This is a rather long summary of some of my thought process on deciding to vote no in the referendum. It is by no means a complete picture but I felt I should write something down, and people can read it if interested and question it whether they agree or disagree. I thought this might be better than immediately engaging in a point-counterpoint debate with anyone. Again I am completely open to changing my mind if persuasive information and perspective is given. (I am aware that it sounds rather pompous but apparently that is the way I write, badly and pompously.) Why I’m voting no on 18th September. I feel that before anyone begins to looks at the economic viability of the case for independence, the rationale for wanting a Yes vote should be well reasoned and made explicit. Thus clearly the reasons of those under the hold of nationalistic fervour are immediately discounted. Surely the only valid and well intentioned reason for wanting a Yes vote is to have the apparent opportunity to create and develop a fairer society with strong social justice; this is an idea which I have a lot of time and respect for. However what is it exactly that differentiates the capacity of Scotland and rUK in achieving this? One is quite obviously Westminster, while the other must be the ideals and values held by these “separate” peoples, in that the function of democracy is to elect a government which represents the common views of the people. Therefore public policy of a government should broadly reflect these views, and with this in mind it is often argued that Scotland is much more leftist and socially progressive than our neighbours to the south. This is then used as a distinction worthy enough to warrant the creation of a separate nation state, which I would have to agree with if the distinction in social attitude was significant enough. However from what I can gather in looking at various sources, the degree to which Scottish views are more leftist and socially progressive is minimal and not significant enough to warrant a Yes vote. It also doesn’t make sense to say that adding these differences in attitude together would constitute a significant impetus with which to carry the momentum for radical social change in an independent Scotland. The reason being that attitudes to certain issues- such as; education, distribution of wealth, EU membership- are not synergistic but are rather quite separate entities which will vary depending on the environment of the day. By this I mean that attitudes in Scotland may change just a few percentage points to the right and align themselves more with the figures south of the border, such results may arise if Scotland were subject to the same level of immigration as seen in England. Secondly I don’t think anyone is in any doubt that Westminster is in need of reform and held to a much greater degree of accountability, however I think this idea permeates the entirety of the UK. I think that the various social movements occurring throughout the UK regarding protecting the NHS, TTIP etc. indicates the willingness and enthusiasm with which peoples across the UK are striving for better social justice. Thus I think the appetite for reform and increased social justice is there all across the UK and that we should all be working together to achieve it rather than introduce arbitrary divisions to the process. I also think we need to be careful when thinking about measuring improvements in social justice, all too often we get caught up in judging everything against our ultimate idealistic goals for social justice, of which we will always likely fall short. This is unrealistic and I think a more comparative measure is better, that is looking at where we’ve come from in regard to a particular issue, child poverty for example. Child poverty has been brought up now and again to point to the shortcomings of a UK government and that an independent Scottish government would be able to better eradicate it. However a Unicef report of 2009 data, indicated that the UK was 9th out of 35 countries in reducing child deprivation, ahead of France and Germany. For the sake of balance it should also be noted that on the child poverty rate scale the UK ranked 22nd out of 35 countries which is measured as the percentage of children living in households with an equivalent income lower than 50% of the national median. Whilst we should continue to strive to eradicate income poverty as this gives households more autonomy in being able to tackle the effects induced by poverty, the implementation of social welfare and public services has mitigated and buffered the effects of child poverty despite the relatively poor performance on income poverty. I think it would be reasonable to assume that child poverty in the present day is quite dissimilar to that of my parents’ generation, so in effect I think we should keep an eye on that pie in the sky dream but maintain a level of pragmatism when measuring progress. One of my major concerns about the referendum and the impact of a Yes vote in particular are the consequences on research and education. I believe both are crucial to developing a stronger economy and in creating and maintaining a more autonomous democracy. Findings from high level research ends up filtering down through the educational hierarchy and being taught to students at postgraduate, undergraduate, secondary, and even primary education. With this in mind Scotland has some world class academic institutions which have been helped in part by the disproportionate acquisition of funding from UK research councils; disproportionate in the sense that we get more than the population share of funding. So we contribute approximately 8.6% of the RCUK pool but Scottish universities get approximately 13.4% back. This is because funds are granted based on merit, however in an independent Scotland that will be stopped as RCUK has stated the current arrangement could not continue. The result of which is that Scotland will only have access to a smaller absolute funding pool generated from tax in an independent Scotland due to having a smaller population. Thus I think research in Scotland would start to lag behind and consequently drag our institutions down a peg or two with it. The goal within Europe for a while now has been to achieve a spending level of 3% GDP on research and development; this wasn’t achieved by 2010 so the target has been moved to 2020. The EU average is around 2.1% GDP spend, the UK is around 1.7% spend and Scotland before the addition of the extra RCUK funding is 1.6% GDP spend. However with the RCUK funding Scotlands equivalent % GDP spend on R&D is 2.7%. Michael Russell the SNP education minister has stated that a Scottish government would maintain current spending on education and research, but does this mean that the current 1.7% spend will be maintained or the 2.7% increased by the RCUK which we do so well from? I imagine it would be the former. Whilst the Yes campaign has been praised for its innovative vision the problem for me which has been implied, I imagine, throughout my writing is reconciling this vision for a socially progressive nation with characteristics that any reasonable person would aspire to and being pragmatic about the process of achieving that. The way of achieving such pursuits nowadays in such a globalised world is via money- the pros and cons of such a system is another debate- and I think that to tackle these issues most effectively is done better in the UK as opposed to independent countries. Moreover I feel that to leave our fellow citizens in rUK is to do them a disservice given our multitude of similarities on a whole host of issues, not least what the Westminster government will be. In the event of a No vote, I really do hope that the level of public discourse that has arose- the like of which I’ve never seen before- is maintained and that we can use this to instigate some kind of change across the UK as a whole, on all the issues which people have been passionately debating. Whatever the outcome, I would like to see Scotland rally around it, and attempt to make the most of either situation. I’m getting bored now, so I’ll stop writing.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 14:11:36 +0000
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