I wonder what people's views are on Scotland becoming an independent state?

I personally think the UK is stronger as a whole, but acknowledge that Westminster is a little too England-centric. I don't want the UK to be split as we need all countries to be joined to keep a credible force in the world economy, not to mention things like defence and such like.

If Alex Salmond did get his own way, what would be the practicalities of that? For example, would Scotland need to apply to be in the EU? after all, its the UK that is a member, not the individual countries. And what about income after the exhaustion of North Sea Oil - can Scotland really feed itself with its other exports?

Listening to the media (which I know can be a bias thing), it seems most people wouldn't want Scottish independence on either side of Hadrian's Wall but there is a desire to see more power go to the Scottish Parliament. I wonder what the views of the amigaworld fraternity are?

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@A1200

One could argue that the EU makes Scottish Independence possible, since it could easily function as a state within the EU, with the Euro as currency. If the split is amicable EU membership would likely be granted very quickly.

But the problem is what to do after the oil runs out. Ireland tried to be a technological hub and we all see how well that worked. Haggis exports aren't going to keep the country afloat. There isn't enough oil to remake Glasglow into Dubai, but there probably is enough to invest in developing industries to replace oil money.

But I don't see it happening, there are plenty of Scots in England and plenty of English in Scotland. Far better to devolve more. Create an English parliament and reorganise the UK into a confederation like Switzerland.

@A1200

Even Cameron admits Scotland would be more successful going alone. His argument that the UK as a whole would be stronger than without, is based on this. Scotland has never voted for a Conservative government, but here we are again, a government that owes Scotland no loyalties and pays it no favours. And then he starts telling the Scottish people that it's up to him to decide when and how the referendum should be decided upon.

One has to wonder if his Cameron blood is trying to galvanize the people of Scotland into independence?

I was firmly on the fence about the whole thing until he spoke. He tried to dictate to me what I should do and when. He single handedly convinced me to vote for independence because he reminded me of the way Westminster has treated Scotland for as long as I remember.

Sure, there will be massive upheaval on a lot of things. Sure, the UK will become weaker as a whole theoretically, but then I'm reminded of the debt crisis, the billions owed and I wonder if the UK is a strong nation now anyway (It isn't).

To me, this isn't about nationality, it's about common sense. The Scottish parliament has shown how governments should work. Westminster is a relic of a bygone era. If we (The UK) were given the chance to scrap it and start again with the Scottish model, then I'd vote to keep the Union. That will never happen. Not without war.

Right now, the UK is lead by a coalition government that nobody has voted for. The coalition should be between the Conservative and Labour parties. They are the two with the highest votes. Instead we are led by a backroom deal.

So I choose peace. I choose a fairer system of government that answers to the people. I choose to get rid of closed government that can whitewash any investigation into it's practices.

If the people south of the border have sense, they'll vote for new devolved powers as well.

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@all

Confederation / English parliament - sounds quite good actually. I like that.... fiscal allotment will probably hinder things to an extent - Scotland has the oil, England has the Financial services, NI and Wales - well someone would need to educate me on their major source of GDP.

Very interesting I think. If I could wave a magic wand I would go resource based economy no government only popular consensus - but that's for another thread!

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@A1200

I could go into one very, very long history lessen/ political post here on this subject which is very close to my heart and explain the reasons why I voted yes...

but I've been doing that in real life for over 30 years so I think I'll give it a miss and just say...

We hate ra B@$t@rd English...

PS: here's a strange thing not understood by many, when a Scotsman says the line I just said above, it is generally taken by most (especially English folk) that we are saying we actually hate every English person alive or dead...

That is not the case... when a Scotsman says that he actually means the English Government and more specifically London (The CIty as they like to call it ), so next time you hear some Scotsman shout that, just remember it's not aimed at you personally and is simply a political statement being expressed in a typical Scottish manner...

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Yes, because real hatred is reserved for the French.

Nah, I'm only kidding. We don't hate any other people, we are too busy hating each other for being Lowland/Highland/West Coast/East Coast/Campbell/MacDonald/Celtic/Rangers/Chav/Ned/Haggis/Neeps/Tennents/MacEwens/Buckfast/Blue Nun/Underpants worn under kilt/Commando*







*Please select as appropriate.

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@SpaceDruid

Quote:

SpaceDruid wrote: Yes, because real hatred is reserved for the French.

True...

Odd thing is I was born & brought up on the west coast in Glasgow as a Protestant, so from an early age I was taught at school to hate Catholics & to support Rangers & hate Celtic...

But... most of my best friends were Catholics and I can't stand football so I hate Rangers & Celtic...

Now I live on the east coast just outside Edinburgh and being from Glasgow I'm supposed to hate folk from Edinburgh but oddly enough most of my friends come from Edinburgh and a good 40% of them are English (whom I'm supposed to hate too)...

Having spent 47 years now trying to figure out why us Scots are supposed to hate almost everything and argue & fight about the slightest thing, from are vegetables really evil and created by the devil to was Robert The Bruce really a traitor and bamstick who spoke to spiders... I have come to one conclusion...

It's all to do with the weather...

It's so damp and ruddy cold here all year round that the only thing we've got to cheer ourselves up and take our minds of how miserable it is here, is to have a right ruddy good moan about everything & anything (especially the weather)...

All the hatred & arguing is just our way of making ourselves feel better, cos everyone else who's not Scottish or doesn't have to live in this gawd forsaken damp and dingy country are better off than us, so we have a right good moan or fight just to make ourselves feel better...

Plus it's our birthright to moan, argue, hate & fight and generally be door faced miserable gits...

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@A1200

1: Within EU I bet Scotland would easily be just as useful as Greece, Portugal or even Spain.
2: But depending on exporting resources alone is dangerous. Norway is a high-tech country but we're building down production to focus on exporting resources for others to process and sell back to us. I fear what will become of us a few years down the road.

Examples:
Fish. We used to process, now it's being processed in China
Solar cells. We used to make them, now we just sell the wafers
Oil.
Hydro power.

Etc. I'm in a technology company, but we've moved production from Norway to Sweden to Poland and assembly was also recently moved.

Same thing across the line. There's a limit to how many people can fish and cut hair, and not all can be owners of each others companies. Someone needs to ADD VALUE to those resources. Retail isn't adding value, btw

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@persia

Quote:

One could argue that the EU makes Scottish Independence possible, since it could easily function as a state within the EU, with the Euro as currency. If the split is amicable EU membership would likely be granted very quickly.

Voted 3rd option. In my experience with breakup of Yugoslavia, even there are territories with cultural and national differencies, that used to be independent in the past, small new countries struggle to survive and often go to heavy debts which means no development. And without economic and social development independence is just a myth abused by greedier politicians.

So any higher integration or union (UK,EU) is far better if enough power is delegated down that people of certain area, region can really express their own will. Its nothing against Scottish friends.

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@vox

Good point, actually. There IS no independence in a modern society. The only way to be independent is to be North Korea, Iran or maybe Syria.

But being able to choose your own allies would help a little.

Here in Norway there's a political report out these days analysing 8 alternatives to our current association with EU (in that we are part of the EEA through EFTA but have no voting rights).

Might be interested also for scots to have a look through that. Seems we're fairly similar countries.

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@olegil

Quote:

olegil wrote: @vox Good point, actually. There IS no independence in a modern society.

What a load of rubbish...

It's only people who have let themselves be conned into believing crap like that, being the reason why most folk blindly give up all their freedoms and rights and allow themselves to be dictated to by the likes of the EU and the loony tunes who administer it...

Scotland will gain it's independence this time and we will become a far better and richer nation for it. Most people here are fed up with being dictated to by London and the EU and have had more than enough...

Think you'll see with jealous eyes in the course of time when Scotland shows just what an independent country can really be like, as you continue to be part of the dictatorship and freedom/ rights stealing "global community" that is not even run by your governments but is actually dictated to by the big greedy money stealing multi-nationals ...

There will be no NWO here when independence comes, we will be one of the very few nations left on this planet where people actually matter and their rights are not eroded & dictated by greedy global corporations...

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@Franko

Quote:

Most people here are fed up with being dictated to by London.

You will get no argument from the bits of England outside of the M25 about that. Westminster is almost entirely London fixated, with cash bonuses given to Scotland, Wales, and Ulster to keep things sweet. Perhaps England should try for independence too.

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@Nimrod

Quote:

Nimrod wrote: @Franko You will get no argument from the bits of England outside of the M25 about that. Westminster is almost entirely London fixated, with cash bonuses given to Scotland, Wales, and Ulster to keep things sweet. Perhaps England should try for independence too.

Like I've said before when a Scotsman says "We hate the English" it's not actually about the majority of the English it's aimed squarely at London and Westminster...

Just like you say, even English people are fed up with being dictated to by London and all the cash being spent there on crap like the Millennium Dome and every thing else the greedy buggers spend our tax payers money on for "The City"...

England would be far better off being independent too, then the money given out in bribes to keep Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland could be spent on the people who actually have to pay for these bribes...

I always hope to wake up one morning and switch on the news to discover that London has been ripped from it's moorings and blown away to somewhere in the English channel in some strange freaky gale...

Other than that I'll just have to wait until we get our independence, which is going to happen very soon...

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@Franko

It looks like the No camp has it. But will the referendum reflect the Amiga users? Be interesting to see!

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@Franko

I disagree. There is no independence of other nations. You can have sovereignty (that is, independent authority), but you cannot be completely independent from the rest of the world. North Korea and Iran seem to try their very best, though. What happens inside your country is going to be dependent on what happens outside it.

I care little for your NWO conspiracy theories. They aren't necessary to explain international politics anyway. If you think you can survive on exporting raw materials without depending on the politics of those who purchase from you then you are Shirley Mistaken.

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Just a quick point that needs to be made about EU membership.

If/ when Scotland gains independent status, the United Kingdom ceases to exist. The former UK, which would consist of Wales, Northern Ireland and England, would become a cessation state along with the newly formed Scottish state.

As such, both states (Scotland and the rest of the country formerly known as the United Kingdom) would be in exactly the same position.

It is the height of arrogance to presume that the former UK simply maintains its current treaty provisions. The same would likely apply to UN membership.

This of course puts the current UK EU and UN vetoes in question. Obviously this would weaken the international status of the former UK, but Scotland would represent its own interests on the world stage in its own right - surely an advance on the current Westminster centric arrangement.

Thankfully, in all likelihood, Scotland and the former UK would retain EU membership as cessation states, so its all just another moot point.

Just one of the many smokescreens and misdirections the unionist stalwarts trot out to undermine the overwhelmingly positive case for Scottish independence.

@Nimrod

What bonuses are you referring to here?

The UK government has now admitted that Scotland pays back more than it receives. Its budget has been in surplus for something like 9 out of the last 10 years. It pays a greater per capita share in income tax than the rest of the UK and none of this includes the huge revenues heading south from the Scottish oil fields.

Scotland is not the poor neighbour, cap in hand, often depicted by the right wing English press. It is quite the contrary.

The UK needs to keep Scotland for precisely this reason.

Scotland, by contrast, does not need the rest of the UK to thrive on its own on the world stage.

Thankfully, more and more Scots are coming to this conclusion and, with any luck, will continue to do so between now and the referendum in two years time.

@A1200

Scotland's potential is based on a number of things.

- Oil, of which there is anything between 30-50 years left, based on the technology required to extract it.
- Whiskey. Lots of money in this.
- Agriculture (including Salmon exports)
- Financial Services. Notwithstanding the failed Scottish Banks (which were run from the City in all fairness) there are life, pensions, fund management and other banking institutions headquartered and operating out of Scotland. This would remain the case after independence.
- Emerging technologies. Such as carbon capture, offshore energy (wave and tidal) - we could lead the world in this.
- Manufacturing. The opportunity to rebuild manufacturing capability (ship building bein one
- International trade. There is talk of an international container port being built in my town in Fife to service the emerging Arctic trade route (the North West Passage) which has opened up due to global warming. Scotland is uniquely placed to exploit this.
- Energy exports. There is talk of linking the Scottish grid up to Scandinavia. I believe it is already linked to Ireland. Scotland will have the capability to generate surplus energy supplies which can be traded throughout Europe and beyond.
- Water exports. Goes without saying.

Anyway, that's just a summary... plenty more besides I expect.

@AndyC

Quote:

Scotland is not the poor neighbour, cap in hand, often depicted by the right wing English press. It is quite the contrary. The UK needs to keep Scotland for precisely this reason.

Well this kind of relations should change.

Small nations really gain nothing in practice but more debts and less development.

And beside cultural and language differences, hope that people living pon the island have some similarities

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@olegil

Quote:

olegil wrote: @Franko I disagree. There is no independence of other nations. You can have sovereignty (that is, independent authority), but you cannot be completely independent from the rest of the world. North Korea and Iran seem to try their very best, though. What happens inside your country is going to be dependent on what happens outside it. I care little for your NWO conspiracy theories. They aren't necessary to explain international politics anyway. If you think you can survive on exporting raw materials without depending on the politics of those who purchase from you then you are Shirley Mistaken.

Ahh... the semantic arguments of the typical "I'm afraid of nationalists, they'll ruin us all" type...

I care little whether you care little about what you call "conspiracy theories", all that matters to me is that Scotland becomes an independent nation once again, which it will...

Scotland as you will see soon enough for yourself will only gain in strength in all it's aspects when we become independent...

I note that you don't mention which country you live in yet are keen to put your biased and flawed arguments forward against independence for Scotland....

That tells me a lot about you & your opinions on this but the main thing it tells me is that your opinions don't matter and wont make a difference on the Scottish independence vote, whereas my opinions do and my vote will...

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