alt Hacker NewsRelaxed is not the word at all. Northern Ireland is a powderkeg and the UK government has known that for decades.
The Scottish referendum did not use neutral international observers, and had extremely biased coverage by state media. The BBC itself even tried to stir up forms of violent unionism. (Look up the so called "passionate Highlander", a drunken loyalist type who talked about defending the union to the death "in the name of Jesus Christ".)
Well, I'm an independence supporting Scot and I don't have any concerns about the actual running of the referendum - I do agree that the BBC coverage was biased but I think that is largely because they are "conservative" (note the small C) in the sense of having a bias towards preserving the status-quo. This was pretty clear from the Brexit referendum where I thought they favoured the status-quo there and, as a Remainer, I guess I was pretty happy with that!