Scottish Referendum - An emotional toll

[sound consciousness]

What about England Wales and N. Ireland, we want free tuition fees , we do not want Scottish labour or any other party from voting in the UK...we want a certain amount odf devolution...we want the same handouts as the Scottish people £1,600 pounds......it is the only way forward more than 70 million people want a level playing field

[Cidersomerset]

What about England Wales and N. Ireland, we want free tuition fees , we do not want Scottish labour
or any other party from voting in the UK...we want a certain amount odf devolution...we want the same
handouts as the Scottish people £1,600 pounds......it is the only way forward more than 70 million people want a level playing field

I'l believe it when I see it, though Cameron has started the ball rolling, it will be 'punctured' further down
the line with the usual Westminster bureaucracy......





'Scottish vote WILL trigger devolution across the UK': David Cameron

PRIME Minister David Cameron has said promised new powers for
Scotland - triggered by the referendum - will see more devolution
throughout the UK.




David Cameron has promised to roll out more devolution throughout the UK[SWNS]

Read More.....

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/512...-David-Cameron

[araucaria]

The site http://beforeitsnews.com/r2/?url=htt...,-1051,00.html links to this other site below, which adds another chilling detail to the story. I discover that UK voting slips have counterfoils that can be used to trace voters and know how they voted. Unbelievable and definitely not what I am used to here.

… During that process we witnessed dozens of sacks splitting and many hundreds of spent ballot papers spilling for all to see. This adds weight to the conspiracy theory that security around the election documents is very lax, and that the vote-tracing procedure has been used to identify people voting for fringe candidates. Votes can be traced by matching the numbered ballot paper to its similarly numbered counterfoil; the numbered counterfoil also bears the voter's registration number from the electoral register which is hand-written by the Polling Clerk when the ballot paper is issued. As all the ballot papers for each candidate - including fringe candidates such as Sinn Fein, communists, fascists, nationalists, etc. - are bundled together, anyone having access to those documents can speedily trace the name and address of every voter for such candidates if they wish. In 1981 Gordon Winter - a former agent of BOSS, the South African Secret Service - writing in his book, Inside Boss, claimed that the South African government knew the identity of everyone who voted for the Communist Party of Great Britain - thanks to British intelligence using this simple vote-tracing procedure. In any event, the notion that we have a secret vote is very misleading. One positive outcome of the 1987 general election, however, was that the incineration of 91 tons of ballot papers contributed to the 21 megawatts per hour output of the North London Waste Authority plant, which supplies electricity to Tottenham.

David Northmore, Author of The Freedom Of Information Handbook, London W1.

http://www.theguardian.com/notesandq...,-1051,00.html

[scanner]

Already posted http://youtu.be/kUR-HgAtwtg

[Gardener]

The vid of the girl placing the votes on piles is not proof, she could merely be correcting a mistake she made and switching them into the correct pile, simple human error. But the vid of the YES X paper on the NO table is clear, and could be the whole pile. Unless of course the vid is doctored. Going to watch again for continuity.

[araucaria]

Posted by Gardener (here)
The vid of the girl placing the votes on piles is not proof, she could merely be correcting a mistake she made and switching them into the correct pile, simple human error. But the vid of the YES X paper on the NO table is clear, and could be the whole pile. Unless of course the vid is doctored. Going to watch again for continuity.

Not if she’s swapping a bunch of votes for just one. Watch how the height of the two piles changes. It’s not rocket science to check yeses and noes, why should she make a mistake? But the problem is that someone should be checking her. The French system is not perfect but to me this is scandalously shoddy vote-counting. We would have had a YES paper and a NO paper that voters would choose between and there would be no room for mistakes, even before double-checking.

Posted by araucaria (here)
The counting system itself is flawed if individuals are left to do it on their own. Here in France we have people working in fours (with the public breathing down their necks) – one to open the envelopes and display any spoilt ballots, another to read out the vote, and two more to note it down, checking with each other at least every fifty votes. That is how it is done even with a two-way choice.

See also: http://aanirfan.blogspot.fr/2014/09/...eferendum.html

[aranuk]

Posted by araucaria (here)
Check this out:

Posted by ktlight (here)

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=kUR-HgAtwtg

"Published on 18 Sep 2014
http://www.undergroundworldnews.com
There is damning evidence that shows that this vote is a fraud. Just from the video and the pictures alone, we can see errors! Can you imagine how much is wrong? This is the Best Video proof you will also ever get showing the votes were changed to NO on purpose!"

See also:
http://aanirfan.blogspot.fr/2014/09/...eferendum.html

Hi Araucaria, that video was in Clackmananshire which was thought to be a yes district too. It does look like the woman is indeed deliberately stacking them in the wrong pile. She could hardly make any excuse as confusion of the papers as they were the simplest of ballot papers I have ever voted on. Nobody of average intelligence could be so confused. She kept taking two yes papers and stacking them in the no pile always keeping at least one yes as a cover. Damning proof.

Stan

[aranuk]

Posted by araucaria (here)

Posted by Gardener (here)
The vid of the girl placing the votes on piles is not proof, she could merely be correcting a mistake she made and switching them into the correct pile, simple human error. But the vid of the YES X paper on the NO table is clear, and could be the whole pile. Unless of course the vid is doctored. Going to watch again for continuity.

Not if she’s swapping a bunch of votes for just one. Watch how the height of the two piles changes. It’s not rocket science to check yeses and noes, why should she make a mistake? But the problem is that someone should be checking her. The French system is not perfect but to me this is scandalously shoddy vote-counting. We would have had a YES paper and a NO paper that voters would choose between and there would be no room for mistakes, even before double-checking.

Posted by araucaria (here)
The counting system itself is flawed if individuals are left to do it on their own. Here in France we have people working in fours (with the public breathing down their necks) – one to open the envelopes and display any spoilt ballots, another to read out the vote, and two more to note it down, checking with each other at least every fifty votes. That is how it is done even with a two-way choice.

See also: http://aanirfan.blogspot.fr/2014/09/...eferendum.html

Hi Araucaria, we should all do it the French way which seems almost infallible.

Stan

[araucaria]

Posted by aranuk (here)

Posted by araucaria (here)

Posted by Gardener (here)
The vid of the girl placing the votes on piles is not proof, she could merely be correcting a mistake she made and switching them into the correct pile, simple human error. But the vid of the YES X paper on the NO table is clear, and could be the whole pile. Unless of course the vid is doctored. Going to watch again for continuity.

Not if she’s swapping a bunch of votes for just one. Watch how the height of the two piles changes. It’s not rocket science to check yeses and noes, why should she make a mistake? But the problem is that someone should be checking her. The French system is not perfect but to me this is scandalously shoddy vote-counting. We would have had a YES paper and a NO paper that voters would choose between and there would be no room for mistakes, even before double-checking.

Posted by araucaria (here)
The counting system itself is flawed if individuals are left to do it on their own. Here in France we have people working in fours (with the public breathing down their necks) – one to open the envelopes and display any spoilt ballots, another to read out the vote, and two more to note it down, checking with each other at least every fifty votes. That is how it is done even with a two-way choice.

See also: http://aanirfan.blogspot.fr/2014/09/...eferendum.html

Hi Araucaria, we should all do it the French way which seems almost infallible.

Stan

Yes Stan, it is a pretty good system, although the quality of the candidates is still not up to scratch . It actually makes for a rather relaxed atmosphere; since everyone is watching over each other, not suspiciously but helpfully, working in a very orderly, foolproof way with exactly 100 envelopes on the table at any one time. It is more like they are playing a game of cards. So I am genuinely shocked at the muddle in these videos even if it were totally bona fide.

I am equally shocked at the idea of counterfoils combined with lax disposal methods. We receive voting slips in the post with candidates’ manifestoes, and there is a pile in the polling station where you can choose any one of hundreds requiring no inscription of any kind.

I want to emphasize what I was pointing out earlier in the Guardian piece: the yes folks maybe didn’t get their votes counted on the day, but there is potential here for them being identified and their vote counting against them. This is disturbing in the extreme. What possible purpose could counterfoils serve other than such tracing of voters? I want to quote a passage again.

“This adds weight to the conspiracy theory that security around the election documents is very lax, and that the vote-tracing procedure has been used to identify people voting for fringe candidates. Votes can be traced by matching the numbered ballot paper to its similarly numbered counterfoil; the numbered counterfoil also bears the voter's registration number from the electoral register which is hand-written by the Polling Clerk when the ballot paper is issued. As all the ballot papers for each candidate - including fringe candidates such as Sinn Fein, communists, fascists, nationalists, etc. - are bundled together, anyone having access to those documents can speedily trace the name and address of every voter for such candidates if they wish.”
http://www.theguardian.com/notesandq...,-1051,00.html

The ten-point gap makes vote-rigging on the required scale that is pretty mind-boggling for the average citizen. Whether or not it actually took place is only one side of the issue. Another, more wide-ranging aspect is that the British electoral system, as evidenced here, is in itself hugely open to abuse. So, if voter fraud is as rare or as mythical as we are told, then either the fraudsters are not up to their job, or there have already been plenty of rigged elections in the past. Yet in this case, it seems that MI5 was involved. An insider even suggested that this was likely, to ensure ‘fairness’ and out of a ‘concern for the knock-on effect in Northern Ireland’. These two things are contradictory: if you want to avoid this knock-on effect then, rather than policing the procedure, you need to steer the result. But then it would be naïve to expect him, as a former ‘national security’ adviser to Blair, to speak the undiluted truth. The truth of the matter is that the ‘national security’ risk was the referendum itself. MI5 – hardly a bunch of incompetents – can be trusted to have done whatever it took to achieve that end. Given that the yes camp was doing a lot better than was perhaps anticipated, ‘whatever it took’ would have amounted to quite a lot as well.

MI5 spies told: stay out of referendum
Paul Hutcheon
Investigations Editor
Sunday 9 June 2013

A senior Nationalist has written to the head of the UK's Security Service and asked for an assurance that MI5 spies will not interfere in the independence referendum.

Margo MacDonald MSP, who says she believes there are undercover agents operating in the SNP, told MI5 chief Andrew Parker that his staff should only be used to thwart criminal and terrorist acts, rather than engage in dirty tricks against those who support Scottish independence.

A Home Office spokesman declined to comment on the letter.

The purpose of MI5 is to protect the UK "against threats to national security", a form of words that could be interpreted as resisting the break-up of Britain. Some Nationalists have long believed the SNP was infiltrated in the 1970s by agents worried booming North Sea oil revenues could lead to independence.

MacDonald, a former deputy leader of the SNP and now an independent MSP, believes MI5 was active during the constitutional debate in this period and wants a commitment that such activity has ceased.

In a letter to MI5's director general, MacDonald wrote: "I will be obliged if you can give me an assurance that UK Security Services will not be used in any respect in the lead-up to the Scottish referendum on sovereignty, unless, of course, the Scottish police have sufficient evidence to justify normal responses to potentially overtly criminal acts.

"I do understand that the Security Services are vital to all the countries and regions of the British Isles and the potential for law-breaking may be heightened during the forthcoming campaign.

"As action on the Security Services' part is calculated to keep communities safe and aid cohesion, I would welcome an assurance from you that this will continue, and that no other consideration will inform your Department's work."

Speaking to the Sunday Herald, MacDonald said the recent comments of former chancellor Denis Healey, who said the Labour Government of the 1970s had underplayed the value of oil revenues, underlined her concerns. She said: "The influence of the security services was insidious. If the opportunity came up to depress the self-confidence of Scots, then the opportunity was taken."

Asked if she believed the SNP and the wider Yes movement was currently infiltrated, she said: "Of course the security services have people in the SNP."

Crispin Black, a former intelligence adviser to ex-prime minister Tony Blair and the Joint Intelligence Committee, said he believed MI5 would monitor the independence debate: "My guess is that MI5 would have the referendum on its radar, primarily to ensure its fairness. There's definitely a national security angle to Scottish independence that the security services would be aware of, but my sense is that they would be stopping dirty tricks, rather than trying to initiate them."

He added that MI5 would have a concern about the knock-on effect of independence on Northern Ireland.

A spokesman for the Scottish Government declined to comment.

At the Home Office, which handles enquiries about the Security Service, a spokesperson said the department would not comment on private correspondence. [my emphasis]

http://www.heraldscotland.com/politi...endum.21143916

[aranuk]

Another thing I was thinking was this: if Alex Salmond as first minister of Scotland and Nichola Sturgeon who surely must have had all the data available in recent elections when the SNP were elected as the biggest Party according to seats they must have figured a YES vote would be triumphant. What went wrong? The strange thing about the recent polls is that they were supposed to be taken from a random sample of the population. I live in Leith which is the port district of Edinburgh. In my street there are 14 houses of varying sizes. They range from some valued at 120K to 450k which I would say is a random sample of the population. In my street there are 10 YES posters on windows and only one NO. There are many streets where this is the case and many with Scottish flags outside the windows. You would think Alex Salmond and Nichola Sturgeon would have been sure of their timing having at hand all the figures they needed to help them decide for the timing of the referendum. Another thing, I am sure that the woman fiddling the count with papers going in wrong piles was not a solitary act. She most likely was the only one exposed and there could have been many many more agents doing the same. I don't know about any other areas but in Edinburgh I was shocked to see the result. That result was not evident by the amount of YES posters on a huge number of windows. I have heard from an insider that this matter is not finished and that there might be a backlash of having a recount or another referendum which will be more organised. Hopefully one which is similar to the French way of doing things.

Stan

[greybeard]

Hi aranuk
exactly the same in Inverness.
Yes posters everywhere not many no.
The yes campaign well organised here---their publications more interesting.
I dont know anyone who voted no.
Whatever way you look at it an enormous amount of people voted yes---this is discounted by some of the media---they suggest the yes campaign crumbled- and the no vote won by a large margin, that is not true.
My son who was going to vote no changed his mind for the same reason Andy Murray did--- a string of negatives about what would go wrong for Scotland following a yes vote. On the contrary the yes campaign was full of positivity--uplifting.

Chris

[aranuk]

I watched a snippet of a BBC programme tonight about the Scottish referendum. Now the "so called unbiased" BBC brings on three University Professors explaining in clear words the absurdity Cameron and Darling spoke regarding an Independent Scotland using the Pound. They all said in so many words that preventing Scotland using the pound was an absurdity. They both (Cameron & Darling) spoke as if the Pound was an English currency ONLY when in fact it belongs to the four nations in UK. Imagine USA preventing any foreign country using the US dollar. In fact most of the trouble and wars they have been engaging in for the last 13 years were because the countries like Libya, Iran, Iraq were NOT using the petro dollar. It was a real scam and false claim Cameron and Darling used to scare the undecided voters. It friggin worked unfortunately. But the point I am trying to make here is that the BB ****ing C were not presenting these Professors before the vote on Thursday only now are they being very unbiased after the NO vote carried. The Media did its job for sure for its masters the bankers and the Industrial complex.

Stan