EDINBURGH: Scotland voted yesterday in an epic independence referendum that could break up the centuries-old United Kingdom and create Europe’s newest state since the collapse of Yugoslavia.
Queues snaked outside polling stations and voters — some wearing traditional kilts and tartan hats — spoke emotionally about the momentous choice they were faced with. “I felt different today than in most of the previous votes. I might be making a difference and my vote counts,” said 23-year-old Aidan Ford after casting his vote in Glasgow.
The campaign has fired up many Scots who have previously taken little interest in politics and has revolved around questions of national identity that are rarely discussed in Britain.
The question for voters at Scotland’s more than 5,000 polling stations is “Should Scotland be an independent country?” and they are asked to mark either “Yes” or “No”. The result is expected in the early hours today.
Some 97 percent of eligible Scots — nearly 4.3 million people — have registered to vote, underscoring the passions that the historic decision has ignited across the nation. Election officials expect turnout as high as 80 percent.
After months when it looked like the independence camp could not win, a surge in support in the final two weeks has left pollsters warning the outcome is too close to call. One of Scotland’s most famous sportsmen, tennis star Andy Murray, appeared to lend his support to separation in a last-minute tweet accusing the “No” campaign of negativity.
“Let’s do this!” wrote Murray, who no longer lives in Scotland, echoing a slogan raised by pro-independence First Minister Alex Salmond in a final fiery campaign speech. “We can take our future into our own hands,” Salmond saud after casting the ballot he has spent a political lifetime campaigning for in the farming village of Strichen in northeast Scotland where he is the local lawmaker.
British Prime Minister David Cameron has pleaded with Scots to vote in favour of keeping “our home” and has warned the break-up would be a “painful divorce” full of economic risks.
Many people in the rest of the United Kingdom are concerned about the prospect of Scottish independence, which would sever a deep bond and cut the UK’s surface area by a third.
A “Yes” vote would not mean independence overnight but would trigger complex talks on how to separate two intertwined economies and eventually end a union dating back to 1707.
The SNP has said it hopes for full independence by 2016 if it wins — a result that could boost could separatists worldwide. Several breakaway movements sent representatives to Scotland to witness the election, including from Flanders in Belgium, Quebec in Canada and Catalonia in Spain.
“Scots, please, vote yes, for yourselves, but also for us,” Daniel Turp from the Parti Quebecois said at a press conference in Edinburgh where 29 European separatist movements also signed a declaration calling for self-determination.
French President Francois Hollande weighed into the debate saying yesterday at a news conference that Europe was under threat from “selfishness, populism and separatism”. “Who can say what the result... will be of this referendum, which could decide the future of the United Kingdom but also of Europe?” he said at a news conference in Paris.
A number of Britain’s allies have also urged the Scots to vote to remain in the United Kingdom. “I hope it remains strong, robust and united,” US President Barack Obama said in a tweet, while Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott told the Daily Telegraph he did not want a “Disunited Kingdom”. Financial markets have been volatile for days on uncertainty over the outcome, although the pound rose against the euro and the dollar on investor expectations of a “No” victory.
Cameron has promised to grant Scotland sweeping new powers over areas like tax and welfare in the event of a “No” vote — something the SNP dismissed as a last-minute bribe.
Best-selling Harry Potter author J K Rowling, who is English but lives in Edinburgh, echoed that sentiment with a tweet: “Whatever happens, I hope we’re all friends by Saturday”.
AFP
London: As the Scottish referendum got under way, there are plenty of ways to celebrate the country’s contribution to the present day world, The Independent reported. Some of these are:
Adam Smith: One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is best known for two classic works: “The Theory of Moral Sentiments”, and “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”. The Scottish moral philosopher and pioneer of political economy also studied at the Universities of Glasgow and Oxford.
Chicken Tikka Masala: Chef Ali Ahmed Aslam, based in Scotland’s capital Glasgow, claims to have created Britain’s favourite dish, the chicken tikka masala. The proprietor of Shish Mahal restaurant was experimenting with condensed tomato soup, and threw in spices for sauce. And culinary history was made, The Independent reported.
Chloroform: Scottish doctor Sir James Y Simpson pioneered chloroform in 1847. He went on to use it as an anaesthetic to ease the pain of childbirth, leading to its acceptance in modern medicine.
Colour photography: Those Kodak moments were only possible thanks to 19th-century Scottish scientist James Maxwell, who invented the “three-colour method”. His theory, based on mixing red, green and blue colours of light, led him to present the world’s first colour photograph in 1861.
Dolly the Sheep: The world’s first cloned mammal was created in 1996 by a team of experts at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh. Dolly survived for six years, before dying from a lung disease. The world’s most famous sheep is now on display at the National Museum of Scotland.
Driving on the left: It was Scotland that pioneered driving on the “wrong” side of the road. Driving on the left entered Scottish law in 1772, more than 60 years before England and Wales adopted it in 1835.
Golf: Scotland is the birthplace of golf. But in 1457, King James II banned it as an unwelcome distraction from learning archery. The Old Course in St Andrews in Fife county dates to the 16th century.
Hypnotism: Scotland-born surgeon James Braid was the first to experiment with hypnotism, using candles to get people into a trance-like state.
James Watt: An idea developed by Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer James Watt led to the invention of the steam engine that sparked the industrial revolution in the world. He also developed a way of making steam engines efficient, to speed up trains along.
Penicillin: Sir Alexander Fleming was a Scottish biologist, pharmacologist and botanist. His best-known discoveries are the enzyme lysozyme in 1923 and the antibiotic substance penicillin from the mould Penicillium notatum in 1928, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1945 with Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain.
Porridge: Parritch, as it is correctly known, has been described as the “backbone of many a sturdy Scotsman”. Eaten for breakfast and left to harden into slabs for consumption later, it was a symbol of a life led simply.
Radar: Sir Robert Alexander Watson-Watt was a pioneer and significant contributor to the development of radar. Developed in secrecy during the Second World War, the object-detection system uses radio waves to determine the location and speed of an object.
Uncle Sam: The term Uncle Sam is reputedly derived from Samuel Wilson, a meat packer from New York, who supplied rations for the soldiers. Wilson’s parents originally came from the Scottish town Greenock.
Vacuum flask: The vacuum flask was designed and invented by Scottish physicist and chemist Sir James Dewar as a result of his research in the field of cryogenics and is sometimes called a Dewar flask in his honour. He made the invention in 1892 but failed to get a patent and so did not profit from his ingenuity.
Bicycles: A pedal cycle based on a hobby horse was invented by blacksmith Kirkpatrick Macmillan. He would “cycle” the rough roads in Dumfriesshire in southern Scotland, but never tried to profit from his invention.
Microwave: Ready-meals would have been a distant dream if the magnetron had not been developed by Scotland’s Sir Robert Watson-Watt.
McDonald’s: Descended from a Scots-Irish family, brothers Dick and Mac McDonald changed the way the world ate after they opened the first branch of McDonald’s in California in 1938.
IANS
