Preparedness for when

[Deleted User]

MAR you are you, you are a proud Scot, you are entitled to your own views and opinions and political affiliations and aspirations. You are my valued friend and I salute you for being honest enough to post that post. I'm not a political animal, I would be very sad to lose the united kingdom but I can fully understand the need to be your own nation with your own parliament. Easy for us, we already have it in the UK and perhaps don't value it as we ought to!

mardatha

AWH TA MrsL xxx I can live with or without indy as long as.....
.............WE HAVE TABLET!! :D

[Deleted User]

Send me some NOW!!!

moneyistooshorttomention

I think its very much a matter of personal opinion as to how we see Britain and that applies within any part of it.

I see it as one country called Britain and one way of life etc. I did when I lived in England. I do now I live in Wales.

I was having a long conversation the other day with a very nice couple here who were explaining to me how they saw themselves as having a Welsh "National Identity" and culture and I was a lot clearer as to why they think that way by the end of it. Hopefully, too, they saw my point as to why I get upset any time something is written in Welsh only (rather than either English - which we can all understand or both languages), as that excludes many British people (including many Welsh) from being able to understand it.

I do understand feeling a sense of British National Identity as a whole and, in years to come, if anyone even hints I should walk around in my own country dressed "modestly" or giving up eating in daytime hours for a month or so a year or any other modification to someone else's way of living (rather than our own) they had better be wearing earplugs and body armour at the response they will get back - as I would deliberately walk down the street in the most revealing clothing I have/obviously playing music to myself and eating a snack in broad daylight just because its our country and our way of life to do so if we wish.

From the fact that no-one/but no-one would make me give up our British way of life/way of thinking then I can try and think how I would feel if I regarded Wales or Scotland as separate countries to think how I would feel if I did and can "agree to differ" on that point and then still perfectly amicably start discussing the most recent bit of local town gossip in the next sentence ("They didn't treat him like that did they:eek:? Ooh....no wonder he reacted as he did.....").

What does cause upset (and a determination to "do the opposite") is whenever anyone tries to "push it" with a nationalist viewpoint.

GreyQueen

We're good, Mar, I hate the English government, too. Don't feel any connection to them, but they manage to get their tentacles into the important parts of my life.

I was living in Scotland at the time of the 1987 general election, when every single Scottish tory lost their seat and the country was still being ruled by the tories in the Scottish Office. I can remember the visceral fury this caused vividly and you only have to mention M*l*lm R*f**d to send my blood pressure soaring, after all these years. I feel that this was a turning point for Scots' sense of injustice and lack of representation.

Oh, and I still remember how if you were watching national telly news, there'd be all the stuff which was considered important to England then, if there was time, a brief snippet from 'the regions'.

Of course, if you don't live in the London area, you are effectively 'the regions' to them, anyway! :rotfl:

Just wish Scotland had gone independant in the seventies, invested the oil revenues in a sovreign wealth fund like Norway and was sitting pretty, instead of it having being squandered making That Woman look like her policies were effective.

Love and peas, going to do some weeding. GQ xx

jk0

Thanks all.

Looks like I am in good company regarding my reluctance to lose my gallbladder.

Regarding travel insurance, I have this included with my home cover, that started in September. Now, the fair man in my head thinks that this should mean whatever befalls me before next September, I can still go on holiday and expect to be covered.

However, looking at this MSE article, http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/insurance/pre-existing-travel-insurance
I am supposed to declare it, (and will have my premium adjusted accordingly.)

Hmm. Sounds like you are only covered if you can prove you don't need to be!

thriftwizard

Scottish independence is a hard thing for many of us to get our heads around, because we have a hefty dollop of Scots blood, & friends & relatives North of the border. I too lived & studied in Scotland, and love & appreciate everything about it apart from the weather, though I too met the odd abusive nut-job who blamed me personally for everything since the Fall of Man. But being of the female persuasion, I suspect everything would have been my fault anyway; being "English" (actually also part Irish, part French & technically half Canadian too) was just a peg to hang that hatred on. In reality people are just people, of whatever ancestry, and most are lovely but some are not. The problems start when they get into power...

Frugalsod

mardatha wrote: »

I'm sorry about that GQ - I hate the English govt but I don't hate the English people - look at all the good friends I've got on here - I think people from down south look on us as just another part of the UK - but we aren't. We are a separate country, we have different money, different laws, we are a different people. It would be hard for you too, if you were ruled from, say, Ireland - there would be bad feeling for sure.
But I dare say that any country with a lot of incomers has this problem GQ, always somebody with a gob bigger than their brain
BTW I don't want or expect any harrassment or nastiness re this post - I'm only putting over a point here. Some of the venom I've had on another forum was quite revealing lol and I found out some "friends" were not!

I agree. I was once in a hospital and one of the other patients was Kurdish, and was described by the nurse as Turkish. Now considering that Turkey is considered an occupying force it would be like describing Sean Connery as English. He would rightly be livid.

moneyistooshorttomention

Frugalsod wrote: »

I agree. I was once in a hospital and one of the other patients was Kurdish, and was described by the nurse as Turkish. Now considering that Turkey is considered an occupying force it would be like describing Sean Connery as English. He would rightly be livid.

I can understand that.

I certainly get annoyed too when I see Tibet described as "Tibetan Autonomous Region of China" - and feel like stamping my foot and going "It isn't part of China. Its Tibet - darn it".

Maybe the difference is that in the case of Turkey and China we are talking about present day issues that are in the process of being argued about/fought about/etc/etc here and now.

Whereas, on the other hand, whatever happened a few hundred years ago happened a few hundred years ago and is now in the history books. The Present Day is a different era iyswim. I've heard the English described by a few as an "occupying country" and think "But we're not talking about the Germans being an occupying force in World War 2 Channel Islands" and something that is regarded as a separate "country" to an extent now. Britain has been one country for hundreds of years, so that's how it is now - whatever did or didn't happen some centuries back". It sort of equates, in my mind, to saying "How far back in history do we go to start differentiating between the Saxons, Celts, Normans, Romans, etc, etc?" and I wonder if there would actually be any British person anywhere in Britain that didn't have that sort of mixed ancestry level and Britain would be left sitting here as an empty lump of rock in the middle of the ocean if we differentiated like that (apart from those from another country that have moved here this or last century).

ivyleaf

Nellie_the_Viking wrote: »

Not just because its what they are used to, but also the likely wider impact of withdrawing, which many in those generations would see as a negative thing, having benefitted from the freedoms they are afforded by membership of the EU. Not everyone will see it this way, but a fair number of young people would.


Empirical evidence suggests that if we opt out of the EU, a lot of businesses will decamp - Slovenia appears to be the preferred choice for many - to maintain the advantage of non-bordered trading. Who knows how many jobs that would remove from Britain, and I'm not convinced that many people would move with the companies. I can't see many companies moving in to fill that gap if we cut ourselves off from Europe.


If we substantially restrict EU immigration (which makes up only around 25% of immigration to the UK year on year) we would then also potentially lose a fair proportion of useful workforce who do the jobs that a lot of Brits won't do because of hours, conditions and in the case of a few of my acquaintance, because they consider themselves to be too qualified. That would be a pretty negative impact of withdrawal.

Thank you Nellie.

Also, the countries we used to trade with before we joined the EEU have now got used to trading with places like China and Japan instead, and if we came out of Europe and said to them "There, it's all right now, we're back and ready to start trading with you again!" they might well tell us to get knotted.