What happens ?....Scottish Independence.

[DanJ]

Oddly enough I've never considered myself as being English, Scotish, Welsh or anything else but as British.  Given the size of these islands claiming to be anything else except British seems rather parochial and narrow minded.

This may be due to having roots in Northumberland which traditionaly saw both the Scots and English as being equally suspicious, or because since the early 1950's my family's moved arround a lot and never having stayed anywhere for more than a few years I've a broader perspective than most.  Listening to the whole debate it strikes me as ironic that in an age when we can fly to Australia in a couple of days or speak directly to someone in Antartica we're so concerned with small scale differences that we're willing to spend millions on the minutae of whether a few million people should be govened from London or Edinburgh.

Maybe it's a case of "I can't cope or don't want to see the global picture so I'll just concentrate on the small differences I can see".  As Dr Johnson once remarked "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel".

[FierceKitty]

Hmmm. And he was famed for his sensitivity to what Scotland was all about.

[Leman]

Agree wholeheartedly with Dan J.

[Rob]

So let's assume the Scots gain their freedom from the oppressive English.

We currently have a two and a few bits party democracy. This oscillates between Conservative and Labour. The Conservatives generally get the country economically fit and then descend into a shambles. The Labour Party takes over and after a couple of terms we are back in an economic mess. And so-on a so forth, but whenever sleaze or corruption hits the headlines the perpetrators are carpeted and often the government changes.

With the split we will have no opposition in England and Wales to a Conservative dominated government, forever. In Scotland there will be a contest between socialist Labour and the socialist Scottish Nationalists.

I don't like politics but I think the current system forces the parties back on to the straight and narrow again and again. Without the few checks and balances this provides I do not like the prospects for either country.

Or am I completely wrong?

[Ithoriel]

Dan, millions is pocket change to nations and the idea that decisions on where the seats of power should be constitutes minutiae horrifies me.

I am still shading towards voting No but get a step closer to Yes with every pronouncement I hear from the Better Together camp who seem to me to be continuing the current trend of governments to push through policies on a wave of fear and paranoia. The Yes campaign is at least suggesting that tomorrow could be better than today, even if I don't entirely believe them!!

Rob, as a socialist through and through the idea of socialist Labour vs socialist SNP rather appeals.

We already let you share our monarchy when you so carelessly lost yours are we to let you share our Opposition too?  After all look what you did with the monarchs!

[Leman]

Funny how this thread constantly veers between the serious and the daft - bit like politics itself. In the final analysis the whole thing is a bit like the nobody knows round in QI from a couple of years ago. In the end it's a case of puff your chest out and cut yourself off from the rest of the world or take on board that the world is now a much smaller place, even more than it was 20 years ago, and the only real reason for independence is to be a a nice little tourism oddity. As for that Germano-anglo-scottish-welsh-french-portuguese-danish, tartan-wearing, posh family......

[DanJ]

Dan, millions is pocket change to nations and the idea that decisions on where the seats of power should be constitutes minutiae horrifies me.

Sorry,  obviously I expressed myself badly I only live 80 miles from Scotland, however speaking from over the border the Yes vote seem to be concentrating on what would be better for a small part of a small island.  I see only fragmentation based on parochial self interest, mostly by politicians who can't or don't want to look at the big issues so they concentate on the small and easy ones, making political capital out of easy targets like nationalism.

I also have a huge distrust for the politicians who choose to go down this route, they want to be big fish in a small pond, carving out small but lucrative pools for themselves.  I wonder just how much difference the current 'devolution' has provided, what it costs in terms of hard cash (apart from the £400,000,000 overspend on the Scotish Parliament building) and what the 'return on investment' is for the average Scot.  But the politicians won't consider these questions as it's not in the 'national interest'.

Whatever the result Scotland will still be a liberal western democracy as will England and Wales, however as has been pointed out all sides will loose out democratically but the nationalists don't care as the wider picture is not what they're interested in.  All politicians are pretty dodgy but any form of 'Nationalist' is the lowest of the lot.

And as for Dr Johnson's comment it sums up my feelings about any form of nationalism, it's context is unknown and irrelivant to his views on Scotland, which he visited at a time when the journey was expensive, difficult and physically challenging.

[Ithoriel]

There still seems to be a misconception that this is about "freedom from the oppressive English" as Rob put it.

If this were a divorce it wouldn't be about England getting drunk every Friday night, coming home and giving Scotland a good hiding. It would be because Scotland thinks that it's important to get new shoes for the kids and to sort out who owes who what for the repairs to the garden fence while England thinks we should get a new telly and that we shouldn't have anything to do with the riff-raff living next door

[Leman]

Hope the riff-raff next door doesn't refer to the Irish Republic, France, Belgium or the Netherlands. Still have to agree with Dan J. Look where nationalism got everyone in 1914.

[Techno]

I think it's a great shame, that whichever way the vote goes, almost half the electorate are going to feel well miffed !
(Assuming that it's as close a call as it's supposed to be.)
Cheers - Phil

[Leman]

Indeed! And for what?

[Ithoriel]

I think it's a great shame, that whichever way the vote goes, almost half the electorate are going to feel well miffed !
(Assuming that it's as close a call as it's supposed to be.)
Cheers - Phil

And half of those who voted in favour of the winning option won't get the future they wanted, expected or thought they were promised, I suspect, which ever way the vote goes.

[Leman]

And you must put up with the result, because that is the only way democracy works (which is what a very large part of the world either fails to understand or refuses to accept).

[FierceKitty]

Democracy works?

[Ithoriel]

From Churchill by Him­self, page 574:

"Many forms of Gov­ern­ment have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pre­tends that democ­racy is per­fect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democ­racy is the worst form of Gov­ern­ment except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time...."

[FierceKitty]

Didn't claim anything else worked either, please note. But among the causes I'd risk my life for, democracy is not to be found by the most microscopic search.

Time to try ailurocracy, perhaps.

[Hertsblue]

You've just made that up! It's total discomtransposition.

[Ithoriel]

Didn't claim anything else worked either, please note. But among the causes I'd risk my life for, democracy is not to be found by the most microscopic search.

Time to try ailurocracy, perhaps.

Ailurocracy, that gives one paws fur thought  

[fsn]

As a proud Scotsman (from Shetland, so I don't do kilts, haggis and bagpipes) who lives in England by accident of history, I note the divergence of the Scottish and Westminster governments. I also see, on my many trips to Scotland, a country where there is  a feeling of a national identity that is absent in England. Count the Saltires proudly waving all year long, and not just when there's international football on (in which case they'd never be aired).

Scotland is already achieving independence from Westminster bit by bit. Apart from foreign and defence policies, and some taxation which Mr Darling has promised to transfer, Scotland is largely self governing. I see the independence campaign as a shunning of Westminster (not England and that other place ... Walls, Wells, something like that) rather than a desire to destroy the Union.

If a fairly socialist party, like say the Labour party before that nice Mr Blair mucked it up, got elected as the Government of the UK, and re-evaluated our place in the world, I think that the  ardour for Scottish independence would be cooled. If this New New Labour scrapped Trident, wouldn't that cut one of the hairy wee legs of Alex Salmond? It's a waste of money any way as they proved in "Yes Prime Minister" thirty years ago ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX_d_vMKswE

[Hertsblue]

While France has ballistic missile submarines, so will we. Would the navy have got new aircraft carriers before the advent of the Charles de Gaulle? I think not.