Farewell UK. Breakup inevitable says top civil servant

suburbanwifey

jamespmg44 wrote: »

I'm a Republican and Nationalist at heart, and living in Scotland I would like to see an independent Scotland one day.

However, the SNP are a party trying to govern and create laws based on reactionary politics rather than sensible policies. They would struggle to arrange the preverbial p1ss up in a brewery and this will be what damages the case for independence before any referendum.

I am English and live in Scotland and I would love for Scotland to become independent.

big5

suburbanwifey wrote: »

I am English and live in Scotland and I would love for Scotland to become independent.

Well, I'm Scottish and live in England and want Scotland to stay in the UK. You, however, will get a say in the matter and I won't...

julieq

Scotland receives a net subsidy from the UK even if you take oil incomes into account. What devolutionists ignore when calculating solvency is that Scotland in particular has a share of the national debt - about 10% by capita even ignoring the bailout cover to RBS - and would have to sharply raise taxes if it were made independent to maintain the levels of public spending it enjoys. North Sea Oil revenues are generally thought to be more significant than they are in practice, in fact interest on 10% of UK debt is currently about half the income from oil.

It is a potentially big win for England if it happens, and no-one South of the border - unless a Labour party supporter - should be in the least concerned by the prospect. If you're in Scotland though and you want to maintain better public services than England gets on the back of a net subsidy then you probably ought to be looking nervously at Greece.

pauletruth

just a small point most of the oil is not English or scottish it belongs to the Shetland isles. ponder this if Scotland went independent it does not mean that Shetland would follow. We could easily become independent or remain within ithe uk. the oil taxes would be most welcome in our coffers.

joguest

It's absurd to complain about the Scots voting Labour, when the real question to ask is why did they stop voting Tory. Maybe, perhaps, the problem is with the Tory party and their cosiness with their corporate crony-'capitalist' friends in London?

A._Badger

joguest wrote: »

It's absurd to complain about the Scots voting Labour, when the real question to ask is why did they stop voting Tory. Maybe, perhaps, the problem is with the Tory party and their cosiness with their corporate crony-'capitalist' friends in London?

Wrong. It is because they were bribed - with other people's money.

joguest

A._Badger wrote: »

Wrong. It is because they were bribed - with other people's money.

The biggest bribe using other peoples' money is the rampant house price inflation (at a rate much greater than wage inflation) of the last decade. The region where this has occurred to the greatest extent is London and the South-East, where prices are up 200-300% since 1995 compared with, for example, County Durham, at ~70%. That's before we get on to the subject of direct bribes in the form of council housing stock being sold off at below market value, etc.

House price inflation accounts for by far the biggest transfer of unearned wealth in recent decades. Most of that wealth has flowed towards the South-East (on the back of the financial services industry's theft).

Home-ownerism accounts for the largest and most damaging amount of spivery and misallocation of capital in our economy. It is killing the economy and has its home in the South-East.

joguest

A._Badger wrote: »

Wrong. It is because they were bribed - with other people's money.

Besides, your argument makes no sense. Why the rise of the SNP if people are voting because of bribes from Labour? One would expect unionism, not nationalism, to be on the rise if people in Scotland thought they were doing well out of the bribes.

joguest

Ironic, isn't it, that all the blinkered Tory-voting bigots demonstrating their hatred of the Scots can't work out why the Scots no longer vote Tory.

julieq

To be honest, it's a bit rich having someone whose every word is inflected with venom talking about blinkered bigots, no?

The fact is that Scotland receives a net subsidy from England, and on the back of that can create better public services than England has which has led to a broadly left leaning political climate. They're told that with North Sea Oil revenues they can do better still, which is questionable but they can figure that out for themselves.

So as far as I'm concerned I'm very relaxed indeed about Scottish independence, it's up to the voters in that country to decide what to do. Then if there is independence it'll be up to what remains of the UK to decide how to run itself based on regional views of what tax and spend policy should be.

As an English voter, I'd be delighted if pending any vote on independence we took a look at the subsidy to Scottish taxpayers and redistributed it more evenly around the UK. Which is only fair, right?