Face the challenge, darling

I've got better things to do than watch our Old Etonian overlord address the conference of a fringe party, but Left Foot Forward quotes him as saying : "There is simply no challenge we face today where breaking up Britain is the right answer."

Leaving aside the fact that Scottish independence isn't about "breaking up Britain", I have to ask - really? How about these challenges - rehumanising our welfare system, scrapping the London veto on weapons of mass destruction being removed from our shores, and finding a way to opt out from London's illegal wars. In what sense does independence fail to meet those challenges, and what is the better alternative that the status quo can provide?

* * *

Spotted at the No campaign's official Twitter feed -

"A fantastic reception for our new #ForcesTogether video and for our Chair @TogetherDarling at our fringe #indyref"

"Thank you to everyone @ScotTories Conference who came along to our fringe. An unbelieveable turnout & great atmosphere in the room #indyref"

OK, the video is indeed "their" video, and Alistair Darling (does the moniker "TogetherDarling" make anyone else feel slightly nauseous?) is indeed "their" chair. But how exactly is the fringe of the Scottish Tory conference "their" fringe?

It's hard to escape the conclusion that the No campaign's Twitter feed is being manned by Tories. After all, who else would be capable of discerning a "great atmosphere" let alone an "unbelievable turnout" at a Scottish Tory conference? (Albeit maybe the latter point will become slightly less unbelievable if Labour continue to helpfully make up the numbers by sending along former cabinet ministers.)

* * *

"#tweetlikeBetterTogether" is fast becoming my all-time favourite Twitter hashtag. These are all from Old Glenbogle -

"The UK is just great. It's like a bag of Revels". #tweetlikeBetterTogether

"You know those little multi-coloured things on the top of a doughnut. The UK's like that." #tweetlikeBetterTogether

"Do you remember 'Watercolour Challenge' with Hannah Gordon? Well, that's why we're better together." #tweetlikeBetterTogether

"You can, like, buy a return ticket to London. In advance. That's barry. That's Britain" #tweetlikeBetterTogether

"What about the Caravan Club of Great Britain? Well? What will happen to that?" #tweetlikeBetterTogether

"I love Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding. But I live in Glasgow. I don't want to lose all that". #tweetlikeBetterTogether

"I'm backing Britain. We're great at queuing." #tweetlikeBetterTogether

"The best things come in threes. So does the UK. Like Twix bars." #tweetlikeBetterTogether

"We speak English, not foreign. Don't become separatese." #tweetlikeBetterTogether

Make your voice heard - what percentage of the vote do you think Yes will get?

There's a poll (an online, self-selecting one) running on PB that might interest you - it's asking what percentage of the vote you think the Yes side will get in the independence referendum next year. I've voted for the 50.01% to 60% option. Click HERE to take part in the poll.

Rhoda Grant and the elusive consultation response

I haven't been following the news compulsively of late, so I only discovered a couple of hours ago that Labour MSP Rhoda Grant recently published the results of the consultation on her ideological desire to criminalise the purchase of sex. As regular readers will know, I responded to the consultation (to oppose the proposal), and my first thought was to quickly double-check that my response had actually been taken into account. I was slightly disturbed to see that my name didn't seem to be on the list of 953 respondents. It was hard to be 100% sure because the names weren't presented in alphabetical order, but I went through them three or four times without any luck. My fears were not allayed by the shorter list (which appeared to be intended as comprehensive) of the types of individual who had responded -

"campaign and community workers (in a personal capacity but with experience of working in relevant organisations (Wellcome Trust, Exodus Cry Houston Prayer Watch, Cardiff and Merthyr Tydfil group, Street Ministry, NGO, Navigators, Stop the Traffick, Act for Justice, Youth with a Mission (YWAM), Stellas Voice charity, Act for Justice group, Dunfermline)
Queens Park Baptist Church Action for Justice Group, Glasgow
co-ordinator & befriender for Destiny Lifeline which is part of Destiny Church
workers with a faith-based justice non-profit organisation
anti-trafficking workers and supporters
director of Prevention for Exodus City
worker with homeless and city mission
worker with victims of abuse
worker in a women’s hostel
volunteers with Glasgow City Mission
workers with homeless charities
worker for Women’s Aid refuge
sex workers (male and female)
homosexual sex worker
migrant and sex worker
independent escorts
worker in a massage parlour
contributor to an escort forum
people who use escort services
worker in psychosexual somatics
Christians
parish minister
parish worker
church goer
baptist minister
member of the North Devon House of Prayer in Barnstaple
local church Senior Pastor in east end of Glasgow
manager of a Christian drop-in centre
academics
lecturer
guidance teacher
teachers
counsellor
psychotherapists
psychologist
undergraduate Law student
student
independent researcher on male violence against women
German researcher based in Berlin
retired solicitor and criminal prosecutor
trained paediatric occupational therapist
military doctor
GPs
addictions medical officer
health visitor
social worker
family mediator
victims and offenders mediator
workers in nursing
scientist and scientific journal editor
freelance writer
writer and performer
business owner
foster parents
worker with Barnardo’s Scotland
registered child minder
worked in the Police force
retired police officer"

None of those descriptions apply to me. The only one that is even vaguely close is "freelance writer", but that would be a bit of a stretch, and certainly isn't how I described myself in my submission. I had horrible visions of having to trawl through hundreds of responses to see if I had been incorrectly put in the 'anonymous' column, but first of all I decided to check similar names. To my relief, I discovered that my submission was there, but under the name 'James'. Quite why my surname had been withheld is a bit of a mystery, as it certainly wasn't something that I requested.

I don't have much experience with parliamentary consultations, and I must say that the process of responding to this one hasn't filled me with huge confidence. It just doesn't seem satisfactory that responses have to be sent to a person (ie. Ms Grant herself) who has a vested interest in the consultation having a particular outcome. OK, in this instance she seems to have processed the responses conscientiously (although I had my doubts for thirty or forty minutes), but there's an important principle at stake here - sporting events use neutral referees for a good reason. Apart from anything else, the mere perception of bias in the conduct of a consultation could be enough to deter responses from one side of the debate, and thus skew the outcome.

Whether that's the explanation for the depressing outcome of this consultation is anyone's guess. But there's not much doubt that the majority of submissions were from a narrow bunch of ideologues who were encouraged to reply en masse. Hopefully parliamentarians will once again be able to wade through the sea of dogma, and home in on the evidence-based responses from academics that ripped Ms Grant's arguments to shreds.

* * *

UPDATE : Perhaps I spoke too soon - this blogpost refers to 70 submissions that are missing from the consultation, "all opposed".

The youth of today and the youth of yesterday

Those delightful chaps over at the No campaign's official Twitter feed seem terribly excited about a new poll of the referendum voting intentions of 14-17 year olds. It does seem to have been an honestly conducted poll, but a number of points need to be borne in mind about it -

1) It sits rather oddly with the results of the last two Ipsos-Mori polls, which clearly showed that 18-24 year olds were the most likely to vote Yes to independence. There isn't a direct contradiction because we're talking about two different age groups, but it does seem somewhat improbable that 14-17 year olds would be the most conservative age group, while 18-24 year olds are the most radical. After all, 18-24 year olds are the 14-17 year olds of yesterday. Are the two cohorts really so different, and if so, what factor or factors can possibly explain that? Or does something magical happen to people around the date of their 18th birthday? Or is this polling evidence failing to tell the whole story?

2) The poll was conducted by telephone, and it may well be that young people aged 14-17 are more susceptible to a feeling of obligation to give the 'expected' answer to an authority figure down the line. A similar survey conducted online would be interesting for the purposes of comparison.

3) Perhaps most importantly of all, the poll was conducted by Market Research UK. This is presumably the same MRUK that became notorious for their inaccurate polls during the 2007 Holyrood campaign. Because they were the Herald's official pollster, this led to a number of comical articles which earnestly reported that Labour were sailing to victory, ignoring the fact that virtually every other pollster had the SNP in the lead.

4) Regardless of the true state of play among the youngest voters, we need to keep a sense of perspective about the overall significance of the youth vote. 16 and 17 year olds will make up only a very small percentage of the electorate next September, and will probably turn out to vote in lower numbers than older age groups. (I expect the turnout to be unusually high across all age groups given the importance of the vote, but it will be proportionately lower in the youngest groups.) Thus, the decision to give 16 and 17 year olds the vote will only swing the balance if the result is incredibly close.

The No campaign also tweeted this comment from 17-year-old Michaella -

"I like the fact that we are part of something bigger and staying united makes sense to me."

I also like being part of something bigger, Michaella, and staying united with the rest of the EU makes perfect sense to me. Unfortunately, Scotland's status as part of the parochial, right-wing UK is imperilling our continued membership of the European family of nations.

Luckily, we have a unique opportunity to do something about that.

Positive straw in the wind for the SNP as European elections inch closer

It's been far too long since I irritated "Carlotta Vance" by reporting the results of a Scottish subsample from a GB-wide poll, so I thought you might enjoy this one from ComRes...

Westminster voting intention:

SNP 36%
Labour 33%
Conservatives 17%
Liberal Democrats 6%
Greens 4%
UKIP 4%

European Parliament voting intention:

SNP 39%
Labour 19%
Conservatives 17%
Liberal Democrats 10%
UKIP 9%
Greens 7%

Of course these figures carry the usual huge health warning, because they're not properly weighted and are based on responses from less than a hundred people. Nevertheless, the fact that Labour's vote appears to drop sharply when voters turn their attention to Europe, while the SNP's vote creeps up, is highly encouraging given the potential significance of next year's European elections, which will take place just three months before the independence referendum.

Question Time for Scotland's 'Popular Front'

The SNP website has today isolated a number of specific questions for the No campaign from Jim McColl's interview in the Scotsman -

1. How will a No vote rebalance the UK economy away from its London-centric focus?

2. What options will a non-independent Scotland have other than UK-driven austerity?

3. What further incentives will there be for business in a non-independent Scotland?

4. How can the UK's one-size-fits-all approach to welfare be tackled in a non-independent Scotland?

These are all fantastic, because they get to the heart of objectives that most people in Scotland share, and challenge the No campaign to specify their plan for realising those objectives - if, of course, such a plan exists. In reality, their answers would be...

1) The UK economy does not have a London-centric focus, because all parts of the UK are equally precious to the London government and Bank of England (aye, right).

2) There is no alternative to UK-driven austerity.

3) No current plans.

4) We're not going to tackle the UK's one-size-fits-all approach to welfare, because we don't see it as a problem.

Doesn't strike me as a winning manifesto. But the Yes campaign shouldn't stop there - it should produce its own version of the ludicrous '500 questions' document, which ought to go down exactly the same road of demanding answers to specific policy questions. If the No campaign think it's perfectly reasonable to ask what the rates of income tax will be in an independent Scotland (even though we don't have a clue which party will be governing an independent Scotland), let's see if Scotland's 'Popular Front' of Tory, Labour and Lib Dem can come up with a joint position on what the rates of income tax will be in a non-independent Scotland over the coming decades. It seems only fair.

But the questions I'd really like some answers to are these -

1) By what date can we expect these non-specific "new powers" to be transferred to the Scottish Parliament in the event of a No vote?

2) If substantial new powers are not delivered by the date you have just specified, will you undertake to immediately resign from public office, or to issue a public apology if you are no longer in public office?

3) Would you agree that a second independence referendum will become a moral imperative if new powers are not delivered with the speed and on the scale currently being hinted at by the No campaign?

On grandiose claims about self-selecting polls

I've got nothing against self-selecting internet polls - I've run a few myself over the years, and they can be quite entertaining if a lot of people take part. But at the end of the day they are unweighted, unscientific voodoo polls, and even if several thousand people took part they wouldn't tell you a thing about the true balance of public opinion. They are, in the immortal words of Peter Snow, "just a bit of fun".

Last September, Subrosa ran a self-selecting poll on her blog about whether an independent Scotland should be an EU member or not. The results were as follows -

Yes - 110 votes
No - 176 votes
Stay in the UK but leave the EU - 72 votes
Unsure - 29 votes

(The other obvious option of staying in both the UK and EU does not seem to have been provided.)

TOTAL ANTI-EU - 248
TOTAL PRO-EU - 110
UNSURE - 29

Both at the time and then again yesterday, Subrosa made quite extraordinary claims about the significance of those results. I challenged her on both occasions, pointing out that bloggers tend to attract readers who agree with them, and she was kind enough to respond. I must say, though, that I found her responses somewhat baffling. Here was the first one in September -

"Yes James, I am anti-EU and that will continue. Many of my readers disagree with me about lots of issues and I respect their opinions.

If you're suggesting that this poll is invalid because it's turned out to be 50/50 then I think you're wrong.

In no way am I stating the poll is an accurate reflection of the whole of Scotland but at least it proves that 176 people don't want an independent Scotland in the EU - if nothing else. :)"

The first couple of sentences are irrelevant because I hadn't suggested there was anything wrong with an individual continuing to be anti-EU, nor had I disputed that some (ie. "many") of her readers disagree with her.

The third sentence is peculiar, because self-evidently the poll hadn't turned out to be 50/50, nor had I suggested that was the reason for it being invalid.

The fourth sentence is technically accurate, but so what? The fact that 176 people hold a particular viewpoint is spectacularly unimportant in the overall scheme of things. Even if we assume that every single one of them was a Scottish resident (almost certainly not the case), that would constitute a mere 0.00003% of the population.

And here was her response to me yesterday -

"A great majority of the readers of this blog support independence James and have done for many, many years. It's quite strange that you're implying the majority are against the EU because I would disagree.

What was interesting about my tiny poll was the number of people who were undecided about the EU yet continually we're told that most of us support it.

Believe me not all my readers agree with me; in fact many take the trouble to tell me just how strongly they disagree and I respect their views."

First of all, I didn't "imply" that the majority of Subrosa's blog readers are anti-EU - I was simply looking at the poll results which clearly suggested that was the case. And was the number of undecideds (a mere 29 people) really the most interesting thing about the poll? How exactly does that contradict the idea that "most of us" support membership of the EU?

And once again, I hadn't disputed that some of her readers disagree with her - I simply pointed out that it was unsurprising that the majority do not.

What am I missing here?

The Omniscare

Hello, I am Robert MacDonald, guest poster. I yearn for the day I can get rid of Alex Salmond - by voting Yes in 2014. But what will that shining post-referendum future hold? I thought I'd share one vision of our future, as imagined by the Better Together campaign and their supporters. Have a read and decide for yourself how credible this future is. We can't say we weren't warned...


The Scottish elector woke up the day after the referendum. He went to get his morning newspaper, and read the front page headline 'Cochers Choppers Off'. The rest of the paper reiterated all the stories it had run in the previous two years warning him of the dangers of independence.

He set about tidying his spare room because his mother-in-law, retired and living in Spain, had been evicted because Scotland was no longer an EU member. However on arriving at the airport he found that the runway was out of action, because the English had preemptively bombed it... as they were scared of terrorists.

He had a bit of bother paying for the taxi back into town as the only currency he had to pay with was Scottish pound notes which were no longer legal tender, except it wasn't Scottish notes. It was Euros. Even though Scotland had been kicked out the EU.

He went to the bank to withdraw more but found that he was suddenly tens of thousands of pounds into his overdraft, his bank's Scottish customers having been saddled with the entirety of UK banking debt. Unfortunately, despite taking on all the debt, he couldn't see how he was going to pay for it, as the remainder of the UK had kept most of Scotland's prize asset, oil revenues. And this was only the start of his economic woes. The economy was crashing about his ears because Moodys no longer rated the economy AAA. I mean, AA. I mean...

As an Englishman living in Scotland, he was careful to keep his voice down on the streets, in case an increase in anti-English violence was targeted at him. However as an Englishman of Pakistani origin there was not much he could do to hide his skin colour. He decided to blend in by eating a deep fried mars bar, and the chip shop was full of Catholic children who had nowhere else to go now their schools had all been forcibly closed. But as he walked home surrounded by a gaggle of children he came under attack from the Orange Order, who had gone paramilitary at the loss of Scotland's UK status.

Back home, to soothe his jangling nerves he switched on TV to watch his favourite programme, Eastenders, but it was no longer available - in fact, the whole of the BBC appeared to be jammed, despite being sure his wife's cousin in Ireland could get it. He looked at his father visiting from England and asked "what now?" "Charades!" came the reply.

Whilst entertaining themselves with charades his father had an unfortunate accident miming 'Blade Runner'. Our Scottish elector rushed him to A&E - only to be turned back, as the NHS would no longer treat anybody who did not live in Scotland, and vice versa.

He phoned his sister in London to tell her this terrible news only to be told to 'get lost'.

he went to the pub to drown his sorrows but beer was suddenly as expensive as Norway, and he couldn't afford more than a pint. Especially as he was now as poor as an average Bangladeshi.

Deciding to drive out into the countryside he couldn't afford petrol as the price of oil had suddenly shot up. Or maybe it had plummeted. It was all too volatile to be sure.

He looked up in the sky and there? What was that? Nuclear missiles from North Korea! His last mortal thoughts on this accursed day of Scottish independence, as the nuclear missiles rained down and the last helicopter left Edinburgh for Carlisle: 'Thank goodness Alan Cochrane, at least, is safe - if only I had heeded his warnings'.

Panelbase poll : Yes campaign closes gap to just eight points

I'll have to make this a very quick post because I'm in a mad rush, but the latest Panelbase poll on independence has thankfully contradicted Ipsos-Mori by showing the No lead dropping. Here are the figures -

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 36% (-)
No 44% (-2)

And the SNP's lead in Holyrood voting intentions remains at ridiculously high levels for this stage of mid-term -

Constituency vote:

SNP 45% (-2)
Labour 30% (-)
Conservatives 13% (+1)
Liberal Democrats 5% (-)

Regional list vote:

SNP 45% (-)
Labour 27% (+2)
Conservatives 13% (+1)
Greens 6% (-2)
Liberal Democrats 6% (+1)

There's also a question asking how people would vote on the independence referendum on the (fairly plausible) assumption that Britain will be leaving the EU -

Yes 44%
No 44%

* * *

I'm the editor of this week's Scottish blogging roundup, which has (to say the least) something of a Eurovision theme. You can read it HERE.

Eurovision 2013 : Prediction for Saturday's final

It's become traditional at this time of year for me to say "oooh, this is a tough one", but actually I don't think it is this time, at least in terms of guessing the winner. I don't really get the hoo-ha over Denmark (admittedly the staging is very effective), but sometimes a consensus is just so overwhelming that you have to accept it's probably right. This is, after all, a popularity contest. So I suspect Eurovision is heading back to Copenhagen, which offers us a neat symmetry given that Denmark were also the winners the last time the contest was held in Sweden.

But who will finish second? That's much more problematical. The bookies suggest it will be a close fight between Ukraine and Norway, but the more I've thought about it, the more I've come to the conclusion that the Ukrainian song is slightly overrated (I still expect it to be in the top six or seven). Until about an hour ago, I was firmly of the view that the true contenders for the runner-up spot were Russia and Norway. Both had points in their favour - the Russian song is perhaps more televoter-friendly and has the inbuilt advantage of the ex-Soviet bloc vote, while Norway has the better draw and is more jury-friendly (ie. it's the best song left in the contest in my opinion). On balance, I reckoned that favoured Russia slightly.

But now I've seen the German dress rehearsal and I'm totally confused again. If that performance beguiles the audience in the way I think it might, in a sense it kills both Russia and Norway - it kills Russia because it's the very next song in the running-order, and it kills Norway because it's a similar type of music. On the other hand, I still can't help thinking back to all those occasions when strong dance tracks have fallen flat on their face at Eurovision (that was the main reason I was sceptical that Loreen would win last year). Another possibility is that the vote could be evenly split between Germany and Norway, allowing Russia to come through the middle. Who knows, so I'll just have to make a wild guess.

The Netherlands is one of those entries that is pretty much guaranteed a very strong 'niche' vote that will fall short of outright victory - my guess is it'll slot in somewhere between about fourth and seventh. The wildcard this year is of course Finland, replete with its wedding dress, lesbian kiss, and lyrics that are so un-feminist that James Mackenzie deleted them to enhance the debate. There was a time, not so long ago (2002, in fact) when gimmicks like that would have been more than sufficient to win the contest. I think we've moved on from those days, but time will tell.

So here's what I've got...

Winners - Denmark (Only Teardrops - Emmelie de Forest)
2nd - Russia (What If - Dina Garipova)
3rd - Norway (I Feed You My Love - Margaret Berger)
4th - Germany (Glorious - Cascada)
5th - Netherlands (Birds - Anouk)

Possible dark horses - Iceland, Finland, Ireland

As for me, I'll be sticking to my non-English language rule and voting for Iceland (or possibly Estonia, which I slightly regretted not voting for in the first semi), but my heart will be with Norway all the way. This is the third year in a row that I won't particularly be cheering on the UK, mainly because the internal selection means that I don't really feel I have any stake in the entry. Weirdly, Fraser Nelson has a lengthy piece in the Spectator on that very subject, in which he makes a number of points that I've made before myself - for example that Jonathan King, for all that he is a thoroughly objectionable human being, was the last person who actually had a well-thought-through plan for finding the right UK entry. I think Nelson takes his argument to an extreme, though - it's not as if an internal selection process is in some way 'un-Eurovision'. (The great French ballads of the early 2000s were internally selected, for instance.) And I think passing the contest onto ITV or Sky would be a terrible idea - say what you like about the BBC, but at least they faithfully broadcast both semi-finals every year, which I'm not sure ITV or Sky could be trusted to do.

The real step forward would of course be for Scotland to have its own entry. Hopefully only three more years to go...