Law Society of Scotland wants independance advice published

I hope they are not holding their breath...as most of the information they are saying they want can only be definitively accessed by the UK...as the current member of everything international. The Scottish Government, Yes Scotland et al do provide detailed papers and statements on key questions...but can only interpret in a situation in which we have to vote for Independence before anyone will discuss anything regarding what will happen after Independence.

Had to laugh at this bit, though! It is something I won't be holding my breath waiting for as it just isn't going to happen! (by that I mean any promises from UK parties ahead of a No vote.)

"It also argued that Labour, the Tories and Liberal Democrats should set out their proposals for further devolution in the event of a No vote.

The society said it wanted to know what further powers each of the parties proposed transferring to Holyrood, what the time-scale for this would be and if Labour, the Conservatives and Lib Dems were prepared to agree a joint programme on this."

Given the Republic of Ireland didn't have all these UK invented problems when they gained Independence...they got to keep the pound, they had no border controls etc...it does rather make one wonder if we should have gone the bearing arms and killing route, rather than try to do it peacefully with a political agreement.

This rant is (so far) a half bottle of red fueled....and may be fueled by a bottle by the end of it !

I am of the opinion that the Unionist Parties can't afford to be more upfront, because upfront will mean they will have to flag up their policies ahead of the 2015 election.  At this stage in the game, they are bound to have some idea as to what the UK will be like after 2015.  We, in Scotland, know we will get the useless and utterly pointless Tory "line in the sand" of The Scotland Act 2012 implemented....and the Tories (or is it the Coalition) have given hints as to actions even further on than 2015. (Its sometimes hard to work out if Cameron is speaking for the Coalition or just the Tories with his flights of fancy re post 2015 possiblities in UK Government.). And given that NuLabour know that to gain power, they have to carry more than ten constituencies in London and the South in our UK Electoral non-democracy, they have pretty much said that little will change bar dickering around the austerity edges.

So all the No Campaign has left as a response to the pro-independence campaign is scaremongering, lies, misrepresentation and generally a reprise (but more so, because now they can add in international relations etc) of the 1979 Referendum No Campaign  which killed off, as far as Westminster was concerned, having to think about the population of Scotland for the following twenty years, until the SNP became a force to be worried about. Devolution is purely and simply a method of maintaining Westminster overall control of all issues which, in Scottish hands, could benefit Scotland but would reduce the benefit to the rest of the UK....and the theoretically failed (due to the only time any UK vote required more than a simple majority to be accepted) devolution referendum in 1979 amply illustrates that if we vote NO this time, we are where we were in 1979........ignored and ignorable.....whatever the various UK political parties promise.

As far as I can see, although I am admittedly biased, Alex Salmond and the SNP are basing their forecasts (as on what they would do, which isn't necessarily what any other elected Scottish Government would do come 2016) on the interpretation of International Law provided by their lawyers, just as the UK bases their interpretation on the opinions of their lawyers.......and economically on the figures provided by the UK Government.

Whether you like Alex Salmond or don't.....and a lot of the pro-union opinion in Scotland is because they don't like Alex Salmond......he and his team have done as well, if not better, than the UK Government has so far re balancing budgets and meeting our requirements to a greater or lesser extent, within their restricted abilities...and that is mostly why he got his unexpected, and UK specifically planned against, majority in 2011.  Seems to me if Westminster can't accept they have a real problem to be addressed with the Scottish reluctance to become right-wing British for as long as London and the South want it, then a No vote in 2014 won't hold uncontested for even one generation....far less for the three generations all the No campaigners assume they will be able to ignore us after a failure to achieve independence next year.