FREEDOM!!!! [4]

{{As results are coming in shaping up to be another disaster for Labour especially- some examples-

'Labour has dropped three seats in West Dunbartonshire, one of the four councils on which it had majority control before the election.
The SNP gained three seats to become the biggest party with 10.
Conservatives gained their first two seats on the council.'

'The SNP lost one seat but remain the biggest party in East Ayrshire with 14 seats.
Labour lost five seats, going from 14 to nine.
The Conservatives gained four seats, up from two to six.'

'Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (Western Isles Council) remained dominated by independent councillors, up from 22 to 23.
Labour lost all three of their councillors.
The SNP gained one, up to seven, and the Tories gained their first ever councillor on the Western Isles.'

'The SNP lost one seat and Labour lost four as the Conservatives jumped to nine seats on Stirling Council.' - BBC

So it looks like the SNP are taking a small hit (relative to the fact they have been the government in office for so long) but are on course to remain the biggest party overall. But the Labour vote has totally collapsed, the Lib Dems show no signs of any sort of revival and the Tories are definitely seeing a big improvement (though again thats relative to their appalling starting position). }}}

{{Only 1 council still to come in so the pattern and results are pretty clear- comfortable win overall for the SNP- big gains for the Tories- disaster for Labour who are the Lib Dems again? Basically sums it up.

How big a disaster for Labour? Well Edinburgh and Glasgow are good examples-

'Labour's support has slumped across the country, with the party finishing third behind the SNP and Conservatives in Edinburgh - where it had been the largest party.'

'The SNP has replaced Labour as the biggest party in Glasgow....Scotland's largest city had been under Labour control for decades.'

'Labour has also been replaced by the SNP as the largest party in North Lanarkshire, West Dunbartonshire and Renfrewshire'

As to the Tory revival- well they did well enough to move into 2nd place overall above Labour, and they gained 150 new councillors overall- a huge leap but you have to remember they were starting from rock bottom, and it seems mainly taking from Labour-

'The SNP will finish with comfortably the most councillors of any party'- BBC

Although expect the news to focus not on the fact the SNP won well again, but rather on that Tory revival. The above quote is from an article headlined- 'Conservatives make gains across Scotland' rather than say reporting the result- 'SNP comfortably win council elections'}}

Thanks for all detail on the local elections, Petty, especially the Scottish results! Largely seems in line with what the general election polling has indicated about the various parties' popularity at this point. Not surprised that the UKIP vote is down and Conservatives are up but if they're drawing in both Labour voters who had previously defected to UKIP and those who had stuck with Labour until very recently, that's even worse news (though not hugely surprising either). I hope that Tim Farron will resign if the Lib Dems perform this mediocrely in the general. And it bodes well for the SNP to continue to be able to build their case for having a mandate for a second referendum.

{{Scottish totals, before and after}}

Before

SNP - 425
Labour- 394
Conservative- 115
Liberal Democrat- 71
Greens- 14

{{Now}}

SNP- 431
Conservative- 276
Labour- 262
Liberal Democrat- 67
Greens- 19

{{ The way things are being reported you'd think the Tories won yesterday and the SNP lost- rather than what actually happened, the Tories increased their vote a bit from next to nothing to something, and the SNP walked away with a comfortable victory controlling every major Scottish city and increasing their numbers by 3 more on what was already a spectacular result, especially for the government of the day after 7 years in power- under any other circumstances that's a massive triumph.

Yet the Daily Mail claims Sturgeon is 'putting a brave face on it' The Herald run with the headline "Tory surge sinks case for independence'- um how? The party of independence won, and won well, again.

The Mail, again, claims the SNP suffered an 'anti-independence backlash'- except they didn't -they won!! And that the SNP saw their vote plummet- despite gaining more Councillors than last time! They picked up more new councillors than they lost and they took Glasgow from Labour, who have been in power there longer than I've been alive!

Oddly enough the Sun has one of the fairer headlines- 'Ruth elation at vote surge, but SNP still walk it.' Its come to something when you look to the Sun for fairness!! }}}

The tabloid media has definitely played a major part in what has happened in the UK over the last years...

Who knew that 40 years of hysterical nonsensical bad press with little or no basis in reality would muddle the water.

say hello to 10 more years of Tory 1984 dictatorship in England. what a disaster.

Well, if that is the case the tories will get what they wish for, which will ruin them and the country. One would like to say "Get on with it then.." if it wasn't for the 48%/75% who did not vote for act this nationalist madness and self harm.

I just hope this means Scotland and NI can get out...

Blue - what if Scotland and NI don't want to get out?

Petty - I think the truth of the Scotland matter is somewhere in between your opinion and those of the papers you quoted. Half of your councillors are still not SNP and a big chunk just switched to the government that is apparently going to ruin Scotland so there is quite a sizeable shift. If the trend continues then it would be interesting... Teresa should get herself up to Scotland a bit more I think... show she cares enough for that at least!

SNP obviously still strong though... Still the biggest party there although lost control of one council and I believe the vast majority of councils have no overall control.

It seems there is still quite a substantial difference in opinion to yours going on up there.

Lancebloke wrote:Blue - what if Scotland and NI don't want to get out?

Then they won't. It will be the worse decision, especially for Scotland, but somehow people seem to struggle to get these decisions right..

Scotland has the choice of becoming a small liberal, prosperous and vibrant country in the north of Europe, on the lines of Norway, Sweden and Denmark, or stick with the isolationist paranoia of England. A reunified Ireland could finally deal with the problems that face the Ireland as a whole, rather than being constantly stuck in a past of hundreds of years of harsh English oppression.

They'd both do better out of the UK at this point in time, that's for sure.

Now, the english could change that a whole lot by voting for a less isolationist approach of a soft brexit. (Even including eea membership, which a lot of people who voted for brexit expected). That's why this next election sees the UK at a crossroads.

so there is quite a sizeable shift- Lance

{{ I dont agree there is a shift. The increase in the Tory vote was one I predicted long before the elections.
Scotland is split down the middle on independence and nearly 40% voted for Brexit- the options for where to put a tick next too for those people have got narrower and narrower.
And the only party left which is staunch on both those things are the Tories. If you are a Unionist or a Brexitier then Tories are the only place left to put your vote.

So its not so much a shift as the existing numbers have coalesced around, unsurprisingly given the main debate here, the constitutional question- on one side are those for independence and on the other Unionist.
Bu the independent side are clearly way out front still in terms of votes at these elections, national elections and Scottish parliament elections.
The tories have a resurgence that's quietly been going on ever since the indy referendum but the fact the SNP after 7 years in power can still increase their numbers of councillors  really should not be underestimated as an achievement.

'although lost control of one council and I believe the vast majority of councils have no overall control.'

They also gained a council so swings and roundabouts really, and they got the the two jewels in the crown- taking control from Labour in Glasgow for the first time in 40 years and taking Edinburgh- those are the population heartlands.

And yes most councils have no overall control, though the SNP is the biggest party in almost all of them. Not sure how local voting works in England, here though we use a PR list system (and the voting age is 16- I think its still 18 in England), its not supposed to produce majorities its supposed to produce coalitions. I voted for 7 people in order of preference when I voted. So most councils having no overall control is not surprising, was same last time out. }}}

{{Full results are out for Scotland-

'the SNP won 32% of the first preference votes. Conservatives finished second overall on 25%, with Labour on 20%.
The SNP secured 610,454 first preference votes in last Thursday's election - an increase from the 503,233 it won in 2012.
The SNP also won 431 seats, finishing as the biggest party in 16 of the 32 council areas and joint largest in a further three.
Meanwhile, the Scottish Conservatives won 276 seats.
Scottish Labour saw its share of the first preference votes fall from 31.4% to 20.2% and its number of seats from 394 to 262. Labour also lost overall control of all four councils where it previously had a majority - including Glasgow - and is now the largest party in just three local authority areas.
The Scottish Liberal Democrats received a 6.8% share of the first preference votes as they won 67 seats, with the Scottish Greens winning 19 seats on 4.1% of the votes.
Almost 200,000 people - 10% of the total - gave their first preference votes to independent candidates, who won 168 seats across the country.
The Conservatives in particular will take heart from the areas where they won more first preference votes than anyone else - Moray, Aberdeenshire, Angus, Perth and Kinross, Stirling, East Renfrewshire, Edinburgh, Scottish Borders, South Ayrshire and Dumfries and Galloway.
These are the very areas where they hope to win Westminster seats.'- BBC

Interesting to note the seats the Tories won were, before the Tory collapse with Thatcher, Tory heartlands in Scotland traditionally. Not so much new votes as a reversion to old votes. Most of those areas are rural with huge land estates and farms- hence the tendency to sway Tory. Dumfries and Galloway in articular have never stopped voting Tory they tend to be the area where the Tories have got their 1 MP from!
So I am not surprised the vote is splitting along both constitutional lines and wealth lines. }}}

"rather than being constantly stuck in a past of hundreds of years of harsh English oppression."

how is that remotely true? no more of the old English evil empire rubbish please.

I mean, real history is of course messy and there are very few clear-cut good guys or bad guys, but I don't think it's a stretch to call colonialism a form of oppression. And the British attitude towards Ireland was definitely a colonial one for a long time, even though it's often considered impolite to say so. I would not describe modern Northern Ireland as a colony but the Catholic population of NI didn't achieve equal political rights until at least the 1970s (arguably not until the 1990s) and I think it's irresponsible to disregard the history there. That said, I think the mostly positive relations between the UK, ROI, and NI that exist now are a huge and beneficial development, so I don't think dwelling on the past too much is the right idea either.

Learning from the past is good but, don't let it rule your life. You have to move forward & find tiny new chinks of light, of hope. Its a new dawn.

Mrs Figg wrote:"rather than being constantly stuck in a past of hundreds of years of harsh English oppression."

how is that remotely true? no more of the old English evil empire rubbish please.

I was thinking the same... little bit over the top. Especially as the majority of Scots voted to stay in the UK... I don't believe we harshly oppressed anyonein to that.

The Northern Ireland issue is a bit different and could be considered from a variety of points of view. The things the unionists did are as bad as things loyalists and British troops did... just the British side had more resources.

In think it also easy to been seen as British oppression when at the time, a large number of the counties that formed Northern Ireland were vast majority protestant and wanted to stay that way. If the there had been a complete pull out I am sure that sectarian violence would have escalated for a while. The Irish government didn't want the British to pull out for fear of civil war so to put the blame solely in one area is a little bit naive.. however still tends to be what happens.

{{Well Ive always voted or independence on largely democratic grounds and social grounds.
Evil England doesn't come into it.

However I would say there was historically hard oppression of the traditional sort- movements against their will of large amounts of people, destruction of homes and culture (England banned tartan, bagpipes, even the spoken language, anything in fact which showed any loyalty to the clan system. Done at the penalty of instant death.

In modern times its more what I would call 'soft' oppression- subtler stuff- teaching English history not Scottish in schools for example- for most scots it took a Mel Gibson film to find out about William Wallace because they were never taught that stuff at school- we got 1066, Romans and Boudicia, Roundheads, War of the Roses, WW1 & 2- but nothing specifically Scottish or from a Scottish perspective.
Same in English- we did Shakespeare and Larkin, not Burns or Scott or even Stevenson. We didn't get any Scottish authors or novels about Scotland, again we got English culture.
There has long been government involvement in preventing Scotland having too much of its own identity- a good example is the refusal to allow Scotland to have it sown national tv news bulletin- we get the 'UK news' ie English news. Much of which with devolution ha nothing to do with us- recently the English news has often led on NHS news, which only affects England and Wales- but we still have to sit through it all in the hope we might get some news form Scotland at some point.
And then there is the soft power of the democratic deficit- in theory the UK votes and we get what the UK voted for, in practise the UK votes and Scotland gets what England voted for. That's been used to shut down all our industry and steal the oil money (and I say steal because we now know Thatcher lied about its value and what it was being used for- which is to pay for all the unemployed she was making) to enforce inappropriate and harmful immigration laws on us, and they have stashed all their nukes here (hypocritically as its near our population centre, the very reason given for why nowhere in England is suitable- too close to people) despite every Scottish party being in opposition to it save the Tories. Who we never voted for.

So oppression, yes there has been, of the worst kind historically, and of the more subtler kind now.
Its not high up my list of reasons for voting for Independence but its certainly there, in the sense that we have had large parts of our culture and history altered or forced upon us form outside, means we are not int he total sens eof the word free. }}

Maybe it was because I attended grammar school, but my History and English classes extended beyond what you have talked about... a little about Scotland when talking about Romans but it was definitely not anglo-centric.

And I am not talking historically when I talk about oppression. If we can't get over all that shit that we should be moaning at the French or that Scandinavian lot still. Arguments along those lines (which I understand you said is not why you vote) are pretty moot today.

It always amazes me that after indyref 1 people can still blame England on the government that is in power, however just o7t of interest I took a look at elections since the 1970s and can see that we have had 11, 4 of which were in line with Scottish voting. Of those, 2 were by a majority which would have been directly influenced by Scotland (2005 and 1974) and one which went the other way to the popular vote, however by a margin that would have influenced by the Scottish vote (1970).

So... your votes are not meaningless and have influenced elections in the past. I think this is comes up as a problem where you consider that Scotland should have some special status in how it influences... it is part of the union and therefore Scotland has no more right to be heard than Cornwall or Suffolk. Your voters ratified that during indyref!

It always amazes me that after indyref 1 people can still blame England on the government that is in power- Lance

{{For that you have to look to the Barnett Formula- policies in England have a major effect in Scotland- not on direction of policy but in budget.
Take the NHS for example- the English NHS has seen a large increase in private companies having apart in it, with it seems disastrous results, but from a Tory perspective it meant saving spending public money on the NHS- they could cut the budget and leave the private sector to pick up the slack- paying staff less and cutting staff numbers, extending the hours of those they keep ect. The usual ways the private sector make 'efficiencies'.
In Scotland we have maintained a publicly owned system and whilst there is some private input its not as in England. Our NHS still has to be funded by our government, and its devolved to its solely them to decide its budget, targets, policy, new hospitals, closing hospitals ect but as its still public and public workers get the living wage (higher than the Tory minimum wage) and the usual sort of public work benefits like pensions schemes. Better system but more cost to maintain.

However the amount of money we get to spend on it is still dictated by how much the Westminster government spends on it there. If they cut NHS spending the Scottish budget gets proportionally cut in line with it- if they increase spending it goes up proportionally.

So we have a Scottish NHS public funded that costs more, and an English NHS partly private that cuts money. And we have to run our system on the English direction of policy. No matter what direction our government wants to go, or has been elected to go they are hamstrung by whatever happens in England with funding. In order to maintain what Scots want and voted for- a public NHS the SNP have to cut budgets elsewhere every time Westminster cuts public spending on English NHS.

'since the 1970s and can see that we have had 11, 4 of which were in line with Scottish voting.'

So out of those 4 we had influence in 3, out of 11. And every other time we got the opposite of what we voted for.

' it is part of the union and therefore Scotland has no more right to be heard than Cornwall or Suffolk. Your voters ratified that during indyref!'

Cornwall or Suffock dont have their own culture, parliament, health, education and legal system.
Whilst I agree we have no more right to be heard, being a country doesn't give our votes more weight. It is perfectly reasonable to asked whether such an arrangement is good for your country when more often than not you do not get what you vote for, and the direction of travel politically is so opposite to what your country is expressing.

That is my position. Its not that its unfair, its that its bad for my country. We cant direct ourselves politically. The imbalance caused by simple scale of numbers between the two means the system is inherently biased in favour of England.

And what we dont control or have a say in are very fundamental things that directly influence our society and what form it takes- such as setting our own immigration, where our needs are very different from in England. Deciding whether or not we play host to a nuclear fleet and its attended weapons. Whether we send our soldiers to war or not and which wars and why. If we want to be members of a European social and political union or not. These are not trivial matters but are underlying features the right to decide are necessary for any society to claim it is free.
For so long as such matters can still be dictated to us by a government we neither voted for or whose policies we approve of we are not in the true sense of the word free.}}}

Cornwall and Suffolk do have their own culture and they are given money to spend on their infrastructure etc. The only difference is it is given directly without another body in the way. In fact, the only difference is perception that a section of Scotland sees themselves as different and keep demanding things whereas those in the West country, who can assure you are very proud of their culture and differences, see themselves as British.

It is the same thing that led to Brexit... somehow the majority decided the UK was somehow special and should have all this stuff to decide itself rather than be dictated to.

You advocate for Scottish independence yet decry Brexit... it is the same mindset. You don't get what the majority of your minority want so independence.

Cornwall and Suffolk do have their own culture and they are given money to spend on their infrastructure etc. The only difference is it is given directly without another body in the way.- Lance

{{I didn't say they didn't have culture, or a local council. I said they didn't have culture, health, a parliament, legal and education system. The things collectively which mark the difference between being a region of a country and being a country.

Scotland, despite what seems a common English way of thingking of us, is not a region of Britain. It is a country which has agreed to a Union of countries with three others forming the UK.

It is perfectly reasonable therefore for the people of that country to consider if that Union is the best way to get our voices heard.
In my view it is not, the very idea of the Union as a democratic block is fundamentally flawed.
And increasingly the idea we can control our own education, legal system, health, some areas of the tax and social law, but cant decide immigration, defence ect seems increasingly silly (take voting Labour at a general election in Scotland- the Scottish Labour person you vote for is part of a Scottish Labour whose manifesto opposed nuclear weapons in the Clyde, but if you vote for them you are also voting for Westminster Labour who believe in keeping the nuclear deterrent on the Clyde- see what I mean its silly and often not practical as a means to express democratically your political wishes when one vote can be for two diametrically opposed positions).

'You advocate for Scottish independence yet decry Brexit... it is the same mindset.'

I advocate Independence because I think it is for the long term good of my country socially and economically and I decry Brexit because I think it will be to the detriment of my country both socially and economically. Simple as that. }}}

Socially... I am not sure how you could advocate both..l

Economically... I am pretty sure coming out of the UK would result in a much greater detriment than leaving the EU. I am not sure how that argument works really just based on the amount of trade that takes place. Problem with that is everyone seems to make what they need to out of those numbers so difficult without being an expert yourself and not relying on seeing through someone else's agenda (£300m to the NHS... remember that one!)

Lancebloke wrote:

Economically... I am pretty sure coming out of the UK would result in a much greater detriment than leaving the EU. I am not sure how that argument works really just based on the amount of trade that takes place.

Just sitting over here on the other side of the world looking at GDP numbers, it looks like Scotland ($0.2trillion GDP) would have a definite economic advantage if it were allied with the EU ($16trillion) rather than the UK-minus-Scotland ($2.6trillion). That's 5 times the economic strength. What am I missing?

The majority of trade being with the rest of the UK. We could only assume a separate Scotland, EU or not, would be worse off paying fees on the bulk of their trade versus a smaller percentage...

But wouldn't a lot of that trade just shift over to the Continent? In this modern global economy, crossing a bit of water by ship is often cheaper than going overland by road or rail.