In 2014, Scotland held an Independence Referendum on whether or not to braek away from the UK.
The “No” side won, with 2,001,926 (55.3%) voting against independence and 1,617,989 (44.7%) voting in favour. The turnout of 84.6% was the highest recorded for an election or referendum in the United Kingdom since the introduction of universal suffrage.
However, Scotland is not happy with the Brexit vote, and many Scots confident they can win independence referendum next year on account os the hard Brexit.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has threatened to call another independence referendum since Britain’s decision to leave the EU, saying the House of Commons “would be making a very big mistake” if they thought she was “in any way bluffing”.
But despite polls which suggest Scots would vote to stay in the UK after the yes camp lost by a decisive 10 point margin in 2014, pro-independence insiders have claimed momentum is on their side as Theresa May pushes to sever ties with the EU bloc.
Charles Grant, a Scottish Government adviser said: ”I believe the Scottish Government is thinking very, very seriously about going for an independence referendum next year.
Earlier this month a poll indicated 49 per cent of Scots were behind splitting from the United Kingdom – a growth of 4 per cent on the month before when the Prime Minister was yet to put her cards on the table when it came to EU talks.
But while the British Government has said there is no need to push for another referendum, Holyrood may still drive Scotland to the ballot box yet again.
A spokesman for the Scottish Government said: “We have made it very clear that an independence referendum is very much an option on the table if it becomes clear that it is the best or only way to protect Scotland’s vital national interests.”
The 2014 Scottish independence referendum was agreed after Westminster granted temporary powers to the Scottish Parliament to hold a vote.
The SNP are two votes short of a majority in the Holyrood Parliament, although the Greens have promised to back a bid for a second independence referendum should Ms. Sturgeon’s party propose a bill.
It is likely a similar arrangement would have to be reached between Edinburgh and London for a second referendum to be held – although Ms. Sturgeon could call for the Scottish Parliament to authorize a non-binding referendum without consulting the UK Government.
It’s very difficult to predict what might happen on a second vote, but we can say that had Scotland voted to leave in 2014, Brexit would have won by a far bigger margin.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
…keep voting till they get it right, Scotland obviously has picked up a trick or two from somewhere.
Scotland must pay us GBP60 billion to cover the cost of bailing out RBS… and another EUR20 billion to cover Scotland’s share of the EUR60 billion the Brits are never going to pay Brussels.
BP still owns the oil/gas fields … which are located in UK waters controlled by the UK navy. The Scots have… a few rubber ducky’s and some sheep.
Last, Scotland owes the UK billions in reimbursements for all the leaky roof repairs on Balmoral Castle, and then they have to buy Balmoral Castle and the grounds around it.
And by the time the Scots/UK finish arguing about that.. it will be time for yet another independence referendum by whichever group loses this round.
With France, Italy, Netherlands, Germany, Greece, etc all talking about leaving the EU… will the EU still be around by the time the Scots figure this out?
Not if you know the accounting they don’t
Leran to look left on a balance sheet that’s where the assets are.
http://www.3spoken.co.uk/2014/03/scottish-independence-myths-national.html
That is national debt, agreed.
What about it?
I see 400+ years of confusing ownership titles that will be tied up in courts for decades at least. I see the conquests of a war that happened 700+ years ago unifying the island.
Northern Ireland have been fighting a civil war for almost a century over events that occurred more recently — that is “simple” compared to breaking off Scotland.
And by the time anyone figures anything out, the EU will have self-destructed anyway!
Huh? This is accounting mumbo-jumbo nonsense. The assets of a country are its natural resources, its land and its people (i.e. taxpayers). If Scotland were to break away from the UK, Scotalnd would get to keep its natural resources, its land and its people. The liabilities are either financial or contingent (e.g., future benefits). The financial debts should be divided through some rational formula, while each side keeps its own contingent liabilities, i.e. future benefit payments.
Only UK will go, others won’t. Watch.
EU is for the long haul after Brexit, more countries will join – there is a queue.
Who pays for what will be interesting though as Ireland and others will receive zero cash or have to pay where they were previously receivers of cash. That is when there will be an awakening.
Especially as Poland, Slovakia etc get the factories and jobs as more there begin to be fluent English speakers.
Ireland will have its tax controlled too.
Now Poland and Hungary are openly challenging the EU’s unelected bureaucracy… the edicts from Brussels are now officially “optional” in Poland and Hungary. What will Brussels do about it? Send in the same armies that couldn’t handle Bosnia? Or will they drive Poland and Hungary into Russia’s arms?
Italy and France are going to leave because they have to, not necessarily because they want to. The minute Brussels stops sending bailout money, Greece will leave too.
England might be the only country to “officially” leave — the others won’t have to quit because the EU won’t exist
Balmoral Estate has nothing to do with the Crown. It is the private property of the Windsor family. So she, and her descendants, can still holiday there as private citizens; even if Scotland became a fully-fledged bona fide republic. The Crown Estates are a separate issue and would have to be subject to a second referendum; which could potentially fracture Scotland on sectarian lines. Even Sturgeon isn’t crazy enough to unleash that genie from the bottle.
Scotland can’t leave the UK because they would never be given EU membership. Their debt to GDP ratio would make a drunken sailor blush and that is current debt levels not post reconstruction.
This is just another bit of political posturing by Sturgeon and her SNP cohorts. She is fooling no one.
Unfortunately the opportunistic individual can cause damage.
So, basically, Scotland has to stick with whoever is willing to fund the welfare payments needed by out of work Scotsmen?
Got it.
Englishmen living in Scotland and recent immigrants were allowed to vote in 2014, and they defeated independence. Maybe not next time…
There is an expectation more will vote for independence as they are more pro-EU than the rest of the country and will be dragged out of the EU by the English side of the border.
The fishing community in Scotland may be none too pleased and some of the financial sector too. Access to EU is one thing, taxes under Sturgeon and EU regulation and future FTT another along with limited fishing rights.
Perhaps a net beneficiary might be northern England, Newcastle etc.
There are unintended consequences galore from Brexit and Scots independence including a weakened NATO. How will Scotland afford 2% of GDP contribution or handle the important sector to Iceland through which Russian subs go?
NATO is finished.
So what! Scottish living south of the border were not allowed to vote. All 700,000 of them. SNP tactics at their finest.
A bunch of progressive infants demanding free stuff from an unelected bunch of drunks.
Half the population will demand another referendum no matter how this next clown show turns out.
Should be great.
Very interesting development.
Insightful comment…thanks for sharing.
Then an independent Scotland could do is stop issuing debt altogether and use our ways and means account instead.
The Ways and Means Account is just an infinite overdraft with the Central Bank, and it grows over time to balance the net-savings of the non-government sector just as the Gilt stock does now.
Scotland’s Treasury simply doesn’t issue any Gilts any more. Any funding of private pensions in payment should be done by offering annuities at National Savings, which would also have the neat side effect of ‘confiscating’ net savings and making the deficit go down.
It’s irrelevant what interest BoS charges on the ‘Ways and Means’ account since any profit the BoS makes from it goes back to the treasury anyway. So it can 50% if that gives the necessary level of satisfaction to mainstream economists and the voters.
What you have is a standard intra-group loan account between a principal entity (Treasury) and its wholly-owned subsidiary. Normally those sort of loans are interest free for the fairly obvious reason that interest charging is utterly pointless, and they are perpetual for the same reason. Rolling over is totally pointless.
Any term money can then be issued to the commercial banks directly by the Bank of Scotland – up to three month Scottish bills.
When you make ridiculous claims about Scotland printing currency as though they are Greece, you realize you are just proving that Scotland by itself isn’t viable
Very viable indeed if we create our own central bank and float our own curreny.
Leaving the £ to use the Euro would be a disaster. We would be replacing one currency slave for another but with the Euro without fiscal transfers.
You need to recognise the difference between a sovereign currency with a floating exchange rate and not sovereign with a fixed exchange rate.
The UK does the tax collection across the UK. Scotland is nothing more than a glorified county council. If you did the accounts for North Yorks County Council you would find it too has a ‘deficit’ that is filled by the block grant and whatever ‘borrowing’ HM Treasury permits.
Here’s the gory details: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/479717/statement_of_funding_2015_print.pdf
So the leakage out of the arbitrary line of the Scottish border within the Sterling currency zone is to anywhere else in the world (including the rest of the UK) – and the rest of the UK saves a lot of Sterling. That leakage, plus any net savings within Scotland, is what causes the Scottish government sector deficit.
Ultimately in the same way that Greece needs to tax German savers, Scotland needs to tax UK savers. To have the power to do that you need UK savers saving in Scotland’s currency which the Scottish government can control and if need be tax. Otherwise Scotland will run out of money as it all drains to the rest of the UK.
Foreigners save your currency if they want to sell you more things than they want to buy from you. The floating rate would make sure that export+foreign savings = imports in terms of the Scottish currency.
You can tax it because it is the Scottish currency, and therefore to transfer it to anywhere where it is anything other than inert it would have to go through banks that are licensed by the Scottish authorities to deal in that currency. They will do as they are told if they want to retain their licence.
Oil is a hug red herring. An enormous canard. It becomes important because although all the dealings are essentially in US dollars and most of the balance sheet is in US dollars, when it is reported in the national accounts it is declared in the reporting currency – which is the Scottish currency. So it’s an accounting trick mostly to make the figures look ‘good’ superficially. The actual Scottish effect is just the fraction of the oil income that has to be physically exchanged for the Scottish currency – to pay staff, suppliers and of course the licence fee and other taxation for the resource.
Spending only comes back if you have your own currency. If you use somebody else’s then it leaks into a different banking system. Greece spending ends up under the control of the Bundesbank. Similarly Scottish spending ends up under the control of the Bank of England, which is owned and directed by the UK government. As long as that arrangement stays in place, Scotland is owned and directed by the UK government – like any other county council.
That is the key issue with fixed exchange rates. You end up with control of the money under some other entity which you have to follow the directions of.
If Scotland became independent then what happens depends upon whether it floats its own currency or not. That is the only way to ensure that Scottish money doesn’t leak anywhere. What the size of the government deficit is will still depend upon how many people want to net save in that currency.
hahaha hohoho
create our own central bank?!
backed by what?!
Nothing we’ve left the gold standard and that’s the whole point.
I’ll follow with interest the first go-round for any euro nation that brings a referendum to exit the EU to a vote.
But I don’t do replays.
Playing catch-up when you’re 400,000 votes shy in a total vote count of 2.6 million is no easy task.
Wake me up when the final count is tallied.
Which “final” vote?
Supposedly they had a decisive final vote a couple years ago
My English cousin who voted for Brexit doesn’t like the idea of Scots voting for independence. However, trying to prevent a vote or making threats is counterproductive. Invite them to do it. Both the euro and the EU may be dead or on life support by the time a vote can take place.
Scotland doesn’t have its own currency, as the UK does for Brexit, so it would be more difficult for them to go it alone and wait to join the euro. California is thinking about independence but it doesn’t have enough water for 30-40 million people (except for this year).
less than 15% of California’s water comes from outside the state. the water question is a red herring.
The technical case for CALexit 2018 is compelling .
Federal Income Tax is 39%
California Income Tax is 10%
can hillary be president?
On the liberal’s version of a map, where do you think the Colorado river starts?
All those farms operated by illegal immigrants get their irrigation water from …. the Colorado River. Los Angeles gets most of its water from… the Colorado River.
And most of the electricity the liberal “enviro-terrorists” use to light up and A/C their McMansions comes from Canada, Washington state and Oregon… you didn’t learn anything after Enron?
Sometimes I wonder if liberal Californians have any clue which end is up.
Los Angeles gets none of its water from the Colorado River. LA gets its water from local watersheds, and from the Eastern Sierra snowpack that flows into the Owens Valley.
California only uses Colorado River water for agriculture in the Imperial Valley (around the Salton Sea area) and a smattering of smaller localities in the southeast of the state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California#/media/File:Water_in_California_new.png
“…less than 15% of California’s water comes from outside the state.”
Fifteen percent is quite a lot. Water is demand-inelastic. If California had a free market in water (which virtually no political unit does), it could probably make do. But the state is full of government-do-everything voters and politicians. Rather than allow water to be collected, processed and distributed by the free market, its solution to water ‘shortages’ will always be ‘conserve’.
If the millions of illegals were sent home, water usage would be reduced.
Afaik, there are 0 CA govt officials who considered this option during the drought.
Every last thing our politicos do is affected by their religious/moral belief system. Not a thing they do is motivated by logic or regard for the common good of the citizens.
The Feds own 45% of the land in California.
So is California going to buy that land from the Feds when it exits? lol.
The liberals would turn California into a 3rd world nation within 5 years of gaining independence.
CalExit is a conservative’s wet dream. But it will never happen. It’s the equivalent of little children holding their breath until they turn blue.
What is unclear is the form of a new “Federal” UK arrangement going forward to finish the work of devolution after Brexit. Care is needed in case the Scots vote for independence only to find they would have got what they wanted by staying but now lumbered with EU regulations and possibly the Euro.
A vote post leaving EU makes more sense than during the negotiations as Scots won’t know the form of the EU relationship until then.
This time various in Europe are also manipulating to help “punish” the UK by working for splitting the country and I also see this as Sturgeon using uncertainty to her advantage. Especially if she suspects a full Federal UK arrangement would spike her guns as Scots would be OK with that.
I was for Scottish independence, but it would have been a disaster. Might work this time but no use of Sterling. A new Scottish pound or the Euro needed.
Powers in Europe are also involved in this, expect some moves on NI too.
they’re talking about restoring borders in Ireland when the north leaves as part of UK so logically there will be a scottish border too. Time to dust off 2000 YO hadrians wall. How long will the Trump wall last?
how on earth will we get a new Scottish pound?! who / what will back it?
who will pay the 15 BILLION budget deficit?
proof of socialist delusion:
Scotland’s £15 billion deficit with plans to borrow even more:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/24/scottish-finances-worsen-fall-oil-revenues-15bn-deficit
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/11/snp-borrow-max-using-scotlands-new-powers/
the idea of a Scottish central bank is truly a joke(!)
Yet again you show that you don’t know the difference between a budget defict within a fixed exhcnage rate regime that gave up their currency.
And a floating sovereign one.
I suggest you look at the accounting between HM Treasury and the Bank Of England.
Leran to look left on a balnce sheet that’s where all the assets are.
If they don’t vote against independence what will Sturgeon do?
ANOTHER vote?
What if they do vote to go and it harms Scotland in the Euro/EU, will she take responsibility? Greece of the North perhaps.
It might work for Scotland overall but it is a One Party State with weak political balance. Brexit is risky, Scottish Independence is even more so especially with such Left wing control.
Also, if the UK is hit with €60Bn divorce bill, Scotland will have to pay it’s % or the bill be reduced if Scotland still in the EU?? They will also have to pick up RBS, a disastrous episode.
She’s probably thinking to pick up Banks from London if they transfer to Edinburgh if Scotland is in the EU as well as FDI to use Scotland as a gateway to Europe.
The thing is all the EU is competing to get financial services out of London and Eastern Europe is the hottest target for FDI – low wage, low barriers to new factory build. Scotland will find itself up against extremely stiff competition except in fishing (EU controls it anyway), tourism and oil/gas. It has a relatively strong financial centre but some will move, have no doubt, as she is thought of as high tax.
It will have to be a net recipient of EU funds too?
Also, the UK has relatively large demand for goods that will help encourage some on-shoring post Brexit. Most is in England. Scotland won’t get those jobs but will get free movement to/from Europe. How will that play out on Scottish population/employment – fewer job potentials, exodus of youth?
It’s another complicated issue. Scots will need work visas in UK !!
Only Idiots would pay 60 Bio bill
This is a test of the PM – these ridiculous demands from the butch Sturgeon. UK’s PM should say “Does this ridiculous person think that the Union would be up for vote on a regular basis? At the very most frequent, such a question should be put once a generation – that means 2041 at the earliest. Better still to honor the historical Union by waiting a full century, until 2116.
Games people play.
There are dark forces at work here involving the EU.
NET AVERAGE APPROX PER HEAD
Scots pay £64 each to EU
English pay £140 each to EU
Scots will need visas to work in England and I suspect they will find themselves walking away from a very useful (to them) Federal UK Settlement post Brexit. It could be a case of buyers remorse, just as Brexit might ultimately be. No one can say for sure.
Scots pay £64 net as part of the larger UK net contribution. Scotland within the UK is a net beneficiary of largesse from England. Outside the UK, Scotland would be a beggar nation hoping to live off sops from the EU, but as the Telegraph article points out, most of Scotland’s EU benefits in years past have started going to poorer EU member states in the east.
If the Dwarf of the North gets her way, the first thing May will need to do is rebuild Hadrian’s wall
Depends how you account for Oil revenue but therein lies a risk as Scotland would be whiplashed by oil price gyrations.
They are a net recipient of funds per head from the UK.
It may just be the turns in history and nothing can be done to stop a dissolution of the UK but the consequences cant be easily predicted and may be much wider than people outside expect. Very much wider.
For sure, we all need to be careful what we wish for.
its BP’s oil, not UK or Scotland
The NHS will shut down completely without ongoing oil royalties…. so England will go to war with Argentina over oil rights, and Scotland too.
Foreigners save your currency if they want to sell you more things than they want to buy from you. The floating rate would make sure that export+foreign savings = imports in terms of the Scottish currency.
You can tax it because it is the Scottish currency, and therefore to transfer it to anywhere where it is anything other than inert it would have to go through banks that are licensed by the Scottish authorities to deal in that currency. They will do as they are told if they want to retain their licence.
Oil is a hug red herring. An enormous canard. It becomes important because although all the dealings are essentially in US dollars and most of the balance sheet is in US dollars, when it is reported in the national accounts it is declared in the reporting currency – which is the Scottish currency. So it’s an accounting trick mostly to make the figures look ‘good’ superficially. The actual Scottish effect is just the fraction of the oil income that has to be physically exchanged for the Scottish currency – to pay staff, suppliers and of course the licence fee and other taxation for the resource.
Spending only comes back if you have your own currency. If you use somebody else’s then it leaks into a different banking system. Greece spending ends up under the control of the Bundesbank. Similarly Scottish spending ends up under the control of the Bank of England, which is owned and directed by the UK government. As long as that arrangement stays in place, Scotland is owned and directed by the UK government – like any other county council.
That is the key issue with fixed exchange rates. You end up with control of the money under some other entity which you have to follow the directions of.
If Scotland became independent then what happens depends upon whether it floats its own currency or not. That is the only way to ensure that Scottish money doesn’t leak anywhere.
What the size of the government deficit is will still depend upon how many people want to net save in that currency.
Hi Mish,
Both you and Sturgeon miss an important point regarding Scotland – they are not a named member of the EU.
Therefore if Scotland stay in UK they leave EU, if they leave UK they leave EU.
Sturgeon fails to make this point clear to her electorate in order to desperately deflect attention from the dire way in which the SNP run Scotland (things like the health services etc). You should think of her and this talk of another referendum as a ‘hurricane of irrelevance’.
The EU will not make allowances for regions like this – for example Spain (with veto powers) will never allow Scotland to set a precedent for Catalonia’s potential independence.
Best regards,
It wouldn’t surprise me if they did make allowance. The EU are capable of all sorts.
Covering up and deflecting blame for its errors and incompetence in government is now an important part of Scottish Nationalist Party activity. That explains in good part why it militates for a second referendum but it must be doubted that it really wants one for to lose the last might be regarded as a misfortune, to lose another would look like carelessness. Scots are known as canny people and know on which side their bread is buttered. All well and good allowing the SNP government to whinge and demand more from Westminster, but foolish to be cast adrift in a hostile world with oil prices well-below their peak. In short, the SNP is full of wind and should just be laughed at.
They might be looking at the expected Rockall oil reserves. What they might not understand is that in time natural resources inside an EU country could be counted as shared resources.
All forms of potential national advantage will be slyly commadeered to the benefit of the entire project. It will be handed over via a Scottish contribution to the EU budget related to oil income.
Ireland has yet to feel the heat as its tax is seen as an unfair advantage. It will be forced to increase taxes and others will decrease theirs. The field will be harmonized/levelled.
Harmonization might be a great idea but it can also suppress competitive spirits.
Crunch time is coming.
A country decides to go all in for an EU future or it decides to be all out.
Scotland is on the threshold of that decision wrapped up in an independance vote.
If all in then join the Euro but being aware that one step on that path and the path disappears behind you. No way back. Greece, Italy etc.
Sterling will not be an option on independance so change will be needed in any case.
Voting for independance they could find themselves less indepedant than before.
Careful what we wish for.
As an english boomer I have no issues with Scottish
people but if they choose independence there will be
a groundswell of opinion along the lines of, take your
considerable share of the RBS and other debts so that
we can get on with rebuilding Hadrians wall. Northern
Ireland next?
Probably yes and a rise in English(ness) or English nationalism would be very detrimental to Scotland and Scots but it is likely. The employment issue could be a big one as Visas will be needed if the EU regulations currently in the works are applied.
No way should England allow immigrants to Scotland from the EU across the borer without the necessary paperwork and job.
I can see NATO being finished as why should the English pay the Scottish contribution and I can’t imagine Scotland paying it. Everyone else in the EU will have to cough up not just to get to their 2% but to compensate in falls due to GDP decreases across England and Scotland too and USA pulling back covering Europe.
The EU will love the fishing rights and future oil though.
It could go either way for England, good or bad change.
I’ve been hearing the the fishing rights are going to be kept by the EU and that the UK has given up on getting them back. I’d love to see me be wrong.
Considered a shared resource but territorial waters should revert to UK unless agreed otherwise. If they revert to UK more money will be spent on inspection and patrol vessels to police the area. CFP (common fisheries policy) then up in smoke if that happens.
A side thought – if the UK breaks up Labour are finished in England.
Anyone pro-English would win and that is not Labour under Corbyn or any other potential leader.
Something peculiarly entertaining about independence from whom you are physically connected to on an island, in order to remain with an external group with whom you wish to share a currency with.
I like how Scotland is going to fight Global Warming AND fund its welfare state with North Sea oil.
Wait for the study showing that CO2 and pollution produced from oil that is used for Social Justice doesnt warm the planet as much as CO2 from oil that is burned for profit.
Guaranteed that Jump The Shark study will happen
How inglorious is anything to do with politics and lobbyism.
Fighting imaginary global warming and funding a welfare state off oil royalties is how the fantasy known as Canada operates. England’s NHS would have shut years ago without the North Sea fields.
But Canada has an undisputed claim to its oil, whereas the British oil is actually out in the North Sea being drilled for with BP’s capital.
Ah, yes… the global warming thing. Never in history has money affected the weather til now.
Real news – Scottish support for independence has been fading. Held now and I think you would lose – so bring it on Nichola… have another ‘once in a lifetime vote’… spend another two years screwing up investment and forward planning… then perhaps you could please get on with the urgent job of improving failing schools, a great many health issues… and the ongoing drain of skills south.
You are one astute observer. Scotland has been hijacked by jokers. If they only managed the place half properly they might gain some respect.
Hypocrite much? Same people who were all fire up for Brexit don’t seem to like Scotixt. What good for the goose y good for the gander.
They should have their vote and live with the consequences, like Brexiteers will have to do.
Interesting they want their vote as UK will leave EU but as they don’t know the form of any final agreement what sense in voting until afterwards then you know what you are voting against?
Some Scots may be OK with the final agreement and think its not the end of the world.
Sturgeon is being very opportunistic and that could bite here in the ass in the end, a few years down the line.
It’s also not very clever for the people of Scotland until they have seen the form of the new Federation various are banding around as the new “UK” deal.
Sturgeon has been pretty rubbish at running her own area so don’t be surprised if they jump ship just to find what they could have stayed with would have been better for the Scottish people. A positive spin will be put on a decision to leave even if it is a real mess afterwards and there is a depopulation of Scotland.
Playing with fire.
I can make the same arguments (or close enough) about Brexit. My comment was more to the point of most readers being pro Brexit but not for Scotixt. Really may be the Scottish don’t want to depend on the Brits technocrats… The problem with all this self-determination votes is were do you stop? At the country level? at he province level? at the municipal level? At the city level? In practical terms I could say city level is also acceptable (Singapore anyone?). You can not be for self-determination and then not being when further splinting does not favor you. See once you say it is acceptable for the UK to leave the EU then under the same principles it should be acceptable for Scotland, Northern Ireland etc to leave the UK.
I’m all for Wessexit myself.
Agreed and Orkney considering leaving Scotland.
We might be at a point in history where centralization will be rolled back.
A natural ebb after the flow. If that is so what chance for an unreported EU?
Only hindsight will determine it but I think there is mileage in a decentralisation theme being in play. Starting here, finishing somewhere else.
Unreformed not unreported.
“Another Scotland Independence Vote Coming Up?”
What would Scotty say? “Aye, Cap’n. I’m giving it all she’s got. But I don’ know if I can hold her together!”
This Scottish Independence issue could be banished forever by a very simple fix: What is needed is for the top three Scottish soccer clubs to be invited into the English Premier League, guaranteed not to be demoted for ten years, so that they have time to build bigger stadiums to accommodate the thousands of Scots who will attend the matches. The crowds will vent their xenophobic anger and frustration at the mostly foreign star players of the EPL by screaming about Bannockburn, Robert The Bruce, etc. to the probably confused visiting players at Celtic Park and the other venues. Then, if the issue of independence ever comes up again, the threat will be that Scottish fans will go back to “Scottish Match of the Day”, (East Fife; 4 – Forfar; 5) although that sounds like quite an entertaining game!
This simple step will guarantee Scottish membership of the UK in perpetuity, so Whitehall can stop worrying about losing the UK Seat on the UN Security Council!
proof of socialist delusion:
Scotland’s £15 billion deficit with plans to borrow even more:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/24/scottish-finances-worsen-fall-oil-revenues-15bn-deficit
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/11/snp-borrow-max-using-scotlands-new-powers/
the idea of a Scottish central bank is truly a joke(!)
The fewer people remain left in the EU with English as a native tongue, all else being equal, the more valuable that hard to replicate skill becomes, for those that do. And ditto for other skills, norms, traditions and connections that have worked their way into the mechanisms by which international business, commerce and relations operate, on the back of the Empire.
Elizabeth is queen of scotland because of her descent from the stuarts. The scottish royal regalia is extant.Scotland joined england when england rescued it from bankruptcy, if they leave, they may have to pay back those millions
I still honestly think Sturgeons real agenda is devolution / federalism of the UK. To pull back as much power as possible to the point where Scotland is effectively an independent nation but still within the framework of the (a new) UK. She won’t leave the UK if she doesn’t have to. I don’t think she actually has the genuine support to do that, nor do I think it’s going to ebb her way. Everyone was saying the same thing post referendum vote how support for indyref will move in a landslide, yet it didn’t budge. Even that 49% poll isn’t representative. That is just a singular poll. The general trend of all polls has actually been downwards. Of course tail risk / unforseen events can change things rapidly, we all know. But there is just as much tail risk, if not more, on the EU side of the equation (which can work against Scottish indyref support) than there is on the UK side (which can push for increased indyref support).
There are people who think Scotland has over representation in the Parliament.
If they do go it will most likely result in the end of the socialist in the UK, And if leaving the EU will destroy the city ( it won’t but we can hope).. Things might start looking up for the UK.