Newsweek Scotland: barking out the battlecry
Post categories: News,ÌýNewsweek Scotland,ÌýPolitics
| 15:00 UK time, Friday, 9 March 2012
They looked like the four horsemen of the apocalypse, hunched tightly together and fighting in close formation, swiping and slashing as the challenges came at them, barking out their battlecry: "Referendums are nothing but trouble....!"
A quartet of constitutionalists confronted MPs this week on the issue of the independence referendum, or as the MPs call it, the Referendum on Separation for Scotland, and gave them chapter and verse on loaded questions, multiple questions and the Decourcet theory. (A method of working out which candidate would beat the others in a run-off) Honest! Check it out. I followed it on (Is this plug necessary? The Producer)
Some points seemed clear to me. There is a democratic case for a second question. If there is no blueprint for an independent Scotland beforehand, there may well be a need for a second referendum after any deal is done with London and Decourcet is a dead Frenchman.
One of the four horsemen will be with us tomorrow morning, , although I'm not sure which one of Conquest, War, Famine and Death he is. The horsemen were harbingers of Judgement Day which is what I think we should christen the Referendum. The Professor will meet his nemesis in . The earth shall tremble.
Other highlights are a discussion on extradition following the removal of 65 year-old Christopher Tappin to Texas where he was taken to court in a jumps suit and shackled. Is the test applied too slight and is the government failing in its duty to protect citizens?
Am I alone in feeling the need to weep in despair and fury as I stare into the eyes of the six troops blown up in Afghanistan? The pictures of young British military personnel who have given their lives are an uncomfortable testimony to the mission in that country which seems to get increasingly obscure. Finding Bin Laden...destroying the poppy harvest...killing the Taleban...preventing terrorist training...creating democracy...building schools...making communities safer...but which of these represents victory and withdrawal? We'll debate.
Friend of the programme speaks to us from Moscow about post-election Russia and why are sales of organic supplies falling? I've stopped insisting on organic myself and I'm not sure why although I make a point of recycling these blogs. Must get ready for Apocalypse now (.
Comment number 1.
At 11th Mar 2012, Neil Robertson wrote:The discussion on Syria with David Pratt was very disturbing .... brave man too to go in there at this time so as to bring back a rivetting first-hand account. You might also be interested in this report by The Henry Jackson Institute in the US which one of my Turkish friends in Washington DC Dr Fuat Andic (one of Professor Sir Alan Peacock's PhD students at Edinburgh Uni a bit before even my time) posted up on his FB page: As Fuat also published a scholarly study in 1996 of 'The Last of The Ottoman Grandees: The Life and The Political Testament of Ali Pasa' (Bibliotheca Ottomanic II The Isis Press, Istanblu) with his wife Suphan Andic who is also an economist I am sure his recommendations can be trusted to be of interest and local relevance not that I am really qualified to comment on Syrian, Kurdish or Turkish politics at all. David Pratt will I'm sure be able to keep you right. I first met Fuat Andic in Liberia incidentally at the start of the civil war in 1991 - so he knows what can happen when society slips into chaos and anarchy ...
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Comment number 2.
At 11th Mar 2012, Neil Robertson wrote:"Decourcet is a dead Frenchman" ...... no doubt .... but you got it right on air: John Curtice was talking about "Condorcet"! Who is also 'a dead Frenchman' ... I seem to recall his grave in the Panthéon is empty so he's also 'a dead Frenchman walking'?!
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Comment number 3.
At 11th Mar 2012, Neil Robertson wrote:Complain about this comment (Comment number 3)