by AhabsOtherLeg » Fri Sep 19, 2014 7:48 am
Oooooft, sair yin. I'm gutted.
I suppose people who are even vaguely to the left in politics soon get used to being regularly kicked in the teeth by the electorate, and often have to watch their dreams and ideals take a vicious shoeing in the gutter, but this one really hurts.
Haven't really had time to fully process the result yet, and I was up most of the night so won't be able to offer much analysis. Throughout the campaign I was pretty sure we'd lose in the end, but of course you don't admit that while campaigning - so the No vote isn't a surprise. I hoped we'd get up to around 48% though - that number would've sent a very clear signal indeed, and might even have been enough to deliver a long and lingering death blow to the Union.
It didn't happen. Looking at the map Semper posted, it's pretty clear that the No vote held a pretty comfortable sway over the country as a whole. The Yes enclaves (principally made up of the poorer major cities - Glasgow, Dundee) are actually so small-looking on the map that it makes you wonder how we reached 44.7% of the total vote at all, especially with the unexpectedly low turnout in those areas.
Ha! One undeniable good effect of the referendum is that we can now count Glasgow's 75% showing at the polls as a low turnout.
....The Labour and Tory apparatchiks on the BBC are already gently rowing back from defining the further powers we were promised. Cameron's virtually announcing a federal UK, but the rest of them are saying nothing. You can see their brains working behind the eyes. Think I'll move out to West Dumbartonshire. They know what's up.
Thanks for not being triumphalist about it Semper, you would've been well within your rights to have a wee jab at least, lol.
It's bad for all of us that a campaign as shambolic and ugly as Better Together actually won the vote. They'll learn a terrible lesson from this - fear and lies are the most effective tools of governance. Positivity counts for shit. But I suppose they learned that lesson long ago.
Semper's right, those prosperous rural areas which nowadays vote SNP for Holyrood (Moray, Perth and Kinross, Argyll and Bute, even Angus) just voted No to independence.
Hope the UK leaves the EU in 2017 - where are all your agricultural subsidies now, eh? lol
I look forward to paying the House of Lords expenses for Lord Alistair Darling, Lord Jim Murphy, and Lord Gordon Brown over the next twenty years. Hell, possibly even Lord George Galloway - for services rendered. The renewal of Trident will also fill me with joy and pride over the coming decades.
Our soldiers will soon enough be on their way to Syria (and Iraq again). Christ.
Time for a drink.
"The universe is 40 billion light years across and every inch of it would kill you if you went there. That is the position of the universe with regard to human life."