Scotland as a seperate country

[Denny Crane!]

So I read in the Times, unfortunatly I cannot find the source, that 51% of Scots believe they should seperate from England entirely and be entirely home run. Devolution is not enough. Approximatly a tenth were undecided and the rest were happy with the status quo.

Now my question is, I already know that what is suggested is entirely possible if it has enough support in the Scottish population but would it be a bad thing for the UK?

The world has seen a spate of such incidents, seperatists in countries all around the world wanting their own rule and independance and yet it is often fiercly resisted. Why? What is wrong with Basques having autonomy or at least devolution or catalans.

Peter

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

On the basis that the SNP are a bunch of tossers I can only hope that it never happens. I would also be very wary that it is 51%........

and would it be bad for UK? Probably, it'd certainly be a total logistical nightmare to carry out.

[Lavastein]

i can not see Scotland being able to run itself. One must consider what is it able to sell in order to have an income. How will it defend itself? What about those who do not want to seperate? will they then move out of scotland? the areas that are owned by the British companies? it will never happen. besides, who did these people ask? How many did they ask? One must consider all plausible explanations

[VALIS]

hmm,i guess i could see independence as a good thing,but the SNP are not the people who i want to see,do it.
scotland would collapse under the high tax, the vast amount of benefits it pays out and the high cost of public/government services.

if scotland was managed well (like ireland) then i could see many positives.Under the SNP i dont think that would happen.

[Tom Paine]

I don't entirely trust that statistic on the basis of the SNP not being even in the Coalition currently governing Scotland, let alone actually outright running it...

[VALIS]

I don't entirely trust that statistic on the basis of the SNP not being even in the Coalition currently governing Scotland, let alone actually outright running it...

but thats because labour didnt want the SNP to be part of the coalition.
since labour have the most seats they did a deal with the lib dems to form a coalition with each other so they could overrule and beat the other parties in votes.

the SNP and conservatives never agree with each other and the SSP dont agree with anyone but themselves and the greens dont matter,so labour and the lib dems normally win my ganging up on the other parties.

or thats the theory at least,mostly nothing gets done,because hardly any of them can agree with each other on anything.

[Manji]

The world has seen a spate of such incidents, seperatists in countries all around the world wanting their own rule and independance and yet it is often fiercly resisted. Why? What is wrong with Basques having autonomy or at least devolution or catalans.

Peter

I guess there is nothing wrong, more, I believe that every single "nation" should be independent, even if integrated into a federated "state"; and this is what many Basques and Catalans believe in, that even if they are independent nations they should be unified under the Spanish state. Others disagree and want full independence which, in my opinion, would be much worse than spanish rule because their economies are deeply connected and self dependent. More, I'm a "iberian unionist", I believe the peninsula should be composed of free nations unified under a Iberian Union because that is the most logical solution: we share cultural and ethnical ties, why shouldn't we be united but still unique in our ways?
The same, I reckon, happens with the feeling of being "British"; you can be Welsh, Cornish, Scottish, whatever, but you are also "British", one does not exclude the other.

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

theres a very good chance they'll be a major player in the next one, Labour is doing really, really badly in scotland at the moment.

[Lavastein]

can someone please explain why scotland has a low labor problem?

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

So Tac, are they losing their votes to the SNP or major GB-wide players (that is, Lib-Dems and Cons)?

mainly to SNP unfortunately. The coalition isn't seen very positively at the moment.

and Scotland in all honesty can't afford for us to be; Scotland gets more money from Westminster than it can give.

um, no they don't, that's an old wives tale. The oil revenues don;t get counted into any calculations about money going either way.

Basically, the figures can be made to show positive or negative flows in either direction (I have a friend who is a government statistician and she lectured me on the stupidity of it all one drunken night :tooth: )

can someone please explain why scotland has a low labor problem?

it doesn't, Labour is the ruling political party.

[Lavastein]

you said it was doing badly though tac. i was curious as to why it was. But others seem to have answered the question i believe.

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

you said it was doing badly though tac. i was curious as to why it was. But others seem to have answered the question i believe.

oh, sorry, misunderstood....

Basically, Labour is in trouble on a UK level because nobody trusts Tony Blair (the prime Minister) after his marvelous decision to invade Iraq.

Also, the Labour coalition in Scotland hasn't been hugely brilliant.

Add the two together and people are moving to the SNP

[Tom Paine]

So Tac, are they losing their votes to the SNP or major GB-wide players (that is, Lib-Dems and Cons)?

[Tom Paine]

The problem of PR systems, yes... the Lib-Lab coalition, however, is the biggest 2 parties in Scotland, if memory serves...

[VALIS]

The problem of PR systems, yes... the Lib-Lab coalition, however, is the biggest 2 parties in Scotland, if memory serves...

thats true.

if the labour people and lib dem people agreed with each other on every issue things would probably be done more quickly (or done at all).Just like westminster there are back benchers who go against the party line and 'rebel' and since neither labour or the lib dems have such a large majority like labour do in westminister,the backbenchers votes count for a whole lot more and influence matters more greatly,and just because the two parties have a formal coalition,doesnt mean they agree with each other in every case(or any case )

a very very maddening system.i hate bureaucracy

[Denny Crane!]

Just a note the survey was independant not done by the SNP although of course they had plenty to say on the subject.

We are not talking setting border controls here you realise it would be surely a financial and legislative split and not much else surely?

(frantically looking for source short of copying it from the paper which I still have somewhere)

Peter

[Tom Paine]

The problem is that legislatively everything but foreign and defence policy, pretty much, is already divorced (we're very much Federalised in that way); economically we aren't, and Scotland in all honesty can't afford for us to be; Scotland gets more money from Westminster than it can give.

[Denny Crane!]

I have heard different, that money that should be spent up north never quite reaches it. Although it would be interesting if we were in fact subsidising Scotland.

Manji: I guess to a certain extent under the EU what you say is happening already with a similar scenario happening on a smaller scale in countries across Europe. I can think of three examples of the top of my head; Bosnia and the surrounding regions which I believe seperated entirely, the Iberian peninsula where I believe devolution of some form is being contemplated for catalonia and in Britain where devolution has occurred already.

Peter

[carl-the-conqueror]

i dont think scotland will seperate, or if it does it will be breif, currently alot of english/welsh/irish money goes into it, and the open borders are much nicer.

many people livig in scotland arent scottish, and many in england & wales are, so i dont think people will be amused at seperation (with citezenship and all that).

[VALIS]

i hate alex salmond though,that guy is full of **** ('scuse my french)

"the english are stealing our oil,our oil.........ummm.....FREEDOM!"