BBC Scotlandshire chooses referendum question

By Nat Hunter our political correspondent

boris-karloffBBC Scotlandshire Directors have today announced their bid to decide the wording of the question to be set by the separatist SNP Scottish Executive, if they achieve their aim of holding a referendum on separation in 2014.

Earlier this year, the UK government through the Scottish Office, undertook a UK wide consultation on the proposed referendum in a completely successful move to take control of the referendum process and thereby legally pokcle it.

The UK government consultation received the following number of responses: 

 

Total number of responses logged 2857
less identical responses from Labour Hame (thanks for trying boys) -740
less responses without email address or name  -101
less known duplicate responses (mainly from J Lamont, Glasgow)  -108
Total number of legitimate responses  1908

As impressive as this response rate is (about 1 out of every 22500 voters in the UK) the channel feels that it is insufficient to provide a mandate with which to take control of the plebicite.

On the day of the launch of the BBC Scotlandshire news website, we created a user poll to allow our visitors to give their opinion on the exact wording of the referendum question. This poll yielded the following results:

 

 

What is your preferred question for the independence referendum in 2014?

Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?

1441 votes (66%)

Do you agree that Alex Salmond should become King Eck and everyone in Scotland should be forced to speak Gaelic?

518 votes (23.7%)

Do you want Scotland to become separated from our friends and family in the UK, as it plummets towards bankruptcy, leaving the population to subsist by eating grass?

223 votes (10.2%)

Number of Voters : 2182

First Vote : Tuesday, 11 September 2012 21:18

Last Vote : Thursday, 27 September 2012 18:24

 

As can be seen from the above, the poll attracted a total of 2182 votes in just over 2 weeks, from a standing start, and with a marketing budget of just 24p and half a pack of Gaviscon tablets.

This represents 247 votes more than the Scottish Office consultation and clearly gives the mandate for referendum control to BBC Scotlandshire.

We will commence negotiations with Alex Salmond over the next few days (missing out Nicola Sturgeon and going straight for the big fish), in order to force through the question favoured by our visitors:

Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?

Leader of the Scottish Labour party (this week) Johann Lamont was unavailable for comment.

 


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