Post by Charles EllsonOn Sun, 10 May 2015 09:19:30 -0700 (PDT), Nicholas Benjamin
Post by Nicholas BenjaminPost by soupdragonPost by The DoctorPost by Nicholas BenjaminPost by The Other GuyWere to be today, I'd expect a DIFFERENT outcome..
=20
SNP has taken 26 seats from Labor so far, and it's beginning=20
to look like a clean sweep across Scotland.
Doubt it.
For one thing, it's a three-party system in Scotland. If the SNP is getting=
45% (like it has in the past few elections), but the LibDems and
Labor are= splitting the remainder then the SNP dominates. The Exit
Polls I've seen t=
hus far don't show the percentages, so there's no way to know whether
the S= NP is at it's recent average of 45% or has gone past 50%.
Moreover, secessionist movements frequently have soft supporters who
don't = actually want to leave the country, but do want the central
government to m= ake concessions.
Nick
SNP sweeps Sctoland with the others getting 1 seat each.
And, just to clarify. The Scottish parliament has 5 parties, not 3. It
did have 6 until Sheriden's SSP went into melt down. UKIP have made no
headway in Scotland and have no representatives, so they don't count
So we're talking about an election to the UK Parliament, which is
first-past-the-post; and you're using numbers from the elections to
the MMP Scots Parliament? My friend, you have truly mastered the art
of fuzzy logic.
In the UK Parliamentary election, which is the one we are actually talking
about, there are three parties and a guy from Dumfries. The three parties are
Labour,. the LibDems, and the SNP. Thaty is a three-party system.
In the _UK_ system there is also
DUP
Sinn Fein (who don't actually turn up to vote but presumably reserve
the right to do so should it be daft not to do so on some occasion)
Plaid Cymru
SDLP
UUP
UKIP
Green
Had the Tories been less successful then these parties along with the
SNP would have had effective control for matters where the traditional
CON-LAB coalition has a policy of voting in opposition to each other.
Dude,
I made a very simple statement about the party system of SCOTLAND in an election for the LONDON PARLIAMENT.
You can type all you want about Wales, the EU elections, etc. you still haven't actually made an argument that contradicts the point I made about the election this thread is about.
Post by Charles EllsonPost by Nicholas BenjaminIf you want to talk about the Scots Parliament's party-system you'll have to stop
crowing about wiping everyone else out and almost getting a majority
of the popular vote; because you only got 44-45% of that vote and a
bare majority.
50% actually :-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2015/results/scotland
If you're talking about a referendum 50.0% is the worst number to use. It's clearly been rounded, and if rounded up the Yes side loses. If rounded down Yes wins. This number is rounded up. It started at 49.9726% IIRC.
Which means yes loses.
Post by Charles EllsonPost by Nicholas BenjaminPost by soupdragonAdditionally, the previous poster seems to be using the American
experience of seccession, rather than the European one to make a
sweeping generalisation about their make up.
Which American experience re: secession are you talking about?
Perhaps a reference to a little local difficulty in 1776 ?
No referendums in 1776 either. 1904 is the first referendum in US History I've ever heard of.
They didn't have the communications technology to have a sophisticated central body decide on the precise wording of a referendum, custom-print ballots, distribute them statewide (40 US states are physically bigger then Scotland, altho 7 of the original 13 are in that bottom 10), etc. So they used an indirect system, usually via one of the Houses of the State Legislature. The famous Lincoln-Stevens, Senate race, for example, was not decided by a popular vote but in the Illinois State Senate.
We still use the indirect system for Presidential elections, which is why Dubya was able to take office over Gore despite losing by a half-million or so.
Post by Charles EllsonPost by Nicholas BenjaminThere has never
been an independence referendum of any sort in any US State ever. The
Confederates had a completely separate legal procedure involving
specially elected conventions. If they'd tried a referendum they
would have lost because they were seceding to protect slavery from
evil Abe Lincoln,
There was a bit more to it than that.
They say that now, but if you read their various declarations of independence (or as they called them "Declarations of Causes") they tend to switch very quickly between abstract immeasurable things and complaints that the rest of the country was interfering with their slaves. This comes from South Carolina's (note: all were adopted by state conventions not referendums):
http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/primarysources/declarationofcauses.html
"But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution."
Later declarations of causes tend to include language about defending South Carolina's right to defend slavery by seceding, but they're still mostly about slavery. Georgia's starts out saying they're seceding, then says "For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery," Mississippi's is similarly structured, with this as the second thing they say "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world." Texas took awhile to get to the point, but "She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?" Virginia insisted on writing in italics that they had to leave because the Feds were acting "not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States."
During the actual war they made it illegal for blacks (free or slave) to fight, refused to send captured Northern Black troops back in exchange for Southern white prisoners (which led the North to refuse to exchange prisoners at all, so there were horrible conditions at camps on both sides, but particularly Andersonville in Georgia), whenever they invaded the North they'd seize free blacks to be sold in southern slave markets, etc.
But they had really good PR, and by 1866 even they realized that the "War to defend slavery" was not morally acceptable, so many (especially their descendants) continue to insist that the whole dispute was about high Yankee taxes making it hard for southerners to export their cotton.
Post by Charles EllsonPost by Nicholas Benjaminand roughly 40% of their populations were slaves. There are
plenty of referendums, but nobody has ever done one on breaking up the country.
That's part of what I'm using, because there's so much more data from the USA.
But the exact same thing has happened with the Australian Republic
referendums (which are currently on hold until the Queen dies),
Quebec's sovereignty/independence referendums, etc.
You just don't get to have a nasty, divisive referendum debate
But we didn't. The "nasty, divisive" bit was and still is just
Unionist propaganda; the vast majority of the population went back to
work/play/live with each other as normal the day after.
That happens in all referendums. Everybody always says something that turns out to be untrue.
That does not imply that 8 months later everyone wants to listen to the local High Schoolers talk about Scotland's glorious past while Grandma frets about Scotland's ability to pay her pension again.
Post by Charles EllsonPost by Nicholas Benjaminyou tell everyone
is incredibly important because it's the future of the country; and
then turn around seven months later and have a new one because you
did well in an unrelated election. You piss off the people who voted
against you (and I'd remind you: that 55%),
That was 55% 8 months ago but 100% were lied to by the combined
Unionist parties' (t/a "No Thanks") campaign with a false promise of a
new Scotland Bill "ready to be voted on by the UK Parliament [on] 25th
February". Many of that 55% can reasonably be expected to have joined
the 45% as a result.
In a few years that argument will work fine. But now that 55% have a PM in London who swore to get to this months ago, 56 of 59 Scots MPs insisting the DevoMax should happen now, etc.
If he drags his feet for six months, it'll have some legs, and the SNP will likely dominate the 2016 election to Holyrood.
Nick