The Referendum Thread

[Stuart Dickson]

I've never understood this stuff about poverty.

My mother-in-law spent most of her working life on benefits as a single parent. She was on disability. Not that she actually had a disability, she just said that working wasn't worthwhile for the wages on offer.

She's now a pensioner on a state pension (paid for by NI credits after her years on disability benefit). She also gets pension credit, council tax benefit and housing benefit.

She's just booked up to got to Majorca in August - as she usually does. It's her second holiday this year.

My wife laughs when she ever reads any mention of poverty. Her upbringing was about the 'poorest' level there is... but she didn't think she was poor. Now that she has cash she still doesn't look back on her childhood as living in poverty. I met her when we were both 16. I certainly don't remember her being 'poor'. Indeed, she used to save up money she got back then for attending school so she could also go on holiday! She had more cash than me.

Poverty indeed...

It doesn't exist in the UK. Anyone who is 'poor' is 'poor' because they squander their cash on drink and drugs.

It won't surprise anyone but I agree, and so do an awfy lot of immigrants to the UK who, even when unemployed send money home to their families who really do live in poverty. Poverty in the UK appears to mean not being able to afford a Chinese takeaway every night, or not being able to pay for the full Sky TV package.

I don't know if others have watched it but there has been a good TV series showing during the daytime about "How to get a council house" and it shows the plight of a number of people who have been made homeless in Tower Hamlets in London. Some of them have genuine situations. There's a guy who was kicked out of his house by his girlfriend - her father was his employer. He used to earn good money and he's just lost everything. He can't get a council house because it's deemed that he has made himself homeless by being kicked out by his girlfriend. Yet in another case there is a girl who's being evicted by the local council because she refuses to pay her rent on her council house. She says on camera that there comes a time where you have to stop paying rent cause you need new shoes or clothes. When she's evicted she leaves a lot of very expensive pairs of shoes in the house behind her and disappears, only to turn up a few weeks later demanding that because she's homeless and she's got a child that the council rehouse her, which they do by putting her in a £100 per night B&B.

There's another couple who claim they can't afford to pay for their house because of benefit cuts. They've been going to foodbanks etc. They are talking to the girl at the Housing Association about leaving the neighbourhood to get something they can afford and it transpires that although they can't afford to pay for food for their kids and they can't afford rent, that they pay for Sky TV.

Now I know these are TV programmes set to show extremes in life and that there are plenty of people who struggle with their circumstances - but poverty in the UK is nowhere near what most people think real poverty actually is.

[Stuart Dickson]

Now you know i hate proving you wrong, but..........

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/real-life/glasgow-tower-block-residents-reveal-2947452

• 1967, Glasgow City Council admit they are looking into the possibility of building deck access flats at a number of locations accross the city as the traditional 4 storey tenement cannot house the vast numbers still to be rehoused in the city limits. These areas are Summerston in the north west, Fernhill in the north, Darnleyin the south and Hutchesontown Area E in Gorbals.

• 1969, all three schemes are approved and construction begins.

• 1972, the first flats are opened by Queen Elizabeth in Pine Street. She hands over the keys to a young couple. The scheme consists of two 24 storey tower blocks at Sandiefield Road and 759 flats and maisonettes in mid-rise deck-access blocks. 4 months later, the first complaints of damp are made as new furniture, carpets and wallpaper are attacked by a creeping black mould. the flats earn the nickname "The Dampies" as water penetration and condensation rot the new buildings.

• 1974, the scheme is completed as the Gorbals masterplan is finished. It relinquishes its status of a comprehensive development area for the first time since 1957.

http://ukhousing.wikia.com/wiki/Hutchesontown_Area_E

Your either wrong again or you've been trying to lie again to suit the BT campaign.

I said built in the 60's and demolished in the 80's. That's factual and accurate.

North Sea Oil didn't begin to flow until 3rd November 1975.

You seem to be the one lying to suit an agenda and you look damned silly

I have to say it's also quite interesting to read that the Natsi's would have held back money to improve conditions across Scotland so that it would have had a fund that - one assumes - would have then had to have been blown to cover the debts of RBS and Bank Of Scotland. Thank f**k we're Better Together.

Edited May 11, 2014 by Stuart Dickson

[smcc]

http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/referendum-news/the-secret-oil-report-we-find-the-crucial-report-advising-westminster-not-t.24189400

Have a look at this, Stu. Better together under the UK? I am sure that you will argue that it was a Labour government that ignored McCrone's advice but subsequent Tory governments did no better. If poverty is an independent Scotland's lot it seems that a lot of the blame lies south of the border.

I've no idea what age you are or if you remember what Scotland was like back then but I have very vivid memories of my early years in a council flat in Battlefield. I remember well my Mum having a regular battle against the elements every time it rained because the single glaze sash windows werent watertight never mind draught proof. In the winter we would have to scrape ice off the INSIDE of our windows. My Dad also used to tell us how just the bathroom we had inside our flat was a new thing cause in 1969 him and my Mum were sharing a landing toilet with those across the landing. Oh and forget security entrances. Back then closes were wide open which meant every time there was a big game at Hampden the close was being used as a public toilet

When we went to school the school couldn't afford to replace our jotters when they were full. Our "gym" facility was the tarmac covered playground outside. The economy was so bad our milk was taken away from us - not that the milk was good in the first place cause Dairies would use the school run to get rid of their out of date stocks.

The walk to school was interesting too. On cold days we were instructed to wear scarves over our faces to offer some sort of protection against the thick smog. The Clyde and the Cart were sewage ridden messes - you certainly wouldn't go fishing cause there was none to find. We had large industries like Ravenscraig regularly pumping toxic material into our soil. And a GPO so dependent on government subsidy despite their total monopoly of the telecommunications market.

Now if you are in charge of your household finances you have to make choices. One may be to let your family live in squalor while you stash money away for a rainy day, or you could spend it improving conditions for everyone and reconciling that with the thought that you were investing in the future by improving learning and opportunity.

The UK today, even for those supposed poorest in society is a pretty decent place to live. It's certainly miles better than the shit fest I lived through in my formative years. Indeed can you imagine the uproar had we squirralled away mountains of cash whilst people were still living in damp ridden slums like the Hutchison E blocks from the Gorbals where my Gran lived.

Rewriting history to spin a story is what the natsi press is good at. You shouldn't be falling for it

As usual, Stuart, you have gone off at at a tangent and failed to addrees the point of my post, which was that successive UK governments squandered the revenue from Scotland's oil and gas resources - and, of course, you had to get your usual abusive "natsi" comment in.

As for my falling for the nationalist spin(or rewriting history as you call it) I would like to inform you that my memory goes back much longer than yours, as I was born during World War II. I was brought up in a post-war prefab and also had to scrape ice off the inside of the windows in the winter and use towels on the window sills to mop up condensation. I can also remember the winter smogs of the 1950s before smoke free zones were introduced following the Clean Air Act of 1956. Please don't try to outdo me on your childhood trials.

The highlighted area is also relevant to my point. Scotland did not, and still does not, have control of its own finances, as I thought you would have known.

Edited May 11, 2014 by smcc

[Stuart Dickson]

As usual, Stuart, you have gone off at at a tangent and failed to addrees the point of my post, which was that successive UK governments squandered the revenue from Scotland's oil and gas resources - and, of course, you had to get your usual abusive "natsi" comment in.

As for my falling for the nationalist spin(or rewriting history as you call it) I would like to inform you that my memory goes back much longer than yours, as I was born during World War II. I was brought up in a post-war prefab and also had to scrape ice off the inside of the windows in the winter and use towels on the window sills to mop up condensation. I can also remember the winter smogs of the 1950s before smoke free zones were introduced following the Clean Air Act of 1956. Please don't try to outdo me on your childhood trials.

The highlighted area is also relevant to my point. Scotland did not, and still does not, have control of its own finances, as I thought you would have known.

Ok - I'll agree with you. There we go. A huge pile of Oil money was squandered.

Here's a list of the items we wasted money on.

1. Improving living conditions for everyone in the UK

2. Building new schools

3. Building new hospitals

4. Funding an ever expanding NHS with it's relentless remand for investment in new technology, new medicines, new treatments and more beds.

5. Building new universities and colleges.

6. Providing access to university education for everyone - particularly in Scotland where some idiot decided to give it to everyone for free.

7. Expanding and improving our telecommunications network so that daft cunts like you and me could argue on a St Mirren forum about subjects one of us at least has only a half cocked idea about.

8. A Scottish Parliament - who's f**king idea was that waste of money. A bamboo hut at the bottom of the Royal Mile that costs the country £72m per annum just to maintain.

9. Installing a massive network of windmills that will generate some electricity that we can't store and struggle to transport efficiently provided the wind blows in the right direction.

10. On above inflation increases in the state pension and Child Benefit.

11. On new benefits like Working Tax Credits and Disability Living Allowances and on things like providing Motability Cars for the severely disabled.

12. On bailing out two Scottish Banks that f**ked up with Alex Salmond as their biggest cheerleader encouraging them to do everything that put them so heavily into debt they needed massive bail outs just so savers and investors could continue to access their own money.

13. On two new aircraft carriers that weren't really needed but which were ordered by Gordon Brown so that shipbuilding could continue for a few more years at Rosyth.

14. On a tram service in Edinburgh.

15. On the underground in Glasgow and on the expansion of the M74 and the creation of the M77. The M74 fair enough I guess, but why the M77 - what use is a 70mph road to tractor users in Ayrshire.

16. On encouraging enterprise into Scotland. £billions have been spent either in tax deals, or in actual inducements to bring foreign businesses into Scotland to keep our population working. Alex Salmond's favourites of course have been Amazon - that well renowned employer who offered a "gummy bear" incentive to make warehouse workers work harder. The walking 15 miles per day as part of the job may be seen as a good thing if the company didn't have such a poor safety record.

17. Funding ridiculous referendums on devolution, on water, on clause 2A of Section 28 and now on Independence.

18. On fanciful loss making shite to make Scots feel important like the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh and now in Glasgow and on silly bids to host the European Nations Championships where we enjoyed the sight of a bus load of delegates visiting a parking spot next to a farm where one of the stadiums would be built if only the farmer and landowner on that site would stop blocking they're attempts to buy the land.

I could go on but I'm sure you get the gist. Loads of money squandered. I'd be interested to see which ones you would have cut back on to have a wee pot of oil money lying around for.....well we don't really know what they'd keep it lying around for. I'm sure if there was a fund it would have had to have been well raided to bail out the RBS and Bank Of Scotland in 2008.

Edited May 11, 2014 by Stuart Dickson

[Stuart Dickson]

No its not. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/built

They were getting built not actually built in the 60's you wrote. Thats factual and accurate.

I can see where the misunderstanding regarding what i wrote about coming on line, was mean't to read as it was about to flow not actually flowing.

Me a liar, thats you done another one. You just can't help yourself.

And as everyone can see you've went really quiet regarding the NHS figures you quoted the other day.

Oh so what you meant was that these flats were built before we had made a single penny from oil and that's supposed to debunk my argument that oil money had to be used to bulldoze slums in the Gorbals to improve living standards for the many residents living there.

You're a f**king weird one Cockles. The Hutchesontown projects started in the late 60's, the first two high rise blocks of flats were open and occupied by 1972, the remainder of the project was completed by 1974 and the first oil flowed in late 1975. The flats that were built before we had oil money were a f**king disgrace and I don't see how anyone without an agenda could argue that the use of oil money to improve housing and living standards for many hundreds of thousands of residents living in sub standard accommodation was anything but a positive use of the money. No doubt you'll still try to spin this one around though. You Natsi's are something special when it comes to that.

[salmonbuddie]

You and FTOF don't like people who hold different values and opinions from you. You think people who are different to you should be put into hospitals or asylums. Josef Mengele, Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler would be very proud of you both.

Can't speak for FTOF but that's not true of me, I'm happy with people having different values and opinions from me. Keeps life interesting.

No, it's you personally I don't like, you personally that I think belongs in an asylum with your constant petty smearing of good people as Nazis. I don't make threats but if (God forbid) we were ever to meet and you came out with that shite to my face you'd only do it once.

So, you going to keep on trolling me then?

[FTOF]

Can't speak for FTOF but that's not true of me, I'm happy with people having different values and opinions from me. Keeps life interesting.

No, it's you personally I don't like, you personally that I think belongs in an asylum with your constant petty smearing of good people as Nazis. I don't make threats but if (God forbid) we were ever to meet and you came out with that shite to my face you'd only do it once.

So, you going to keep on trolling me then?

Use the ignore function SB, you know it makes sense.

[smcc]

Use the ignore function SB, you know it makes sense.

Unfortunately it is not possible to avoid his posts, or SD's, by putting them on ignore as other forumsters keep quoting them. You would have to put everyone on ignore!

[Stuart Dickson]

The oil money helped with housing that was built on who's watch......... oh yes Westminster Labour and Tories.

So if they had got the houses built properly instead of some of them lining there own pockets, then the oil money could have been used better.

Need i remind folk about the money that was paid to Lafferty construction.

Well funnily enough I was going to mention Lafferty construction earlier today. The way I remember it was that it was Scottish politicians who were found guilty - not ones from the rUK.

[salmonbuddie]

Keyboard hardman in my opinion.

You're entitled to your opinion. You'll find out how wrong it is if we ever meet and you call me a Nazi to my face.

Oh the banter! What are you Natsi's like?

Well that's the trolling question I raised been answered, then.

[Stuart Dickson]

Scottish politicians from what parties? Surly not any that are in Better Together.

Sorry but Scottish politicians are Scottish politicians in an Independent Scotland. It's your mob that keep telling us we aren't voting against the SNP or Alex Salmond. We're voting for some silly ideology that would put these very people right at the top of our political establishment regardless of the colour of their rosette.

Fortunately for us we're in the UK where the nasty element of politics - you know you're Bill Walkers and your Eric Joyces - have very little real power.

[Stuart Dickson]

You wrote earlier it was Scottish Politicians, i was only asking what parties they'd belong to so that anyone reading this can make there own mind up who to trust.

So here's some from the UK as you put it, that had power.

http://metro.co.uk/2013/03/11/after-chris-huhne-10-other-politicians-who-were-jailed-3536565/

http://conspiracytruths.co.uk/mpscovictedofsexoffense.html

"That had power" - really? Most of the list were never anything more than councillors.

You've been quick to cast aspersions regularly calling me a liar without ever managing to prove your case and you've done nothing but republish the same old Yes Campaign propaganda whilst smearing anyone who disagrees with your view point. It you don't like the Natsi tag, maybe it's time the Yes Campaign stopped acting like the old National Socialist Party.

[salmonbuddie]

I think this thread should be locked as there are too many people that get easily upset. Just think what this place will be like if the majority vote "No". This thread will go into overload with people melting down faster than ice cream on a sunny day.

If the majority vote No then that's what the majority have voted. I know you have personal experience of online meltdowns but the rest of us are grown-ups who will quite happily accept the democratic decision of the people of Scotland. Equally, if the majority vote Yes, the grown-ups will accept the decision with good grace.

If you include me in the "easily upset" category then, yes, I am easily upset by someone calling me a Nazi. Do it to my face and we'll see who ends up the most upset.

[salmonbuddie]

I'm not, you know. You, however, continue to prove yourself the fanny that most people consider you to be - keep up the good work!

And I'm out.

[oaksoft]

I think this thread should be locked as there are too many people that get easily upset. Just think what this place will be like if the majority vote "No". This thread will go into overload with people melting down faster than ice cream on a sunny day.

Too easily upset by being called Nazis?

Easily one of your more stupid posts.

Most of us have simply had enough.

[FTOF]

I'm not, you know. You, however, continue to prove yourself the fanny that most people consider you to be - keep up the good work!

And I'm out.

You're being too kind SB.

He's like a slimy, cancerous cyber stalker that pollutes the forum.

It was only a couple of months ago that he was crying about people using the word "meltdown".

Doesn't seem to bother him now. Stronger meds perhaps?

Anyway, most people have learned to ignore him, other than to point and laugh at him.

[salmonbuddie]

You're being too kind SB.

He's like a slimy, cancerous cyber stalker that pollutes the forum.

It was only a couple of months ago that he was crying about people using the word "meltdown".

Doesn't seem to bother him now. Stronger meds perhaps?

Anyway, most people have learned to ignore him, other than to point and laugh at him.

And he's doing that like/unlike thing with posts again too. Tick tock might be the phrase I'm looking for, here.

[faraway saint]

And he's doing that like/unlike thing with posts again too. Tick tock might be the phrase I'm looking for, here.

I got 10 yesterday, do I win a prize?

[FTOF]

And he's doing that like/unlike thing with posts again too. Tick tock might be the phrase I'm looking for, here.

I don't have that facility turned on, so he's wasting his time if he's doing that to my posts.

[faraway saint]

I don't have that facility turned on, so he's wasting his time if he's doing that to my posts.

That's because nobody likes you.

[FTOF]

That's because nobody likes you.

As long as they like my posts, as I do so crave attention................................

[Guest TPAFKATS]

Baillie Gifford, investment company employing almost 800 at its Edinburgh base, states it's committed to staying in Edinburgh and will thrive after referendum vote irrespective of vote outcome.

[Guest TPAFKATS]

Here's a wee film about Maryhill food bank - especially for all those suffering from poverty denial!

[Stuart Dickson]

Loads of huff taking from the Natsi's yesterday. What a shame....

Thing is why the over sensitivity about it? Could it be because actually there's far more than just a passing resemblance in the way Nationalists in Scotland treat their political opponents. The treatment of Nigel Farage for example is a shocking display of how Scottish Politics in an Independent Scotland might work. No right to free speech, no real democracy, and no right to hold a differing view from the party line. Businesses not bowing to the leader get threats of being run out of town and god help any university that wants funding after independence if it hasn't crawled up Alex Salmonds arse to get there.

Maybe you guys can tell me - when does the book burning start?

[Stuart Dickson]

Latest opinion polls -

Progressive Partnership - NO 54% YES 34% - the same poll also showed that 50% believed Scots would be worse off in an Indepedent Scotland whilst only 31% believed we would be better off.

Caledonian University Poll showed - NO 63%

Edinburgh University Poll showed - NO 60%

Channel 4 - NO 58% YES 42%

it still looks to me like the Yes campaign is making absolutely no ground at all....with support for them still barely above 1 in 3. And that's despite the £2.5m recently pumped into the campaign by the Largs lottery winners and wasted by the SNP.

Independence is a dead duck because of the way the Yes Campaign is being run. Far from not being interested in the economics of the argument Scots remain completely unconvinced that Independence would work in their favour making us better off.