intelligence chief) that he wasn't. Early reports didn't remark much on this, but then someone mistranslated it as "they exaggerated my part in the bombing" which of course would have been an admission of guilt if he'd actually said it. Suddenly even the BBC changed its reporting of the story to declare that Megrahi had confessed.

Even so here, when a Spanish spokesman says, "well for the first thing, we wouldn't block...", the media grab on to a translation that says "Spain has said that it wouldn't initially block Scotland's application", just loving the implication that Spain intends to string Scotland along a bit and then block!

I'm depressed beyond description about the one-sided partisan reporting by virtually all the mainstream media. It's been going on not for years but for decades. Twitter is infested by rabidly unionist journalists trolling independence supporters with misinterpretations and blatant lies, then pulling the "I'm a journalist and people pay to read my valuable opinions and insight so shut up you vile cybernat" line when challenged.

There's a related phenomenon which is becoming more obvious. As well as the journalists who know perfectly well that they're peddling lies and misinformation (from Andrew Neil to David Maddox and plenty in between) there are many more who simply pick up the oft-repeated lies such as £15 bn deficit and Spanish veto and "you'll be forced to adopt the euro" and repeat them as unchallenged truths. Trying to get any of these to look at the facts is nigh-on impossible.

Allied to this is the deliberate demonisation and "othering" of independence supporting online reporting that does indeed check its facts - principally Wings Over Scotland, the best of the sites, but others get it too. It's got to the point that the more goody two-shoes elements in the independence camp are doing the unionists' work for them by currying favour in establishment eyes by bad-mouthing Wings.

But hey, if you want the actual, fact-checked real deal, read Wings. So he swears on Twitter, that doesn't make him wrong (and it's often very funny).

If you want the absolute, straight-from-the-hound's-mouth truth about Spain, read Paul Kavanagh. He lived in Spain for ten years, speaks fluent Spanish and passable Catalan, reads this stuff in the original, and reports what they're actually saying. Here he is in December 2013 pointing out that the Spanish veto is a canard that has been shot dead too many times to count.

https://weegingerdug.wordpress.com/2...u-veto-threat/

Here he is more than eight months ago explaining that while Spain isn't going to veto Scotland's membership of the EU it sure as hell intends to do its damndest to veto any Brexit deal that doesn't deliver what it wants for Gibraltar.

https://weegingerdug.wordpress.com/2...h-veto-threat/

This has been up there on the internet, free-access, for ages. The mainstream journalists sneer and deride and then claim that what Paul has been saying all along is some new angle they'd never considered, or a complete u-turn on the (absolutely false) premise they themselves had previously been peddling.

But people read this stuff. Worse, they just look at the headlines on the papers in the rack while they're in the queue at the Co-op. And it influences them. Just as the Express and the Mail have stirred up anti-immigrant hatred to the point where people are being attacked, they stir up anti-independence bitterness by demonising Sturgeon and convincing everyone that Scotland is the only resource-rich country of 5 million people on the planet that would inevitably fail as an independent state.

The BBC is at it too, partly by peddling the same unionist line itself and partly by its habit of allowing "what the papers are saying" to dominate its own news agenda. I don't know how we can have a half-way fair vote with this sort of inequality of propaganda arms. OK, we've got the National now, but that'll never change anyone's mind as it's only bought by people who already support independence.

Hopefully, though, if the EU countries get sufficiently hacked-off with the way Westminster is behaving, we'll have a few more clear statements to "correct misinformation" that can't be ignored.
 
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I think it can only be positive that the UK is no longer to be protected by the EU in these debates. It's a very different picture. The EU can now be far more straightforward on its position towards Scotland.
 
ddt said:
Or it could be their death because their symbolism is considered lèse majesté.

Meanwhile, in the Globe and Mail, author Ken McGoogan dead seriously suggests that Scotland join Canada.
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That would transform Scotland into a "province". So we start as a "country", throw off the Union and end up as a "province". That would present psychological difficulties.

Fare weel to a' our Scottish fame,
Fare weel our ancient glory;
Fareweel even to the Scottish name,
Sae fam'd in martial story.'
Now Sark rins o'er the Solway sands,
And Tweed rins to to the ocean
To mark where England's Canada's province stands,
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation.'
 
I think this coming general election is going to stir things up a bit. It will be interesting to see what a increased Tory majority might do to the opinion polls.
 
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