Undecideds of Aberdeen struggle to make up their minds on independence

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/16/undecideds-aberdeen-scottish-independence-vote

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Biding his time beside a statue of Robert the Bruce before a job interview at Aberdeen council office, Callum Hogg is one of the Scottish referendum's remaining undecideds, or to use that especially Scottish term, switherers.

"It will probably be some time tomorrow when I make up my mind. I'll go on to Google and see if I can look it up from both sides and try to avoid any bias," says Hogg, a 20-year-old IT worker and first-time voter. "Most of my friends who are leaning towards yes – it's not about nationalism. They just see it as an opportunity to create a better society."

As the battle for Scotland's future enters its final days, the votes of switherers like Hogg could be the decider in an apparently knife-edge race. Their numbers have been difficult to pin down, with online polls putting them at around 10% of the electorate and other polls giving double that number. Some polling experts are said to believe that as many as 600,000 people will make up their minds on polling day.

Scotland's third largest city has its own distinct identity (Aberdonians speak a dialect known as Doric). The oil boom has drawn a sizeable number of non-native Scots here, and in affluent areas the pro-union signs in front windows outnumber pro-independence ones, but other areas have seen little trickle-down of wealth.

"If you go out to Banff and Macduff then you will struggle to see the influence of the oil wealth there," says Lorraine Clark, 53, naming two towns with high levels of deprivation as she sits outside Aberdeen's shining new Union Square shopping centre, home to outlets of brands ranging from Hugo Boss to Superdry.

Clark is another switherer. A transportation worker and mother to five children, some of whom have served in the armed forces, she says: "Financially it worries me a lot, and then what happens with the army. How can they split all that up?

"If I looked at it not from a selfish point of view and not worrying about my own circumstances at the moment in financial terms then I would definitely vote yes for the generations coming after us. If they answered some of those questions then I would be a yes voter, but at the moment I'm scared. I'm not sure."

Ten minutes by taxi from the town centre – a journey along dockland areas where oil installation supply ships have replaced the city's once sizable fishing fleet – there is more indecision to be found in upmarket Seafield.

"In a way it's hard to make up your mind because we have been bombarded with so much information," says Emma Douglas, a 20-year-old hotel receptionist whose husband works in the oil industry.

"We've definitely seen so much more business because of people travelling in and out due to the oil boom. I hear people saying that if we go independent then maybe there will be even more oil for Scotland, but then I'm still really not sure."

On the stretch of suburban street behind her, more than a few houses have pro-union stickers in their front windows, and at one address a union flag flutters on the front lawn. Living here is Bob Farmer, 70, not a switherer but that relatively rare creature, a Scottish Ukip supporter willing to speak publicly about why he backs the Eurosceptic party.

"I just see that 25 years down the line my grandchildren will pay the price," Farmer, a veteran of 25 years in the RAF and 15 with Thames Valley police, says of the independence vote. "It's all very well saying now, but let's look back at the last 300 years which has done us no harm. The rest of the UK bailed us out and I think we should stick to that.

"West Aberdeen is not exactly the sink estates, so there are different views all over the city. If you thought about Aberdeen on a whole though, I would believe it would be a no, really, because I think it has got wealth and there is too much of a risk to take."