It’s November Already. So What Are We Supposed to do Now?

Former-Scotland-secretary-014

Continuing our series of proposals and ideas for the way forward (#IndyIdeas)Peter Arnott has a tactical proposal, and argues that ‘to live without hope in the future is no way to live in the present’

Hey! Let’s not pretend it hasn’t been fun recently.

For two years the Yes campaign may have laid the ground for a radical transformation of the British State (among other things). But it became very clear as early as the morning of September the 19th that even when it comes to the Break- Up of Britain, when you want a thing done properly, you have to call in the Etonians.

Not just the timing of Cameron’s tying of the “Vow” on “more powers” for Scotland with English Votes for English laws was perfect – even the acronym was beyond price. When the Prime Minister came out in favour of EVEL that morning, mired as I was in a tired haze of half convinced attempts to console myself, Cameron’s high-handed, Labour-shafting, crowd-pleasing announcement for his own Cro-magnon electoral base, was only the start of a quite extraordinary few weeks after the Referendum vote, when in the wake of the triumph of darkness, timidity and nihilism, the architects of that No vote seemed determined to snatch tomorrow’s defeat from the jaws of yesterday’s victory.

First, there was that careless, wonderfully toffee-nosed relegation of the debate that had consumed us for two years as a mere historical footnote in much more important and recently discovered campaign for devolution for England! Overnight our passions and labours of two years became the merest bagatelle of UK local government organisation that could be sorted out over a nice lunch.

Then, as if the flowering of a thousand democratic thistles had never happened, the forces of nihilism in both their post Thatcherite and post Blairite manifestations blithely brought history back under their control in the form of command papers and adjournment debates and commissions to be set up under unelected peers…only to find that, as manifested in public meetings and a flood of engagement with the political process (now taking the practical longer term form of, for example, the SNP multiplying its membership by a factor of more than three) the genie of popular democratic engagement was not going back in the bottle. In fact, if anything, the disease might be spreading to other corners of this benighted imperial archipelago.

(Popular engagement in politics is to the professional class of punditry and spin what Christmas is to the rest of us. They all say they’re looking forward to it, but actually…)

As a result of all this I found myself personally in a state of bereavement deferred. I wrote repeatedly on social media and elsewhere about sitting back with a bucket of popcorn to watch our late opponents in the referendum campaign get on with doing our job of state rebuilding for us. What we had fallen short of doing deliberately, the former No campaign seemed bent on achieving accidentally.

Not only had the tied themselves irrevocably to a “Vow” which it has now been confirmed was entirely dreamt up and written in the offices of the Daily Record, the three main political parties, though they longed to get focused on what they saw as the proper adult business of electoral politics now that this wretched, juvenile indyref nonsense was over, found they were still consumed by it. Although we had taken the option, as Westminster saw it, of shutting up rather than fucking off, there did seem to be something about “shutting up” that we had failed to understand.

Hilariously, phrases like “settled will” began to emerge. Assumptions that democracy for Scotland as a sovereign political entity had been all right for a one off, but that it was now to be irrevocably cancelled. Jack Straw even went so far as to float, briefly, the notion that there never ever being any of this nonsense to annoy decent British people ever ever again should be written into law…thus making the only written bit if Britain’s word renowned unwritten constitution read “Not you, Jock.”

Meanwhile an exhausted Labour Party , demoralised by their own success as bag men for the empire, held a victory conference that lurched from sand pit to bear trap like a collection of unusually uncoordinated zombies…They too had woken on September the 19th to find they’d been hornswaggled, taken for a ride by the Tories. The Labour Party , the last principled defenders of the Union, found themselves reviled for being anti-Englishness well as well as hung on the Tories’ pre-existing anti-Scottish petard.

How could it get worse for them?

Well, just give it a couple of weeks. For now here came joking Jim Murphy, deploying every high and low weapon in the Blairite armoury to finally effect the takeover by the market right of the corporate dinosaur of the Scottish labour party. Briefing against Johann Lamont to the extent where even Govan’s own Ian Davidson thought he’s gone too far in the back-stabbing, and then putting top down pressure on Anas Sarwar to get out of his way, Jim has entered the building. And we are now the delighted readers of puff pieces of quite extraordinary vacuity penned by Blairite luminaries comparing this cadaverous, lean and hungry Cassius to Lamont’s Julius Caesar to Matt Santos off the West Wing of all people.

It does remain to be seen whether the war enthusiastic and austerity-friendly Murphy will succeed in persuading the few remaining Scottish Comrades that he is the left-wing firebrand who will lead them away from the abysmal predictions of recent opinion polls.

But I digress. The travails of the winners are not my problem. Our side lost. And though the merry pranksters of once upon a time “Better Together” have been doing their very best to act like THEY were the losers, the losers were actually us. And while there has already been some rather fitful and forced grin activism on our side designed to “keep things going” there has also been a distressing and disproportionately loud Neanderthal tendency from within the Yes camp talking about electoral fraud and traitors and all that unhelpful bollocks.

These people should realise that they are the one consolation left to the forces of darkness and immediately put a sock in it.

ENOUGH WITH THE POPCORN ALREADY

Our real problem, on the Yes side, is that the simultaneous strength and weakness of our campaign was that it could focus the simple minded question of Yes and No. “Yes”, as our opponents quite fairly pointed out, could mean anything to anybody. Vagueness was a condition of the debate, and this worked both for and against us. Had the Scottish Government been able to seek a mandate for the negotiation of a constitutional settlement, that might have made for a more coherent debate, but it would never have raised the passions in the way that a choice between Yes and No did.

We should not get carried away into thinking that Yes and No are on the table for Smith. What is there is negotiating position that is weakened by the referendum result, but strengthened by what has happened since.

I sent in a wee general squib to Smith on the principles of popular autonomy and national sovereignty which I expect to be deservedly ignored . However I was most impressed, I think, by the STUC’s detailed submission, which struck me as a well considered and detailed and comparatively practical wish list of powers that might in the interim actually DO things to improve the lives of those who live and work and study and get sick and go to school and do the shopping and try to make ends meet here in actually existing Scotland.

And it struck me that I, as a member of the informal fraternity and sorority of Civic Scotland Cybernats, could do a lot worse than to publicly endorse what the good people at the STUC came up with. They, after all, were the glue that held the the reluctant corpus of the Scottish Labour party to the Constitutional Convention that achieved us the first version of democratically accountable devolution in 1999.

And that past coalition made me think about a possible new coalescence, as it were, of the disparate forces and individuals that gathered their energy and focus behind the binary question of Yes or No. Because the really difficult strategic question before us, now that we are back in the analog world, is what do we coalesce around now? What are the simple objectives around which we can gather with our diverse and sometimes divergent passions?

A TACTICAL PROPOSAL

If it is by the standards of the non partisan and social justice based package of powers demanded by the STUC that we might seek to measure whatever his Lordship finally recommends, then it is that same standard of enhanced leverage over democracy and social provision that we should write and speak to when the Smith Proposals are making their way through the UK Parliament after Christmas, and when those proposals go to Holyrood and the Lords for their rubber stamp. Then and after, I think we will need a clear and straightforward message around which to get graphically and dramatically inventive.

Then I think we should carry that same Civic model intro the election campaign, and use it to judge and influence the parties whether they were on our side in September or not.

Crucially, that standard must studiously avoid looking at the manifestos through a retrospective future prism of Independence. Firstly, that would be inept and make for a sterile façade of engagement with the arguments. Second, it would be bad tactics. The point is to bring people who voted No along with us, not to feel good about our own disappointed virtue.

Feeling good about being in the right is all very well for a while, but it gets tedious and unattractive quite quickly.

We need to apply the values and energies and competencies we developed in the Yes Campaign to the important processes within each of the political parties we deem to have agency in the public and private processes of getting to those elections. And we need to do it because we were the ones who “got” what was going on in Scotland, the seismic and irreversible changes that have occurred. Though the elections in May are to the same House of Commons on the same day, what happens in Scotland on election day is now every bit as distinct from the UK “mainstream” as is what happens between Sinn Fein and the DUP in South Down or Antrim.

While I have a good deal more time and respect for Nicola Sturgeon than I have ever had for Jim Murphy, she does now find herself at the head of a family sized concern that has become a mass movement…all of whose well established factions and tensions will need to adjust to a new reality, as well as being parachuted in as first minister of a fractious and divided country many many of whose citizens are almost as frightened of her as they are of Lesley Riddoch. Her stadium tour is, I think, an inevitable way to connect to the sheer numbers she now has to deal with, but stadiums full of cheering people are a danger as well as a tonic to the soul. Ask Mick Jagger.

It needs be clear to the SNP, I think, that the Scottish electorate have always been, and especially are now, devotees of the tactical vote. Old members must accept that these johnny come latelys have not come through the door humbly, but rather, have come through with an agenda that reflects the changed nature of the electorate in Scotland.

AFTER SMITH? THE ELECTION.

Which brings us to the next big event, which is really as far as my crystal ball gazing will legitimately take me at the moment. Yes..we are talking about the UK general election in May 2015.

Just as I think a coalescing around the only indirectly constitutional position of the STUC is both good sense and good tactics in regard to the Smith Commission and its parliamentary follow ups BEFORE the election, so I think that a formally simple social and democratic programme that puts the indy question on the back burner is the way we need to go in May, and in the lead up to May. We need to construct, I think, a popular manifesto…a short programme of measures to make a better Scotland that do not start with ANY constitutional assumptions.

“This is the Scotland we want to live in” we should say “these are some ideas about how to get there” …and that we then test the manifestos of all the parties against what we judge to be a minimum set of social and democratic standards around which a progressive consensus ought, ideally, to be able to coalesce. The Yes movement needs to stand beside the electoral process as the parties contest it. And to advise, warn, and maybe, eventually consent.

I used the word ideally there quite deliberately. We have been running an idealist campaign to which the political parties , the Greens, SNP and SSP included,have, been part, yes, but have not led. We need to keep the lead away from them if they’re already on the same side – keep them honest. And, as importantly, if they weren’t on the same side in the referendum, Labour, Liberal and even Tory members, that is no reason to call anyone a traitor. The very opposite. It is a reason to put forward a positive vision for the country we all share, and ask that the political parties address themselves to that vision, and prove themselves to us as being means to that end.

The political parties need to remain an adjunct to the broader campaign,, and in order to effect that, we need a clear set of principles from the broad Yes campaign to which all parties can be held up fro scrutiny equally. This is easier said than done so I think it should be our focus before we get to electoral wheeling and dealing and pacts and so on.

The parties are going to do what they will do, and I don’t think we can expect the formation of a unified Yes Alliance candidate in each constituency, I think we can demand a decent standard of horse trading…with the Greens and SSP left some clear territory in which to concentrate their resources on specific seats.

But all that is to come and is secondary to our need to find a MINIMUM package of ideas that we can agree…and define, calmly and without rebuke, areas where we agree to disagree.

The Scottish electorate have, of late, notoriously voted tactically. In the different elections in our different countries, we have voted one way as British subjects and another way as Scottish citizens. At this moment it looks very like the tactics of tactical voting may have changed, but i doubt very much whether the sound political instinct behind it has gone anywhere. It would take a better crystal ball gazer than me to offer an entirely coherent analysis of exactly how it has changed and exactly what this means for next year, let alone five years from now.

I do not think that the political parties can in themselves embody this new consciousness. I do think they can respond to it. And that it is pour job in the broad campaign to articulate it as best we can.

Which is why, I think, the once upon a time Yes campaigners need to find a new provisional place to stand. A new name or a new party I think can both wait. As can instant demands for an Indy rerun…We need to come to an agreed position that is a tactical position around which we can gather…a standard to which the clans can come to fight first the Smith process, and then the election…without pretending that such a thing is forever. We should embrace our uncertainty, I think, and treat contingency as our friend.

Whatever happens next, it feels for the moment like history is on our side even if recent history has disappointed us. That we recognise that it in the nature of history to demand of us that we make promises concrete, and then that we accept disappointment.

So we should act “as if”, I think. As if we had faith in our people, and in our shared humanity. As if we believed that good faith and good arguments can influence the political process. As if we had time. As if we believed in the future. As if the side of life will eventually win over the side of death. We should do these things because the alternative is to be on the side of helplessness. To live without hope in the future is no way to live in the present. At best, to extinguish hope in the future is to defend the privileges and injustice of the past. And who would want to do that?

And yes, we should act as if we already lived in the early days of a better nation. Because, actually, we do.

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  1. Well …
    what for Yes voters to coalesce around?
    As you say it’s six weeks, and I’ve been exercised by the same questions.
    And although I admire your immaculately constructed argument …. so erudite…. so … bloodless, it’s already coalesced for me around a very simple idea regarding the May 2015 General Election.

    Revenge.

    Gets more popcorn. 😀

  2. This is an excellent article, which really sums up how I’ve been feeling. Even the final paragraph. . . I finally understood what “living as though in the early days of a better nation meant” – after the No vote! Let us act as though we are sovereign.

    Can I suggest a new name for our new phase? There’s a group setting up called “Gigs For Change”. They came to the Common Weal meeting last Monday in Edinburgh. They’ll be putting on music and comedy gigs to fund Common Weal and other causes, and will be working in communities.

    However. . . . I think “… For Change” has the power to move us on from “Yes…” or “… For Indy” and take progressive elements of the No vote with us.

    Edinburgh For Change, TUs For Change, Kittens For Change – I think it could unite us all around the wish to change Scotland from where we are now, regardless of what happens with the Smith Commission, GE2015, etc.

    I’ll keep plugging away. I don’t want to join a political party, but I want us to keep up the work we’ve been doing, empowering our communities and holding our politicians to account.

    I am also, separately, willing to work with any party who is standing on a progressive pro-indy platform next year, and since my Labour MP’s majority is about 400 votes, that should be fun!

    1. macart763m says:

      Last para says it all Anne, but essentially we work with what we’ve got, just as we always have. 🙂

      The use of tactical voting got us a referendum in the first place and who knows, maybe another in the not so distant future?. At the moment though, its got to be about making the best of what we’ve got to shape our politics and governance as it is.

      Couldn’t agree more with your own post. Well said.

  3. benmadigan says:

    actually if current polling intentions are anything to go by (and they may not be, with all due caveats) all the celtic nations in the British isles could be living in “the early days of a better nation”http://eurofree3.wordpress.com/2014/11/02/perfidious-or-precarious-albion/

    I agree the Yes campaigners need to unite, agree on a set of principles, join up with Scot2scot http://eurofree3.wordpress.com/2014/10/30/scot2scot-westminster-theres-a-storm-coming/
    and make sure pro-Scotland parties get as many seats as possible at the forthcoming westminster general election.

    If scottish MPs form a pan-nationalist alliance with sinn fein, SDLP, Plaid Cymru + the greens they can then decide what’s in the best interests of all concerned – abstentionism like Sinn fein, semi-abstentionism like the SNP, full participation without Sinn fein, knowing they have a strong outside ally in the republic of ireland and northern ireland

  4. Shaun says:

    What you need to do now, is seek to address why you lost the referendum.

    A lot of you believe that you lost the referendum because, at the last minute, the three stooges “vowed” to give us more powers should we vote no. But this merely illustrates the differences in paradigms between many of those who voted no compared to those who voted yes. To large amounts of no voters, more powers isn’t a priority. The no vote had a commanding lead long before more powers were ever put on the table.

    I think, right from the very beginning, your campaign made a strategic error because you were trying to say to us that with independence everything would be better and nothing would be worse; that no-one would have to make any sacrifices; that Scotland would be the land of milk and honey. Then, when more authoritative figures pointed out the risks that independence would bring, the things that would have to be sacrificed, your campaign had no answer. But because of your strategic error at the beginning, you had to fight these people and institutions. Satisfactory or believable answers could not be provided to the questions you were being asked.

    Now, independence is off the cards for at least a generation, but there is no reason why Scotland could not ever become independent. But if it is, those wishing for it must be able to answer the questions that the people of Scotland would like answers to.

    1. stramash says:

      I think you’re over-egging the pudding a bit there. No-one in the Yes campaign suggested that Scotland would be a land of milk and honey post independance, although the BT crowd tried to characterise the Yes movement in such terms. Also who are the ‘more authoritative’ figures of whom you speak? Surely you don’t mean Darling and Osborne? And ‘off the cards for at least a generation’? Have you seen the recent polls?

      1. Brian Fleming says:

        Well said, stramash!

    2. Wul says:

      Shaun, could you name three of the “risks” to which the Yes campaign had no answer? Maybe someone on here could have a go at addressing them?

      I think you are right to underplay the “vow effect”. Some folks were never voting Yes and came to the polling station, maybe for the first time in their lives, to make their mark.

      As to having your fears answered, the SNP were constrained by a need, not to “scare the horses” of the wealthy and comfortably off, but the Yes campaign signposted “answers” all over the internet.
      At the end of the day, the need to answer the “risks” perplexes me. We have enough money, enough resources, enough intelligence, enough skill. WTF more do you need to know?

    3. topherdawson says:

      I think the referendum was held only just in time to get a No. Yes had gone from 25% to 45% in two years and now seems to be at 52%. We were allowed a referendum because Cameron was sure we’d lose it, correctly as it turned out but only just. When Yes is at 70% it will all be over apart from the shouting. And I don’t think it will take a generation.

    4. thoughtsofascot says:

      Nonsense. There were answers to every damn question that was raised. You just never made any sort of effort to seek them out, and allowed the media to play you like a fiddle. Boy, did they play you well.

      The independence movement, playing on a deeply uneven playing field, needed people to think for themselves and do their own research. That’s the downside of your opponents having a compliant media(just ask Putin’s rivals over in Russia how well that works out for them). When you don’t get the airtime you need, you need to rely on the optimistic belief that people will seek out what is hidden from them. That was a mistake.

      Its also amusing as hell watching all the claims from the :”authoritative figures” unraveling as we speak. Tell me, why did the media treat their words like gospel when its plainly obvious now that everything said was utter poppycock? Oil running out? my ass. Banking jobs safe as part of the UK? My ass. The lack of any sort of prodding on these claims was a disgrace, especially given how quickly they fell apart after the 19th of September.

      The lesson that everyone can take from this is the same one that the opposition in Russia learned 15 years ago, and the same one that the Left wing in the Labour party are learning at this very minute.

  5. Gordon bradley says:

    I’m sure we can rely on the blundering ineptitude and incomprehension, the sheer thickness, of the London establishment to irritate us all to rebellion. Its well under way already. They truly do not get it.

  6. ” . . hung on the Tories’ pre-existing anti-Scottish petard.”

    You might want to check on the derivation of ‘petard’. You can be hoist on one, certainly, but not hung on one.

  7. John young says:

    If we are to prevail we have to present to the scottish people all of the scottish people a clear and concise way forward a vision to invigorate the education health foundations for a prosperous business environment that could reduce costs and promote job creation,we do not need political parties with their own agendas,we could elect proven well respected persons all decisions taken in an open forum.

  8. Martin Wood says:

    “I suggest a new strategy R2….”

    The recent surge in the polls got me to thinking the last time this happened. “Los tres amigos” were stirred into action and the entire MSM, business community and Westminster went into misinformation overdrive, saturating the media with “Project Fear”
    As a result – we lost.
    The same might happen in GE 2015 – they won’t take a strong SNP/Greens, weak Labour lying down. We face a very large well-coordinated “enemy” and fighting them at their own game seems stupid. Guerrilla warfare is the best way to beat overwhelming strength – laced with a healthy dose of misinformation
    The media and MP’s use the polls to shape public opinion – so why don’t we turn this back on them. 1.6 million of us seem to be well connected on social media. We could spread the word to “misinform” our voting intentions.
    Instead of answering SNP etc. – say Labour, Lib Dem – Tories even.
    This will artificially inflate the labour vote and will probably be widely reported as a Labour recovery as often as the BBC can. This should hopefully calm the furrowed brow and lull them into a sense of security. A few things should fall out of this.
    Eggman may be tempted to stand in a less safe seat – making it easier to bounce him.
    Twopee will feel he can fight the Westminster election without worrying about North Britain and the Labour voters who would vote for a Chimp with a red rosette would be encourage to go back to sleep and they’re turnout drop back to the 30% of 2010 as they may think it’s in the bag.
    For the sheer amusement – if nothing else, the faces of SLAB in May when the actual results come in (hopefully reflecting the current level of distaste for labour) and the decimation of the seats they hold would be a fair shock to the system.
    The strategists in the main parties would be hung out to dry, pollsters would be dragged into various Whitehall offices, John Curtice, who’s face has become a bit too wearing on TV, would struggle to answer how this happened.
    Starved of accurate information – the run up to Holyrood 2016 should be chaotic for SLAB etc – they won’t know what to trust even if they do figure it out.
    For a bit of entertainment February 2015 could be “Tory” month, March “Lib dem”.

    Thoughts?

    1. jmkdesigns says:

      Thats a great idea, but I don’t see how you are going to get enough people signed up to it to make it work. My tuppence worth is that we need to look at all the points made by the “no” lot which either seemed semi-convincing, or that we did not have a good answer to. e.g. the currency question. We (or at least Nicola and co.) need to examine all these points, and come up with more convincing answers, so that within 3/5 years, as it becomes apparent that the “vow” is completely non-existent, and that all the major UK parties are reduced to vestiges in Scotland, we can get the result we want.

    2. Andrea says:

      Love the idea of messin’ with the polls – civil disobedience at its most fun….although you might confuse the hell out of the ordinary older folks battling to get access to information….. other than ‘keep the Tories out’

  9. mo Mhorag says:

    Martin, I absolutely love your thinking!

  10. David says:

    This Neanderthal tendency that you refer to? I am doing my very best to move on and work with everyone else on the longer road to independence or every improvement in Scotland’s governance, status and the welfare and prospects for the Scottish people that we can achieve. As far as the ballot goes I am absolutely certain that the paper I voted with was blank on the reverse. I am careful not to shout fraud or ballot rigging but I do have serious concerns. It is very clear from the guidance notes issued to polling staff that there should have been no such thing as a ballot paper that was blank on the reverse. The office of the presiding officer insists that this could not have happened. The electoral commission, supposedly totally independent from the presiding officer and the management of the referendum vote and count, says exactly the same thing and the police are not interested. The chief presiding officer also states that even if the paper was blank on the reverse it would still have been counted while also stating emphatically that no such papers were found by either polling station staff or staff and observers present at the count.

    So while carefully avoiding assumptions or jumping to any conclusions about ballot fraud I still feel very strongly that I have raised a serious issue that has not been adequately addressed. Sticking with the facts as I know them, there are well over one thousand persons who have stated emphatically that their ballot paper was blank on the reverse and there is what seems to be an insurmountable legal barrier and the full aquiesence of the chief presiding officer preventing any proper investigation of this.

    We are not all incurable bravehearts or incurable bad losers we are just trying to make a serious point that we believe the procedures for ballot papers have not been followed and it would be a much healthier situation all round if this could be investigated to vindicate us or to show by some real evidence that we are wrong. I have no great hope that this will be in any way seriously investigated and it leaves me with seriously diminished confidence in any future ballot process. I did not choose to have a ballot paper that was blank on the reverse and I think that if this had not happened to me I would probably be saying exactly what you are saying about leaving all this behind and moving on.

    1. Wul says:

      This issue is a dead duck, but I can fully understand your concern. Is there any correlation between where the blank forms were noticed and where people voted? i.e. were blank forms more prevalent is safe “Yes” or “No” areas?
      It should be easy enough to check a sample, don’t they keep the ballot papers for years? If Ruthy was allowed a quick swatch before the polls closed, surely the cops can have a wee look too?

      1. David says:

        afterthereferendum.com has over 1000 fully registered and sworn entries from people who declared that their ballot paper was blank on the reverse. They also have the approximate time that votes were cast. I see a pattern in that but I’ll let you make your own judgement.

    2. Andrea says:

      I completely disagree that those people who are concerned about electoral fraud are ‘neanderthal’.

      The Better Together Campaign did everything possible to scare and trap voters into voting no.Everyone saw that. That trapping and lying does not engender trust – amongst those who didn’t believe a word of it.
      A British establishment that works the rules to suit itself (iraq war, trident, forcing people to work for subsistence benefits, whilst they destroy the paperwork for rorted expenses, you could fill a book with the underhanded methods of the Establishment and you’d have to be a dreamer if you thought government sanctioned Electoral fraud wasn’t part of the armory of dirty tricks.

      It is precisely that they can pull the old ‘conspiracy theory nutters’ trick that makes it work so easily – just like calling folk ‘braveheart romantics’ – name calling is a ‘tell’ that there is something to hide.

      1. David says:

        Thanks for support. My main issue is that I genuinely don’t want to cry fraud and I am trying to stick with what I know. The only issue that I have direct knowledge of is that my ballot paper was blank on reverse. I know of two others with same issue one has registered on afterthereferendum.com and the other has not done so. I have made my self familiar with the polling staff guidance notes and reading these makes it very clear that his was not supposed to happen. I have written correspondence from presiding officer, Mary Pitcaithly’s office, which asserts that no such papers could have existed but offers no way forward in checking these 1000 plus complaints.

  11. LMS says:

    Well said David – I agree with all you say here…..I feel( and am livid about)the entire electoral process for the referendum, especially the excessively large number of postal ballots was a joke – conducted in so many ways totally unsatisfactorily and causing many people to be suspicious – before any repeat of a referendum on Independence, and in fact for all future elections starting with the GE next year, there needs to be complete electoral reform regarding ballot security and public assurance of such.

    1. David says:

      Thank for support, I am left in a position where my level of trust in future referenda or elections is much diminished. I find it very disturbing that even though all the evidence should be there to check out these complaints that option is ignored in favour of support for legal impediments in place to prevent the reopening of any stored ballots and assertions that we are all wrong and even if we were correct our votes were still counted. If they are correct all the papers that they require to prove their assertions are still there.

  12. arthur thomson says:

    Of course the referendum was a con – it was always going to be. Ask an illusionist how they would have fixed it. But we all know that the political mafia at Westminster, their mouthpieces and their business partners are a collection of undesirables so we shouldn’t be at all surprised. The important thing is to keep fighting and looking for ways to be beat them – and we shall. As to whether I should say it was a stitch up – my answer is yes and I won’t be put off by stupid references to Neanderthals. I will never be able to police the activities of the nasties who oppose Scottish independence but I can make it absolutely clear that I think they are no better than thieves and that is a small consolation. Liars and thieves just hate to be called liars and thieves.

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