Too bad, living abroad is not the same as walking away from your home country. Nice try though.
A higher proportion of Canadians live abroad than Britons. It's as simple as that.
Frankly I'm proud of the fact that a Canadian had to move over to the UK and run your bank.
Quite proudly, I'm VERY proud of the fact that an Englishman had to move over to Canada and run YOUR bank between 1987 and 1994.
Latest poll
NO - 54%
YES - 46%
According to that Survation poll, the NO side has now moved eight points ahead just four days before the referendum.
However, as the silent NO majority of Scotland will be able to vote, in secret, accordingly on Thursday, without having to be scared of verbal and physical intimidation by the anti-democratic YES thugs, I still predict the NO side will win by an even bigger margin, somewhere in the region of 60%-40%.
Scotland's UKIP MEP David Coburn was on the Murnaghan show this morning and he told Murnaghan that he was having a chat with Scotland's Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon the other day (Salmond and Sturgeon - the SNP are very fishy) and she pointed out how most of the houses she passes on her campaign trail have YES signs in their windows. He told her that the reason for that was because most people who are planning on voting NO are too scared to come out and say so - and to display NO signs in their windows - because they are scared of being verbally and physically abused by the YES thugs and that the silent majority of NO voters will make their voices heard on Thursday.
And that's all the YES mob are. Intolerant, foaming-at-the-mouth, swivel-eyed, violent thugs who think they have every right to intimidate any Scot who doesn't believe that Scotland should be independent.
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This Scottish independence referendum is the first UK referendum ever in which 16 and 17 year olds are allowed to vote.
The SNP have given 16 and 17 year olds the opportunity to vote in this election because they thought that the youngsters would be overwhelmingly in favour of an independent Scotland (the SNP have tried to cheat their way to victory, in other words). Yet it seems that, in actual fact, young people are more likely to vote AGAINST independence than for it, so this is something which may well backfire on the Scottish nationalists and anti-English racists
The young (and the English) have restored Scotland’s ‘no’ lead
248 comments
12 September 2014
Fraser Nelson
The Spectator
No unionist should breathe easily after last night’s YouGov poll putting the ‘no’ team on a six-point lead. The race remains too close to call. And the poll also suggests a degree of volatility quite unlike that seen in general elections.
Michael Saunders from Citi has dug deeper into the figures
(pdf). You need to treat all Scottish polls with caution, due to the sample size and the fact that the turnout may be high enough to include people who polling companies don’t know exist. But YouGov found that the under-25s (the ones more likely to vote on the day, rather than by post) have switched from a 20-point lead for ‘yes’ to a 6-point lead for ‘no’ in under a week.
See graph: http://forums.canadiancontent.net/editpost.php?do=updatepost&p=1977360
Now, 20pc of people born in Scotland have concluded that their future lies outside of Scotland. Being fully plugged into the network of the rest of the UK is an advantage: as a Scot in London I feel (and am treated) like a fellow countryman, not an immigrant. I have to say: it’s a good feeling, and one I’d certainly want to protect if I were a teenager mulling my future options. When I went back to my old school in the Highlands, Nairn Academy, one of the kids asked if English employers would be any less likely to hire Scots after independence. It’s a real concern.
The second reason the ‘no’ lead is back is that non-Scottish-born voters are coming to the same conclusion: do they want to be categorised as immigrants in their own country? Even factoring in the young, ‘no’ lead only exists due to the increasing concerns of voters born outside of Scotland.
See graph: http://static.spectator.co.uk/xIbAd/?fs=1
The YouGov poll talks about Scottish voters born in other parts of the UK (about a tenth of the electorate). The vast majority of these will be English. If they’re having second thoughts, as they stare down the precipice of separatism, I can understand why.
This is a very passionate campaign – dominated by optimism, but also with an unmistakable dash of fear. A dark side of nationalism is starting to present itself in Scotland: I was accused of being English by a ‘yes’ activist yesterday, his parting shot – and his ultimate insult. The Glaswegian pensioner I was talking to tells me that she hears that all the time
(there are far worse examples), and she’s worried about it.
Salmond has done a good job keeping a lid on the xenophobic elements of nationalism. But his agenda – Scotland for the Scots, etc - is undeniably the politics of disunity. Is it any surprise that it also encourages the politics of intolerance? The vast majority of ‘yes’ supporters loathe this intolerance. But I’m not sure many of them would be bold enough to say that it doesn’t exist.
Right now, you can move from Aberystwyth to Aberdeen while moving from one part of your country to another. A Londoner can settle in Inverness and feel that they are amongst countrymen. It’s a good feeling, something precious – and something worth saving.
The benefits of staying united, of keeping our amazing country together, are worth more than all of the oil in the North Sea. The opportunities of the union, and the fraternity that it represents, are two of the most powerful arguments that the ‘no’ campaign can make. I do hope they make them in the next week.
UPDATE As you might expect, some nationalists are none too happy with the enemy within. Here’s one:-
It could well be that a majority of Scottish-born vote ‘yes’ but the decision is swung to ‘no’ by the English living in Scotland. Then you may hear moans about the perfidious English ‘preventing’ independence. But if the vote had been extended to Scots living in England (including yours truly) the ‘no’ lead would be much bigger.
The young (and the English) have restored Scotland’s ‘no’ lead » Spectator Blogs
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Jim Sillars’ threat of a ‘day of reckoning’ exposes the darker side of Scottish nationalism
107 comments
12 September 2014
Fraser Nelson
The Spectator
Alex Salmond and Jim Sillars yesterday
Only yesterday, Jim Sillars was being paraded by Alex Salmond as a nationalist heavyweight who has been taken back into the fold. He had once fallen out with Alex Salmond but the two were, apparently, good friends again. A photoshoot, above, consummated this reconcilliation. Sillars is a former SNP deputy leader but now not part of the apparatus- so he can speak freely. All too freely, as it turns out.
Here’s what he has said today.
“This referendum is about power, and when we get a Yes majority, we will use that power for a day of reckoning with BP and the banks. The heads of these companies are rich men, in cahoots with a rich English Tory Prime Minister, to keep Scotland’s poor poorer through lies and distortions. The power they have now to subvert our democracy will come to an end with a ‘yes’. BP, in an independent Scotland, will need to learn the meaning of nationalisation, in part or in whole, as it has in other countries who have not been as soft as we have forced to be. We will be the masters of the oil fields, not BP or any other of the majors.”
So Scotland’s refusal to go all Hugo Chavez on its companies is, to Sillars, an example of the SNP administration ‘forced’ by Westminster to be ‘soft’ (ie, not lay down the law to) companies. Their expressing their concerns about his separation plan is the same as ‘subverting our democracy.’ They have become enemies of the Scottish people, according to Sillars, and will be treated as such.
Sillars
had a bit more to say. Under a separate Scotland, companies like Standard Life would be required to give two years' warning of any layoffs they wanted to make. This sounds crazy, more like East Germany than a new Scotland. But as Silllars put it:
“What kind of people do these companies think we are? They will find out.”
For Scotland’s sake, I hope we don’t find out. Sillars will, I hope, soon be condemned by the SNP hierarchy who will disassociate themselves with his demagoguery. But all this unnerves businesses, who can imagine where all the nationalism might lead Scotland where it has led other countries. This is why increasing number of them have to reassure shareholders that, if Scotland votes ‘yes’, they will not stick around for long enough to see what Mr Sillars meant.
Jim Sillars’ threat of a ‘day of reckoning’ exposes the darker side of nationalism » Spectator Blogs
