Scottish independence: polling day - as it happened

There are still four hours to go until polls close at 10pm BST, but plenty of people here in Scotland seem to want to be out, to be part of the action somehow. Here are some crowds outside the Scottish parliament building in Edinburgh:

This is a happy gang in Glasgow’s George Square:

Reader and GuardianWitness contributor Ross Vernal is in Glasgow too:

Readers in Scotland can still send over pictures, thoughts and musings to our GuardianWitness assignment mapping the mood across the country on polling day.

Are you reading this from America? *waves*

If so, welcome. And here’s a guide written especially for you from the Guardian’s New York office on the best ways to follow the referendum – voting and counting. Obviously its first recommendation is this liveblog. But have a read of it anyway, then come straight back.

Down in the City of London, shares in the pillars of the Scottish financial system have risen as investors anticipate a victory for the no campaign, the Guardian’s Graeme Wearden reports.

Lloyds Banking Group gained 1.35%, Royal Bank of Scotland rose by 0.6%, Standard Life picked up 1.5% and Aberdeen Asset Management rallied by 1.85%.

David Madden, market analyst at IG, says the moves suggest the support for the yes side is fading.

Our binary bet on the outcome of the Scottish referendum is now showing an 18% chance of a yes vote.

Traders were given a shock by the YouGov poll that put the yes campaign ahead nearly two weeks ago, but the sentiment has shifted to the no side and traders have used the Salmond shake up as an opportunity to pick up cheap banking stocks.

And as we covered a little earlier, the pound has also rallied in the currency markets.

It hit a two-year high against the euro of €1.273 this afternoon, and a two-week high against the US dollar, after a volatile couple of weeks:

Economist Sean Richards remarks:

Actually on the day of the independence vote the UK Pound is doing rather well, although of course later the ‘all bets are off’ cry from the film Snatch may be deployed.

Thousands of City analysts and traders will still be coming into the capital ultra-early tomorrow, and some will even work all night, in case the result causes turmoil in the markets.

Capital Economics’ John Higgins warns:

A no vote might have little market impact, but a shock yes could trigger a surge in volatility and flight out of UK assets – at least until some of the many uncertainties have cleared.

Esther Addley has been scooting round the Shetland islands, where the most northerly of Scotland’s voters have been turning out in record numbers.

By 1pm, according to the Shetland Island Council’s counting officer, Jan Riise, more people had already voted in the islands than turned out in the entire day of polling for the European elections last May. ‘On that statistic alone, this looks like a record turn-out for Shetland,’ he said.

Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, the council of the Western Isles based in Stornoway on Lewis, reported a similar record turnout, with 87% of postal votes returned by mid afternoon, and others expected to hand theirs into polling stations. Almost a quarter of the 23,000 electorate had requested postal votes.

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But the remoteness of the locations – every inhabited island in the Western Isles has polling stations – makes arrangements for counting the votes a logistical challenge.

Ballot boxes from Barra will travel by boat to Eriskay, where they will be driven across the causeway to South Uist and then onto North Uist. From there, votes from all four islands will travel by specially chartered plane to Stornoway, in Lewis.

There were nervous moments this morning when heavy fog delayed all scheduled flights to Stornoway. “It was looking a bit dodgy earlier, certainly,” said a spokesman, adding that the council had a boat on standby in case the chartered plane would be unable to fly. In that event, the islands’ result would be delayed from an estimated 2am to 5am, he said, stressing that he was hopeful the weather would clear in time.

Shetlands’ ballot boxes, from Unst, Yell and Whalsay, will be brought by the mainland on the islands’ scheduled ferry services, and then driven to the count in Lerwick, where the result is expected around 1.30am.

Still, there shouldn’t be any problems with the road traffic:

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More from the Guardian’s Michael White in Kirkcaldy, Gordon Brown’s home town, speaking to voters this afternoon:

Voting was notably busy yesterday, but quietly orderly, couples holding hands. Yet the tangible optimism – the “vision thing” – was all on one side. And it showed. Defying the Kirkcaldy cold in shorts and bright trainers, Patrick Lowe (64) was “a diehard yes, Labour and the Union haven’t done anything for us.” Two smartly-dressed pensioners in extrovert-bright clothes said much the same. So did weedy youths, sometimes with a vacant (“I’m Scottish, not British”) shrug. Smokers tend to yes or to not voting. “ Vote? What vote?” replied one.

It is the respectable middle class in sober dress who tend (‘It’s the currency”) to no (“ I don’t like Salmond, but Alistair Darling’s lovely”). So do Labour stalwarts of all ages for whom “solidarity” still has resonance. Lib Dems are said to be divided and the Guardian finds an old soldier in his kilt outside St Giles who is internally so. “As a patriotic Scot I’ll vote for yes, hoping no will win. So will lots of people,” he insists.

Both sides have been accused on scaremongering, rightly so in their more extremes claims. But the yes camp stands accused of something far more powerful, more uplifting and potentially disappointing: hopemongering.

More dispatches from Guardian colleagues out and about in Scotland on this momentous day. Tom Clark and Phil Maynard are filing video reports from their travels:

Earlier on, we caught up with Oxford University polling expert Steve Fisher in Glasgow, and asked him about what to look out for as the results pour in. He told us Inverclyde would be an early test of the theory that the working class is swinging behind a Yes, and that East Lothian could prove an instructive bellwether of which way Middle Scotland is swinging.

Quite a few people have opinions on the referendum. Quite a few of those have written for Comment is Free. But you can’t read them all (well, you could, but you’d miss the results). So our fine colleagues at Cif have put together this top 15 of the most popular pieces on the independence debate.

Top of the list is George Monbiot: Scots voting no to independence would be an astonishing act of self-harm.

My colleague Ewen Macaskill is pounding the streets of Glasgow today. He sends this dispatch:

If you had to choose just one place in Scotland that encapsulates the referendum debate, it is the statue of the late Donald Dewar, Scotland’s first First Minister, at the top of Buchanan Street. This has been a gathering place for Yes supporters to deliver speeches, sing and dance.

I bumped into Scottish artist and sculptor Kenny Mackay at the statue. He has a special interest in it since he made it. He thinks its popularity as a political forum is that the steps in the immediate area around it have created an amphitheatre.

I asked him how he felt about the irreverent strain among Glaswegians in placing traffic cones on Dewar’s head: ‘I feel it is disrespectful to him and to the work of art.’

In spite of being the sculptor of the great Scottish Labour leader, Mackay is a Green. He has not yet voted but is planning to: a yes vote. ‘The no campaign has been too negative,’ he said.

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The Guardian’s Mike White has had his finger on more pulses than an NHS trauma nurse, and he’s taking the temperature of voters in Kirkcaldy’s High St:

As his car swung past the bus station in Gordon Brown’s home town of Kirkcaldy yesterday a young man waved a clenched fist out of his car window and shouted “Ayeee” at no one in particular. “ I think he’s a Yesser” explained a passerby helpfully.

With Scotland voting in record numbers on the greatest existential challenge to the British state since Spitfire dogfights in 1940, not every Scot felt quite so gleefully uninhibited. Far from it. Along Kirkcaldy’s High St, struggling as so many do, No supporters heading to and from the Philip hall polling station were decidedly more reticent.

Some lowered their voices before saying “ Definitely no.” Others refused to reveal their binary choice, though their tone and body language spoke for them. “ I’m glad it’s nearly over,” said one woman,” except it won’t be.” “ I just hope common sense prevails” muttered an Englishman (“ I came here on holiday 17 years ago and fell in love with it”). He did not feel the need to spell out what he meant.

Is it fear of intimidation or reprisal, as some fervently assert? Or simply trepidation about an uncertain future if yes triumphs in the overnight count?

Thanks to Paul Owen, who’s now taking a well-earned breather before the results start to come in. This is Claire Phipps, taking over the liveblog again from Edinburgh; Richard Adams remains on board in London.