SNP stretch lead over woeful opposition

TrevorsDen

All salmond is is the leader of a large local authority. he has power without responsibility. he just spends other peoples money he is not responsible for raising it and if there is not enough he can just blame somebody else. The scottish electorate realise that he is the best man to do that. Why should people now vote say labour for instance when they know that with a labour govt it will be all nice and cosy and scottish labour will not ask too many awkward questions?

In this respect of course 'independence' makes no sense what so ever.

JR Tomlin

It was "mind numbing dullness"... Or pretty much exactly what they said in their party manifesto? Well, I will give you that party manifestos rarely make exciting reading, so it could be both.

Jeremy

Hamish Macdonell:

"The suspicion at Holyrood is that Mr Salmond is deliberately doing nothing to cause any great problems or divisions so he can smooth the way for the one really important push – on independence."

A strategy that would maximise his chances of success. Very canny. At what point, one wonders, does independence for Scotland become inevitable?

Colin

The honeymoon will continue until they can no longer afford to bribe the parasite vote...

The last thing Captain Haddock wants is a referendum on independence, because he might win.

The Heir to Heath should call his bluff and announce a referendum ASAP.

strapworld

I do believe that a charistmatic politician leading an English Nationalist Party would also sweep the board down here.

Let us face facts. The Conservative, labour and the ghastly Liberal Democrat parties have all ignored the English, riding rough shod over any request for an English Parliament, referendum on the EU, the total inequality of the Barnett Formula and the uncontrolled immigration into this overcrowded island. The expenses scandal showed that these parties do not care a toss what the people think and we now have the situation where this conservative led cabinet has some serving ministers who would, had they been ordinary people, been facing criminal charges.

There is a need for a clean sweep of this rotten place. Ukip is certainly not the answer as they are as bad as the rest.

barnehurst Bob

Colin,

I agree that CMD should call his bluff, but I fear that he won't.

The Scotish electorate have the best of both worlds. A strong Scotish leader, implementing socialism and avoiding the enevitable bankruptcy by sending the bill to the English. I can't imagine they would vote to deliberatley run out of someone elses money!

David Lindsay

There is no West Lothian Question. If the Parliament of the United Kingdom were to enact legislation applicable in Scotland or Wales, then that legislation would prevail over any enactment of the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly. It does not need to use it. It merely needs to have it. And it certainly does have it. There is simply no doubt at all about this, and anyone who doesn't like it should have voted No to devolution. I bet they didn't. If what I am saying were not the case, then, in the SNP's own terms, there would be no need for the SNP.

The real English, and especially Northern and Western English, grievance is not some "West Lothian Question", but cold, hard cash being poured into an area where per capita income stands at one hundred per cent of the national average. Of course, far more of the monies extracted on pain of imprisonment from Shetland to Scilly are expended in the South East, Scotland's twin. Judging Scotland by the East End of Glasgow is like judging the South East by the East End of London. Better to think of Scotland as a bigger Surrey.

I am a leveller up, not a leveller down. I want both spending and outcomes in each of the 12 regions, since we must, to match each other by bringing everywhere up to the standard of the best. And, if that fails to be delivered, by docking the pay of the relevant Ministers. That is the basis for the Unionism that clear majorities in all four parts of the United Kingdom continue to want and need.

If being a toxic brand there means that the Conservative Party must be disbanded in Scotland, then that party needs to be disbanded everywhere outside the South East and East Anglia. The whole thing sounds rather like Peter Hitchens's oft-repeated call for the Conservative Party to be entirely replaced because so many people will now never vote for it no matter what its policies are, who its Leader is, or whatever, but simply because of what it is. Such a party would have something to say about Bombardier, both on its own and as example of how international capitalism corrodes to nought everything that conservatism exists in order to conserve.

Murdo Fraser, if he wins, might start it off in Scotland by opposing the even further centralisation of policing and detachment of that service from the communities that it serves, a connection requiring not only small police forces such as were based on the old counties, but also those forces' accountability within local government rather than in the persons of local robocops, preventative policing based on foot patrols, and the former network of police stations and police houses. Let him shame not only all the other parties at Holyrood, but all the parties at Westminster, by taking this hugely popular and dazzlingly commonsensical stand.

Note that Fraser wants a separate party in order to oppose the Common Fisheries Policy, which the Conservative Party, having very briefly opposed it under Iain Duncan Smith, went back to supporting under Michael Howard. Meaningless withdrawal from the European People's Party was promised by David Cameron. But then, you already knew that. Meaningful withdrawal from the Common Fisheries Policy was promised by David Davis. But then, you almost certainly did not know that, or indeed anything else about him beyond the appearance of a lady falling asleep during one of his speeches. Once again, the potential electorate exists far beyond Scotland. Which is why, as on policing, and as on Bombardier and all that it represents, over to Ed Miliband.

Nicholas

Good Byee! Good Byee!
Wipe the tear, baby dear, from your eyee
Tho' it's hard to part, I know,
I'll be tickled to death to (see you) go.
Don't cryee! don't sighee!
There's a silver lining in the skyee
Bonsoir, old thing! cheerio! chin-chin!
Nah poo! Toodleoo! Goodbyee!

Bye bye Andy Murray! Bye bye David Tennant! Wave bye bye! Bye bye Gordon Brown and every other mean, grasping, socialist loving, English-hating, chip on the shoulder Scotsman! You won't be missed. And once you've gone our double dealing slimeball politicians will find it even more difficult to deny the English their own parliament.

Yes, I'm a Little Englander - don't tread on me! No taxation without representation!

Mac

8.4% contribute 9.4% in tax revenues and receive 9.2% in total spend.

That is what currently the Scots are doing in the UK.

An independent Scotland would be a low tax, low spend economy with over a £trillion in bankable assets.

That is the economic message that will sway the vote on independence.

Ian Sankey

The honeymoon will continue as long as the Scots can see how bad things are south of the border.

Can you blame the Scots for wanting to run their own affairs when the London parliament slash is making such as mess for us all?

Dougie

Firstly, there is no honeymoon period. If there was such a thing it would have ended at the time of the Megrahi decision. What we have is the public's critical assessment of who is best to look after the interests of Scotland. The fact that there is no contest is not a reflection of the SNP receiving any kinf of benefit of the doubt.
Secondly, the Government's programme includes the first serious attempt to tackle Scotland's alcohol problem, the first serious attempt to tackle the sectarian problems that remain. Both of these have been evaded by previous governments, so they deserve credit for thaking on these issues. Add to that the restructuring of police and fire services, which have political risks given the opposition to these moves.
Surely, only those who are obsessed with the fact that the government have not brought forward the independence referendum, three years earlier than they promised would find that disappointing.
I would have thought that the creation of a mechanism to release the report by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission would be exciting enough in the year ahead. This may allow us to finally discover some of the truth around Lockerbie at last.

Lonesome Dave

As a card carrying Tory I say good on you Alex!

Go after your referendum and set about winning it - however let's simply think of it, realistically, as independence for England.

Go, and take your country with you and see how far you get without English funding....

TrevorsDen

you live in dreamland strapworld. Does simply labelling yourself 'english' solve all the problems of raising taxes and living in the real world?

All you want is an 'agree to my prejudice and to hell with the consequences' party.

Take a look at greece to see where wishful thinking and ostrich behaviour leads.

Quite frankly do we really want another massive and expensive and pointless layer of govt over the top of us?? yet more pointless expenses claiming politicians? Another expensive and architectural monstrosity of a parliament?

No we just need a lot fewer scots and welsh MPs in westminster.

Dennis Churchill

There are two inevitable things that will happen and putting them off just makes matters worse and prevents us just getting on with improving this country. They Are:
Referenda on EU membership and continuation of the United Kingdom.
Does anyone believe neither will happen?
The political class putting their collective fingers in their ears and chanting La La La ,in order to ignore these issues, just puts them off not removes them.
The referendum on the UK should be held in both countries and either voting for independence should decide the issue.
I suspect there is now more support for independence in England than Scotland so the SNP should support a dual referendum.

2trueblue

We need one referendom on the EU and one on Scotland, then we would be free! Won't happen though so we are stuck with both.
We need the English to vote on English issues and the Welsh and Scots to vote only on their affairs or on issues that involve us all. It is totally undemocratic that the English are interfered by all of these people. All we do is support them, great.

Fraser

The sooner we have independence the better. The negtive feedback i see from people south of the border makes me grind my teeth.

Reed

Nicholas : "Yes, I'm a Little Englander - don't tread on me! No taxation without representation!"

I like this idea. Let's reclaim the term 'Little Englander' and turn it into a positive affirmation, like the gays did with 'queer'.

Fergus Pickering

But Mr Lindsay, there are many, many people, including my good self, who would never vote for a socialist party whatever it called itself. We believe socialism is wicked and its adherents are the spawn of the devil. And there are lots and lots of us.

TrevorsDen

We would still impliment EU edicts even if out of the EU. We trade with them after all. We would still subsidise our own farmers. The main benefit would be to better control immigration - not to be ignored.

But to otherwise ascribe all our ills on the EU is a false premise, just like saying most of scotland is like surrey - and there is no westlothian question

G Nixson

I would like to point something out to you firstly to say england bailed out Scottish banks Is a joke am afraid to say, as a English born Professor of economics that the arguments are in fact unfounded. Firstly it is a myth English tax payers subsidies Scotland england gets billions more than Scotland gets secondly you have forgotten that england receives direct subsidies out of Scottish oil and whiskey revenues many of my learned friends take only in to account Scottish income tax and council tax as to considering how much Scotland pays to the uk but in order to know the truth you must look at the whole picture. When you take into account all of Scotland’s revenue collected by the uk inclusive of oil whiskey, income tax, Corporation tax, Vat, Council tax, Landfill Tax, National insurance etc you will actually find Scotland is paying more to the uk than it gets and in fact Scotland has never received any of there oil revenues where as england has received extra funding from Scottish Oil funds. In Fact Scottish oil funds will be worth a minimum of around 3000 Billion pounds over the next thirty years which they will never receive. Further to this English banks were also bailed out including Halifax the banking crisis was also started in england with northern rock. We must not forget that Scotland has paid her way in tax ever since it came in to the union. The problem england has is that at current we do not spend money wisely here we throw huge sums in to quangos which frankly are not needed if we got rid of these quangos we could in fact survive independence. Secondly you should consider that London receives more public expenditure in the uk than any other part of the uk. Ireland also gets more than Scotland and in terms of population it is in fact smaller. It is in fact a myth that Scotland does not pay its way in fact it has among the highest council tax rates in the uk and the highest business rates in the uk. The problem is it is a myth Scotland gets English money and is in fact more often than not the other way round as huge portions of Scottish oil whiskey and corporation tax is spent in England. in fact the treasury are already aware of the fact that Scotland pays its own way and this is demonstrated by the granting of tax raising power to Scotland in the new Scotland bill in which Scotland government will raise a third off its budget using this rate itself for its own budget using the Scottish income tax rate of 10p without having to raise income tax. This means if Scotland where to have full fiscal autonomy they would in fact be billions and billions of pounds better of even being able to manage to have half the size of the uk armed forces for only around 3-4% of its gdp. So in fact if Scotland did get independence they would in fact be better off and england would struggle as would northern Ireland without the Scottish tax coming into the treasury as usually vast sums of that tax is diverted elsewhere. I can say this both as an economist and former treasury advisor. I hope Scots continue to believe Scottish unionist scare mongering that Scotland cannot survive independence if they dont continue to believe it england will struggle to cope with the loss of Scottish tax revenue!

Simon Stephenson.

I wonder what David Lindsay gets out of commenting on here? He's out of the Gordon Brown school of argument, learned I expect in the mindblowing Trades Union and constituency Labour Party committee meetings of the 1960s and 1970s. Don't even think about taking part in a contested discussion, just go on, and on, and on with polarised, unconditional and unremitting assertions until anyone who has a different view to offer loses the will to participate. "Win" the debate not with logic or reason, but with discouraging opposition by insisting that entrants to the contest must be prepared to wade through mud up to their neck, for hours on end, in the knowledge that there's nothing they can do or say that will have the remotest effect on the opinions or behaviour of dogmatists they are confronting.

Dennis Churchill

TrevorsDen
September 12th, 2011 11:23am
No the EU trades with us: we run a trade deficit with them.
If they want to continue then like all suppliers they need to keep on the right side of their customers. There is nothing produced in the EU we can’t get from outside the EU and in the case of food cheaper.

michael

There will be no common sense in Scottish politics until they have to pay the bills.

Yam Yam

The true measure of Alex Salmond's success is that he has succeeded in creating a desire for Scottish independence amongst the English (including an increasing number of English Tories).

Andy Carpark

Simon Stephenson - How dare you accuse David Lindsay of making unconditional assertions.

'If the Parliament of the United Kingdom were to enact … If being a toxic brand … Murdo Fraser, if he wins …' do not look like unconditional assertions to me.

On the contrary, Lindsay's stock in trade consists of outlandish counterfactuals, such as 'If the earth were to land on the moon, soup of the day would be carrot and coriander' and this is the stuff of over 10,000 blog posts in the past five years. Simply as a matter of formal logic, the quoted example is actually true, an analytic truth which has probably led poor deluded old Lindsay to think that he has added immeasurably to the store of human knowledge.

James Gray

The misinformed, misplaced and hostile poster comments here towards the Scots is truly astounding and Westminster is laughing at you accordingly.
Before devolution Scotland had 72 parliamentary seats. It now has 59 soon to be reduced to 52 with the passing of the Scotland bill. At most Scotland has only ever had 74 MP's. Even Ireland when a member of the union had more with a maximum of 105. At 8.4% of the population Scotland should have approx 57 seats.
It truly is a bizarre claim that the number of Scots MP's have somehow disenfranchised the English electorate. FYI the 6 SNP MP's do not vote on English matters on a point of principle. Want to know why England does not have free prescriptions, free personal care etc?? Go and ask the 533 MP's that purport to represent you.

As for being subsidised, Scots are 8.4% of the UK population and contribute 9.4% of total tax revenues with 9.2% being spent on our behalf.
Westminster, aided by media outlets such as the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph, will simply continue to ignore Englands concerns for as long as the frustrations of her people are misdirected at the Scots.
I wonder who certain posters here will blame once the Scots remove themselves from this most unequal of unions...........

Nicholas

"Before devolution Scotland had 72 parliamentary seats. It now has 59 soon to be reduced to 52 with the passing of the Scotland bill. At most Scotland has only ever had 74 MP's."

I love the smell of angry Scotsmen in the morning. That is still 50+ MP's that get to vote in TWO parliaments and the majority of them are Labour. There are precisely 0 English MP's voting in an English parliament because there isn't one.

And please tell us how many of those 59 Scots MP's voted against free prescriptions, etc., for England? Even 1 is 1 too many.

All the parties go on about equality and fairness. Devolution and the different treatment of BRITISH subjects depending on whether they happen to live in England, Scotland or Wales has undermined equality and fairness and the outcomes are regressive. That orange arch bounder Hain glibly tells us that the Welsh decisions about prescriptions, student fees, etc., are down to the Welsh Assembly but sees nothing wrong in Welsh MP's voting for English students in England to pay fees.

This is a national scandal and no amount of weasel words or Scots/Welsh special pleading will alter the basic fact that the English people are being unfairly treated and not properly represented. In short they are being discriminated against.

Nicholas

PS we know Westminster is laughing at us. That is part of the problem. Well, I hope the arrogant bastards will have the smile wiped off their faces when English nationalism finally breaks loose and we get a leader, a party and a parliament that truly represent us.

James Gray

"I love the smell of angry Scotsmen in the morning. That is still 50+ MP's that get to vote in TWO parliaments and the majority of them are Labour. There are precisely 0 English MP's voting in an English parliament because there isn't one."

Nicholas, there is no anger on my part. On the contrary I'm quite relaxed about the constitutional future of Scotland. However, I continue to be perplexed by logic of which you've just displayed. 50+MP's do NOT get to vote in two parliaments. They were elected for Westminster not Holyrood.
I can't tell you how many voted against free prescriptions. Can you tell me how many English MP's voted against? The fact is that if the English MP's were concerning themselves with the wellfare of their constituants instead of trough feeding then the voting patterns of those 59 MP's would be an irrelevance by a simple matter of numbers. It really is that simple. That is why I say the English nationalist argument is misguided. I could not agree more with your principle but your method just does not hold any water.
I also would like to know where your sense of fairness is regarding having a government in Westminster without a mandate to rule in Scotland. Then again that wouldn't compliment your misguided argument, would it?

Keaton

Nicholas:
And please tell us how many of those 59 Scots MP's voted against free prescriptions, etc., for England? Even 1 is 1 too many.
----

England has never voted for a party which supports free prescriptions. Scotland has. I agree that Scottish MPs should not vote on this issue - but even if they did not, you wouldn't have the free prescriptions, as English MPs don't support them either. England undoubtedly gets the sharp end of the West Lothian stick, but you can't blame Scottish MPs for this one.

Incidentally, who are these MPs who can vote in two parliaments? I'm not sure what you mean by that statement.

Nicholas

James Gray and Keaton. Yes, my mistake. What I should have observed is that Scots MP's represent their people in three parliaments - Edinburgh, Westminster and Brussels. For the English there is no equivalent to Edinburgh. They are uniquely unrepresented at that level.

I don't "blame" Scots MP's for the prescriptions fiasco. I merely point out that in a Westminster parliament where "equality and fairness" are much touted by all parties the English are not treated equally or fairly. In fact I concur with both your observations regarding English MP's. They do not represent their constituencies well, but even if they did they would still face (in theory) potentially competitive voting from Scots, Welsh and Irish MP's. That imbalance is surely the very genesis of devolution? But at some stage of this oddly imbalanced process the old anachronism of Britain = England and England = Britain was invoked, so Westminster serves England in a way that it does not serve Scotland, Ireland or Wales. Surely you can see that is not equality or fairness?

James Gray

Nicholas.
"For the English there is no equivalent to Edinburgh. They are uniquely unrepresented at that level."
I agree. Unless of course you live in London and have the Assembly with the comical Boris!
Yes, there is an imbalance. With 533 MP's it's stacked overwhelmingly in Englands favour. That was the genesis for devolution. We (Scots/Welsh/NIrish) were on the periphinal of voting power, England was and is not. I'm not complaining, that was simply the nature of it.
It is as simple as this. England can have as many parliaments as it likes but until the political parties adopt the social programmes that we have these benefits will never be delivered regardless of any potential voting from MP's outside England.
Sadly, I don't think it will happen any time soon. Westminster MP's are too busy posturing and grandstanding on the world stage, with their £100 billion nuclear weapons that no one will ever use or supercarriers or wars of dubious legality, to be concerned with the "trivial" problems that face the English people.
The fundamental problem with this union is that it serves no one apart from the politicians and their partners in The City. 'Project Britian' has failed us all. It's time we wiped the slate clean. Independence for all the UK nations then we can begin to heal our economic and cultural wounds inflicted upon all our great countries.
You have my best wishes for an English parliament.

I S

Up here, in North Britain, we wish you all the best in your quest for English independence.
Not to burst your bubble, but here are several things that will not happen once independence is achieved:-
-Your immigrant population will not up sticks and leave.
-Your politicians will not opt to leave the EU.
-Your education system will not cease to be two-tier.
-Your North-South divide will not disappear.

What will happen is that your age-old preoccupations - money and class - will assume paramount importance.
Best of luck in your brave new world.