Welcome to North Britain – Bella Caledonia
It seems some of our friends north of England are having a hard time coping with the decision that came from the Scottish referendum. The following article by Mike Small sums up the different strands of feeling – but is it accurate? Isn’t it too soon to say the Westminster parties lied about new powers for Scotland and is it accurate to say they won’t be enough to ward off the next wave of austerity from the evil Coalition government? Here’s the article:
For my friends, the ‘Proud Scots’, congratulations on your victory. Now there’s good news and some bad news for you No voters.
The good news: your vague ‘sense of Britishness’ is secure. Hurrah, no need to worry yourself any more.
The bad news: you have opened the door to £25 billion of austerity measures that will redefine the fabric of our society. On the plus side, you’ll still be able to get The Archers, so while people living in destitution sounds harsh, you won’t be inconvenienced.
The good news: the media is busy telling everyone that ‘home rule’ is coming to Scotland.
The bad news: Gordon Brown just made that up. He’s not in government, it’s not yet 24 hours after the polls closed and the ‘Vow’ is unravelling before our eyes. Already the timetable has disintegrated. Couldn’t they have waited until the weekend before pulling it?
Apparently “Baroness Goldie” thinks appointing “Lord Smith” to reform Scottish democracy is a “strong” move.
The good news: ‘Unionists’ are so happy at the result they’re burning the saltire in George Square, singing the Famine Song and telling asians to leave the area. Is this ‘No Borders’ with a twist? Luckily, you’ve defeated ‘narrow nationalism’.
The bad news: Nigel Farage says “absolutely clear” the Barnett Formula will have to be reconsidered. He’s not alone.
Your victory has left Scotland disempowered and isolated. 73% of over 65s voted No. 71% of 16/17 year olds voted Yes. The young & the poor voted to build a new country & a better future.But the old & the rich said it’s not worth the risk.
45% of Scotland doesn’t want to be part of Britain.
Did you think that by voting for less powers you would get more powers? Funnily enough that’s not what’s going to happen. Already the agenda has moved swiftly on to home rule for England.
So – congratulations Proud Scots – an evening of celebration perhaps? Just avoid George Square, there’s a riot on.
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He is on the money – the back pedaling was something to see. There never was any new powers on offer. At least they didn’t try to string out the lie over that “iron timetable”.
Rather than have the union go out with a little dignity, people have obviously chosen to see it hacked to death by severe austerity.
No Mike, it’s not too soon. The first date on the timetable towards new devolved powers was yesterday. And nothing happened.
No, he’s right. Thursday was a disaster. It’s given the Coalition impetus just a few months before the election, and the outcome of that election will almost certainly be unaffected either way by the Scottish vote, because it rarely ever is.
I can’t see the Westminster parties delivering greater devolution of any real significance. (“Devo-Max” is just a label and has never really been defined.) I’m not convinced the Tories will even try, they’ll just keep coming up with stalling tactics. But if the Scots had voted for independence, they would have secured all the powers of “Devo-Max”, whatever they are, and more besides.
The Scots frequently complain, rightly, about getting Governments they haven’t voted for. This week they had the chance to stop it happening in future, and they just piddled it away.
I feel genuinely angry about that, and not just because of the free gift they have handed to the Tories. I spent my teenage years living in Scotland and I was sometimes the English ‘verbal-punching-bag’ whom locals took their nationalistic bad moods out on. Finally the opportunity arrived for the Scots to get what they wanted, and they chucked it aside. So what exactly were they giving me all that grief for for all those years then?
On a broader, but no less angry note, that’s two referendums in this Parliament for much-needed constitutional changes, and both have ended in a No vote. And yet the British never stop moaning about the status quo.
What’s the point?
Perhaps ‘Devo-Max’ should be the re-branded name of Irn-Bru?
As a proud West-Countryman, I can state firmly that any drink that has a name sounding so much like “Devon” should be a brand of cider. :-P
The advertising tagline could be “Totally Scrumpy-tious”!
What a load of rubbish I voted no to stay in the UK. Ed Miliband has said he is going to go ahead with the powers that was promised. Well done, Gordon Brown isn’t in government but he got the 3 of them together we will get the powers but it won’t be on back of a fag packet like good old Alex’s promises who promised everything with endless money from where, I do not know. I am fed up with getting called I am not a scot because I preferred staying in the UK . One other thing the Scottish parliament control most budgets including the NHS, Education etc Now there was a lot of lies told of that, it was going to be privatised (NHS) if we voted no which there was no truth as the SNP are in charge. What about the burning of the British flag by the other morons? nothing said? in Aberdeenshire there was intimidation, ripping down signs all the time (70%) anything done..NO that what happened with that lot flying British flags at George square was disgusting and sick I hope they will be done for it. Everyone has a right to vote I voted for extra powers but, within the UK that’s what it always has been any government. But remember it was the nice SNP (who hate the tories..so they say) who helped a tory government into power in 1979 which they happily forgot I notice. They then complain about the tories? that witch who ruled killed everything, the mines, unions, NHS, Education….everything. Don’t anyone accuse me of not caring because I voted no everyone has a right and I never had a go at anyone who voted yes as that is their right to do that.
Jim. You are right when you say that Scotland has control of its NHS but wrong if you think that it is immune from privatisation. If cuts are made to the English budget, these cuts are made to the money Scotland receives, in proportion to the population. As funding dwindles, there may be no option but to go down the same road as England, however vile it may be. There are only so many cuts that can be made to other services to fund the public NHS.Also, when the TTIP is ratified UK-wide, with Cameron refusing to exempt the NHS, Scotland not being a country in its own right and thereby not being able to exempt its own NHS, privatisation will automatically follow, I fear.
I’m not sure who you are blaming for the disgusting behaviour at George Square, but even the BBC man on the spot said it was unionists who started it. “Unionists”, mind you, not simply described as No voters. I don’t know the full details but the Orange Order have been mentioned in several posts. It was obviously organised, not just a flare-up of emotions.
I agree that the SNP did help Thatcher get into power but they were not alone by a long shot. So many people were fed up with the ’70s, what with the strikes and 25% inflation that they voted for anything different, without any idea of what they were bringing on themselves. My tabloid-reading ex, (note the ex) even suggested that we should vote for Thatcher because she was a woman and we’d never had one as PM before. Women were better organisers he thought. I voted SNP that year, as before, but after one term of Thatcher I became a Labour voter.
Thanks for the reply Joan. I was sick to death with that lot that was pretending to be british and I also had a go when I saw a youtube video of a poor young girl with a scottish flag getting it pulled away by what I discribt done as bullies whom I hope get done. I hate that. What happened with the vote was brillant and democratic and well done to the yes as well for giving it a fight (honestly) . I feel that the yobs in George square (I mean yobs) used this historic vote as an excuse for trouble.
I voted Yes and was proud to do so. I’m an English woman living in Scotland and saw a huge chance for Scotland to secure it’s future and to get away from the stealing and lying Tories forever.
I was so upset when the vote came through and at 10% for the No vote! I have to say, that I did not, along with many other people, believe that the difference on the day would have been so high. However, the ones that threw that vote away were the pensioners and the rich and I am completely ashamed of them. The rich I can understand as more always wants more, and their greed means everything to them. The pensioners? Selfish to the bone, they only cared about themselves and their futures and not the futures of their grandkids and great-grandkids!
We have already seen right away that Labour will not keep it’s promises and we already know that the Tories won’t. I will never, ever vote for Labour again as they have shown just how blue they really are.
The new powers will never come and I hope that labour loses the majority of it’s MP’s here in Scotland as they have shown themselves to be liars and the fact that they will always count Scotland as nothing else but MP’s – well I’m not the only one to vow that I will not even vote for them in the GE now, they don’t deserve it!
I hope the no voters are squirming as they have just given our country away and our NHS will go bye-byes.
As for me, if I can get enough money together I am off to live in Eire – I may have to use the Euro but I will never be able to be touched by those evil killers the tories again, and gawd help us all when we are under the rule of Boris and Farage!
Why do you say Labour will not keep its promises? Labour is trying to hold the lying Cameron to his!
I normally agree with you, Jaypot, but I am getting fed up of being lumped in with No voters and slagged off simply because I am a pensioner who has not had to resort to foodbanks. I voted Yes and, if you are English as you say, probably voted SNP before you crossed the border. I have a pension but would not be intimidated into voting No simply to protect it (another scare story anyway). In fact I would gladly live with a reasonable reduction in said pension in order to live in a more equal country.
This quote “Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results”
Why oh why do people keep voting for the BIG three time after time, after time…?? They all continue to fail ‘us’ ..the people they were elected to serve down the last 5 decades!FFS people..wake up and lets have a scottish style vote for an alternative….The Peoples Assembly, Left Unity, Greens, …anybody..JUST NOT THE BIG THREE..surely the alternatives cant be ANY worse than spinning the same record over and over?? It’s not rocket science!! (4 with UKIP)….(Greens have great social, welfare, legal, policies..etc,despite these, they always push their green/climate agenda as their main attributes…:-( ) I’m concerned about the environment too,but people want to know about food, work, shools, housing etc FIRST!
People tend to believe that it’s not the same ‘Big Three’ because whenever one of them is defeated they have a change of leader and a slight change of direction, in order to make themselves more palatable to the people. But popular attitudes change. The very stance that made Labour attractive to the electorate in 1997 – the neoliberalist similarity to Thatcher’s Tories, but with a ‘caring’ angle – is exactly what got them kicked out in 2010, after the failures of silly ideas like PFI and the many attempts to integrate private enterprise with public service that were never – ever – going to work, alongside the perceived failures of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown as leaders (Iraq/Afghan wars; the global financial crisis – which wasn’t Brown’s fault, as the world ‘global’ should make clear for all but the terminally numb of mentality). The Tories then decided to cobble together a line that they were now the ‘caring’ party, and the electorate very nearly fell for it, with Nick Clegg’s March 2010 betrayal providing the necessary momentum to get Cameron into Number 10.
Slight changes to cope with defeat, that make them more acceptable to the people than the others. The reason this keeps working is, the core principles behind each party are (or at least were) widely accepted. Labour’s dalliance with neoliberalism has upset that apple cart, though, meaning it is hard to predict what will happen next time. Ed Miliband seems to have found it hard to reject the right wing of his party, despite the damage it has done, and the right-wing media have worked hard to confound attempts to get his message out to the people.