More maps of Scotland
I've posted about maps of Scotland before; if you follow the different aspects of this blog you'll know I'm rather interested in maps. In June I posted the EU referendum results map. It sharply delineates Scotland. So too did maps of opinion on Europe prior to the vote.
The end of a work-horse
My cross bike is dying. The bottom bracket bearing, a twelve year old Campagnolo Centaur square taper, is failing noisily. But, as a steel bearing in an aluminium frame which has survived being ridden on the salted roads of twelve winters, it is completely seized and is unlikely ever to be successfully removed.
My cross bike is my real work-horse. I’ve ridden it in Scottish Championship cyclo-cross races, but that hasn’t been its main role. It's the bike with which I tow my trailer, and consequently the only bike which can effectively replace my car. I need it to fetch groceries, and to take my recycling to the coup. I use it to go camping and touring. I have used it, over the past three years, to commute to work through the streets of Glasgow. It's the bike I really cannot do without. It's also (obviously) an old friend, and much loved. We've been a lot of places together.
Will Scotland veto Brexit?
A Romanian friend, living and working in London, asked me today, 'is the Scottish Parliament going to veto Brexit?' This post is my answer.
Yes and no.
And so we begin again
The last — very negative — referendum is over, and it ended in the triumph of Hate over Fear. It was a referendum fought between neoliberals and xenophobes, a contest which pitted blatant racism against doomsaying. A campaign — on both sides — of the most extreme dishonesty and bad faith we have seen in my lifetime.
But from its ashes arises a new referendum.
Let's make this one positive. Let's make it about welcoming, about looking outwards to the world and talking about how Scotland can contribute to making it a better place.
On a Difference of Opinion
One of the things the Better Together campaign tried to convince us of during the independence referendum campaign was that there was no significant political difference between Scotland and the rest of the UK in general, and England in particular. That always struck me as a tendentious proposition, but it's only in the last couple of weeks that I've run the numbers and discovered quite how false it was.
YouGov's startling remain/leave map is one of the pieces of information which started me investigating; the other was the claim by a Twitter user (I've forgotten whom) that Scotland wasn't really any more left wing than England.
Now, of course, what counts as 'left wing' depends on your standpoint; the particular Twitter user with whom I discussed this believed that Labour were left wing, and that the SNP were not. The Political Compass disagrees on both points, and I'd tend to trust the Political Compass as a fairly neutral observer on this. In any case, the question is not whether one party is or is not 'left wing' in an absolute sense, but whether one position is more (or less) left wing than another.