Having tried to document
the whole campaign we are leaving pretty well all of the content up as
an historical archive. The Scotsman newspaper has posted up their take
on the whole debate at
http://www.scotsman.com/scottish-independence/referendum-review/
The vote result was 55% No
to 45% Yes Since
the debate discussions are now going on around a Devo Max option to give
the Scottish Government much more power.
My take on the referendum is that older
voters were more sensible in their outlook and thus the idea that the
YES camp had on winning the referendum was to immediately give away a
good deal of that independence to the Bank of England and the EU did not
sit well with many voters. Also the aggression showed by Yes voters
against No voters was also a significant factor in my view. At the end
of the day I simply believe that the SNP lost the fight as they were not
prepared to be honest with the people of Scotland. I also detected
that a number of Yes voters were quietly relieved at the No vote
winning. I feel this shows that many didn't trust the SNP to run an
Independent Scotland but were prepared to gamble that they wouldn't get
an overall majority in the first election after Independence.
On a personal note I
would have voted Yes but on the basis that I hoped the SNP would not win
an overall majority at the first election. I am convinced that joining
the EU would be bad for Scotland and when Nicola Sturgeon ruled out a
referendum on the issue I was not at all happy. There was really
no discussion on the alternative of joining EFTA, EEA and The Nordic
Council. I also felt the SNP were so focused on domestic issues that
they simply had no idea how to run an Independent country. I felt that
Alex Salmond should have taken a much tougher line with the Yes voters
that were being aggressive to the No side and the fact he didn't started
me thinking of the SNP more like the Third Reich. I had become rather
concerned that the SNP were building a police state in Scotland. Like
why do we need 1,000 extra police officers, why should they be arming so
many of them and why are they tinkering with our legal system and even
trying to change our media. To me these are all sign of a police state
and when I learned that they had allowed questionnaires to go forward
where our children were being quizzed on questions such as "Do your
parents argue" I was even more troubled.
I do think politics needs to change in
Scotland and I feel there needs to be a new party for the center right
as the Tory party has been fatally damaged in Scotland and there does
need to be a party that reflects the center right.
Given that the SNP has
been preparing all its life for Independence it seemed strange that they
had no real vision for how an Independent Scotland could be run. In my
view the SNP lost this election as it wasn't properly organised to offer
a real vision for the Scottish people. Alex Salmond has said he would be
prepared to step down and dissolve the SNP if he thought it would make
independence happen. Pity he didn't carry that through as I think it
would have worked.
So that's my take.
The topics covered can summed up in the
Scotland's Decision pdf file
Economy
Agriculture & Forestry
Economy & Taxation
Energy
Financial Services
Fishing
Initiatives
Land Use
Tourism
Transport
Social
Social Welfare
Arts & Culture
Education
Health Care
Justice, Law and Order
Pensions
Population & Immigration
Environment
International
Security & Defence
Scotland in Europe
Scotland in the World
Scotland's National Borders
Commonwealth
Scotland-UN Committee
Brexit
Constitution
Draft Constitution
General Principles
Independence
Monarchy Versus Republic
Democratic Government
Claim of Right
Major players in the Independence
Debate
Political Parties
Major Organisations
Media
Correspondence
This is where we will post some of the correspondence we get in.
Independence Debate
Where we find general articles to do with the debate on the referendum
we'll post them here.
Ed Means Column
A regular column exploring the benefits of Independence.
Reference
Documents
Due to the Realm of Scotland web site closing down we've rescued some of
their reference documents with their permission. We are also adding
significant documents on Scottish Devolution.
Scottish
Innovation Party
A fictional Political Party which we are using to look at innovative
ways to improve Scotland.
Electric Scotland
Choice of News Sources
These are sources I refer to frequently.
Building a
New Scotland
Papers from the Scottish Government |
