Spontaneous Monotony

Today sees the launch of Alex Salmond’s campaign for a ‘national conversation’ (Worst. Title. Ever.) on the future of the country. The general idea seems to be that the public will be overwhelmingly convinced by the words of El Salmondo and the naughty unionist parties will see the error of their ways and back a referendum. When you’re finished ducking to avoid airborne pork products, perhaps you might see the reason why a referendum would be a good idea.

As the unionist parties have been crowing for the past few days, a poll conducted for that well-known bastion of objective journalism. the Daily Mail, showed that support for independence had dropped significantly. Leaving aside the strong possibility that this does not reflect the actual responses in the poll, even a well-conducted opinion poll generally proves to be as accurate a reflection of public opinion as if I threw two gerbils in the air and waited to see which landed first. Previous polls have shown a majority support for independence. Remember the poll that predicted an SNP-Green-Socialist majority government? The only way to really find out what the public want is to ask them, in a proper referendum.

This is what leaves me so baffled by the position of the unionist parties. They confidently proclaim that ‘the majority of Scots do not want independence’. So why are they so worried about the prospect of a referendum? The cost of holding one would be about £7m - that’s approximately 2 hours’ worth of Iraq War (based on the total dollar cost of the war to date), or approximately one seven-hundredth of a trident submarine (based on the official estimate of £20bn for 4 new submarines).

I would suggest that the constitutional future of our country is more important than illegal wars or illegal WMD, and I therefore fail to see the disadvantage in asking the question - the ‘independence issue’ would then be settled, one way or the other.

External Links
National Conversation

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