Yessers feel that old familiar tingle down the back of the neck as we move within just SEVEN MONTHS of referendum year - let's celebrate with an update of the #Referendum2023 Countdown Clock

Democracy costs money - but not very much.  If you were as fatuous a person as Blair McDougall is, you could very easily say "we're in a cost of living crisis, every single penny needs to go towards alleviating it, so let's make vital savings by cutting out needless luxuries like elections".  But as soon as you think about that for half a second, you realise that the - in relative terms - pocket money required to administer an election is exceptionally good value in avoiding dictatorship and/or fascism.  

Exactly the same principle applies to a referendum on independence.  If the UK isn't Scotland's prison (and unfortunately that's very much a point of contention), then there has to be a democratic mechanism by which independence can be chosen or declined. If the voters decide to trigger that mechanism, the relatively small amount of necessary funding has to be spent.  The time for arguing against a referendum was the 2021 Holyrood election - a free and fair election in which Blair McDougall's side of the argument was decisively defeated.

So it's entirely appropriate that the Scottish Government have announced that £20 million has been set aside for delivering the guarantee of an independence referendum in 2023.  And let's have no time for the cynics who say that this announcement is just part of an elaborate 'sound and light show' and that the money will never actually have to be spent because the referendum will never take place.  It is utterly inconceivable that the SNP leadership would play games like that, because when they commit to a date for a referendum, by God they stick to it.  Well, OK, they didn't stick to it in 2017, 2018 or 2019, but this time is obviously different.  Just like Rita Ora, the majority SNP-Green government will never let you down as far as the #2023ReferendumGuarantee is concerned.  Let's celebrate with an update of the Scot Goes Pop #Referendum2023 Countdown Clock...

There are just 218 days until the earliest possible date for #Referendum2023 (5th January)

There are just 568 days until the last possible date for #Referendum2023 (21st December)

(Note: the Countdown Clock calculations assume that tradition will be maintained by holding #Referendum2023 on a Thursday, and that it will be before Christmas.)

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I saw on Twitter yesterday that one of the identity politics zealots (I'm not sure which one) disgraced themselves by making anti-English comments about the gender critical witnesses who appeared before the Scottish Parliament committee discussing GRA reform.  So I had a look at the video of the session, and to my surprise I actually found myself getting quite annoyed by the opening statement and some of the answers from the representative of 'Keep Prisons Single Sex'.  It was nothing to do with her English accent or her gender critical views - it was simply the fact that what she seemed to care about, mainly, was the impact in England of any change of the law in Scotland.  She kept telling the committee that they would have to consider the effect on English prisons of awarding Gender Recognition Certificates to a wider range of people in Scotland.  Current Ministry of Justice policy on the importance of GRCs would effectively create a two-tier system, she complained, with Scottish prisoners in England being treated differently from English prisoners in England.

But here's the thing - none of that is the province of the Scottish Parliament.  If a change in Scots Law has the side-effect of creating practical problems in England, it's up to the English authorities to decide how to resolve that - they could, for example, decide not to recognise certain GRCs granted in Scotland, at least in the context of prisons.  Legislators in Scotland shouldn't even be taking those problems into account - they're there to decide what's best for Scotland, not to work out what will be least troublesome for England (centre of the universe though it may be).  What would have been much more appropriate from the witness would have been to make the case for keeping Scottish prisons single sex.

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Over the years, Scot Goes Pop has provided extensive Scottish polling analysis and political commentary, as well as commissioning no fewer than six full-scale opinion polls, and producing numerous podcasts and videos.  If you'd like to help me continue this work, donations are welcome via any of the following methods...

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