Davie P

Ha! That's just not true! You're going to have to try a bit harder to turn this into a negative that you can lay at the SNP's door The Scottish Referendum may have been the first (that I'm aware of) election in the UK that extended the franchise to 16 year olds, but it was done with cross party support. Furthermore, many UK parties have supported the vote for 16 year olds for yonks, there have been many groups and political think tanks who have campaigned for it, and it's common in other countries.

Labour, the Lib-Dems, Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru, amongst other parties, all support votes for 16 year olds. The Conservatives and UKIP want to keep the age limit at 18, but the Scottish Conservatives support voting at 16.

Luckily it doesn't come down to your opinion, it comes down to facts, and the facts aren't on your side. We've already been through all this in the Brexit thread Urabug. If you didn't understand the referendum, perhaps you should have done a little research before you voted. The legislation on which the referendum was based, and subsequent rulings by the High Court, are very clear. "a referendum on any topic can only be advisory for the lawmakers in Parliament unless very clear language to the contrary is used in the referendum legislation in question... No such language is used in the 2015 Referendum Act," {source} I suggest to do a little research on the subject, or remind yourself of the Brexit discussion thread, before labelling me a '(friends with concerns about Brexit)' who is 'making up stories and stirring the **ite again'

^ Indeed, I can't recall an election where so many people were still 'floating voters' in the weeks beforehand. I believe Radio Shetland are hosting a hustings the week before the vote. I'll probably make my decision after that.

You ask, "why was the EU referendum vote different"? The 'rules' of the EU referendum was that it was a pre-legislative advisory vote. The MSP By-Election is to select our representative at the Scottish Parliament. Elected representatives who debate EU membership, whether they are supportive or against, are obeying the 'simple rules of democracy' as per the legislation on which the referendum was based and parliamentary procedures. Falsely claiming that they are breaking 'rules' does not help clarity of discussion.

As has been noted several times, Britain wasn't a signatory of the 1957 Functioning of the European Union when Eden was PM. As you said yourself when I pointed this out a couple of months ago in another thread...

It all depends on the legislation upon which a referendum is based. Referendums are not 'native' to UK constitutional processes so the technicalities of each referendum are pre-agreed and enacted into law by parliament before the actual vote. To cut a long story short, the EU referendum was a straight non-binding 'advisory' one (some legal commentators have likened it to an opinion poll), but the Scottish Independence referendum, whilst still technically advisory, had more legislative weight. This was in part due to the constitutional details being pre-thrashed out as Westminster had to devolve the administration to the Scottish Parliament, and the Scottish Government published considerable detail in advance as to how the result of the Scottish Referendum would be enacted. There was little or no legislative detail re: the EU referendum, which IMHO has been the root cause of the Brexit mess.

Prisoners get to vote for first time in Scotland at Shetland by-election Interesting!

Do you have a link for the original report - I don't have a subscription for the Telegraph. Cheers I found a few other articles about the same report which were published in June 2018. The context for the "5000 new jobs" is unlikely to be a reality with a hard Brexit, and according to the Herald the Scottish Government considered it to be “the least likely or plausible” of 4 modelled scenarios in the report. For balance, The Herald says another of the Brexit scenarios in the report would lead to an £85m economic hit and the loss of 429 jobs. https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/16271129.dream-post-brexit-deal-for-fishermen-worth-an-additional-540-million-to-scotland/ https://www.shetnews.co.uk/2018/06/28/report-makes-heady-claims-for-future-of-fishing/ All of the potential Brexit benefits to Scottish fishing depend on Westminster not negotiating them away during the glut of trade deals that will follow

Do you have a link for the original report - I don't have a subscription for the Telegraph. Cheers

So no Brexit candidate and Debra Nicolson is standing for the Greens. I'm surprised The Brexit Party haven't fielded. I expect they'd have done quite well in Shetland.

You can try to contextualise it as a bit of fun, or a 'contrived narrative' from the left if you want. Regardless, the President of the United States is encouraging and normalising xenophobia. You might be OK with that, but I think it's a divisive and reckless path to take. Perhaps a desire for folk to treat each other with respect makes me a leftist snowflake?

An interesting series of responses, KOYAANISQATSI. I don't "look at the world through the cultural Marxist lens of victim and oppressor" or "[live] in the mainstream media's, leftist bubble echo chambers", and I don't believe I have a "regressive narrative" I can, however, read, and when the President of the USA tweets "Why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came" about US citizens who are also democratically elected representatives, and chants of "Send them back" ring out at a subsequent Trump rally, then the racist alarm bells ring. No media bias, spin, fake news or subscribed narrative required. Maybe Trump isn't racist and was just trying to go on the offensive with whatever came to him, maybe he is naive and didn't consider the consequences of repeating such classic racist tropes, and maybe it's a co-incidence that such statements act as a rallying call for the right leaning side of the spectrum. Or maybe he knew what the likely outcome would be.

So, is Trump racist? If not, is he pretending to be racist to drum up far-right support for his 2020 bid?

And now that the Brexit Party associated leaks has caused the resignation of the US Ambassador, Farage announces that being US Ambassador would be his 'dream job'. That's quite a coincidence - https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/07/13/exclusive-farage-says-being-ambassador-to-u-s-would-be-dream-job-but/

It doesn't come as a surprise that a close associate of the Brexit Party has been implicated in the recent leaking of diplomatic emails - https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/brexit-party-richard-tice-darroch-18206347 I s'pose we'll just have to chalk it up to another example of illegality from the Leave EU camp and press on with taking back control, or whatever it is we're doing

@Suffererof1crankymofo - yup, I paid for my PG education too (in fact I'm still paying!) and travel grants and the like had long finished by the time I went to Uni. Keeping in mind I said earlier that "I have no problem with those who can afford to contribute something being compelled to do so", the two fundamental reasons why IMHO the state should also contribute is a) equality of opportunity, ensuring students from lower income backgrounds can access higher education and having a well-educated workforce benefits the economy. Also keep in mind that it is only core tuition fees that are covered by the government, only Scottish residents are eligible and the majority of students have to take out loans too. Government supported tuition fees themselves are inward investments into the economy and many Scottish universities are world leaders attracting large numbers of non-Scottish students with all the economic benefits that entails. I completely agree that there should be more supported vocational training opportunities such as apprenticeships, and I think the Scottish Government does quite well in that department.

In response to Ghostrider - Realising economic and social benefits through archaeology, https://www.archaeologyshetland.org/ Re: "What exactly am I, or Shetland in general going to benefit from anyone in Shetland knowing any of this?" - I agree that "Archaeology or culture or heritage are all good and useful", and I dare say there are many immediate economic benefits to students coming to study in Shetland. There's also archeological and cultural tourism as Shetland is rich with archeology, culture and heritage, and regular conferences which attracts international visitors. Also, UHI courses are usually offered across the Scottish UHI network so students may be studying at any of the campuses, or from home via VC, so I imagine Gaelic modules would have a better uptake in the Western Isles than Shetland. I believe UHI also have a large number of part-time students who are studying and working. Re: mixing subjects - joint degrees, or degrees where students can select a number of optional modules, are common. Having a degree doesn't guarantee a job, it just proves you can study (research and analyse sources for validity, process information, construct and present compelling theories etc) to a certain level. It's very common (perhaps most common?) for jobs to be advertised as 'educated to degree level' or 'hold a qualification in a related area' to encourage a wider pool of applicants. A specific degree in a single subject certainly doesn't mean you can only work in that area. Since philosophy was mentioned earlier, it's actually a very valuable degree as it demonstrates that students, and therefore job candidates, can process and communicate complex information. Philosophy is often combined with other subjects (e.g. linguistics, economics, politics etc) as it provides students with a set of tools for debate and reasoning.

Let's play a game! For every example of someone folk on here don't think worthy of having their tuition fees waived, I'll post evidence of the net social and economic benefits of having a well educated population across a wide range of subjects (and the benefits of having a well resourced higher education sector that attracts large amounts of external investment by means of international students and research income). Personally, I have no problem with those who can afford to contribute something being compelled to do so. But it is rather simplistic argument to say there has to be a specific job at the end of a degree to be worthy of taxpayer support. Many areas of economic growth in Scotland have come directly from innovation and development at Universities, and the benefits are not as immediately apparent or clear cut as, for example, someone doing an apprenticeship in a trade. As an example, I recall when Abertay and Dundee universities, and the Dundee City Council, invested in computer game development ('leisure software') some years back. The naysayers were many (just a bunch of layabouts sponging off the taxpayer on their Playstations etc etc), but this investment has turned Dundee into a world leader in the field.

Conspiratorial nonsense to add to the Gaelic roadsigns! By "....hushed up as much as possible for obvious reasons", I presume you mean "....in the public domain, regularly reported in the media and information was freely available from a range of sources"

Yes, I agree. first we need to stop foreigners at the national borders, then we can work on all the pesky soothmoothers who have come here stealing our jobs and sitting on their gold plated thrones making us eat fancy haggis etc etc But what about the councillors that aren't thoroughbred Shetlanders? Have they been compromised with external genes too? Where will it end!

Maybe a bit of scaremongering there re: Gaelic roadsigns! It's local councils, not the government, let alone the SNP, that make the decision on bi-lingual signage, as is the case in Shetland with settlement name signage which includes dialect.

UKIP have just announced Stuart Martin as their candidate - https://www.shetlandtimes.co.uk/2019/07/10/ukip-names-candidate-for-holyrood-by-election

With TS standing down, who's your money on to become our next MSP? There's three hats in the ring so far - Ian Scott, Ryan Thomson and Johan Adamson Or somebody else....?

Hunt and Johnson seem to have lost their grip of reality as well as public finance, merrily conjuring up imaginary money and continuing to make undeliverable populist promises whilst we trundle toward a no-deal Brexit "Finance minister Philip Hammond has warned the two candidates that their plans would cost more than the headroom in his budget." Factbox: Bonfire of the Brexit cash - UK leader candidates' spending promises The initial post-Brexit economic shock and ill-considered post Brexit finance gamble, combined with their farcical spending promises, does not bode well for the future of our economy. If they can't do basic arithmetic then I don't fancy their chances of negotiating a prudent financial settlement with the EU. I hope there are enough Tory rebels that see through their blatant financial populism to put a stop to it.