I predicted this a few posts back (#211)...

...on Wednesday at 1900hrs. By Thursday morning it was in the news! I wonder if I am Salmon D's "Treasury Mole"!!! :p

Is it me, or is he getting a bit paranoid? Also, I predict that if RBS move it will be a bit more than a 'brass plaque' move that he would have us believe. I reckon a couple of thousand jobs will go with it down to where the streets are paved with gold - Landaan taaan!

Anyway, at least Courtney can re-invest his mil pension if this happens!

LJ :ok:

PS. I knew I should have bought a lottery ticket on Wednesday!

Newt....send photos of the house and directions to the fishing!

Will there be duty free facilities at Gretna Green ?

Leon,

It appears that Salmond doesn't like the thought of the truth coming out. Personal agenda, smoke and mirrors, etc....

I also warned (post #176) that there is going to be trouble either way on this as it is also predominantly a Catholic/Protestant thing and that MACA/MACP might be required if we're not careful as the boys in blue might not have enough resources to cope. Then I read this...

Well done Salmon D, you are ripping both the UK and Scotland apart for your own political goals and your own personal vanity. :mad:

LJ

Wanting to make light of it...even the Kestrels are leaving the sinking ship!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-29178662

LJ - "We Heck's vanity" - you said it all


iR - kestrels sadly serious decline in England too. Covered in ISTR Springwatch on BBC2 earlier in the year

Of course it's not just the kestrels, Nessie has legged it already Daily Telegraph, apparently!

A friend of my wife has worked as a presiding officer at a local polling station for nearly 30 years. She reports that recently she has had many acquaintances asking her if it is possible for someone to determine how they voted? She has never been asked that before in all her years as a presiding officer.

So why is the question being asked? Quite simply these people are frightened of the consequences if the vote is "yes" and someone determines that they personally voted "no". Such fears might be totally groundless, that's easy to say, but is largely irrelevant. The point is that these fears exist and are very real to some people.

Whichever side of the argument you sit, I would ask, what have we become?

If the poll is conducted the same way as the recent elections in UK then the answer is, potentially, yes!

Have a look at page 12 (bullet 1, Stage 2) on this (Electoral Commission) link.

Therefore, in theory (and with my tin foil hat on), if someone was to have access to the ballot papers (which are manually counted.....) and the polling station lists they could be cross referenced back to the individual elector number and therefore the individual elector.

I questioned at the last local election here why this was done (connect ballot number to elector number) but the polling officer was unable (or unwilling) to answer my question.

Wrathmonk Thanks for the recall. This possible mechanism was pointed out to my class in VIth Form in 1967 by a very switched-on current affairs master (a Liberal party man ).

Wrathmonk,

Thanks for that, but I already knew that the answer to the question of whether it is possible to determine how someone voted was yes, perhaps I should have mentioned that in my previous post.

You'd be surprised how easy it is.

I stood as a candidate in 2003 and I was shocked at how easily this information becomes available. With more intensive use of IT, a truly secret ballot will become impossible.

The staff in the polling stations, most of whom knew me, were not hiding the fact that the papers are not secure.

The facility allegedly exists to check for fraud, but actually opens the door for it.

To return, briefly, to Military Aviation, compare this to teaching Spin Recovery. The CAA no longer, for some years now, mandate such training as it was felt that more people died from learning how to handle it, than were at risk from it happening. My opinion is that the deadly spin happens when recovery would not help as there is insufficient height anyway; forced landing and stretching the glide being the popular cause.

So, we have a system where a Voter ID Number is allocated to each person entitled to vote. The polling stations have a list for each ward, showing everyone who can vote there. The authority to vote, is demonstrated by the possession of a Polling Card, bearing the Voter's ID number and full postal address.

Your vote is registered on a sheet of paper, the unique number from this piece of paper is written next to your name and number, on the list of voters.

This paper, which identifies You & Your Vote, is then stored, along with the sheets where your number (and name & address) is ticked off as having attended to vote.


So, it's an easy task to run down the list of registered voters and see all the blanks where people did not vote. Those people (the disillusioned and undecided) are worth targeting for the next campaign.

To go a step further, you cross reference the sheets with the numbered voting papers, and see what vote is recorded on each paper, which links back to a name and address.

Now comes the conspiracy theory part:

The paperwork is stored in the "care" of the local authority. The body who employ most of the invigilators.

The "non political" council officers, who depend upon the elected Members to choose them for high office, are of course above any kind of looking at this stuff, or allowing copies to be made. It says here.

The way in which some council staff cosy up to long term political office bearers makes me wonder. The whole system stinks, because of the hypocrisy.


The very first vote taken in the new Scottish Parliament was (taken in secret) to decide if they could have Secret Ballots.

That was hardly a step towards open democracy.

I was in Rhodesia when Mugabe was elected, and the owner of the hotel said to us that she didn't realise that the Africans hated the whites so much. If it comes to a yes vote, I shall think the same of the scots!

We can all make "wee eck" out to be the villain in this piece, but, Camoron should carry his share of the blame for what he has created in Scotland with this referendum. Husband against wife, internal community aggro, all because Camoron needed to distract the electorate from his governments flagging performance and desultory performance. One thing I'm certain of is that if the jocks vote to leave, it should see an immediate resignation by Camoron.

Smudge

Careful wot you wish for Smudge... you might end up with Millipede :ugh:

And probably best to remember who Daves predecessor was - he was utterley atrocious :sad:

Smudger

I don't particularly like our current PM but he is the best choice we have in my opinion. The rest are total clowns; Cleggy, Wallace & Gromit (aka Millipede), anti-€uro Nigel and then what I call the lunatic fringes. Yes, the current Govt have made some c0ck ups (quite a few due to the previous lot's "hospital pass" from the one-eyed financial genius who increased borrowing during our brief spell of public surplus :ugh:) but the current lot have reduced the deficit and we might be paying back our debts by 2017. If Comrade Balls had been allowed in we would all have been paid off with 3.5% pay rises for the past 4 years, the doley-bums got new flat screen tellys and we would have got some new (outdated?) military kit from our favouite aerospace company in the Labour heartland. It's just like Wee-Eck is buying off the masses with massive promises of prosperity , free education, better NHS, etc... When all of the business bosses are telling him that they will have to put up prices and/or move south of the border then he calls them 'scaremongers' and alleges some massive conspiracy theory with Westminster that would rival that of Holocaust-deniers or the nut jobs who don't believe we went to the moon!

This whole independance thing is costing ALL OF US money that we can ill afford. It will result in criminal damages that we will ALL have to pay for (either emotionally or financially). It will damage our standing in the world as individual and collective nations. Given all of this then don't expect any miracles in SDSR 2015 now, as there will be no more money for extra fighters, LRMPAs, replacement training aircraft or any significant increase in remuneration for NEM.

This whole independance thing is going to cost ALL of us dearly, one way or another. There will be NO winners on the 18th Sep and we will ALL be poorer for it regardless of the result.

What f***ing mess! :ugh:

LJ

I might have to start drinking Whiskey rather than Whisky!

Being a proud Englishman who has lived in Scotland (and love living here) for more than half my life, the majority of which was in the service of Queen and Country, I can honestly say that I am worried whichever the way the vote goes this coming Thursday.

I hope that politicians on both sides are proud with how they've divided not only the country and neighbours but also families! This will take generations to heal and I cannot understand how those in power ever thought it would be anything other than this? One family in my own street has already been torn apart over this and we haven't had the count yet, so God help us on Friday when the result starts to become clearer.

This is an emotive subject that was always going to cause division. The Yes campaign White Paper containing even less substance than a small pack of white powder in a dodgy nightclub toilet on a Saturday night and the No campaign focused on scaring people over currency, jobs, salary, pensions etc. They are treating the electorate like clueless halfwits and stirring deep seated anxiety to try and sway the argument in their favour!

Both sides have to share the blame for this cluster f##k of a situation we find ourselves in. Hardly credible from either of them, but looking at the morons that we have elected to serve us what should we expect?

As to the question of what have we become - the answer is simple; divided and weaker - and that's before a single vote has been counted!

I sold a house in Scotland a few years ago for just over £300,000. The buyer would have had to pay £9,000 in stamp duty at the time. Under the rule changes announced by the SNP in their budget proposals, due to come into effect in April 2015, a buyer in similar circumstances in future will have to pay £30,000 in stamp duty!

At least we now know the SNP definition of "rich"! Just wait until they start setting income tax rates and threshold levels!

Not true!
The proposal is no land and property tax up to property value of £135k
From £135k to £250k, you pay 2% on the value of your house above £135k
From £250k to £500k, you pay 10% on the value of your house above £250k plus 2% of £115k.
So for your example for a £300k property, you'd pay (115k*0.02)+(50k*0.1) =£7300. Currently, you would pay 3% on £300k = £9000.

I can't be bothered to do the arithmetic, but I think you start to 'lose out' if your property is worth more than £345k(ish)

At least that's how I have interpreted the way the tax will be imposed

Absolutely correct, Speedywheels.

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1640848/th...ERON-570.jpg?1

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1640844/th...ORNE-570.jpg?6

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BhOhGtQIEAAGsAl.jpg

Sorry I couldn't resist.

I'll admit I got it wrong! I saw a table with the headline figures and no real explanation. This sets it all out quite clearly:

BBC News - Who will be the winners and losers of the new Scottish stamp duty system?

The first completely independently produced Scottish tax since 1706?