Every Scot i have met at work recently is a NO voter ,, they reckon the yes voters are all on the ''client state list'' so they wont be paying for Salmonds folly

Latest polls showing the 'Yes' camp ahead for the first time.

Get your asylum application in now Ga!

I think many Labour voters in the rest of the UK may be gloating at the thought of a YES vote thinking they'll get rid of Cameron.
They really need to wake up and smell the coffee. Milliband just as culpable for the lack lustre NO campaign and with Labours presence in Scotland compared to the tiny Tory support they really should have performed better.

Not to mention the vastly reduced chances of any Labour majority in Westminster without their Scottish MPs.
Simie.

Totally agree mate. The same set of polls showed the change was down in no small part to labour voters flocking to Salmond following Miliband's intervention last week.

The No campaign has to be the worst run political campaign in history - they lost a 20 point lead arguing against a guy who hardly set the commons alight when he was playing in the big leagues and who's core arguments aren't even directly related to independence as much as they are an attack against the current coalition policies.

Agree, it is the poorest campaign ever run, I still think on the day it will be a No vote. Todays poll is a bit of a red herring, no undecided voters are included.

The guy mainly to blame is Cameron, 4 years of Tory rule has led a lot of Scots to think whatever happens with independence is better than having a government full of Toff twats like Cameron, Osborne and the No.1 cunt Farage. Everytime they go north of the border that is another few thousand votes for the Yes boys.

I hear if there is a Yes vote Carlisle is opting to move North under Scottish rule.

Don't think we'd have had 1,400 girls abused (just the ones we know about so far that is?!) by Paki cunts if Farage or someone like him had been PM last 15 or 20 years. All the others Cameron, Milliband etc inc every Chief Constable in the country so shit scared of being called racist and so tied up in PC bullshit they'd let ethnic minorities do what they want. And of course the biggest criminal of the lot Blair who totally fucked this country up good and proper. 3,000 new laws, allowed the new EU countries to flood the country with workers that suppressed wages and worsened the housing crisis and that's before we get onto the death of tens of thousands of Iraq civilians to massage his ego. And that's just the tip of the iceberg!
Simie.

Funnily enough it was a Scotsman who. Played a huge part in ruining my country as chancellor and then PM and sure a Scottish bank was also culpable , as my supervisor said to the jock lads who work with me if it's that good why don't you fuck off back there ?? They won't cos they can't earn the same dosh up there

And the 3 blokes I work with have worked with me for last 3/4 year outside Scotland so shouldn't really qualify for a vote

You can be a German of a Pole or a spotty faced 16 yr old without a clue and you can vote if your living in Scotland and registered. But if your a real Scot but live outside Scotland you can't.
Just the way fish face wanted it of course!
Simie.

Of course if Farage had been in power 10 years ago a lot of blokes Thai wives would still be in Nakhon Fuckknows and not England

If Scotland votes for independence next week, it is the British establishment – and the establishment alone – that is to blame. The yes surge is not being driven by blood-and-soil nationalism, by dewy-eyed Celtic nostalgia or the resurrection of a Braveheart spirit. It is a defiant protest at a bankrupt order built by Margaret Thatcher and then preserved and entrenched by New Labour. David Cameron’s Conservatives will bear most responsibility for the break-up of the country, but the last government and a hollowed-out Scottish Labour party cannot escape the blame.

Most Brits voted against Thatcherism, but the Scots – like the northern English – voted more passionately against, and yet suffered some of the worst consequences. In 1981, Glasgow was ranked 208th among British local authorities for economic inactivity; a decade later, it had jumped to 10th place. Middle-income skilled jobs were stripped from the economy, often in favour of service sector jobs with lower pay, fewer rights and less security. The mass sell-off of council housing – never replaced – left many working class communities bereft of affordable homes for their children. The slashing of taxes on the rich in favour of indirect taxes, the crippling of trade unions, mass privatisation and the relentless promotion of the City, all ensured that inequality levels exploded.

But New Labour’s surrender to the underlying assumptions of the Thatcherite crusade gave the independence movement its greatest opportunity. Yes, the Blairites could not entirely purge Labour’s traditions, and so the minimum wage was introduced (albeit at too low a level), poverty was reduced and public services were invested in.

Yet they illegally invaded Iraq with Conservative support, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and 179 British military personnel before handing much of the country over to fanatics. They punished aspiration by introducing tuition fees, saddled public services with long-term debt through the colossal rip-off of PFI, and began privatising our NHS – laying the foundations for some of the pernicious policies of this coalition as they did so. They allowed the living standards of millions of working people to begin falling years before the crash, even as the coffers of corporate Britain prospered like never before. They failed to solve an ever-worsening housing crisis, leaving 5 million languishing on council housing waiting lists. They cut taxes on corporate Britain while indulging in entirely destructive gimmicks such as scrapping the 10p tax rate.

Many Scots look at the Britain built by this political elite, they don’t like it and they want out. If, say, northern England was a nation rather than a region, it would surely be bolting for the door by now. Sixty-four per cent of eligible Britons voted against the Conservatives in 2010, but in Scotland they have all but collapsed to fringe party status.

To most Scots, living under a Tory-led government seems absurd, like being forced to live under a hostile foreign occupying force. Why do we have to scrabble around for spare cash to counteract cartoonishly unjust policies such as the bedroom tax that attempt to balance Britain’s books at the expense of predominantly poor disabled people, they wonder. Labour, meanwhile, left the Scottish National party ample progressive political turf to seize and claim as its own. On the ballot paper on 18 September, yes seems to read “never live under a Tory government ever again”.

You would think that Labour’s leaders might have learned from their grievous mistakes. Rather than joining forces with a Tory party that the independence movement owes everything to, Labour should have treated the Conservatives as political Ebola. The Tory vote has been in long-term decline not just across Scotland, it could have said, but across much of England and Wales too: now is our time to finish them off together. Rather than attempting to defeat a yes campaign championing hope with the politics of fear, it would have promised to build a socially just Scotland as part of a new federal Britain.

Such is the desperation within this camp that John McTernan, former adviser to Tony Blair, has dirtied his knees by coming crawling to yours truly. In the fight to stop independence, he writes, “the preachers of old time religion” – including myself – need to take to the streets of Scotland. Desperation and chutzpah have been rolled into one neat package. It was the likes of McTernan who championed policies that fuelled the independence movement, who sidelined and demonised dissident voices who protested: critics who – if listened to – may have prevented this unfolding debacle. And now New Labour ideologues come crawling to those they demonised to help prevent the all-too-plausible break-up of the country they are partly responsible for.

Defending a union forged by two kings over three centuries was never of any interest to me. What appeals is the common traditions shared by Scottish, English and Welsh people as they confronted, fought and defeated the powerful. Suffragettes such as Edinburgh’s Ethel Moorhead and Manchester’s Sylvia Pankurst; socialists such as Fife’s Jennie Lee and her Welsh husband Nye Bevan; trade union leaders such as North Lanarkshire’s Mick McGahey and Liverpool’s Jack Jones – all confronted a common enemy.

Glaswegians, Mancunians and Cardiffians fought for and built the welfare state and the NHS with their own hands. A movement of Scottish, English and Welsh citizens not only defeated the poll tax, but ejected Margaret Thatcher from office too. Our common enemies remain economy-trashing financiers and poverty-paying bosses, whether they speak in an Edinburgh lilt or with the Queen’s English.

Even if it is a close no, Scotland will be gone within a decade unless there is dramatic change: only the over-65s firmly oppose independence. The old order is dead, whatever happens. A new federal constitutional order – with sweeping devolution to the English regions and Wales, and to Scotland if it remains – must be built. Drawing on our shared traditions of fighting the powerful, English, Welsh and Scots must confront an establishment that will still reign, even if Scotland is formally independent. Too much damage may have been inflicted for anyone to listen to such a call. But the establishment should know: it is responsible for the looming break-up of the country.

If Scotland votes to leave, or only narrowly remains, there will be a reckoning, and our bankrupt status quo must surely be swept away.

Not at all Nigel is not against foreigners or immigration. Just the uncontrolled open door immigration we have at the moment.
You'd perhaps forgotten his wife is foreign.
Simie.

Blame the Tories and maggie again R ?? :yawn: your living in the 70's you'll be blaming them for the visa crackdowns next

To me all the Westminster politicians are the same now, go to the same public schools, university, political researchers job then get an MP's seat at Parliament. No wonder people have had enough.

And as for Simie, he seems to have forgotten the primary purpose law that Maggie brought in that stopped blokes bringing home their Thai wives if they had worked in a bar and his mate Bloom would say plenty of English sluts here so no need to bring in a foreign woman for the job.

We need a proper sort out, get rid of idiots like Cameron, Clegg and Miliband and find some decent leaders before it is too late.

Exactly the same criticism being made here. labor is entirely made up of union hacks who got economics degrees while working in the union office. None of them ever drove a train or welded a pipe. The tories are all law graduates who never practised law, but became party hacks working for a previous MP, then got soft shoed into parliament.
Then there's the greens. Totally purist and idealogical, no concept of Newton's third law.

What really staggers me is that when they retire from politics and become commentators they can actually make sense. Its the blind allegiance to party dogma that is tearing the system apart.:smilies-33413:

It`s the first time I`ve noticed financial markets take the prospect of a Yes win seriously :

"The pound slid the most in 11 months and U.K. share-index futures fell after a poll showed a majority vote in favor of Scottish independence."

Down almost 1 % against the US $ just from Friday.

Some of the big investing/trading houses/banks predicting a further fall in the pound`s value should Yes actually win.
A fairly logical view on the pound.

Obviously not helping the pound baht rate either.

All the financial markets hate turmoil which is what is happening at the moment

Indeed so Wodger, very true.

£ looks very vulnerable in the next few weeks and bad news for anyone who has a trip in the near future

I shall probably change my dosh when I get there if if looks like a yes vote nearer the time? £ bound to drop a bit more if it is a yes vote.
Simie.

Wodger, If we'd had had a different government none of us know what shape or form it would have taken, so any speculation is just that speculation. If we had stayed in the EU then the primary purpose law would be unenforceable as it would be now under EU legislation. And if we had left everything is hypothetical.

However I do agree with you about the current politucal, none of them have ever had a proper job. Unless you include Farage who worked in business for 20 years before politics.

And as for my mate Godfrey Bloom, as far as he's concerned you can never have enough sluts!
Simie

Some balanced reporting for a change....

Cameron is a disgrace. Yes, he is loathed in Scotland, but that means he cannot do any more damage to himself or the tories. As leader of the Unionist party he should be on the stage with Salmond and wipe the floor with him, it would not be very difficult.

Now everyone is getting worried about the Yes vote (not me I'm convinced it will be No) how long before the London media pours some muck on Salmond? I know for a fact that they have something, the timing will be interesting.

I spoke to a customer at work not long ago who said her husband was from the same town as Salmon and it was an open secret there he was a heavy gambler.
Simie.

We could probably help the media along, anyone any good at photoshop? We could have him playing a game of three card brag in Boystown with Mirky. Revealed exclusive and all that.

Think I might have to stop accepting Sweaty notes.

In a lot of ways there is an anti Thatcher element driving nationalism. A vague notion that we could do better than having a bunch of English public school boys running the show. A hatred of 'Westminster' which seems to implicitly be a code word for Tories, London... basically The English.

With no currency plans set in stone, a vote for yes seems to me to be a massive gamble. Incredibly though it seems like less people are concerned with economics and more their sense of identity. If Adolf Salmond and his natsi's can pull this off they'll have beaten Labour, Conservatives and the Lib Dems, every major political party.

Worrying times...

With regarding the current weakening of the £ due to the impending vote, perhaps we could contact the thai exchequer to find out how you "fix" (I mean) keep the currency strong during years of turmoil that would have destroyed other countries economies.

One of the things that I`ve not noticed being brought up is that London is one of the leading financial centres of the world.

It has it`s scandals etc but the amount of transactions routed through it is totally out of proportion to the ( small ) size of the UK, that makes money, some of it filters through to the general economy.

In one financial trade sector it has about 54 % + of total world trade, quite an amazing feat.

An independent Scotland would maybe lose out there, already talk that they would not have the excellent credit rating that the UK as a whole has.

The three stooges, Cameron, Clegg & Milliband are hot footing it up to Scotland tomorrow but anything they do or say like Brown in last nights speech is purely panic stations now.

Whatever the result some people are going to be pissed off and all that will happen is Scotland will now be a divided country.

That's very true, I think if there is a no vote there will be social unrest with all the Rab C Nesbit types in their string vests kicking off and fish face who'll still be first minister causing any shit he can.
And if it's yes I think there will be a huge exodus of money and business from what will become the most northerly banana republic.
Simie.

The Governor of the Bank of England, who is no ones fool, has stated again today they cannot have the pound. The SNP finance bloke responded that it will be all right on the night, you could not make up these nationalists stupidity.

Carney is Osborne's mouthpiece so he is toeing the party line

He is far to bright to be anyones mouthpiece, albeit Osborne did appoint him. What he is stating needs to be taken on board by the Scottish people before they go into financial meltdown.

You could offer the Yes mob £100 to vote no and they would turn it down, they have got the London establishment shitting themselves and they love it. I predict an even bigger poll lead in the next few days but whether that turns into actual Yes votes that is a different matter

Spouting off in public is one thing, when they are alone in the booth and thinking about their financial future, the temptation to vote Yes will diminish. I am not buying into these recent polls, my prediction is a No vote with at least 55% of the vote.

That's my prediction too, maybe even a bigger majority which makes all these last minute panic offers pointless as it will kick up a fuss in England over financing them

To a degree I think people are so intimidated by the YES baying mobs they are too scared to say publicly who they are voting for. This is not a nice time to live here. I wouldn't put a NO THANKS sticker on my car, house, etc.

Problem is that Adolf Salmond has lured the gullible into believing his promised land of increased spending with no tax raises. A socialist utopia. There are a lot of people living in poverty and this is what they want to hear. Factor in the Tims and anti English Tartan Army clowns and unfortunately that's a good 40% of the population up here. It will be close. Any big news story in the next week could tip the balance either way.

People with mortgages are starting to shit themselves though. As they have a loan in sterling to English based lenders and if there is a currency change they might be fucked. I've moved all cash savings out of Scotland already just in case there is some Cyprus style restriction on moving capital in the event of independence.

I'm scared, I'm British I don't want to wake up on the 19th and be a foreigner.

I thought this was a good article -

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeeh...-am-voting-no/

Once upon a time, a long while ago, I lived in Dublin. It was a time when everything seemed possible and not just because I was younger then. The country was stirring too. When I arrived it was still the case that a visa to work in the United States was just about the most valuable possession any young Irishman or woman could own; within a fistful of years that was no longer the case. Ireland was changing. These were the years in which the Celtic Tiger was born. They were happy years of surprising possibility.

Years later I lived in the United States and my perspective changed. Scottish independence seemed, viewed from there, about as useful or meaningful as independence for Texas. Not impossible or even necessarily undesirable but somehow missing the point nonetheless. But that was later. When I lived in Ireland, Dublin’s example seemed, well, exemplary. If the Irish could do it, why couldn’t we? More to the point, why shouldn’t we?

So, like many other Scots who will vote No next week, I don’t think independence a daft notion or some kind of fatuous affectation. I think there is a reasonable case for it (even if this is not the case that, during this long campaign, has often been the case that has actually been made). Could we do it? Why, yes we could. But should we?

Of course the detail matters. It matters even if you accept that the Scottish government’s prospectus for life after independence is only one of many possible futures none of which can be decided until independence is achieved. There are many voters – well, perhaps one in five – who would vote for independence even if it promised an impoverished future. Similarly there are many voters – perhaps one in five – who would reject independence even if they believed it offered a more prosperous future.

Still, if we’re to vote on independence it should be done on the basis of a moderately honest prospectus. No such prospectus has been offered by the Scottish government. A lot of people are voting on the basis of a deeply cynical and meretricious set of promises that simply cannot, not even when assisted by great dollops of wishful thinking, be delivered. It is not possible to spend more, borrow less and tax the same.

That, however, is what the SNP propose. Lower borrowing rates, 3% annual increases in public spending and no changes to the overall level of taxation. It is incredible. It supposes that voters must be glaikit and easily gulled ninnies who can be persuaded to swallow anything, no matter how fanciful it must be. A nonsense wrapped in a distortion inside a whopping great lie.

It’s quite possible that the realities of life in an independent Scotland might push the country’s centre-of-political-gravity to the right. Quite possible, then, that an independent Scotland would be more likely to produce more of my kind of politics than some of the politics imagined by the keenest advocates for independence. That still strikes me as a thin and selfish reason to vote for independence.

But, sure, many of the details could be worked out and it’s certainly possible that after an initial period of some difficulty Scotland would emerge as a decently prosperous and contented country. It needn’t be a disaster and it probably wouldn’t be. Nevertheless, the growing pains would be acute and I think it best to recognise this. There will be short and even perhaps medium-term pain but the long-term prize will be worth it.

That’s not what’s being sold, however. Far from it.

There are other difficulties. The dishonesty of suggesting – or allowing it to be understood – that there’s no functional difference between sterlingisation and a monetary union with whatever remains of the UK is, in the end, breathtaking. Yes, Scotland can “use the pound” but how it’s used is a question of some importance.

I know politicians can never say they don’t know the answer to something but there are times and places when pretending you have all the answers is worse than admitting the obvious truth that you don’t. This is one of those times; one of those places.

But, look, in the end this is still process stuff. Very important process stuff but still only process stuff. I happen to think it provides ample reason to vote No but it’s not why I’m voting No.

I’m voting No because the campaign has surprised me. It’s made me think about my country and, more than that, what it means to be a part of that country. I’ll vote No even though I think Scotland would do fine as an independent country.

Because, even more than the economic sleight-of-hand, I’ve been taken aback by the dishonesty of a campaign that claims you can end the United Kingdom as we know it but retain almost everything about the United Kingdom that actually makes it the United Kingdom.

Like everyone else I’ve been asked to believe that independence will improve relations between the constituent parts of this kingdom and that, far from ending a kind of Britishness, it will actually enhance your sense of Britishness. The Yes campaign has said you can lose your country and keep it too. I don’t believe that.

You know how it is at a funeral: there is a hierarchy of grief and it is unseemly to pretend you’re closer to the epicentre of loss than is actually the case. The same is true of difference and “foreigners”. No parts of these Atlantic Isles are truly strangers to one another. But there is still a hierarchy of difference. England and Wales are not so foreign as Ireland. Ireland is not so foreign as New Zealand or Australia. Which in turn are less foreign than Canada. And Canada is not as foreign as France or Belgium or Sweden or even bloody Norway.

Independence won’t sever all those bonds. Of course it won’t. The hierarchy of difference will remain in place. But the gaps between the layers will increase. Scotland and England (and Wales and even Ulster) will drift apart. We will be less close than once we were; we will not become strangers but we will know less about – and be less interested in – each other. Never foreign-foreign but foreign enough for it to count and be noticed.

And I think that would be a sad business. I think Alex Salmond gets something very wrong when he says that England would lose a “surly lodger” after independence and gain a “good neighbour”. Because I don’t think of Scots as lodgers paying rent in someone else’s house, granted a bedroom and the use of the lounge three nights a week. I think we live in our own house. A house we built ourselves. Salmond asks us to move to another, smaller, house and that’s fine but he does so while pretending we can continue to live in our old house too. But we can’t.

I’m Scottish but I’m British too and I’ve been surprised by the extent to which that latter layer of identity still matters to me and still has something to say, not just about me, but about all of us. I don’t recognise the caricature of England (and it is usually England, not the rest of the UK) offered by Yes supporters. They see a heartless, rapacious, profiteering “neoliberal” dystopia; I see a relaxed, liberal, ambitious, open-minded, multi-racial, modern country.

They see the rise of UKIP and are frightened by it; I see UKIP as a bug not a feature because the feature is the manner in which the UK is open to the world and, actually, quite happy about that thank you very much. A UK in which, despite its difficulties, has managed the transition from a white country to a multi-racial polity with, in general, commendable ease. They see a broken, sclerotic, unreformable Britain; I see a cosmopolitan country that’s a desirable destination for millions of people around the world.

Of course there are difficulties. There always are and always will be. Britain can no more solve every problem than could an independent Scotland. Which is why, again, this debate – for me anyway – isn’t about policy but instead about something bigger: who we are.

The other day the historian Tom Devine remarked that all the Union has going for it is sentiment, family and history. Like that’s not enough? Those aren’t wee things, they’re the things that make us who we are. The blood and guts, the bone and marrow of our lives. The tissue that connects us to our fellow citizens, the stuff that makes us more than an individual. The things from which you build a society. You can have that in Scotland, alone and independent, too of course. But we also have it in Britain, right now, and we will lose some of that if we vote Yes. Or some of us will, anyway.

So I think of E Pluribus Unum and I think that’s a motto that applies to the United Kingdom too. And so does its opposite: within one, many. There’s ample room for many types of Britain. Not just Scots and Welsh and Irish and English but Pakistani-Scots, Jamaican-Welsh and Nigerian-English too. I think it’s the tensions and ambiguities inherent in all of this that makes Britain interesting; that makes Scotland interesting too.

Nuance and complexity matter and have some value. They have helped make us what we are. I like that at Waterloo the Scots Greys, part of the Union Brigade, charged into the French lines to the cry of Scotland Forever. I like our ambiguous, sometimes ambivalent, often ironic, past. I like our present too and I have some small hopes for our future as well.

Perhaps this is romantic, sentimental, tosh but that’s an inescapable part of national identity. An unavoidable part of the business of constructing a nation. That’s true of Scotland just as it’s true of Britain too.

Here’s the thing: Scotland is different from England but it is not separate from it. Nor from Wales or even Northern Ireland either. I like the fact I have two countries. I like the fact that one includes Jerusalem, Men of Harlech and the Londonderry Air as well as Annie Laurie and the Flowers of the Forest. That one offers Larkin and Thomas and Heaney as well as MacDiarmid. I like that these belong to all of us even if they each belong a little more to some of us than they do to the rest of us.

I see this as a country greater than the sum of its constituent nations. Whatever remains of the United Kingdom after Scottish independence will do just fine. Scotland, likewise, is not doomed. We can, all of us, make a decent fist of things. But it will not be the same and the idea everything must change so things can remain much the same is a con.

If history matters – and I think it does just like sentiment and family matter – then whatever this place’s shortcomings and mistakes it’s worth recalling that it’s also the country of William Wilberforce and Alan Turing as well as Adam Smith and Thomas Paine. That should count for something. We are different but not separate. I think of it as being like the relationship between Boswell and Johnson. They complement one another. You may even think they complete one another. There’d be a smaller Johnson without Boswell but a lesser Boswell without Johnson. They improved each other.

Most of all, I like that when you get the train to Scotland from London or Peterborough or Newcastle north and you cross the border in the gloaming you feel your heart soar and you cry hurrah and yippee because you know you’re home now without having been abroad. I like that and think it matters. I don’t know if I know why it does or why it suddenly seems so valuable but I know I do. But that’s the Britain I know and like; a place in which I’m always Scottish but also, when it suits, British too. A country where you travel to very different places and still always come home without having been abroad.