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[Nmaro Makari]

Additional questions for everyone:


Answer some, all or none.

Most of us, certainly in the UK are aware that Scotland will be holding its referendum in September on secession and independence.

1) What do you think the result will be?

2) What do you hope it will be? (as the poll asks)

3) Will the European Elections (held approximately 4 months before) have an impact on the debate?

4) In the event of a yes, is it the end of the UK?

5) In the event of a no, is it the end of the independence movement?

BONUS QUESTION
Theory: "The Union is broken. How do we fix it?"

[Dessau]

As an ignorant American of Scoto-Norman descent, I'm interested in the outcome of this referendum, but other than googling 'editorial scottish independence', I am not well-versed in the particulars of the debate. As the First Minister said, a highly complex set of negotiations would follow the referendum, comprised of many moving pieces.

[Louella Dougans]

1) What do you think the result will be?

65/30 No/yes

2) What do you hope it will be? (as the poll asks)

a strong No.

3) Will the European Elections (held approximately 4 months before) have an impact on the debate?

Maybe.

4) In the event of a yes, is it the end of the UK?

It screws things up for everyone.

5) In the event of a no, is it the end of the independence movement?

No, they've already said that they'll continue pressing for more referendums, until people "vote correctly".


The pro-independence movement contains some of the worst elements in contemporary Scotland. Including advocates of sharia law. This is because the pro-independence movement believes that "identity politics" is the key to this referendum, and have recruited members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the organisation outlawed for terrorism, as experts in "identity politics". That is to say, creation of an "Us and Them" ideology. Whoever is not for independence is "Not Scottish".

It is the literal use of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, unironically.

Remember that the Scottish National Party has its roots in parties that opposed the war on Nazi Germany, even after the events of Krystallnacht, the invasion of Poland, the extermination camps, all of that was "Englands imperial wars, nothing to do with Scotland".

The Nationalists wish to erase Scottish Lowland culture. Millions of pounds for Gaelic education, but not a penny for Scots language, the language of Robert Burns, the national bard. They trumpeted the opening of a Gaelic language school in Ayrshire, when Ayrshire was never Gaelic. It is an attempt to erase cultures that do not fit the nationalist myth of the oppressed Gael.

A common tactic of the Nationalists is to say that anyone who disagrees is "ill educated", and "doesn't know the real history". They seek to control the teaching of history, to create a national mythos, where the "truth" is taught to all. The "truth" of "hundreds of years of oppression". Where have we seen this before? The Balkans are the extreme example in modern times.

The Nationalists have just recently, written into law that all parents are suspected child molestors. Every family doctor, every school teacher, now has a statutory responsibility to inform the police and child protection services if they suspect abuse is occurring. There are named persons who have a legal responsibility to ensure that children are being "brought up correctly". The Nationalists say this "protects children", and is needed because of a handful of prominent abuse cases in recent years. It is nothing of the sort. It insults every parent, and there will be a great deal many parents who will be accused of abuse, because of the way the system works. By putting in a statutory responsibility to inform, then a family doctor cannot give a parent the benefit of the doubt. A bruise from falling out a tree, has to be reported, if only to cover the doctor's statutory responsibility, because they cannot jeopardise their career if they do not report things. Same for teachers - if a child has a bruise, it gets reported as abuse, because the teachers cannot risk their careers. So a whole lot of children are going to be taken into the care system for bruises from playing. And in the care system, as can be repeatedly seen on numerous occasions, the children end up being more at risk.

There's a lot more too.

[Lyn Farel]

I wouldn't mind embracing new Scotland in the big unhappy european family 

[Gottii]

The people pushing for Scottish independence then hoping to keep the pound strikes me as the same of making a big deal out of moving out of your parents' house but then moving into their guest cottage in the backyard. 

As an outside relatively neutral observer, hope it doesnt go through.  Think it would hurt everyone in the former Great Britain, including Scots.

[orange]

1) What do you think the result will be?
To remain unified.

2) What do you hope it will be? (as the poll asks)
Continued solvency of the United Kingdom.

3) Will the European Elections (held approximately 4 months before) have an impact on the debate?
I doubt it.

4) In the event of a yes, is it the end of the UK?
By definition. 

5) In the event of a no, is it the end of the independence movement?
No, because plenty of people continue to fight for lost causes the world over.

The movement does not make a whole lot of sense in the grand scheme of things since Europe is slowly moving further away from nation-states having sovereignty anyway.   Scotland becoming "independent" of England has a whole lot of negatives and not a lot of positives going for it from an uninformed outsiders perspective.  Unless it goes really into the negative category, chasing after weird neutrality, anti-West, type alliances, I really do not see what is to be gained other than pursuit of a "historical ideal," which is not real.

[Ollie]

Every family doctor, every school teacher, now has a statutory responsibility to inform the police and child protection services if they suspect abuse is occurring. There are named persons who have a legal responsibility to ensure that children are being "brought up correctly". The Nationalists say this "protects children", and is needed because of a handful of prominent abuse cases in recent years. It is nothing of the sort. It insults every parent, and there will be a great deal many parents who will be accused of abuse, because of the way the system works. By putting in a statutory responsibility to inform, then a family doctor cannot give a parent the benefit of the doubt. A bruise from falling out a tree, has to be reported, if only to cover the doctor's statutory responsibility, because they cannot jeopardise their career if they do not report things. Same for teachers - if a child has a bruise, it gets reported as abuse, because the teachers cannot risk their careers. So a whole lot of children are going to be taken into the care system for bruises from playing.

I was with you up until this part.

For perhaps more years than I've been alive, Australia has had mandatory reporting laws when doctors and teachers suspect child abuse or neglect. None of the slippery slope arguments you are making have come to pass.

It has, within Australia, identified children at risk in the tens of thousands per annum.

It is not done on a whimsical 'child fell out of tree, must report it' basis. It follows a process of clinical judgement (in the case of trained doctors) and observational analysis (in the case of trained teachers). While hardly perfect in its specificity or sensitivity, this reporting process does form the basis for the first part of a safety net that includes further investigation (usually with the child and parents kept anonymous from the community by the government departments responsible for said investigation) and referral to police should it be found that there's sufficient likelihood of a child at risk and/or a criminal case to answer.

It is still not a perfect system - human systems never are. It is however a satisfactory system that identifies a large number of children at risk without significant numbers of innocent parents being unjustly accused or exposed before the criminal system.

Childhood abuse and neglect can cause significant long-term harm and is usually not reported by the child in question. Amongst other negatives, it leads to high rates of social and academic learning difficulties, higher rates of criminal offending and a high likelihood of eating disorders, substance abuse and depression. The latter of course are associated with elevated risk of self-harm and suicide above and beyond that found in the general population.

My own opinion as a medical professional is that the rights of the child to safety and protection supercede that of the parents or any other individual within the community. If, based on my own clinical judgement and expertise, I decide I am looking at a potential case of child abuse which I suspect (based on that same clinical judgement) to have been committed by someone responsible for the child's safety, there should never be a 'benefit of the doubt' for that adult.

Your nation or Scotland's proposed system may well be different from the one outlined above, Lou, but in my experience mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse or neglect really isn't the knee-jerk or 'It's my career on the line' reaction you're suggesting it might be.

And it does protect a lot of children with no voice of their own from a horrendous childhood experience that will likely impact significantly on the future quality and outcomes of their lives.


Addit: Also, sorry for going off-topic here.

[Louella Dougans]

yes Ollie, but in Australia, is every child assigned a civil servant who will record details of their life, onto a central government database ? which is exempt from Freedom of Information requests ?

Does the Australian government believe that "the community" should raise a child, rather than that child's parents ? Does the Australian government issue documents which state that the aim is to reduce parental rights and responsibilities, in favour of Government civil servants ?

[Lyn Farel]

Is that a bad thing ?

[orange]

Is that a bad thing ?

It depends on what you think of other ideas.

Do you think parents have a responsibility to care for and raise children they have and should have the ultimate say in the child's up-bringing?  Do you think the state should keep secret documents on innocents?

[Louella Dougans]

given that local authorities in Scotland have abused powers in the past, such as using Anti-Terrorism laws to install hidden cameras in employees houses, in order to look for evidence that the employee was leaving work 10 minutes early, then I think I have the right to consider secret central government databases where the details of what information is held and who has access to it are not revealed, a bad thing.

While the Express is sometimes an alarmist newspaper, I'm not sure why any government agency would need to know the name of a child's pet.

[Lyn Farel]

I was asking more from a purely academic point. About the responsibilities of parents in the upbringing of their children, I mean, not on security/databases vs individual privacy.

Out of a purely rational view, experts in raising children would prove a lot more efficient than parents that obviously are amateurs in such things (considering the results in half of the cases, it's not always pretty). However, it has to be taken in account the emotionnal side of the whole process, which makes it a complicated issue as a whole.

And very taboo too.

[Ollie]

yes Ollie, but in Australia, is every child assigned a civil servant who will record details of their life, onto a central government database ? which is exempt from Freedom of Information requests ?

Does the Australian government believe that "the community" should raise a child, rather than that child's parents ? Does the Australian government issue documents which state that the aim is to reduce parental rights and responsibilities, in favour of Government civil servants ?

I will admit to not really understanding how these questions and the policies you've linked are relevant to the issue of mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse. I don't know anything about the SNP or their record within Scotland - you clearly know this party better and within the context of that knowledge might well be proven right about them. That doesn't change the potential that their proposal for mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse, in and of itself, might be good policy.

As to the questions themselves, it's a complex answer in Australia if we're being honest with ourselves on the differences between how child protection legislature is applied between predominantly non-indigenous urbanised populations and predominantly indigenous rural and remote communities.

The former have the process I described in my previous post.

A number of the latter were forced into agreements under a previous conservative government to submit to regular sweeps of their communities by civil servants within child safety government departments and police officers looking for signs of child abuse or neglect - if they refused they lost their welfare benefits which would have left them destitute, if evidence of child abuse was identified they risked having the majority of their children taken by child services. Rock-and-a-hard-place/Catch-22 stuff from a government that was, at the time, trying to exert as much control and influence over its indigenous population as it could in order to appease its right wing supporters and divert the political momentum its liberal opposition was gathering.¹

I suspect there are similarities between the latter and what you might be inferring with regards to the SNP's plans, Lou. I understand some of your concerns: I do not agree with the need for a 'Named Person' approach which appears to be one of the SNP's proposals. I don't see the need for spending government resources on a central database to track the details of every child/family. Should the community/government be the ones to raise children where no suspicion of child abuse/neglect exists? No.

But should the community accept its role and responsibility for the protection of children? Yes - meaning be wary for signs of child abuse and report it to authorities charged with further investigation if you hold reasonable suspicions for the welfare of the child/children in question. That's all mandatory reporting really is.

** Again, sorry for the derailing Backstage. Lou/Lyn - if you want to continue this perhaps we should create a new thread or take it to messages?

¹ It should be noted that this is a gross oversimplification of an issue whose pros and cons are still a point of contention for some people nearly a decade after it was introduced.

[Lunarisse Aspenstar]

) What do you think the result will be?
Scotland will remain part of the UK.

2) What do you hope it will be? (as the poll asks)
Scotland will remain part of the UK.

3) Will the European Elections (held approximately 4 months before) have an impact on the debate?
Probably not.

4) In the event of a yes, is it the end of the UK?
Well, I guess Wales and Northern Ireland is still a part, so No.

5) In the event of a no, is it the end of the independence movement?
Of course not, because people can never leave well enough alone.

[Louella Dougans]

There was more arguing about the prospect of a currency union, with the nationalists claiming that a recent leak shows that the other parties statement that a currency union won't happen is just bluffing.

Except it's not.

It reinforces the statement by the senior civil servant at the Treasury, who said that a currency union is only ever workable when all parties to the union are fully and irrevocably committed to it.

So, on one side we have the nationalists who have said "we have a plan B, but we're not going to tell what it is, and we can use the pound anyway, you can't stop us, and we'll renege on all debts", thus demonstrating they don't have the commitment necessary to make a union work.

And on the other side, we have the official position from the unionist parties of a "No" to a currency union, and an apparent leak where someone seems to say yes to the idea of Scotland using the pound. This also demonstrates there isn't the commitment necessary to make a union work.

So when both parties to a potential union have shown they do not have the commitment to make it work, then it's not going to work, is it ?

And so, the senior Treasury civil servant's analysis is proven correct, no ?