"What will it take to be too much? When is enough enough?"

Carolyn Leckie in simply breathtaking, stunning form. (Click here if the video above is not viewable, to see it on YouTube)

Anyone who views themselves as at all left of centre and who is swithering about which way to vote: watch this. Watch this and after you have stopped applauding pass the link on to anyone you can think of.

VNB: WTF? LMAO, ROFL etc.

A thoroughly deserved mickey take of the truly awful adverts from the weird and creepily sinister "Vote No Borders". No further comment needed, I think.  Apart from one thought: if Luxembourg, Malta, Greenland and Barbados all have embassies in Rio then wtf wouldn't Scotland? Maybe I've no sense of humour. Anyway.

"Passport" original: (click here to view if you can't see the clip below)

"Passport" spoof: (click here to view if you can't see the clip below)

"Fantastic" original: (click here to view if you can't see the clip below)

"Fantastic" spoof: (click here to view if you can't see the clip below)

The process of doing ourselves proud

First off: a confession and declaration of interest. I'm in favour of Scottish independence and, from the start, have been optimistic that we'll get a Yes vote. The reasoning is simple enough. I genuinely and sincerely believe that the facts, the economic facts, are on our side. But just as important to the argument, I believe that most people are unaware of these facts. Why would they not be? I was, until I decided to read up and investigate. Until the SNP came to office, it's not been in the interests of anyone in a position to do so to publicise or highlight them, to argue against the presumption that we are a basket case of subsidy junkies. That's why suddenly opponents were falling over themselves to claim no-one was saying we couldn't afford to be independent. That's precisely what they've been saying (or at the very least a belief they have been happy not to dispel) for most of my life. So, I think most people don't know that Scotland's GDP per head is higher than the UK's, that we've paid more tax per head than the UK in each of the last 30 years and more, that that excess greatly exceeds the extra public spending per head that we get back, that we're one of the wealthiest countries in the world and so on. I think that when they learn the true position, they'll want to vote for independence.

But I'm not an idiot. I know that of course that's not enough.They need to decide they want to find all this out. If enough people still don't know the facts come the vote, we'll lose. They'll need to believe my side to some extent, or they won't bother. They won't believe that there's anything worth finding out, that what they have always assumed to be true might, even just might, not be. And you would, wouldn't you, expect that people, jaded by and inured to political scandal after political scandal, would turn off and either not vote at all or refuse to engage in the debate and, so, never hear from people like me, asking them to look at the facts and consider the evidence? That's been Better Together's big bet. I'd suggest it explains their reluctance to take part in debate at all (with every meeting I've read about where a before and after vote has been taken recording substantial movement to Yes). But I always thought this wouldn't, in the end, work. What made me confident that Better Together were underestimating the electorate?

Punching above our weight

What, as Wings asked this morning, do Better Together actually have left?:

"No currency union: gone.
Your pensions at risk: gone.
High cost of borrowing: gone."

Well, to be fair, a couple of things. Primarily, it seems, maudlin, sentimental (though increasingly belligerent) paeans to an imagined but never-actually-existed-and-certainly-won't-now Britain about which increasingly desperate, far-fetched and outlandish claims are made. (Did we really give the world "Christian civilisation"? When?).

But anyway, there's another trope they bang on about: international influence. "We punch above our weight". Now, there's not enough room on the internet to do justice to all the fascinating psychological implications of equating "influence" with looking for big people to hit to demonstrate to everyone that you're not small at all oh no there that showed them do you want some too do you do you? And there are most certainly limits to what comprises permissible, or sensible, punching. But in any event, is it punching that gives you influence in today's world? How do small countries who don't punch people get on? Countries who don't threaten to punch people, don't want to punch people? Can they have no ambition to play any part, in concert with others, in creating a better, more stable world? Does realpolitik condemn a nation of, say, five and a half million people to choose either to opt out of world affairs altogether, to be buffeted around by the disturbances created by others, or hook itself up with a belligerent partner and go on a spree punching? Well let's see. Let's pick on someone smaller than us.

Eat. Sleep. Vote "No". Repeat

"It will open a way for all parties to explore together a lasting alternative arrangement which can enjoy the support of the whole British people."

Truths, inconvenient truths and statistics

Scepticism is good. Healthy. However. There's a kind of self-regarding method of argument that involves everything you say being countered by "So you say. How do I know that's true? Prove it." Each time you present a supporting argument, offer some bit of evidence, the veracity or accuracy of that evidence is questioned. What evidence do you have for the evidence? And so on and so, ultimately unproductively, on.

In the context of the independence debate, from the very earliest days, there's been a clamour from some for "the facts". Actually, usually "just the facts". As if there was a small number of bits of crucial information whose existence was known to the politicians on both sides but which they were choosing to keep secret.

Well, actually, there is.

Splitters

Over 100 academics put their names to a letter reported in the Herald today which was, in short, supportive of Scottish independence and positive about the opportunities it would bring to academia. And how did the Herald choose to report that fact? Under the headline "Academics divided on impact of a Yes vote" it said:

"ACADEMICS are split over the impact of independence on university research after more than 100 of them warned the real threat to Scotland's future comes from remaining part of the United Kingdom."

Is that not, on any view, a bizarrely misleading way to approach things? I don't remember any report of the views expressed by the No equivalent, "Academics Together", as starting off with the observation that the academic community was not unanimously united in its views. But the Herald has form here.
 
It has been breathtaking to watch over the last couple of years as campaigners and commentators have created an atmosphere where not only is it rendered respectable to articulate as a reason for voting No that you "hate Alex Salmond" but where No campaigners perfectly happily cite that as one of the two main reasons given to them by their own supporters:

Wings Over Scotland recently summarised things thus: