The commentators                    03-09-14

...on Scottish independence

 Independence, as more Scots are beginning to see, offers people an opportunity to rewrite the political rules. To create a written constitution, the very process of which is engaging and transformative. To build an economy of benefit to everyone. To promote cohesion, social justice, the defence of the living planet and an end to wars of choice. To deny this to yourself, to remain subject to the whims of a distant and uncaring elite, to succumb to the bleak, deferential negativity of the no campaign, to accept other people’s myths in place of your own story: that would be an astonishing act of self-repudiation and self-harm.
- George Monbiot, The Guardian
This is no moment for anyone who claims to care desperately about saving the union to suffer a fit of the vapours because a few Yes-supporting diehards are being beastly. The Respect MP for Bradford West, George Galloway, showed more stoicism after being hideously beaten and kicked than Jim Murphy at being threatened.
- Matthew Norman, The Independent
Alice Thomson
Conservative and Labour seem content to write off the Yes campaign. “Salmond’s taken the low road. His methods are disingenuous and the Yes campaigners’ attacks are vicious,” one minister says. Maybe so, but the priority for politicians at Westminster for the next 15 days has to be Scotland, Scotland, Scotland — otherwise they will find that their high road is leading them over a cliff.
- Alice Thomson, The Times
For all that the referendum matters to his political future, the Prime Minister would do better to accept that he should rely on others to fight the battle for him, difficult though that may be for him to do. After all, Labour has just as much to lose as the Prime Minister should Scotland opt to vote Yes.
-  John Curtice, Daily Telegraph
The ethnicity of the guilty men is a central feature of the abuse, and council officials were certainly inhibited because of it... but this was a regime unwilling to confront the problem at all - regardless of who was behind it. This was a dysfunctional council that operated in a macho atmosphere of bullying and sexism. Women were lesser beings and discussion of subjects such as sex abuse was almost impossible. 
This isn't about political correctness, it's about chauvinism and class
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