I know what you mean, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume every non-voter is a vote for the status quo. There will be lots of sick, incapacitated, and (most of all) apathetic people out there.
To count those as the status quo is plain wrong IMO. It also gives motivation to those in power to make it difficult to vote for certain demographics, like we’ve seen recently with voter ID.
I know what you mean. Big decisions being made by 50%+1 votes are definitely messy. But the alternative is that a minority wins. e.g. 60/40 or whatever. That’s even worse.
Maybe there should be a series of referendums and you need a majority 3 times in a row? But those might all be 50%+1 again.
Like it or not, people can even be found guilty of murder on the basis of a single person deciding one way or another.
Scotland isn’t just a region, it is still a country in its own right. Would we have been okay with the EU refusing us a Brexit referendum, or telling us we can only have one every X years? Of course not.
And, to be honest, people get tired of voting. If anything, frequent independence referendums would only put people off.
To be honest it’s all hypothetical. The UK government will never allow another independence referendum. And nor will Labour. Cameron only allowed one because he thought there would be no chance of a Yes vote. There is no getting out, no matter what percentage of the Scottish population want one.
Yeah. I had selected those quotes because they highlight what a shit situation we’re in. I get the logic; it’s just depressing that the logic is sound.
However, it remains to be seen how Labour will react to Just Stop Oil. I think they’ll be less blunt but will pretty much treat them the same way. Hopefully I’m wrong.
Mr Vince, a major Labour donor, said further action was “pointless” because the government had shown it would drill for oil “come what may”.
God that’s depressing.
Further disruption, he added, would help “feed the Tories’ culture-war narrative”.
Fair point but still depressing.
Instead, he said, he would divert funding to the anti-Conservative vote.
So no longer specific to halting oil production at all then. Sigh.
We are in a union between two countries. That’s the key difference.
e.g. our law systems are separate and pre-date the Union itself.
Not that I particularly want to open this can of worms here, but I’m pretty sure that Scotland has more resources than a lot of lim independent European countries. Colossal amounts of renewables potential, oil (just don’t burn it), whisky, tourism, etc.
I agree about there being enough to go round. Unfortunately I don’t think the Conservatives or Labour are interested in that model, and FPTP elections are never going away at Westminster.
Although I’m uneasy with blocking any democratic right, I do see your point.
However, the voters have kept the SNP in power for 16 years now - there is clearly is still a strong interest in independence. There won’t be many unionist voting SNP for their other policies!
I think Northern Ireland have the right to a referendum every 7 years. That seems reasonable to me.
I would maintain that stance even in an independent Scotland, if unionist groups can get into power with reforming a union with England on the manifesto.
I honestly think the SNP still want independence, and to have a referendum, but they have no official route to get one. Which is completely wrong, democratically speaking.
That’s not to say there aren’t loads of Tories. Just that they almost all tactically voted for Labour to get the SNP out.
If only 80s or even 90s Britain could see Scottish politics now. They would wonder wtf is going on, with Tory/Labour tactical voting and coalitions.
It may have changed recently, but my understanding of it is that you are expected to aim to join the Euro but there is no set timescale.
The ECB summary seems to indicate that they would rather a country is in a stable, fit condition before adopting the Euro. (We probably have Greece circa 2008 to thank for that.)
There are a few countries already in the EU who have no plans to adopt the Euro. I’m sure we could do the same.
It’s a disgrace that 28% would still vote Tory after everything they’ve done.
‘They’ being whoever doctored the image, and not the Labour MP.
It does (once again) raise a valid point about verification of images. Some kind of checksum or (god help us) blockchain based confirmation that an image hasn’t been altered.
Obviously any resizing of an image would screw this up, but there are already lots of apps that can find duplicates despite different resolutions.
Yeah I would never count non-voters as for, or against, something. But I disagree that apathy (or ignorance) equals a vote for the status quo.
I didn’t vote at all until I was about 28. Not because I was happy with the incumbent party, but because I knew I hadn’t researched any of the options well enough to vote for them.
On making sure it is the will of the majority by requiring >50% of the population, it makes it remarkably easy to prevent change. If the media are on your side, they can simply downplay any vote. Or, like I mentioned previously, make voter registration difficult/biased.
I do get what you say about ideally being >50% of the population. But I think it’s far too easy to subvert such a rule, leaving us stuck with >50% of votes registered as the most practical (if not ideal) option. Even though I also hate to see outcomes from really low turnouts. (Local election turnouts are embarrassing.) I’d love to see a minimum turnout requirement but I do just think it would be abused.
At this point, btw, I’m not even sure how we got to discussing turnout. :) It does seem like we fundamentally disagree on what’s acceptable though.