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Scottish Independence and Scotland's Future
Referendum was on 18 September 2014


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


 

 


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