Nicola Sturgeon says the SNP will vote on English laws

Why not? After 1997, the opponents of devolution accepted the settled will of the Scottish people. Why don't Scottish nationalists do likewise?

The purpose of referendums is to settle an issue. It is referring it to the people to make a final judgement. That's happened.

The great problem with the health spending argument is that the SNP has cut health spending in real terms in Scotland, after having pledged to protect it. Meanwhile the Conservatives pledged to protect it in England, did so, and Scotland received Barnett consequentials from that decision.

Mmm hmm, and what about the devolution referendum in 1977? If that was that issue settled, why do we have devolution now?

I've made it pretty clear I was talking about the principle, rather than any particular example. Health is just an easy example because it's one of the main devolved matters.

Do you have an issue with the principle or will you just continue playing the man like the other unionists?

An NI number is an identification number with address and other data.

How does it integrate with the immigration authorities? (I assume you mean the Border Force and UK Visas and Immigration - both parts of HMG) Who has paid for that integration - the Scottish Government?

How do you use it at the Royal Botanical Gardens of Edinburgh? My mum is coming to Edinburgh from Cambridgeshire in March, neither of us have a card - won't we be able to get in for £4 (concession) using my NUS card and her driving licence?

Its not integrated with HMRC/DWP. The NI number is far more all encompassing isn't it?

Thanks for highlighting the snp and its supporters are rather narrow minded individuals.

Quite a big generalization there.

I've yet to be convinced otherwise.

Where are you from?

Do you know SNP members or do you base this assertion on this forum?

I am not in the SNP personally but I find it crazy to tarnish over 100,000 people as "rather narrow minded individuals"

Almost by definition they want to narrow thinking to be about Scotland rather than the UK.

There is nothing narrow about believing Scotland should be an independent country. Sure, some of them were shall we say "nationalists" who disliked English people but this is a minority from my experience.

Where are you from?

Do you know SNP members or do you base this assertion on this forum?

I am not in the SNP personally but I find it crazy to tarnish over 100,000 people as "rather narrow minded individuals"

I know very few SNP supporters personally (one or two) and I wouldn't like to judge them from their internet presence (although that judgement would be very negative, it's true of many groups where I know it isn't representative).

What has filtered through, though, is how empty their proposals are. I actually could have respected a bluntly nationalist movement a lot more. But most of what they said during the independence referendum was that all the old institutions would continue to work to benefit them, they'd just stop giving anything back, making them better off on net.

Firstly, if you swallow that as a set of factual claims, I've got a bridge to sell you. But secondly and more importantly, if that's your idea of morality, then I'm really just flabbergasted. There seems to be little or no philosophical content of Scottish Nationalism beyond, "I'm alright Jack!". There are a couple of exceptions like Tommy Sheridan, who seem to really believe in something (even if it's something I strongly disagree with) but they seem to be few and far between and have little influence in the movement. It all comes across like a set of people with a greatly exaggerated sense of their own importance wanting to live better at the expense of others.

It's a narrower, more parochial policy. Just as is UKIP wanting to leave the EU. Not saying that's wrong, but it is more narrowly minded.

Firstly, most people who support independence from my experience believed that Scotland would be a better society.

I don't swallow anything, I just said I am not in the SNP and have never voted for the SNP.

Again, there is nothing wrong with people wanting to run their own affairs.

Yet when pressed on any specifics they seem to want that society to remain exactly the same as it is now.


I didn't mean to refer to you personally; I don't know what you believe.


In principle. However, as the Americans said in their Declaration of Independence, "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes". In the case of Scots' nationalists, what is the "necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government"? Most of their time and effort in the referendum debate was spent arguing (in my view mostly wrongly) that the most important institutions of state wouldn't change at all! Scottish Nationalism seems to be an ideology of "light and transient causes".

Not from my experience. They want a change fundamentally towards a fairer society.

I didn't mean to refer to you personally; I don't know what you believe.

You still generalize a lot people

Which is the exact reason why it is wrong to tarnish all people in the SNP with the same brush. I am in the SWP and voted for independence simply for the reason that I thought Scotland would move towards a more socialist type of society. I don't want to keep the queen, the pound, to stay in Nato etc. There are some Scottish nationalists but this is not the same thing as people who supported independence.

Then you seem to be in the same sort of group as Tommy Sheridan - who I agree has a real ideology and reason for wanting independence, even though I don't agree with those reasons themselves.

Problem is that what you want has got little or nothing to do with what the SNP argued or what the broader Yes campaign argued. Most people don't want to leave NATO, abolish the monarchy, leave/go deeper into the EU (can't tell if your comment on the pound means you favour an independent currency, or the Euro). Salmond (rightly) regarded any concession like that as a poisoned chalice to his campaign and vehemently denied that any of those things would happen.

On at least the EU and pound questions, he was almost certainly wrong. But that's by the by. In his pursuit of a 'big tent' independence movement - which you'll have noticed still failed to reach a majority - he was forced to jettison pretty much any ideological content of the independence campaign.

Not from my experience. They want a change fundamentally towards a fairer society.

What they were selling was as close to identical to what we already have as possible. The only difference I could see was that there would be a border (but an open one, so things wouldn't be any different to how they are now) between Scotland and England and the politicians in charge would be based in Holyrood rather than Westminster.

It was about nationalism - division and power - rather than a fundamentally fairer society.