Your time is up.
Asked to rank their priorities for the forthcoming Holyrood Election, voters in Scotland have placed not even independence itself, but so much as a referendum on the subject, twenty-second out of twenty-five. Even lower than replacing Council Tax with local income tax, but still ahead of the Conservatives' plan to lower the school leaving age to 14.
However, I think that people might eventually warm to that one. After all, it would be only for those who were going into apprenticeships. Do people want a manufacturing base, or not? If so, then how else is such a base supposed to be rebuilt? I do not necessarily mean that second question rhetorically.
So much, though, for the idea that the permanent divide in Scottish politics is over something called "the constitutional question". These are no times for such self-indulgence. Or, therefore, for any party defined solely be reference to it.
Back on the Scotophobic hobby horse. I suppose you have conceded that there is a strong chance that the SNP will be returned to power.
ReplyDeleteLooking at the list of issues, considering most of them deal with day to day things, does not surprise about the rankings. Interesting to see that the creation of a national police force (cooked up by Labour and now backed by the SNP and Tories) recieved less support seeing that it now looks inevitable.
As for the school leaving age thing, many of these people doing apprenticeships at 14 and 15 will not be able to do much training anyway as health and safety law forbades people under the age of 16 from doing certain hazardous things/being on building sites. And since health and safety is reserved to Westminster for the moment -------
Let you have your tantrum. The new Scotland Act is coming. For the man who predicted there would be no more devolution.
Take it up with voters in Scotland. They are the ones who don't want to know.
ReplyDeleteBased on this, it looks as if the new Scotland Act would not have been approved in a referendum; it would certainly have been a very close-run thing on a pitifully low turnout.
Devolution is rather like the EU: no one would invent it now, but the Baby Boomers who used to be against it are determined to ensure that we are stuck with it.