Unanswered Question

Tonight is YESmas eve. The snow of leaflets has almost stopped. Tomorrow is the day we all have control of our destiny. What we decide will keep it there, or not.

So a note for the undecided, the ones it would seem the Labour party are desperately calling on to rise and vote NO. Having signed on their website to ask a few referendum questions of my own, they have me on their mailing list and, boy, have they been busy. Four times today alone, have I had emails from them: from the party itself, Gordon Brown, Johann Lamont and, a few minutes ago, Ed Milliband himself. I politely declined the first three and two of my answers are posted here. Ed Milliband, I steadfastly ignored. At least I wasn't in public transfixed by a real person, looking like as duck in the crosshairs. The question I'd asked, by the way, remain unanswered.

That's been a theme, a mantra of the NO campaign. Too many unanswered questions. It cuts both ways. We've had 'answers' from NO which in themselves have been questionable, answers they've spontaneously provided to questions about currency and pensions, for example, where they said the opposite of what, when checked, was true.

NO's missing answers actually boil down to this: none of the answers YES give are ones we like. The truth is out there, as they say, on websites, social media, in the Wee Blue Book, even in the mainstream media, if people seek out what they need to know. Some don't suit the NO campaign, some do. Information is like that. You may pick and choose, build your argument. Just be honest, though, when you simply dislike or disagree with some of the answers you've been given.

In the last week, of course, there's a wholly new set of unanswered questions. These are contained in the Gordon Brown surprise package. In this case, we have no answers either. Partly because the unseemly timing hardly allows anyone to ask; partly because answers with meaningful detail have to wait until we've taken the decision for which they're crucial. The package, ratified ('rat' being the operative syllable) by the three superheroes of Westminster without a nod from either party nor electorate, is a bucket of fog.

There's the difference. Choose, if you're NO, between answers you have actually heard but may not like and obscure promises no-one might even deliver but which you want to believe in because they sit on the other side of the decision. Choose, if you're YES, between a future you aspire to or a future shrouded in misdirection, a political conjuring trick.

This is the eleventh hour, or will be when I finish this. Actually the only unanswered question is the one we answer tomorrow. Put, as Justin Curry said, our saltire in its box. It's now or never. Screw your courage to the sticking place. Hold the line.

Oh, aye, eat your cereal.