if you ask a stupid question

The UK wide AV referendum has been pretty decisively turned down and the ineptitude of the LibDems in insisting on this piss poor alternative to FPTP as their referendum choice during the power sharing negotiations after the UK election merely amplifies their horrendous judgement. They've blown the chance for PR for the indefinite future. Tories and the Labour right will see to that ... and anyway you're back to two party politics south of the border anyway. Two dominant centre right parties - oh my... what a choice you have. Here in Scotland we are now a one party state. It's official. Labour deliberately designed our semi PR voting system to keep the SNP from ever getting an overall majority with the top up regional list as well as FPTP and it has failed. Just as Labour have failed. Their manifesto was SNP lite anyway.  We now have an SNP majority. We owe nothing to Westminster and we want Salmond to fight for our NHS, students, public services and for full youth employment while the Tories flush England plc down the pan for short term gains for their corporate chums. Scotland is naturally left of centre and has a strong social conscience - it is more Scandinavian in outlook than Anglo Saxon. It is communitarian and we already have a big society - we don't need English platitudes on that score. 
Unfortunately, the downside is that if England catches a cold or - more likely develops severe economic malnutrition we might get pneumonia or even something nastier - though at least we'll have free prescriptions.  
The independence referendum will be won or lost by the Westminster government and how much we think it is following Thatcherite dogma - or worse, and not by the SNP. We will vote against Westminster when the time comes because after 8 or 9 years of SNP in power we will know for sure whether or not we have the quality in the Scottish political class to provide good government. Not Labour, not LibDem, not Tory but a Scottish agenda for Scotland. True, the SNP do need to do a good managerial job. Too many poorly handled crises will be fatal to independence. If Labour had had the wit to be a real left Scottish party, and the LibDems had any wit, (wake up Danny Alexander) then we would have a coalition or minority government now. I hope we succeed. The arrogance of the English political class has long fed the Scottish cringe. It's about time Scots got the confidence to create another Enlightenment 200 years or so after the last one. TINA ? Let's see about that. Both Keir Hardie and Adam Smith were Scots. There's some great thinkers and some great doers here.