[Terese Coe]

No from Norman and from Dean. Post but no vote from Bill.

8 No and 3 Yes at present.

I will be offline for several hours, possibly longer--back later!

[dean peterson]

Best of luck to all involved.

[Gail White]

My husband, who is totally ineligible to vote, is casting a passionate NO by mental telepathy. As he will be unbearable to live with if the Scots leave the Union, I too am hoping the NOs will win.

Does anyone know the old ballad "The Bonnie Bunch of Roses", about Napoleon's son?

"Oh son, don't be so venturesome,
You know the English they have hearts of oak.
And England, Ireland, and Scotland,
Their unity has ne'er been broke. "

Hoping for that outcome...

[Rick Mullin]

Gail, didn't you tell us once that your husbands votes "no" on the American Revolution? ~,:^)

[dean peterson]

As my alma mater was a member of the Big 12 and a primary rival of the Longhorns from the mid 1990s until only a couple years ago, I often thought how nice it would have been had Texas gained its independence.

Nebraska's football record would have been a little better and the Bush clan could still have thrived, selling Time Shares down in Costa Rica.

[Gail White]

Originally Posted by Rick Mullin

Gail, didn't you tell us once that your husbands votes "no" on the American Revolution? ~,:^)

You've got it, Rick. Arthur thinks of the Revolution as the disaster that robbed him of his rightful Queen.

[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

I predict a landslide-like victory for yes, shall we say 59-41?

Whatever the result, Scotland has made leaps and bounds forward in recent years, and I expect most of its citizens/residents will move on whatever the count.

Both national and international media coverage has, with one or two exceptions, been very biased towards the Unionist cause, but I don't believe that this has been any great blessing for it. If anything, it has confirmed many Scots in their suspicion that the British establishment is both unwilling and unable to accommodate them.

One of the more striking anomalies of the Better Together campaign was its two most persistent claims: a) that Scotland is financially dependent on the UK, and b) that rUK (= the rest of the UK) would feel immense regret in the event of Scotland leaving the Union. These two claims were always going to be difficult to defend simultaneously, with b) damaging the reliability of a), and a) questioning the sincerity of b). It became very obvious, even to those that supported the Union, that by persistently plugging these two strange bedfellows, the Better Together campaign was failing to show genuine concern for the fate of Scotland.

All in all, the Better Together campaign was incompetent and unsexy. Scots have always been inclined to ridicule those in power, and the Better Together campaign gave them ample opportunity, obliging them with own goal after own goal. Gordon Brown's recent speech was indeed great, but in retrospect it may well be seen as far too little, far too late.

Duncan

PS Even though I am pro-Independence, I enjoyed Mary's poem, as I am sure many other pro-Independence voters would. Mary's poem was witty, and most Scots have the ability to laugh at themselves.

[Norman Ball]

The ridiculing of power Duncan is a luxury the freshly empowered can no longer indulge. Satire doesn't vote.

[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

Originally Posted by Norman Ball

The ridiculing of power Duncan is a luxury the freshly empowered can no longer indulge. Satire doesn't vote.

Quite so, Norman, and many Scots don't normally bother voting, but I gather they've made an exception this time.

Duncan

PS To David: Scotland has long been a divided country. So they're used to it at least.

[Quincy Lehr]

To Shaun a while back--Quebec, of course, has every right to break away from Canada if it so chooses. While most of the people I know in Montreal are Anglophones (though not necessarily Canadians), Quebec is, to my eyes, obviously a different nation in a common nation-state. CBC 1 actually did a good comparison of the Scottish referendum versus the last Quebec referendum. Scottish nationalists decided to go with a particularly terse question because they saw how the longer Quebecois question led to a great deal of rancor over details.