Is something happening in Scotland today?

[emilystrange]

it's all kicking off in george square in glasgow

[Pat]

Kicking off is an understatement
Nazi salutes under Union Jacks shouldn't have a place anywhere in the UK, WTF has gone wrong with Scotland!

[lazarus corporation]

and now it seems that the vow made by westminster isn't going to go ahead according to the timeline given, and something else is going to be tied in with it.
a vow can't be altered to suit in this way.

Yes, Cameron's trying to bundle it in with a load of other stuff about constitutional change in England, which will slow it down going through parliament. Miliband wants to deal with delivering the "devo max" promise to Scotland first, then deal with the more contentious constitutional changes for England, Wales, and NI afterwards.

[Miliband] said Scotland should be dealt with first, in isolation, and warned against a "quick fix" deal on English matters agreed "behind the scenes" at Westminster.

clicky for source

[lazarus corporation]

Kicking off is an understatement
Nazi salutes under Union Jacks shouldn't have a place anywhere in the UK, WTF has gone wrong with Scotland!

f**king bunch of morons.

[stufarq]

A victory for fear over hope.

It's kinda patronising to suggest that 'no' voters did so out of fear. And before anyone starts, most didn't vote out of loyalty to the union either (and the Nazi brigade certainly aren't representative of any majority in Scotland or anywhere else in the UK). Most 'no' voters were simply never convinced by the arguments of the 'yes' campaign and don't see any benefits to independence. We're all well aware of Britain's problems, and a 'no' vote is largely a vote to stick around and do something about them. Instead of getting a divorce, we decided to try and work things out.

[Nikolas Vitus Lagartija]

A victory for fear over hope.

It's kinda patronising to suggest that 'no' voters did so out of fear. And before anyone starts, most didn't vote out of loyalty to the union either (and the Nazi brigade certainly aren't representative of any majority in Scotland or anywhere else in the UK). Most 'no' voters were simply never convinced by the arguments of the 'yes' campaign and don't see any benefits to independence. We're all well aware of Britain's problems, and a 'no' vote is largely a vote to stick around and do something about them. Instead of getting a divorce, we decided to try and work things out.

I agree, and also concur with the comments of @abridged and @LazCorp. The majority here have voted for the third option of Devo Max, the one option which wasn't on the ballot paper but which was effectively offered by the Westminster parties once they started to panic. Slippage will not be tolerated, or Diet Devo instead of Devo Max, or Westminster wrangling.
Most here will be relatively happy once all is sorted - the No crowd still have the reassurance of being part of the Uk, the Yes will be one step closer to total independence knowing that there will be little else left to transfer (and therefore no third option) next time.

[emilystrange]

I have a feeling that this vow issue is going to affect a lot more than scotland.
right now, it's a very major example of broken promises, very close to a general election. there are going to be a fair few looking at that and thinking about the likelihood of election promises being kept.
it's about time they did that.

[stufarq]

What broken promises? Cameron and Clegg have said they're still committed to devolving more powers to the Scottish Parliament. So has Miliband; he's just refusing to talk about English devolution, which, to be fair, wasn't something he'd previously agreed to and has been sprung on him at the last minute. On the other hand, he should have known that the West Lothian question was always going to have to be dealt with whichever way the vote had gone.

It's less than 24 hours since the result was announced. Let's see what actually happens first.

[emilystrange]

If you give a timetable, and then chuck in conditions that weren't even mentioned and that you know are going to delay the process despite what you promised, then you are going to p*ss off a lot of people. and quite rightly so.
you cannot sway a vote with a vow then say you're not going to actually stick to it after the vote.
no voters aren't going to be happy. yes ones will feel justified.
24 hours, aye, and already 'yes, well, we might not be able to do quite what we said now...'
things simply cannot be sprung like this at the last minute without an uproar.

[Nikolas Vitus Lagartija]

But within two hours of the result, Cameron was already bringing in an obstacle by linking the fully agreed extra powers to Scotland to reforms affecting England.
Whilst no-one would deny that the resolution of the West Lothian question is long overdue, or that English devolution has become a hot topic amongst many English voters and may need addressing by the English electorate, there will need to be further debate on the matter and this can easily be done separately to further (agreed and promised) Scottish devolution, and that is what Scottish voters (both Yes and No) will expect.
This is not the time to start playing games, and in my view Cameron has made a major error of judgement in trying to bundle these two issues together.

[emilystrange]

He has, and not just with Scottish voters. It's not going to go down well here either. Boris was distancing himself from it - or trying to do so without dropping Cameron in it

[stufarq]

If you give a timetable, and then chuck in conditions that weren't even mentioned and that you know are going to delay the process despite what you promised, then you are going to p*ss off a lot of people. and quite rightly so.
you cannot sway a vote with a vow then say you're not going to actually stick to it after the vote.
no voters aren't going to be happy. yes ones will feel justified.
24 hours, aye, and already 'yes, well, we might not be able to do quite what we said now...'
things simply cannot be sprung like this at the last minute without an uproar.

Perhaps, but my point was that no-one has actually gone back on promises or said they won't stick to them. Some backbenchers have been calling on the government to renege, but the three main party leaders have all reiterated their promise. (However, see my reply to Nikolas Vitus Lagartija below.)

Let's also be clear that the devo max promise didn't sway the vote. The vast majority of polls have consistently predicted this outcome and most voters had already made up their minds before the vow was made.

But within two hours of the result, Cameron was already bringing in an obstacle by linking the fully agreed extra powers to Scotland to reforms affecting England.
Whilst no-one would deny that the resolution of the West Lothian question is long overdue, or that English devolution has become a hot topic amongst many English voters and may need addressing by the English electorate, there will need to be further debate on the matter and this can easily be done separately to further (agreed and promised) Scottish devolution, and that is what Scottish voters (both Yes and No) will expect.
This is not the time to start playing games, and in my view Cameron has made a major error of judgement in trying to bundle these two issues together.

Yes, agreed, and on that front, Miliband is arguably taking the more sensible position. But I doubt if Cameron has introduced the question of English powers deliberately in order to slow things down. I think it's more a reflection of the ramshackle last minute nature of the promise - borne, I might add, out of a panic that was entirely unnecessary. If they'd had any sense, they'd have worked out a devo max package at the beginning and deliberately timed their announcement at a strategic juncture.

[emilystrange]

you cannot say for sure that devo max didn't sway the vote. the timing of it after polls gave yes a lead was completely suspicious and a panicked response. no one believes that it was intended to do anything BUT sway it - and i think it did sway some undecideds who wanted more but not all.
it doesn't matter WHY they are slowing things down. the fact that they are is dropping them in the s**t.

[Nikolas Vitus Lagartija]

@Stufarq. I think the panic announcement was made because there was a genuine fear at Westminster of a Yes vote, with most polls showing approx 3% only between the two camps with many still swithering. There was no planned announcement precisely because there was no real agreement between the parties, despite all the time they had to sort this out, as has now become apparent.
Gordon Brown seems to have deviated a little from the original Better Together line as laid out on their timeline poster, and it may be that Cameron's comments are an attempt to renegotiate some of this. His timing and method of doing this though looks clumsy and frankly disrespectful.

Overall, the No campaign tried to get away with as low a profile as possible as comments from English politicians may backfire, and the Scottish parliamentarians (eg Johann Lamont and Willie Rennie, leaders of Scottish Labour and Lib Dems respectively) were kept well away from major set-pieces, either because they have no power to deliver any promises from Westminster or because they were seen as a liability.
Instead we got a couple of arguably discredited ex-chancellors (Darling and Brown), a couple of popular Westminster parliamentarians (Murphy and Reid, sent to try to win over Glasgow) and the ubiquitous Ruth Davidson, respected leader of the unrespected Scottish Conservatives.
It's been a strange campaign and it looks like it may yet get stranger.

[stufarq]

@Stufarq. I think the panic announcement was made because there was a genuine fear at Westminster of a Yes vote, with most polls showing approx 3% only between the two camps with many still swithering.

Yes, I did say that. I also said it was an unnecessary panic. The many still swithering was about 13% of the electorate, and if the question is between major change and the status quo, most undecideds will tend to opt for the status quo. I don't doubt that the announcement was intended to sway the vote, but nor do I think for a second that it actually did. It will have swayed some people but hardly enough to affect the outcome.

[Pat]

A victory for fear over hope.

It's kinda patronising to suggest that 'no' voters did so out of fear.

Quoted me a wee bit out of context , I was referring to the info provided showing the amount of 65+ who voted no due to the pension scare stories. The Pension Scare was that in an indyscotland people wouldn't get their Pensions as they were no longer part of the UK . This was blown out of the water when , at a commons select committee, an official for the DWP admitted that up until the day of independence if someone had paid into the UK pension pot the UK would guarantee their pension, it didn't matter if they moved to Spain or iScotland.Scot Gov said that as part of the deal on debt they would take full responsibility for all pension payments (In the White Paper and stated loads of times). I still received a leaflet from Labour stating my UK pension wasn't safe and we had no idea what currency an IScotland would use (but it wouldn't be the £) on the morning of the vote.The Pension and currency scare were the 2 questions I was most asked by retired people and when I was canvassing .
In 1979 Thatcher promised more powers if we voted no, we did and f**k all happened.We're not getting any more powers now either, it wasn't on the ballot paper it's not going to happen. I'm sorry ranting a bit, v tired, v disappointed and the crap going on in George Sq just confirms to me that as a country we're perhaps not yet mature enough to run ourselves. If you voted No good on you, I'm going to try and put it behind me starting now, I gave it my best shot.

[sultan2075]

I've watched the whole thing with a great deal of interest. The part of me that wants to put a "US out of Texas!" sticker on my car really hoped Scotland would make a go of it.

[Nikolas Vitus Lagartija]

A victory for fear over hope.

It's kinda patronising to suggest that 'no' voters did so out of fear.

Not really, most No voters I know did so with no great enthusiasm for the Union but were worried about the risks associated with the more uncertain aspects of the path ahead if the vote was Yes. Whether this is "fear" or "realistic caution" depends on which side of the debate you are on. The Yes campaign was very well run on a grass roots level in the past month or so, but the damage had been done in the over ambitious and largely party political weighty tome that was published at the start of the campaign and gave their opponents too many targets to aim at, sowing the seeds of the concerns which Brown's last-minute intervention drove home.

[lazarus corporation]

I think that, since all 3 major Westminster parties have signed up to the Devo Max promise before the 2015 general election, then if there is any failure to deliver on it before the next general election then Scotland should have another referendum vote at the same time as the general election.

Personally I think that Labour has no problem with delivering on it, and I doubt the LibDems have any problem with it (although god only knows what they believe in these days), but I suspect that the Tories will do what they can to derail it or dilute it.

[iesus]

Best stickers to fill with fear the heart of every single one pensioner over 65 and achieve over 75% in that group of voters. They can be used the same (from the time of their proved success) to Texas with only replace in Texas instead of Scotland and $ instead of pound as currency.

[million voices]

If they ever re-make Braveheart. Wallace can be asking of his followers "Are We Not Men?"
And they can reply "We are DEVO-MAX"

[stufarq]

Well, Cameron's promised a detailed devo-max plan by January and put Lord Kelvin in charge, with Hague doing the same for English devolution. He's making all the right noises so far. Let's see where it goes.

[emilystrange]

The point is not whether they do it or not. The point is that they said they would do one thing before the vote, then immediately changed the terms and conditions after the result was announced.
That's a betrayal, and one that will not be forgotten. To do something so inherently PR disastery so close to an election is Darwinish. Let's hope the politics gene pool is reduced by a few.

[stufarq]

I think the point is very much whether they do it - or, more specifically, that it gets done. That's far more important than what we think of them.

And they're still promising to do what they said they would. They're just offering more besides. Now, you could look at it as a stalling tactic (although I personally don't think it's been thought through nearly well enough for that), and you could look at it as a mixture of disorganisation and panic (which seems more likely to me); but regardless, you could also look at it as a positive opportunity. They're offering more self-governance to Scotland and now to other parts of the UK as well. If that comes off, I think it'll be a good thing. So I'm choosing to be pragmatic and give them the chance to follow through. If they fail, we can criticise them then. But there's no point criticising them before they've even had the time to do it.

[Pat]

The promised timetable.

They've only missed the first 2 deadlines. Shock horror nothing in the papers and nothing on the BBC (it did make RT news ).