Saturday - September 20, 2014

scotland votes NO.  the union is saved. for now.

Well, it looks as if the argument isn’t finished even if the battle is over.

This is a reference to the vote this week that has ended, at least for the next 20 years,
the issue of Scotland as an independent state.

The votes came in and in spite of Scotland giving the vote to 16 year olds and up, the Yes campaign lost.

People turned out in record numbers, something like 85% I have heard, went to the polls.

Scotland has a very much socialist bent, and a popular (I’ve been led to believe) anti nuke attitude.  It was expected at one point, according to some “experts”, that the dreamy eyed romantic youth would carry the day for the Yes side.  And the yoot certainly did turn out.  Many with I suppose the knowledge of past battles from antiquity with images of Mel Gibson leading the charge.
Well, the kids turned out okay, but I got an education last night listening to many of them interviewed.  What I heard was a very savvy and mostly very articulate group of young people who I would hesitate to refer to as kids.  I was a still a kid at 16 back when the dinosaurs roamed.  These weren’t kids at all.  Over time I have fallen into the trap I think, of assuming based on news stories of the thugs in that age group, that they were all pretty much the same except for a very small minority.  Bad on me for that.

So anyway …..  the papers and radio news and panels of speakers of every political persuasion are offering opinions and some predictions for what the future may hold.

When things were looking the bleakest for the ‘No’ to independence vote, when it looked like the ‘Yes’ folks would carry the day on the day when it counted most, the heads of the three main political parties here went grovelling on hands and knees to Scotland. They carried with them, party bags filled with promises of greater power in the hands of the Scottish parliament and assorted other goodies.  The fear was very real.  The break up of a union that has held for over 300 years. 

So for now, it’s over. Sort of.  Because one headline today reads; Unionist truce collapses over English ‘home rule’

And that’s whole other subject I won’t go into here.

Meanwhile, here’s a bit from the Telegraph this morning.
Outta the mouths of babes?

In years to come, they may have a change of heart when considering little things like, middle age, old age, health care, who pays for it? And how?
Kinda wish I could still be here for that.

For schoolyard voters, the Scottish independence argument has only just begun

Half of Scotland’s newly enfranchised electorate – the 16 and 17-year-olds granted a vote by Alex Salmond - are relieved. The other half are ‘devastated’, ‘gutted’, ‘raging’

By Fraser Nelson
The Telegraph

If the seniors of Nairn Academy looked more tired and grumpy than usual, they had reason. Some hadn’t been to bed, others had been watching the news since 4am and many had already spent hours arguing about the future of British democracy on Facebook.
They are part of Scotland’s newly enfranchised electorate – the 16 and 17-year-olds granted a vote by Alex Salmond. When I meet them, the morning after the vote, half are relieved about the decisive “no” result and the other half are – well, they have several words for it.

“I’m devastated,” says Rebecca Liddle. “If Westminster launches another illegal war, or the NHS gets sold off, then I want complete silence from anyone who voted ‘No’. They had their chance.” She says she will not be able to sing Flower of Scotland again – her countrymen, she laments, are obviously not as brave as she thought.

Last November, the pupils of Nairn Academy rejected independence in a mock referendum by 71 per cent. As a former pupil, I was much encouraged – seeing it as a sign that a globally minded generation had no time for a Braveheart generation’s notion of independence.

This time, though, opinion has shifted firmly towards separation. When I ask if it’s closer to 50/50 now, Eilidh Innes corrects me: closer to 53/47 she says.
The quibble would sound ridiculous if the argument had not dominated the school. They have argued about it in the canteen and on social media. “If I found a No campaigner, and he ever raised a point I couldn’t answer, I’d go online to find out why he was wrong,” says Ruaridh Swainson. The taunts used on Facebook tend to involve words like “ignorant” and “uneducated”. To defend themselves against such slurs, 16-year-olds started learning and arguing about the relative merits of a central bank.

None of this was allowed to be taught in school. Highland council issued a strict ban on any staff discussing the referendum – or even encouraging students to vote. Any teacher with a Yes or No sticker on their car had to leave it at home: the pupils were on their own. But they took pride in holding their own discussions with adults who thought they were too immature to handle the debate.

Eilidh Innes worked in a hairdressing salon over summer, and says customers who found out she was a No supporter said she was too young to vote. “But if you ask me, a lot of them are too old to vote. If a 60-year-old votes for independence, they won’t have to live with the consequences for as long as I will.”
Strikingly, many of the pupils think this referendum was a warm-up, with another just 10 or 15 years away.

When I was growing up in Nairn, there were plenty of English children. The idea that there was any difference between us would have seemed bizarre, not offensive. But one English-born pupil tells me she is teased for being an “immigrant” and only half-jokingly threatened with deportation. This is a sign of the ferocity of the debate, ending up with some teenagers defining themselves with labels they barely knew existed a year ago.
“That’s why this debate wont go away now,” says Rebecca Liddle. “This argument is just getting started.”

SCOTLAND VOTES NO to Independence

Posted by peiper     on 09/20/2014 at 05:25 AM   
Filed Under: • UK •  
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