It’s almost as if they want the satisfaction of being the ones to inflict damage upon Scotland, rather than doing it ourselves…

It isn’t necessary to say in which direction we will exert that control but simply that WE will have control via our elected representatives in a Scottish Parliament.

At present this control – in the big areas of tax, defence, foreign affairs, broadcasting etc – is exercised by a parliament where there are 59 Scottish representatives out of 650 – not a lot of Scottish control there.

The 533 representatives of the largest of the four countries know power/control lies with them – and they intend to keep it that way.

So, strictly speaking, who you want to have control is the only argument in town – those of you struggling for a definitive reason for independence may feel free to use it.

You will, of course, still be presented with futuristic arguments about how control will be exerted, and limitation type arguments – we don’t live in isolation etc – but all of these can be drawn back to the basic argument – we will make the decisions.

Any legal advice is utterly unimportant as it will be provided without the context of the realpolitik that will exist when such advice would be pertinent.

This is not a matter of criminal law and about ensuring ‘justice is done’. It is about treaties and their inherited (or not) rights and obligations. The starting point will always be what is the desired outcome for all parties – which will be that the EU will want to retain Scotland and rUK as members and that both Scotland and rUK will want to remain members. Pretty simple really. Does anyone really think that any of these parties is going to raise some legal objection to prevent everyone getting what they want? It is an absolutely ridiculous notion.

Reality – there is no mechanism for a member or part of a member state to be excluded. Reality – the EU is instinctively inclusive. Reality – if it had to choose, the rest of the EU would far rather Scotland remained part of the EU than rUK. Reality – the No campaign needs to hide behind an abstract legal argument because it knows all this.

I think the question of whether or not we remain in the EU is really one that should be directed towards the No campaign because a UK Tory Government that is wagged by its right wing tail seems to be a far more realistic threat to Scotland leaving the EU. And, as ever, in such a scenario Scotland will not have voted for it.

Given the level of political awareness in the statement from the kilted assistant it is a safe bet that he is challenged on Scotland’s current affairs, or just challenged, and is wearing the kilt to keep a job. Devolution has come and gone a long time ago. It was your duty to educate the poor fellow.

“I daresay a comparison could be made to the mental image much of the public has (and certainly the media’s regular portrayal made of) those who intend to vote Yes in the referendum in 2014.”

These images are perpetuated by a biased and hostile unionist MSM. Ruth Wishart has broken the mould and now perhaps the 90 minute nationalists will become life long. “Much of the public” you say, a very bold statement, and I puzzle at what forms such opinion given that you will certainly not have consulted “much of the public.”

“How many minds have wondered, or mouths spoken out loud even, ”You support independence? You? But you’re normal’……..” Well, we can’t be leaving it all to the tartan loonies, can we? And let’s be honest, there was a fair few on display streaming down the mound yesterday,”

What a load of utter tripe. People who go on marches dress up as it is a carnival fun occasion, they want to celebrate and feel happy and make their statement. To label the marchers on Saturday as you just have, indicates a certain level of inverted snobbery on your part. As if you are not normal unless you are in a family group. I wore a T shirt that said “choose freedom in 2014″ and wore tartan on my hat, I also carried a Saltire on a stick, I was not in a family group but a group who were similarly dressed. I can only imagine that your friends are all deeply conservative snobs if they would suggest that you are not normal for voting YES in 2014.

“there seems to be an irrationally deep-seated intransigence to even considering anything other than the status quo. I don’t mean genuine disagreement, which is to be very much welcomed. I mean a hard-headed ‘No!’ that carries no rhyme nor reason.”

Yes there are a group of people like that. I know them as people with vested interests in the Union. For example Scottish MPs and all their families and friends. These people have a lot to loose. Conservatives. And of course the deeply entrenched Loyalists, the sectarians and associated apparatchiks. Not for nothing has Matheson in Glasgow sidled up to the Orange Order. Then there are the intellectual snobs who seem to see them selves as superior beings who think on a higher plane to the rest of us plebs and who would poop poop at any change that rattled their misty eyed view of Scotland, their Victorian theme park. You will find them arguing that Scotland in particular the Highlands must be preserved in aspic for the likes of them to gaze fondly at every August. These desolate Highlands whose desolation is a Union dividend. However given all that, the strength of the independence message is now so strong and credible that we will win the day.

I saw one or two people who waited at the University campus coffee shop for us, and then joined the march there. I won’t name names but some famous faces. It seemed to me that they had taken a strategic decision so that if it was only one man and his dog they could just sit and snigger in to their lattes. But if it was a resounding success as it was, they would just start marching, well done to them anyway. Other people, I know are now expressing regret they never went, citing a lack of publicity as the excuse.

Get out there next year and get the tartan on and fly the Saltire shout and bawl if you like but be there.

Given the level of political awareness in the statement from the kilted assistant it is a safe bet that he is challenged on Scotland’s current affairs, or just challenged, and is wearing the kilt to keep a job. Devolution has come and gone a long time ago. It was your duty to educate the poor fellow.

“I daresay a comparison could be made to the mental image much of the public has (and certainly the media’s regular portrayal made of) those who intend to vote Yes in the referendum in 2014.”

These images are perpetuated by a biased and hostile unionist MSM. Ruth Wishart has broken the mould and now perhaps the 90 minute nationalists will become life long. “Much of the public” you say, a very bold statement, and I puzzle at what forms such opinion given that you will certainly not have consulted “much of the public.”

“How many minds have wondered, or mouths spoken out loud even, ”You support independence? You? But you’re normal’……..” Well, we can’t be leaving it all to the tartan loonies, can we? And let’s be honest, there was a fair few on display streaming down the mound yesterday,”

What a load of utter tripe. People who go on marches dress up as it is a carnival fun occasion, they want to celebrate and feel happy and make their statement. To label the marchers on Saturday as you just have, indicates a certain level of inverted snobbery on your part. As if you are not normal unless you are in a family group. I wore a T shirt that said “choose freedom in 2014″ and wore tartan on my hat, I also carried a Saltire on a stick, I was not in a family group but a group who were similarly dressed. I can only imagine that your friends are all deeply conservative snobs if they would suggest that you are not normal for voting YES in 2014.

“there seems to be an irrationally deep-seated intransigence to even considering anything other than the status quo. I don’t mean genuine disagreement, which is to be very much welcomed. I mean a hard-headed ‘No!’ that carries no rhyme nor reason.”

Yes there are a group of people like that. I know them as people with vested interests in the Union. For example Scottish MPs and all their families and friends. These people have a lot to loose. Conservatives. And of course the deeply entrenched Loyalists, the sectarians and associated apparatchiks. Not for nothing has Matheson in Glasgow sidled up to the Orange Order. Then there are the intellectual snobs who seem to see them selves as superior beings who think on a higher plane to the rest of us plebs and who would poop poop at any change that rattled their misty eyed view of Scotland, their Victorian theme park. You will find them arguing that Scotland in particular the Highlands must be preserved in aspic for the likes of them to gaze fondly at every August. These desolate Highlands whose desolation is a Union dividend. However given all that, the strength of the independence message is now so strong and credible that we will win the day.

I saw one or two people who waited at the University campus coffee shop for us, and then joined the march there. I won’t name names but some famous faces. It seemed to me that they had taken a strategic decision so that if it was only one man and his dog they could just sit and snigger in to their lattes. But if it was a resounding success as it was, they would just start marching, well done to them anyway. Other people, I know are now expressing regret they never went, siting a lack of publicity as the excuse.

Get out there next year and get the tartan on and fly the saltire shout and bawl if you like but be there.

Anyway, I agree that it is the job of the Yes campaign to allay peoples’ fears. We as Scots are a fearful, unconfident bunch and are apparently prone to believing some really ludicrous scare stories.

Currency – personally I think we should start off doing what Ireland did for decades – use Sterling. It’s the sensible option, I reckon. Of course we would no longer be able to dictate UK monetary policy so it’s in Scotland’s interests, as we do now (guffaw).

EU – I’m an EU citizen living in EU territory. I can’t see why I would stop being an EU citizen if Scotland became independent. No amount of Ruth Davidson and Alastair Darling making “woo” scary ghost noises is going to get me scared about this particular issue. Having said that, the EU is nice but hardly essential to prevent an apocalypse. Norway does okay outside the EU. Who knows – perhaps the EU feels so confident at the moment that it reckons it can happily chuck out EU citizens. Seems unlikely.

I think the Yes campaign needs to find a way to sell Independence in a broad-based way that doesn’t package it up with a wish-list of radical stuff that some people want. Personally, I want independence to initially be a minimalist process that results in us having full sovereignty. It’ll be enough of an upheaval without tying it together with everything that gives the ‘activists’ the horn, including the kitchen sink. For me, the benefits of independence are sovereignty lying where I want it to be – with us.

Whilst decisions like Nato and Trident can be left to an independent parliament to decide there is a rather immediate concern over which currency we will have and whether we would be in the EU or not. Or the conditions required to be in the EU. Hiding the legal advice is awful behaviour: it would be much better in the long run to resolve this unknown even if it was bad news for the Yes campaign.

And it would be a government that would have many more powers available to it and therefore a better chance of making joined-up decisions which would have a wider and more successful impact.

That seems really obvious to me. It makes no sense at all that we have two separate governments making decisions about policy areas which are intrinsically linked in the real world. What is the advantage of having the UK Government control pensions while the Scottish Government controls other aspects of support for elderly people? What is the advantage of the Scottish Government making decisions about health and social care but not about the welfare system? What is the advantage in the Scottish Government making decisions about law and order internally but not about external defence? In what way does it make any sense for the Scottisn Government to have an enterprise policy but be unable to decide economic policy. What is the difference really? It’s all terribly random, it goes against common sense and it doesn’t produce good outcomes.

It would be far simpler to just have one national government which was responsible for most decision-making and took those decisions in a joined-up way. Not to have this rather random arrangement which is made even more ineffective by the fact that our two governments have very different ideologies and views of the future and therefore – inevitably – spend much of their time at loggerheads.

It would be far better just to have one government and that government should, as is normal in all other democratic countries, be led by the political party that won the election, not by a political party that lost it.

People who expect the Yes movement to be able to produce a fully worked out model of what an independent Scotland would look like, a bit like a TV cook producing a cake and saying here’s one I baked earlier, are destined to be disappointed because no-one can do that.

But you can’t really do that with the UK either. It’s all inherently unpredictable.