YES OR NO | REFERENDUM

As someone who has lived in Scotland all my life, the Referendum has been constant background noise for many years now. I have only been eligible to vote for 2 years now, and this was one of the first chances I had to do so. 

I will say off the bat that I am generally not really that interested or invested in politics. However, despite a lot of encouragement to do so from both friends and family, I made the decision not to vote. Because of this, I became subject to every single person I met trying to persuade me to vote their way (the best way), which almost always ended in exasperation. Bizarrely, my neutrality towards the situation also made a lot of people angry, particularly a friend of mine who proceeded to shame me with the "do you know how many women died for the vote?!!" spiel. Of course, I am totally thankful that I have the right to try to influence the country I live in, something that so many people around the world are still denied, but I also think that this should be a choice rather than an obligation. I think that if I had been forced to vote, as is the case in other countries like Australia, I would not have been happy with either decision I could have made. Quite simply, I was not at all convinced by either party's proposals, and therefore didn't feel it was right to vote for something I didn't believe in. 

I think, like almost everyone ever, I have slight trust issues with politicians. On one hand, I don't feel like the UK's current politicians really have people's best interests in mind and I feel a slight contempt towards the obvious social bias parliament; the majority of politicians are still middle aged white males from upper class backgrounds, who have a reputation for being entitled, greedy and easily corrupted. However I don't feel like this would really change if Scotland became independent; I kind of got the impression it would all just be the same thing disguised in different packaging. I did think that the Yes campaign had far better and slightly more honest intentions than Better Together, but as a young person who is just starting my career I didn't think that now was the best time for such an uncertain future. I think part of me secretly wanted them to win, but I was also kind of relieved at the result and not having to worry about what comes next.

An image named "hams-that-look-like-david-cameron.jpg" which I found on google.

I think that many people were voting yes just as a kind of 'fuck you' to David Cameron, being the butter faced prawn looking man that he is, and I don't really blame them. But by the end of the campaign I was so bored of people aggressively squabbling over who could shout loudest that I was ready to hit the next person who breathed another word of it.