Its definitely a no as it has been the case pretty much all along:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014...m-campaign

It is now an issue to put aside for another 30 years.

(09-18-2014 12:42 PM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  I've read that there are no exit polls for this referendum. How come? Are they prohibited so not to influence anything? You'd think the public interest in this would be enormous.

From what i've read, the Brits didnt expect it to be this close and choose not to pay for it. Brits do this kind of shit a lot. When I worked in the UK, I had my training days booked during the Olympics since they didnt think it would be a big deal.

The Onion strikes again

The Onion Wrote:British Empire To Be Reduced To 8 Acres Around Buckingham Palace By 2050

“Considering the loss of its colonial possessions around the world over the years, as well as Scotland’s current independence campaign, we project that the once vast and mighty British Empire will soon reach only a few hundred feet beyond the property lines of the royal palace,” said Oxford University political science professor Patrick Withers, adding that within 35 years, the sum total of British-held territory will likely extend from Upper Belgrave St. a few blocks west of Buckingham Palace to just a small fraction of St. James’s Park to the east.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/british...:1:Default

I was hoping for a yes, as I've said all along, the UK needs it's influence on a global scale reduced, this would have done it.

It's still pretty close, but I hope for a No while supporting the idea of independence.
Nonsensical? Not really. Westminster hates the idea of devolution, because that means the civil service are less a monopoly of political influence- but it'll be forced to give more regional powers to Scotland in the event of a No vote, to try and keep the UK intact, thus triggering a landslide of regional government. This in turn could attract more foreign business to Scotland-which, say what you will about oil and related industries, is basically the suburb of London in economic terms- and maybe even a preferential tax arrangement. If a Yes is the outcome tomorrow, many industries will leave Scotland to avoid the legislative clusterfuck and to maintain steady trading in sterling. This will turn London into even more of a smelly, overfilled shithole than it currently is, and transform the North into a country owned largely by Google.
Rushing into independence will only cause harm, and the Scots have fantasized about this for so long, that only disappointment can result.

(09-18-2014 08:15 AM)Matt Forney Wrote:  Nearly a thousand years since William of Normandy and it's come to this.

The once-great U.K., the empire on which the sun never set, wasting away from societal cancer. Pakistani rapists pimping out England's daughters, child molestation rings going all the way up to Buckingham Palace, and now a whole third of their core territory about to be lost without a single shot fired.

And really, the Scottish independence movement is a complete farce. This flab-faced clown Alex Salmond is a joke and everyone knows it. His racial mythology of the Scots, down to his noise about joining the Nordic Council, has less historical veracity to it then Nazi mysticism. But since Westminster has been bending over backwards to suck Salmond's dick, what does this say about them?

At least the Irish had to actually fight a war to gain their independence. At least the IRA had to go to the effort of planting bombs in the boats of England's inbred monarchy. All the Scots had to do was whine and whine and elect a diabetic loudmouth and the government rushes to kiss their asses. "The armies of this age are weak."

And man, I don't believe in karma, but if anybody deserves a beatdown from the gods, it's the U.K.

For centuries, the English have plundered, raped and looted their way across the world without a speck of remorse. Concentration camps to wipe out Boer women and children in the Boer War (where do you think Hitler got the idea from?); conducting a genocide in Sri Lanka; slaughtering Tibetans in a war out of pure boredom; deliberately refusing to aid the Irish during the potato famine (notwithstanding the Cromwellian conquest and a million other crimes committed against that land): the collective crimes of the British Empire make the Nazis look like a teenage pipe bomb operation in comparison.

And nobody knows about this. The Devil's greatest trick was convincing the world that he didn't exist, and the English's greatest trick was convincing the world that they're a bunch of harmless character actors with spiffy accents and that their brand of imperialism was just swell. The English left is quick to condemn the French for Algeria, the Belgians for the Congo, the U.S. for our treatment of Indians, but they never, ever apply that same standard on their own country. They've been aided by the idiotic Anglophile lobby in the U.S., the provincial rubes who think speaking a common language makes us natural allies (and get rewarded for it by being spat on by the English chattering classes they admire).

I'm not even getting to the legal clusterfuck that is the City of London, the world financial capital, the single biggest reason why the banksters are continuing to suck everyone on the planet dry. Kosko's post on the City of London is a must-read, but it's basically this: the City is an offshore tax haven backed up with the military of a world power. And trying to rein in the City is impossible, since their so-called privileges extend back to the Magna Carta. Oh look, the Lord Mayor of the City is running cover for child molesters, too! Shocked?

And now the U.K. is falling apart, not because of an invasion from Huns... er, I mean Germans, not because of Russia or the U.S., but because of its own stupidity, cowardice and degeneracy. A nation that allows its daughters to be groomed and pimped out by foreigners out of fear of being "racist"; a nation that gives comfort and protection to child rapists like Jimmy Savile; a nation that allows financial rentier parasites to run around unchecked is a nation that doesn't deserve to survive.

I don't care about Scotland. Never been there, probably never will go there. They can go full-on communist for all it matters. But tearing apart the U.K. is a necessary step for a better world, not only because it will weaken the degeneracy that the British enforce on the rest of us, but because it will be a major blow to American imperialism. Ever since World War II, the U.K. has been the primary trojan horse for American influence, because they're the only ally of ours that is both compliant and relatively powerful (something that Charles de Gaulle recognized, which is why he refused to allow the U.K. to join the EEC fifty years ago).

America is the new Evil Empire, and the U.K. is their bottom bitch. It's time to clean up the brothel.

Matt, I am fairly certain that what you write about Ireland (as an Irish passport holder) is simply not true.

It is therefore hard to take the rest of this post all that seriously.

Outsider's perspective but it seems like a catch-22:

If Scotland votes yes they lose all of their leverage.

I wouldn't want to be on the other side of Westminster negotiating the details after you vote to break off from Britain. The mainstream British politicians are being all sweet now, but if it goes "yes" then what you all call "toffs" like Cameron and Osborne (or whoever replaces them) will go for the jugular. They can fuck Scotland hard when sorting out the details.

Queen + Toffs + Bankers + Lawyers vs. Scotland = White Collar Braveheart

Oh and don't you think us English have forgotten our politicians promising all and sundry to Scotland.

I hope this destroys Labour and the Lib Dems even further if it is a no vote. They have a large base of voters in Scotland but the majority of voters are in England. labour wants to give more power to scotland and they cannot welch on the promise like the Tories can.

This is a good position for the Tories IF it doesn't become a Yes vote.

But if the Tories do allow powers to go to scotland then they will not last the shit storm.

(09-18-2014 05:03 PM)CrashBangWallop Wrote:  

(09-18-2014 08:15 AM)Matt Forney Wrote:  Nearly a thousand years since William of Normandy and it's come to this.

The once-great U.K., the empire on which the sun never set, wasting away from societal cancer. Pakistani rapists pimping out England's daughters, child molestation rings going all the way up to Buckingham Palace, and now a whole third of their core territory about to be lost without a single shot fired.

And really, the Scottish independence movement is a complete farce. This flab-faced clown Alex Salmond is a joke and everyone knows it. His racial mythology of the Scots, down to his noise about joining the Nordic Council, has less historical veracity to it then Nazi mysticism. But since Westminster has been bending over backwards to suck Salmond's dick, what does this say about them?

At least the Irish had to actually fight a war to gain their independence. At least the IRA had to go to the effort of planting bombs in the boats of England's inbred monarchy. All the Scots had to do was whine and whine and elect a diabetic loudmouth and the government rushes to kiss their asses. "The armies of this age are weak."

And man, I don't believe in karma, but if anybody deserves a beatdown from the gods, it's the U.K.

For centuries, the English have plundered, raped and looted their way across the world without a speck of remorse. Concentration camps to wipe out Boer women and children in the Boer War (where do you think Hitler got the idea from?); conducting a genocide in Sri Lanka; slaughtering Tibetans in a war out of pure boredom; deliberately refusing to aid the Irish during the potato famine (notwithstanding the Cromwellian conquest and a million other crimes committed against that land): the collective crimes of the British Empire make the Nazis look like a teenage pipe bomb operation in comparison.

And nobody knows about this. The Devil's greatest trick was convincing the world that he didn't exist, and the English's greatest trick was convincing the world that they're a bunch of harmless character actors with spiffy accents and that their brand of imperialism was just swell. The English left is quick to condemn the French for Algeria, the Belgians for the Congo, the U.S. for our treatment of Indians, but they never, ever apply that same standard on their own country. They've been aided by the idiotic Anglophile lobby in the U.S., the provincial rubes who think speaking a common language makes us natural allies (and get rewarded for it by being spat on by the English chattering classes they admire).

I'm not even getting to the legal clusterfuck that is the City of London, the world financial capital, the single biggest reason why the banksters are continuing to suck everyone on the planet dry. Kosko's post on the City of London is a must-read, but it's basically this: the City is an offshore tax haven backed up with the military of a world power. And trying to rein in the City is impossible, since their so-called privileges extend back to the Magna Carta. Oh look, the Lord Mayor of the City is running cover for child molesters, too! Shocked?

And now the U.K. is falling apart, not because of an invasion from Huns... er, I mean Germans, not because of Russia or the U.S., but because of its own stupidity, cowardice and degeneracy. A nation that allows its daughters to be groomed and pimped out by foreigners out of fear of being "racist"; a nation that gives comfort and protection to child rapists like Jimmy Savile; a nation that allows financial rentier parasites to run around unchecked is a nation that doesn't deserve to survive.

I don't care about Scotland. Never been there, probably never will go there. They can go full-on communist for all it matters. But tearing apart the U.K. is a necessary step for a better world, not only because it will weaken the degeneracy that the British enforce on the rest of us, but because it will be a major blow to American imperialism. Ever since World War II, the U.K. has been the primary trojan horse for American influence, because they're the only ally of ours that is both compliant and relatively powerful (something that Charles de Gaulle recognized, which is why he refused to allow the U.K. to join the EEC fifty years ago).

America is the new Evil Empire, and the U.K. is their bottom bitch. It's time to clean up the brothel.

Matt, I am fairly certain that what you write about Ireland (as an Irish passport holder) is simply not true.

It is therefore hard to take the rest of this post all that seriously.

Yeah he's completely wrong about what he wrote about Ireland, firstly it wasn't the IRA that killed Lord Mountbatten it was the provisional IRA, which are a completely different organisation to the IRA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional...lican_Army
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Republican_Army

Finally the assassination of Lord Mountbatten had absolutely nothing to do with Ireland getting their independence as Lord Mountbatten was killed in 1979 and the Irish Free State was formed in 1922, so there's a bit of a time gap there. With the overall motive to the killing being to stop Northern Ireland being apart of the UK an aim which at the moment has been unsuccessful.

PS Thanks CNN...

Just watching the BBC now, although no actual results are yet in, the political commentators are suggesting that the "No" vote will win.

First results will be in about an hour but the overall result will take another 4 or 5 hours.

(09-18-2014 05:03 PM)CrashBangWallop Wrote:  Matt, I am fairly certain that what you write about Ireland (as an Irish passport holder) is simply not true.

It is therefore hard to take the rest of this post all that seriously.

What isn't true? The Famine and how the Brits let it happen? Cromwell and the genocides he committed?

Believe me, he's only scratched the surface of what the Brits did in Ireland.

He's failed to mention the "Black and Tans" and the War of Independence, internment without trial, the Bloody Sunday massacres (1920 and 1972), the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan car bombings, Ballymurphy, Stalker and shoot to kill, British collusion with Loyalist death squads etc..

And who could forget the Penal Laws, which meant that Irish Catholics couldn't in their own country..

Practice their religion
Own property
Vote
Work
Get educated

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_Laws_%28Ireland%29

Or how they turned a blind eye from 1921-1969 when Loyalists turned the North of Ireland into their little version of White South Africa, amongst a heap of other things..

I could go on for days. Matt is actually incorrect in what he says, in that the Brits were far worse than he makes out.

The people of Scotland have voted to stay in the United Kingdom.

It's a proud day whether you are English, Welsh, Northern Irish or Scottish....but it's an even better day to be British.

God Save the Queen.

(09-18-2014 11:09 PM)Midlands Man Wrote:  The people of Scotland have voted to stay in the United Kingdom.

It's a proud day whether you are English, Welsh, Northern Irish or Scottish....but it's an even better day to be British.

God Save the Queen.

~55% voted no, a decisive win but not enough for British parties to back out of their promise of even greater autonomy for Scotland. Especially since the Yes vote actually won in both Glasgow and it's suburbs. When Labour wins the next election (which they were already going to before this debacle hurt David Cameron even further) they will have no choice but to deliver this considering how strong their support is in Scotland.

Ahh fuckers, now they get devolution max which is absolute bollocks.

I think less people will be cheering on for Andy Murray in the future given he said on the day of the poll 'lets do this!'.

(09-19-2014 04:07 AM)bojangles Wrote:  Ahh fuckers, now they get devolution max which is absolute bollocks.

It's quite likely they'll end up with less than they get now.

This campaign has highlighted to the English just how entitled 45% of Scottish voters are.

I suspect there will be a "let them eat cake" reaction from those South of the border.

(09-19-2014 04:21 AM)CrashBangWallop Wrote:  

(09-19-2014 04:07 AM)bojangles Wrote:  Ahh fuckers, now they get devolution max which is absolute bollocks.

It's quite likely they'll end up with less than they get now.

This campaign has highlighted to the English just how entitled 45% of Scottish voters are.

I suspect there will be a "let them eat cake" reaction from those South of the border.

Indeed. To my mind the whole thing has been less about independence and more about socialism vs realism. Time for a healthy dose of realism, but I'm not holding my breath.

Voters aged 16-17: YES: 71%; NO: 29%
Voters aged 65+: YES: 27%; NO: 73%

No comment on this...

Heart broken. Well, that was the last year of focus wasted I guess, back to working on me.

(09-19-2014 10:32 AM)Statsi Wrote:  Heart broken. Well, that was the last year of focus wasted I guess, back to working on me.

Statsi mate, you'll get your day in the sun.
Don't worry about it.

This aint over by a long shot.

it is possible the votes were rigged:

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/09/19...democracy/

Why did 18-24 year olds vote narrowly against independence when their younger and older cohorts voted strongly for it?

Glaucon that was before votes had been counted, I doubt very much they corrupted 200, 000 votes that we'd need to get a yes.

Every group under 60 voted majority yes and Glasgow, and the area of Glasgow my own campaigning was based in, also voted yes. At least I'm in the right city. Next referendum could be 2019 at the earliest assuming we elect another nationalist government with a large majority. I'd also expect federalism to be the direction the UK takes with both the snp and UKip's popularity.

I'm still pretty devastated, but no point in dwelling. Back to a life of self improvement and the pursuit of virtue.