Rigging the referendum consultation?

Pot calling kettle black?

There are numerous problems with this accusation. First, of course, there is the simple fact that all consultations in recent years have been run under very similar lines, like the consultation process for the Smoking Ban, run by the Labour/Lib-Dem coalition Scottish Executive. But there's a much bigger problem, if you ask me, and one that Labour seem to have conveniently forgotten.
Over the first few months of the year the Scottish Office at Westminster has also been running their own consultation. They are very keen to tell us that the vast majority of respondents want the referendum brought forward to 2013, for example. That's very interesting, I'm sure, but considering that the Scottish Labour website not only gave you a form for your email address and name, they very kindly filled out the rest of the form for you with this suggested response.

The referendum on Scotland’s constitutional future is hugely important, and I want to have my say on how the referendum is run. I want it to be legal, fair, and decisive.LegalI do not want the referendum to be subject to legal challenge or dragged through the courts. Clarity on which parliament has the legal responsibility to call the referendum must be sorted out.FairI want the referendum to be supervised by the Electoral Commission, and I am opposed to any attempt to water down their role. They must have the legal power to rule on the wording of the question.DecisiveThere should only be one question in order to give a definitive answer on whether or not Scotland remains part of the UK. I do not support attempts to muddy the water with further questions on other matters. I want the referendum sooner rather than later and do not see the need to wait almost three years.Please take my views into account.

They also suggested a subject for you too, since, possibly, being Scottish makes this all too difficult for you. Just in case you were in any doubt this is their idea of how to respond to a consultation, to the right of the form there was a little message, "Sending the message on the left means you will send an email response to the Scottish Government consultation." There were 3000 responses to this consultation, which is now closed. The claim that 70% of respondents did not want to wait to 2014 rather uncannily echoes the wording of the above suggested response. I've been unable to find a breakdown of how many of the 3000 responses came through the Scottish Labour website. I made my own through it, but of course I deleted the suggested response. I've also made my own, non-anonymous response to the Scottish Government consultation.
Last night on Newsnight Scotland Kezia Dugdale seems to categorically accept Jim Eadie's contention that 1500 of the responses each from both the Scottish Government and the UK Government consultations came through the Labour website as above. 1500 amounts to half of all the responses received for the UK Government consultation altogether? Who's rigging it? At around 6.46 Kezia Dugdale makes her admission.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B04p9uf5bKs&feature=player_embedded#!

I'd like to suggest to Scottish Labour that they look to their own arguable rigged referendum consultation before criticising the Scottish Government's one. Unfortunately, the problem isn't just in the Scottish Labour Party. Our own dear Scottish Secretary seems to see nothing wrong with calling the Scottish Government's Referendum consultation rigged even while telling us all quite clearly the extent of the jiggery-pokery going on with his.


On Good Morning Scotland this morning, Scottish Secretary Michael Moore said that of the 3000 or so responses to The Referendum on Separation for Scotland consultation, the UK Government "had 740 that are the text of which was the same as the Labour party text on their website".


He claimed that this didn't concern him, "because that was consistent with a number of others from across Scotland who are also in favour of a single question and wanting to have this sooner rather than later".


So in other words, more than 25% of their responses consisted of Identical Text, and Michael Moore doesn't believe his consultation needs independent verification.


He also claimed that this UK Government consultatiation, "confirms support for the Government's approach to the referendum, that we need to have a legal, fair and decisive referendum", without out even a hint of irony!



Now I took myself off to the Scottish Government Referendum Consultation website because Michael Moore told us in the same interview that the Scottish Government had put a similar automatic response to their question on The Question, but I didn't find that there at all. In fact every box below every question on the on-line form is left blank for your very own response, as if we Scots do indeed have brains enough to answer these important questions for ourselves.

In a week when Michael Forsyth and Ian Paisley made sense.

I can't decide which quote this week amazes me more.  Is it the Reverend Ian Paisley's magnanimous statement :

The Scottish people are a canny lot, I should know, my mother was Scottish! I fail to see what all the angst is concerning the question to be put in the upcoming referendum. The Scots know exactly what they want, know how to get it, and probably would greatly appreciate it if we left them alone to make their own decision.

or is it Michael Forsyth's basic admission that Government Ministers know more about the south of France than Scotland :

 "I think that's probably true.  What alarms me is that when I got into the House of Commons in 1983 almost every Tory supported the Union and was committed to it.  Now I find Conservative MPs saying in increasing numbers 'Why do we need Scotland?' and abandoning the unionist position." 

 Does this sound like, with two years left to go, that the Unionists are giving up?  Much as I'd like to say yes, I doubt it.  When the balance sheet of the UK becomes more closely examined in the run up to 2014, then we'll see real panic set in.  I've seen a lot of commentators say that the Unionists are already panicking, and while this may well be true of Scottish Labour seeing as they have so much to lose come May this year, I don't think either the Tories or the Lib Dems are quite at that point.  The Lib Dems have been in gentle decline for almost a century, and this taste of power that Cameron offered them has turned so sour that the gentle decline is turning into a head long plunge to oblivion.  The Tories have only one MP in Scotland and don't really care much for the devolved party in Scotland.  They just don't care enough from a political stand point.  Currently, we're not worth the trouble we're causing.
No, the Lib Dems and the Tories aren't panicking, they are being condescending.  The scare stories being circulated by them are truly what they think will bring us back into line.   There's no co-ordination between any of the parties, simply because it's not being given enough credit yet for true cross-party action, and with Labour tail-spinning north of the wall, because they are on the brink of losing their northern fiefdom long before the referendum, they can't risk co-ordinating with the other parties because of their obvious toxicity.  Do you think Johann Lamont was truly grateful for Ed Milliband's token public statement of support for the Co-alition line on Scotland, knowing full well how toxic the Tory brand is in Scotland? Of course she has to play the faithful underling, but she deals with the day to day politics of Scotland and has in the past tried to link the SNP to the Tories to try and gain from that same toxicity.
Michael Forsyth is right though, they aren't getting their act together at all, and Scotland is already well engaged in the debate about her future. Meanwhile, Westminster just keeps throwing occasional glances our way to see if we're still too scared by their stories to vote yes.  The polls still look that way.  Anyway, we can see the gradual upward trend towards yes from poll to poll anyway, so we know that with time on our side, we are going to win.
But here's the point, and here Ian Paisley has the right of it too, some point within the next two they will realise that we are a canny lot, that the pro-independence arguments have been well thought out and are being positively put to us, while they have been busy engaging most of their attention elsewhere and occasionally throwing their laughably negative nonsense our way to keep in the debate.  Remember how confident Iain Gray was this time last year?  Remember their campaign?  The Unionists haven't given up, but for the most part they are kidding themselves.  Labour has a clue about what's going on, but doesn't have a clue about what to do about it.  The Tories and the Lib Dems are too caught up in Europe, the banking crisis and Westminster politics to really have a clue at all.
We have momentum now, but we musn't take it for granted that the current state of affairs is going to remain.   Michael Forsyth's words may well lead to the beginning of a waking up to what this Referendum really means for the whole of the UK, or maybe it will be someone else further down the line, but eventually there will be a co-ordinated and well funded No campaign and we will have to start the fight for real.  We are holding pretty much all of the cards now, but we've got to watch out for our opponents bluffing us!

Russell Brown MP, a case study in Scottish MP's in Westminster

My local MP is Russell Brown of the Labour party.  He became my MP due to boundary changes that created Galloway and West Dumfries incorporating my old constituency of Galloway and Upper Nithsdale.  Galloway and Upper Nithsdale had been in a state of regular change from Tory to SNP for many years, with negligible Labour support, so to suddenly find myself in a Labour constituency in such a way  felt a little undemocratic to me.
Now I have a very strong feeling of the wrongness in Scottish MP's voting on matters of English interest only, so I decided to have a look at Mr Brown's voting record.  It's pretty depressing reading, to be honest.
Russel Brown voted moderately for University Tuition fees, for the hunting ban (a matter which is reserved to Holyrood for Scotland, personally I agree with the Hunting Ban), for greater autonomy for English Schools, voted for the English smoking ban, for the introduction of Foundation Hospitals in the English and Welsh NHS,  for the anti-terrorism laws and  he never rebels against his party in Parliament.
Other things that Mr Brown has voted for which were Reserved matters, in spite of strong opposition in Scotland are for the introduction of ID cards, against a wholly elected House of Lords, for the Iraq war, against investigation into the Iraq War and for replacing Trident.
Yes, Russell Brown is the fairly elected representative of Galloway and West Dumfries, but in all of the above things I can't see him adequately representing Scottish interests in Westminster, and am disgusted by his record of voting for controversial legislation in Westminster that does not affect Scotland and would not pass into law in Scotland.
I believe that we should all be challenging our Unionist MP's on their voting record in Westminster as a part of our argument for Scottish Independence.  It's as equally valid an argument to say that they have no mandate on English affairs as it is to say that the Coalition Governement of Westminster has no mandate to dictate on Scottish affairs like the Referendum.  This is a double standard that can be eradicated by Independence, as we well know.
Go have a look at your local Unionist MPs voting record here, and you just might feel motivated to write to them and express your feelings about their voting on English matters that have nothing to do with them.
We so-called cybernats are often accused of being anti-english, but looking at the record above I almost feel that Russell Brown is anti-english as he is having a hand in dismantling Free Education in England and England's NHS, two cornerstones of what Unionists believe make Britain a fair and equal society.   
As we move towards the Referendum, it is important to inform ourselves just about how our Scottish MP's are representing us in the Westminster Parliament.  I personally do not want to be represented in a way which allows English people to rightly complain that they are helping to take away such vital things from English public life.  I want the English to have the same level of care in health and education as we Scots enjoy, but it's not for us to dictate that to them.  I also want the Americans to have those same cornerstones of a fair society, but I wouldn't dream of sending Scottish congressmen to America to vote either way on these matters.
Independence is a very simple premise, in the end.  It is the the right for the people of a country to determine their own government and services.  English Independence from Scotland is just as important to me as Scottish Independence from England, because that is going to be the only way we will achieve fair democracy in these  islands.  So long as MP's like Russel Brown continue to be sent south to intervene on the behalf of their party in English politics, that just isn't going to be achieved.