zerne wrote:Thommo wrote:It's an omission in the sense that I said the prime minister refused to have a second Scotland referendum before Brexit, and you asked me why I said she'd refused a second referendum (full stop), which means something else by virtue of not containing part of the sentence. If the distinction is unimportant to you, that's fine, let's move on.
There was no omission and since you can clearly read what i wrote above, this is either blatant misrepresentation or outright lying.
It's neither, something that was present was left out. That's all the word means.
I don't know why you're overreacting so, but since you don't seem to be enjoying the conversation, I think we should drop it.
zerne wrote:Factcheck; there has been no response from Westminster to Holyrood's request.
If your point was to suggest that the "official email" didn't get a reply, yes that is correct. This is not what I was referring to in the quote of mine you objected to though.
Point clarified. No problems.
zerne wrote:Factcheck; Mundell did no such thing.
He gave a perfectly plain statement to the BBC on that date:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-39422747I may have been incorrect about the date of a statement in the house, but it hardly matters. That was a passing comment, and Holyrood isn't full of idiots, they know exactly what the government's position is whether or not the "official" email got an answer or not.
Unlike the article 50 notification you compare to the email has no "official" or statutory role.
zerne wrote:Why would section 30 of the Scotland Act, which delineates which powers are reserved to Westminster, have any mention of communications between the two parliaments?
This question seems to be a bit of a non sequitur. The point is that if official notification or communication was required under the clause they wanted to negotiate, that clause would mention it.
zerne wrote:It may be worth mentioning that Article 50 doesn't mention anything about letters either, what it says is that the member country must notify the EU of its intention.
Right, and in that respect of being unilateral and requiring an official notification the two are completely different.
zerne wrote:So if what you say is true, any number of tweets, soundbites and press releases should have triggered it. But in reality it was only triggered once the UK Government drafted a letter requesting the triggering of article 50 to the EU Council's President. The EU responded formally, because that's how these things actually work.
No, that doesn't follow at all.
The EU's formal response though,
was not required. And as you point out section 30 and article 50 don't work the same either.
Holyrood wasn't notifying Westminster of a referendum (they can't), they were asking for the other half of the permission required (the first half being their own) to grant them the competence to hold one.
zerne wrote:They still have not responded to Holyrood's request. It's something that awaits the new administration.
I'm assuming by this that you're trying to make the technical point that the "official" email hasn't had an "official" response yet. This is correct, but has nothing to do with the point I was making prior to your interjection.
If I'd wanted to argue about the technicality I'd have said to Byron that his plain language summary of the Scottish government's current position was not correct because it's beyond the legislative competence of Holyrood to authorise a referendum. But I don't really want to get into the technicalities of it, which is why I just answered his plain language about the point with equally plain language.
Holyrood will have to formulate a new position to accommodate the reality that the UK government has refused to have a referendum prior to Brexit. This is exactly what Nicola Sturgeon herself had said when she talked about the three week deadline for the non response.
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