Alex Salmond: A second Scottish referendum is inevitible

platypus · 14 Oct 2015 at 12:51

[TW]Fox;28682009 said:
How can you possibly know that?

He doesn't, at all. He's just positing it because it supports his fallacious argument.

lovelyhead · 14 Oct 2015 at 12:58

grumpysculler said:
Provide a source for that or shut up about it.

It is also perfectly reasonable that, having spent 40+ years voting in elections they saw through the veneer put forward by the politicians and realised that the union is better for us all.

The young whippersnappers, not having such life experience of politics, were more taken in by the empty promises.

Maybe we should stop everyone under the age of 65 voting as they haven't built up enough life experience to vote correctly. You guys are funny!

Elixir · 14 Oct 2015 at 13:06

lovelyhead said:
Maybe we should stop everyone under the age of 65 voting as they haven't built up enough life experience to vote correctly. You guy are funny!

Or we could keep it as things are and not complain about a particular age group voting a certain way because they're all old, confused, frail and scared.

I'd love to see you tell some of the pensioners I know that they don't understand what's going on, you'd get your arse verbally handed to you.

lovelyhead · 14 Oct 2015 at 13:13

Elixir said:
I'd love to see you tell some of the pensioners I know that they don't understand what's going on, you'd get your arse verbally handed to you.

That's nice. Still wouldn't make them right necessarily though!

Moses said:
Not true unless you prove it, although if that was the case they saved you, given what's happened to the oil price/how much more of a joke the yes campaign's predictions look like now!

Well the poll conducted by Lord Ashcroft certainly seems to back me up. Pensions were the second biggest reason for people voting NO.

estebanrey · 14 Oct 2015 at 13:45

lovelyhead said:
Well the poll conducted by Lord Ashcroft certainly seems to back me up. Pensions were the second biggest reason for people voting NO.

The same poll also shows the biggest reason for people voting "yes" was "disaffection with Westminster Politics" by a much larger margin (74%) than people voting "no" went for pensions (37%).

Wouldn't a disaffection with Westminster only come through age? If it's mainly young people saying that doesn't that prove they were mostly motivated by the acceptable racism against the English that you seem to have up there?

lovelyhead · 14 Oct 2015 at 13:53

estebanrey said:
The same poll also shows the biggest reason for people voting "yes" was "disaffection with Westminster Politics" by a much larger margin (74%) than people voting "no" went for pensions (37%).

Wouldn't a disaffection with Westminster only come through age? If it's mainly young people saying that doesn't that prove they were mostly motivated by the acceptable racism against the English that you seem to have up there?

Not at all. You can be any age and be unhappy with Westminster rule. For instance, a 16 year old could be unhappy about having nuclear weapons a mile from their home, or be unhappy about employment law or perhaps be unhappy with Scottish broadcasting.

There are not many younger people worried about pensions that is for sure (because they all know that they will be getting no where near as good a deal as what current pensioners have)!

I'll just throw this little hand grenade into the equation!

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/time-strip-britains-oaps-right-vote-1476961

Kamerad · 14 Oct 2015 at 14:00

lovelyhead said:
I'll just throw this little hand grenade into the equation!

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/time-strip-britains-oaps-right-vote-1476961

So you want to ban pensioners from voting when a good percentage of them fought to preserve the democracy that you enjoy today.

lovelyhead · 14 Oct 2015 at 14:02

Kamerad said:
So you want to ban pensioners from voting when a good percentage of them fought to preserve the democracy that you enjoy today.

Did I say that?

Plus there aren't many pensioners still around that fought in the war. A growing number of pensioners today come from the most privileged generation in history. Probably the most privileged generation there ever will be.

estebanrey · 14 Oct 2015 at 16:06

lovelyhead said:
Not at all. You can be any age and be unhappy with Westminster rule. For instance, a 16 year old could be unhappy about having nuclear weapons a mile from their home, or be unhappy about employment law or perhaps be unhappy with Scottish broadcasting.

BS, the said "Dissatisfaction with Westminster Politics", we all know what that means and it's not "dissatisfied with specific policies that come from the UK government" as you are trying to portray.

lovelyhead · 14 Oct 2015 at 16:08

estebanrey said:
BS, the said "Dissatisfaction with Westminster Politics", we all know what that means and it's not "dissatisfied with specific policies that come from the UK government" as you are trying to portray.

Go on please elaborate because I for one have no idea what you are talking about.

eddiemcgarrigle · 14 Oct 2015 at 16:40

Dissatisfaction with Poll Tax being introduced a year before everyone else is pretty high on the list as to why Scots dislike the Tories.

grumpysculler · 14 Oct 2015 at 17:58

lovelyhead said:
Maybe we should stop everyone under the age of 65 voting as they haven't built up enough life experience to vote correctly. You guys are funny!

The only person on this thread who is arguing against universal suffrage is you and you are doing it by arguing that the older electorate voted the way they did for the wrong reasons.

Nobody knows why they voted and nobody else things the franchise should be changed to exclude groups that gave the wrong answer.

You clearly have no argument because you can only revert to a fairly pathetic straw man.

That every vote is equal is a cornerstone of democracy and that right has been hard won. Leave it alone.

lovelyhead said:
That's nice. Still wouldn't make them right necessarily though!

Which seems to be the crux of your argument - that demographic gave the wrong answer so we should question their right to vote.

If union supporters suggested restricting the franchise to those with 5 Highers or who work more than 16 hours a week we would rightfully get laughed at. But that seems to be acceptable for nats to do?

Macro · 14 Oct 2015 at 18:08

Quite funny watching Lovely get tied up in knots and resort to "errrr, yeah, but, no, but, yeah but... ermm... here have a pointless link to a nats propaganda post somewhere"

lovelyhead · 14 Oct 2015 at 18:14

grumpysculler said:
Nobody knows why they voted and nobody else things the franchise should be changed to exclude groups that gave the wrong answer.

It is pretty clear they voted against Independence because of the pension lies. But any way you look at it, the older generation voted self-servingly against the wishes of the younger generations (16 - 55) who by and large wanted Independence. Of course that is their prerogative.

Another interesting fact is that a majority of Scottish born people wanted Independence. If the vote was restricted to Scottish born people, YES would have won 53/47.

72% of non Scottish UK born voters voted against Independence. That works out to be approximately 300,000 votes from non Scottish UK born voters.

Macro said:
Quite funny watching Lovely get tied up in knots and resort to "errrr, yeah, but, no, but, yeah but... ermm... here have a pointless link to a nats propaganda post somewhere"

Please show me where I am getting tied up in knots.

Werewolf · 14 Oct 2015 at 18:52

lovelyhead said:
It is pretty clear they voted against Independence because of the pension lies. But any way you look at it, the older generation voted self-servingly against the wishes of the younger generations (16 - 55) who by and large wanted Independence. Of course that is their prerogative.

Another interesting fact is that a majority of Scottish born people wanted Independence. If the vote was restricted to Scottish born people, YES would have won 53/47.

72% of non Scottish UK born voters voted against Independence. That works out to be approximately 300,000 votes from non Scottish UK born voters.

Yes they voted that way purely because of they selfishly wanted what they thought was best and believed the "pension lies", whilst the youngsters all saw through the lies and wanted what was best for the country having taken everything into account. (imagine I've inserted the worlds largest animated roll eyes here)

Back in the real world, the older people are more likely to have experience in the world and question what they're being told a little more.
For example if your vision of the future can't even decide what your currency is going to be, or how you're going to back your banking system the people who are a little older and understand a bit about finances (say because they've paid attention to what happened in other countries or to the stock markets, and have lived through banks going bust) are going to question how well thought out things are and what is going to happen to their savings, investments and pensions
And to think about what might happen to their kids and grand kids.

They're more likely to have experience in researching subjects properly, not just a quick internet search on Wings Over Scotland and the SNP site, but look at who is actually saying stuff, and their qualifications (it would be really interesting if we could get a breakdown on the socio economic groups as opposed to just ages).
They're also less likely to vote one way or another on impulse.

grumpysculler · 14 Oct 2015 at 19:20

lovelyhead said:
It is pretty clear they voted against Independence because of the pension lies.

The only thing that is clear is that you don't like the fact that they voted No and are trying to discredit that group.

Why is age the only demographic that you seek to subdivide voters into?

72% of non Scottish UK born voters voted against Independence. That works out to be approximately 300,000 votes from non Scottish UK born voters.

Racist much? Blood and soil has always been the undercurrent from many nats and if that's what it means to be a true Scot then I'm glad they don't count me as one.

grumpysculler · 14 Oct 2015 at 19:34

Socioeconomic data is in Ashcroft's polling.

As is the most important reason for voting no being:

The risks of becoming independent looked too great when it came to things like the currency, EU membership, the economy, jobs and prices

While a Yes vote was based on principles rather than anything more objective:

The principle that all decisions about Scotland should be taken in Scotland

So Ashcroft's numbers are:

Groups AB voted No by 60:40
Group C1 was marginal (51:49 to No)
Group C2 was also marginal (52:48 to Yes)
Groups DE voted No by 56:44

The only group to come out strongly for independence were C2 males. C1 females were 50:50 and all other gender/socioeconomic groups were No.

It's a bit surprising because pre-vote polls suggested a stronger trend. Albeit most split the participants in ABC1 and C2DE but there was a stronger slant.

Take it with a pinch of salt, some of the groups have small sample sizes so the margin of error is up to 9% for some figures.

lovelyhead · 14 Oct 2015 at 19:35

Werewolf said:
Back in the real world, the older people are more likely to have experience in the world and question what they're being told a little more.

I would argue that younger people are far better informed than older people. The internet sees to that. Older people's past experience doesn't really help you make a decision on independence seeing as it is not something they have ever had to consider before.

That puts the young and old on a level pegging going into it.

So this whole, "the old are wise and noble" crap doesn't really wash.

[TW]Fox · 14 Oct 2015 at 19:42

lovelyhead said:
I would argue that younger people are far better informed than older people. The internet sees to that.

As I mentioned above there is a very big difference between being informed and being educated.

Just because you can read things online doesn't necessarily mean you can rationally process them and form a rational viewpoint. This is something which comes increasingly with age - I bet the older generation is better able to do this than we are, for example.

We've had access to the internet for our entire lives yet I cringe when I think how ridiculous some of my views were say 10 years ago. But hey, I was informed!!!

lovelyhead · 14 Oct 2015 at 19:51

[TW]Fox;28683833 said:
As I mentioned above there is a very big difference between being informed and being educated.

Just because you can read things online doesn't necessarily mean you can rationally process them and form a rational viewpoint.

So you are saying 16 - 55 year olds are unable to form rational viewpoints based on the full range of evidence from all available sources of info. But pensioners who have formed their opinions over their complete lifetime via newspapers and TV news are somehow wise and oracle like!

You must be having a laugh!