The BBC's Question Time had a 'Scottish Independence' special last night. Everyone except the megalomaniacal
Alex Salmond, his SNP buddies, and a few Scottish hopefuls knows that
when the date for the Scottish independence referendum arrives Scotland will not be independent from the rest
of the UK
However, as the reality is so predictable, for a bit of fun let's imagine the following hypothetical
situation. Suppose in the Scottish referendum
4 million of the country's 5.2 million citizens turn out to vote on the
question of independence, with the result being as follows:
Yes: 2,000,001
No: 1,999,999
Because it's so desperately
close, there would be lots of panic and a desperate need for a careful,
time-consuming recount. The argument would be, there's a lot at stake, and if it's *that* close, the
time and money expended on a recount is the rational and necessary thing to do.
The closeness of the vote says
the opposite to me. If you think about
it - a time-consuming and thus costly recount might be less sensible than one
first thinks. Presumably a vote that is so close means that the Scottish
people, as a whole, thinks there's virtually nothing between the two outcomes, with
none of the two outcomes appearing to be distinguishable in terms of quality of
result. Therefore, accounting for a very generous final count margin of error
of approximately 0.001% (which is around 40 votes), it might be better in this hypothetical scenario if
everyone agreed to simply settle the matter with the toss of a coin. And if that coin toss could include the separation of Wales too, even better.
