Should a person walk upright? Does that immediately strike you as a daft question? A question which insults intelligence and offends reason? It should! Walking upright is normal. It is natural. Why would you ask people to express a view on whether human beings should walk upright? Surely the assumption should be that everyone wants to be normal. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be the norm. Walking upright is the default for humankind. People only do other than walk upright if something obliges them to. Disease, perhaps. Or something making them crawl. It only makes sense to ask if a person should walk upright if you start from the assumption that they’ve somehow been forced to their knees.
Should a country be independent? Does that immediately strike you as a daft question for reasons indistinguishable from those set out above? Why then should it be other than a daft question when Scotland’s name is inserted?
Should Scotland be an independent country? That has to be a daft question. It cannot be a sensible question. Nor can it be a neutral question. Just as the first question above perversely makes walking upright the contentious issue despite that being the norm, so this question makes independence the contentious issue despite it being the default status of all nations.. The implication is that Scotland is somehow an exception to the general rule. That independence is not normal for Scotland even if it is for every other nation on the planet.
The question distorts the debate. It forces the debate to focus on the justification of what is normal while leaving the anomalous status unquestioned. So my next question must be, why are all Scotland’s pro-independence parties meekly accepting this grotesquely loaded question? Why do they not forcefully reject the implication that Scotland’s place is on its knees?
To crawl or stand tall? That is the question.
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Peter A Bell 
I choose to dissolve the Union.
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You could ask that question of every other part of the UK except England, Peter, as it is assumed that England would never need to ask the rest of us whether it could be independent or not. Isn’t it strange that only England ever assumes that it need not consult anyone else on its own status? It has made itself the default, the centre of the universe, and the rest of us are satellites circulating around it. That is the distortion that is the UK and is England as the UK. It is the very reason that you have to posit that question in the first place.
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On the contrary Lorna, asking England that question would be very interesting. Can they stand on their own two feet? If England is so great why can’t they go it alone?
If you are judged by the company you keep then ditch the paupers to the north and west and stand tall once more. If you can.
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Some of them are already suggesting that they should kick us out as ingrates. They are not politicians. The politicians know that that would be insanity, so they will come back at us all the harder. There is no point in engaging with them unless we have done our homework on the overriding mentality of the political elites. Most of the English people are decent souls, but some do have a bee in their bonnet about our totally erroneous mendicant situation. The politicians will not want to disabuse them of that mindset because they are useful to their agenda. In the end, they care about as much for their own people as they do us.
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Aye. The British state is not England. The British state is a supra-national entity overlying all the nations of the UK. If it looks like England it is only because the largest part of it derives from the largest part of the UK. British Nationalism denies England’s national identity in the same way it does Scotland’s. It’s just less obvious because the faux national identity of the British state tends to resemble England’s national identity.
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Perhaps it isn’t, Peter, but everything that overlays the British State has its origins in England the English state. It is less that England’s identity is denied as that England’s identity is the British identity and vice versa. Many of us have managed to keep it at bay, but it is creeping closer and closer and will overwhelm us if we are not careful. I think it suits the English elites to pretend that they are British. It is easy because, to them, and to many ordinary English people, they are the same. Some day, they are going to have to think about who they are without the rest of us. It is going to be a painful moment, but also a good one.
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What a good analogy. So if we are to have a referendum post independence the question is obvious – maybe something like : “Should Scotland enter into a treaty of Union with Greater Wales ?” , but what about a pre-independence question ? Maybe “Should Scotland cancel the Treaty of Union with England ?” – I can see issues with that question and with any other version I can think of today.
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Reblogged this on Ramblings of a now 60+ Female.
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The question of whether Scotland should become independent isn’t relevant in my eyes when unionists go on about it. We on dissolving this union will be returning to our previous state as an single sovereign nation.
Infact I’d say that the word independence shouldn’t come into it at all, as we are not seeking independence as such, we are seeking to dissolve a union, of two nations, and a political one at that.
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So apparently this is Sturgeon’s rote to a indyref. Will it then be a wee pretendy indyref just to see the lie of the land, but not to upset the status quo?
“NICOLA Sturgeon is planning to hold a consultative second independence referendum in order to bypass any legal difficulties involved in the Union being reserved, according to reports.”
“con·sulta·tive
[k?n?s?lt?t?v]
ADJECTIVE
intended to give professional advice or recommendations:”
https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thenational.scot%2Fnews%2F20220336.indyref2-to-consultative-attempt-bypass-legal-issues%2F
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The question should be “Should Scotland be ruled by a foreign country” or similar
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The question should relate to a proposition. This proposition can then be more detailed than is possible in a question.
The proposal is to dissolve the Union. The proposal itself should have two forms – the full-text version and a short version. The latter to be printed on the ballot. The former to accompany all referendum campaign materials.
The question then is – Do you agree with this proposal? YES / NO
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