Can of worms: Scottish Independence - Printable Version +- Frictional Games Forum (read-only) (https://www.frictionalgames.com/forum) +-- Forum: Frictional Games (https://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/forum-3.html) +--- Forum: Off-Topic (https://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/forum-16.html) +--- Thread: Can of worms: Scottish Independence (/thread-26054.html) |
RE: Can of worms: Scottish Independence - MrBehemoth - 09-18-2014 (09-18-2014, 03:17 PM)MrWhitticus Wrote:(09-18-2014, 02:54 PM)Mudbill Wrote: I just stumbled upon this. Thoughts? I dunno, but you can't rely on opinion polls - they represent the noisy minority whose feelings are strong enough for them to decide to go online and complete an opinion poll. The quiet majority just go out and vote. Besides, the trend map shows yeses all over the UK, but the vote is only in Scotland, which makes me doubt its accuracy in general. I think it's going to be a lot closer. RE: Can of worms: Scottish Independence - Kreekakon - 09-18-2014 (09-18-2014, 05:02 PM)MrBehemoth Wrote: I dunno, but you can't rely on opinion polls - they represent the noisy minority whose feelings are strong enough for them to decide to go online and complete an opinion poll. The quiet majority just go out and vote. Actually I think this is rather debatable. The "quiet majority" are likely going to be people who don't vote at all since they don't seem to be all that passionate when compared to people who would go through the effort of an online poll - which may even be less effort than actually going to vote since it may have taken place online. At the very least I'd say that the quieter people are going to be consisted more of people who don't vote at all rather than ones who will. That's just my view on it though. RE: Can of worms: Scottish Independence - MrBehemoth - 09-19-2014 And breathe..... Scotland voted "no" by 55%. (As of now. The Highland region is still to report, but isn't big enough to swing things.) Interestingly, many of the places I would consider to have a stronger sense of Scottish identity voted "no". Here in Edinburgh it was 61%. Up on Orkney (way North of the mainland) it was 67%. In the Borders, where they have annual festivals celebrating victorious battles over the English 500 years ago, they voted 66% "no". 3 of the 4 regions (32 total) who voted "yes" are clustered around Glasgow. Amazingly, 85% of the electorate voted! Let's hope the energy this referendum drummed up is put to good use, and not into fostering more division. Here's a breakdown, plus a map to compare to the opinion poll Mudbill posted. RE: Can of worms: Scottish Independence - Kreekakon - 09-19-2014 Aha ninja'd by MrBehemoth! I was just about to double post the same results! In my very biased, and mostly uninformed opinion though I think this is best for the country. Independence is not something to be taken lightly, and best only endeavored if a nation is truly ready. RE: Can of worms: Scottish Independence - MrBehemoth - 09-19-2014 (09-19-2014, 06:51 AM)Kreekakon Wrote: Independence is not something to be taken lightly, and best only endeavored if a nation is truly ready. This. RE: Can of worms: Scottish Independence - Romulator - 09-19-2014 I wonder - since the vote was divided by almost half, what will be the after effects of this by the losing vote? My first impression was a riot, protest or community march, but also there's the possibility of no further action. Unless there was a set of guidelines set out stating no further action is to be taken, any ideas from a local perspective? RE: Can of worms: Scottish Independence - MrBehemoth - 09-19-2014 Although I've heard of a few isolated incidents, I don't think there's going to be any riots or anything like that. Brits, including Scots, are quite a demuring bunch. The feeling I'm getting from both sides is that everyone's happy to go with the majority. Of course Westminster has promised Holyrood more powers, so I think both sides hope they keep their promise... RE: Can of worms: Scottish Independence - Prelauncher - 09-19-2014 I think this is for the best. And as long as both sides keep their promise I think even a lot of the yes-voters will be happy about it. I like it when democracy works, the people wasn't happy about something, they raised their vocies and they were heard. RE: Can of worms: Scottish Independence - Mudbill - 09-21-2014 I've heard a lot of rumours about the vote being rigged, and yeah this conspiracy probably occurs on any vote because people aren't satisfied, but I'm a bit curious. I was sent this video so I checked it out. I'm not one to believe things right away, so I don't know what to think of the legitimacy of it, but it does looks fairly suspicious. There are also petitions on doing a revote because of these things. I'm not sure what to believe though, but I'm interested to see what will happen. RE: Can of worms: Scottish Independence - MrBehemoth - 09-21-2014 I feel quite strongly on this, so apologies if it's TL;DR! It's just that I really believe democracy has taken place and people now need to accept it. If the nation had voted "yes", I would accept that. Salmond's resignation on Friday just goes to show that he was not acting in the best interests of the country, or he would continue to do so. He has left an aftermath of resentment. People need to stop picking the vote apart and look to the future. (09-21-2014, 01:09 AM)Mudbill Wrote: I've heard a lot of rumours about the vote being rigged, and yeah this conspiracy probably occurs on any vote because people aren't satisfied, but I'm a bit curious. The "yes" voters are surprised and hurt, so of course people are going to look for justification. Their passion made them so sure that they're now asking "How could this have happened?" For me, personally, I'm not surprised it turned out how it did. The rallies and campaigners were shouting "yes!" but when I actually spoke to real people in my life, over 50% (maybe more like 75%) of them were quietly saying "no". It's like what I was saying earlier about the loud minority and the quiet majority. I'm not saying that all the "quiet" people voted "no", far from it, but all the passion and bluster of the "yes" campaign was not visible in the everyday lives of folk who were just calmly making up their minds. But the "yes" campaign, on the other hand, was so, so, confident that everyone else in Scotland felt the same as they did... (09-21-2014, 01:09 AM)Mudbill Wrote: I was sent this video so I checked it out. I'm not one to believe things right away, so I don't know what to think of the legitimacy of it, but it does looks fairly suspicious. Ok, there are a few things in this video that don't look good on face value, so let's analyse them one by one, thinking about what we can actually see.
In all three clips, we are examining the overt actions of employees of the Scottish Electoral Commission. These are not passers by who will disappear after the count. They are vetted employees who have been given specific tasks to perform upon specific allotments of ballot papers at specific times, all of which is planned and recorded. Furthermore, all papers carry a unique number. It is possible to trace the provenance of any one ballot paper backwards from where it is stored in the archive/warehouse/wherever-they-end-up, who transported it there, who prepared it for transport, who actually counted it, who sorted it into yes/no piles, who removed it from the ballot box, right down to which member of the public actually made the vote, where and at what time, and who handed them the paper in the first place. Aside from members of the public and the press being present and able to record videos of the process, the employed counters are in full view of their colleagues and in most cases will be on CCTV. I find it very, very hard to believe that the Electoral Commission, either as a whole or it's individual members, would risk committing electoral fraud under these very strict, very transparent and very traceable conditions. There have, however, been some other suspicious incidents that have been recorded by legitimate press and/or investigated by the police. For the sake of balance, let's look at those.
So, these are the two genuinely suspicious occurrences that I have come across. One was extremely minor and committed by a handful of members of the public. The other was potentially major, but thwarted by continued vigilance. I do not hold that anything in the conspiracy video is genuinely suspicious. What is interesting to point out, however, is that the two regions that had the strongest "yes" vote, were the two regions that had the lowest turn out, against those who were expected to vote. It seems sad to me that where people seem most passionate about change, that is also where people seem less likely to do something about it, which leads me to wonder if those particular "yes"-shouting non-voters had genuine passion, or whether they were just mouthing off. Oh, and one last thought to leave you with: those two regions were Glasgow and Dundee. |