In reply to Saor Alba:
> (In reply to Jim Fraser)
>
> ... You think they would think of something else by now.
No. Sorry. That's the politics of the headline chaser. Good governance and human dignity were right when Hume, Smith, Rousseau, Bentham, Mill, Jefferson and Paine were debating and writing about them and they are still right today.
> There is no chance of a federal UK ...
Aye, because we are stuck in the rut we have been driven into by the headline chasers. 80% of the effort goes on bitching and 10% on self-aggrandisement (perhaps the other way round in Eck's case). Whether at Holyrood or Westminster most parliamentary time is a waste. There has been some tinkering of acceptable quality with the managing and legislating for Scotland yet the battles of the 18th century philosophers are barely won. If our representatives cared enough about good governance then we could have proper local government again in Scotland instead of over-paid chambermaids doing the dirty work for the power hungry machine at the centre. If they cared about justice then Alistair Bonnington would have been nothing to write about in The Times in August when he told us why "Scotland now has a third world legal system". I thought the title was a bit of an insult to the third world myself, and he was a bit soft on some legal grandees who needed a good kicking, but generally a very good piece.
Nobody is properly governing the UK and nobody is properly governing Scotland. That's one of the reasons our economy is more fragile than some neighbours. Much of what politician do is of little consequence and people then have no respect or confidence in politics and you spiral down into chaos.
Here we are spending much of, what, 2 years, bitching about independence when there are important fundamentals to sort out. Independence will make almost no difference while within the EU. A modern ECHR-compliant and economically sustainable justice system, properly devolved local government and a sustainable housing economy could have been achieved since 1999 but they haven't. It would have taken guts and intelligence and a principled stand against vested interests but it would have made life massively more bearable for the poorer 50% of the Scottish population. It would be cheaper for everyone: except the stockbrokers and lawyers.
We are much of the way to a Federal Britain already. It wouldn't actually take much. On the matter of devolution, the mind-set of the entire UK population has changed in the last 13 years. We can have a Scottish Parliament and the sky will not fall in. We can have an SNP government in Scotland and the Earth will keep turning. If we can just get England to move forward into ... the 18th century ... well it would be a start, then Federal Britain is not too difficult.
> I also think you have maybe reduced the issue to party politics. ...
What do you actually get for your YES vote? Apparently, we still end up under the British Crown. We'll still be in the EU. It is looking like we'll still be in NATO. We'll still have the pound. That could be a worse deal than the Irish Free State and that brought a civil war and 60 years of economic stagnation. So is it any wonder that I want to examine the party that wants to bring us that deal?