Will RoUK really give up some of its financial freedom to the independant Scots?

antrobus

adouglasmhor wrote: »

Thanks I did not know that - so who were the Tories originaly as they were an Irish party originaly I heard?

The 'Tories' bit was (I believe) derived from Tory Island somewhere off the coast of Ireland, by reputation the haunt of thieves and brigands; just as a Whig was horse thief. They were both terms of abuse that first emerged during the Exclusion Crisis way back in 1680ish or so.

Technically speaking the old Tory Party split in the 1820s over the issue of catholic emancipation, giving birth to the Conservative Party. People still however commonly refer to the Conservatives
as 'Tories;, although no one calls the Liberals 'Whigs', if only because most of the Whigs ended up in the Liberal Unionist Party.

antrobus

angrypirate wrote: »

.... This is more of a red herring.Barnett formula is massively out of date and spending per head in Soctland massively outweighs spending per head in the rest of the UK. ...

But that's nothing to do with the Barnett formula per se.

What the Barnett formula does is split allocations of certain kinds of comparable public expenditure in proportion to population. So Scotland gets the same amount of money to spend per head as does the rest of the UK. What it doesn't do is address the fact that Scotland was already spending more per head before the Barnett formula came into use. (Which was incidentally before Mr Barnett got anywhere near HM Treasury.)

Oddly enough, the SNP doesn't like the Barnett formula, because it means that, over time, if only as a result of inflation, it will mean that eventually Scottish spending per head will become pretty close to that for the rest of the UK.

kabayiri

The debate ISTL reports shows how we should be able to divorce short term politics from the long term independence, yet the nature of politics means we can't.

People will see the issue of independence as "independence as presented by the SNP".

Nicolas' questions were all loaded questions. They seemed designed to draw out division.

I am more interested in process pre and post the independence vote than anything else.

One thing seems clear, if they are going to make this independence work they will have to put aside the petty bickering and approach every issue of shared service/cooperation on a rational basis.

Take the BBC - why wouldn't the Scots want to continue paying for it, and in return receive a pro-rate proportion of programming, or the retention of the Glasgow studios recently moved there.

Scots are canny with money. They will recognise good value when they see it. BBC is great value!

Generali

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

The highlands population is 232,910
the Outer Hebrides population is 26,080

As a percentage of the electorate, their area's impact is

Highlands 0.35% for the UK, 4.23% for Scotland
Outer Hebrides 0.04% for the UK, and 0.47%

Effectively, independance would increase the weighting of their vote by 11.8 times than staying within the UK

Very true. It also reduces their influence over international events from some to none.

Shakethedisease

Generali wrote: »

Very true. It also reduces their influence over international events from some to none.

I think most are far more interested in what's happening on their own doorsteps, homes and pockets to be overly worried about international influence the on the 'world stage' at the moment. Best to start there first probably...then worry about waging wars and telling Hollande and Merkle to get stuffed later on eh..;)

adouglasmhor

antrobus wrote: »

The 'Tories' bit was (I believe) derived from Tory Island somewhere off the coast of Ireland, by reputation the haunt of thieves and brigands; just as a Whig was horse thief. They were both terms of abuse that first emerged during the Exclusion Crisis way back in 1680ish or so.

Technically speaking the old Tory Party split in the 1820s over the issue of catholic emancipation, giving birth to the Conservative Party. People still however commonly refer to the Conservatives
as 'Tories;, although no one calls the Liberals 'Whigs', if only because most of the Whigs ended up in the Liberal Unionist Party.

There were American Whigs as well, Lincoln was a Whig.

zagubov

Generali wrote: »

Very true. It also reduces their influence over international events from some to none.

That's fine. The whole point of the exercise is to increase control and influence over their own business rather than everybody else's.

What autonomy do the Australian states have compared with the UK's home nations? Do they wish for more central rule? Does their status stop the country from splitting?

MFW_ASAP

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

The highlands population is 232,910
the Outer Hebrides population is 26,080

As a percentage of the electorate, their area's impact is

Highlands 0.35% for the UK, 4.23% for Scotland
Outer Hebrides 0.04% for the UK, and 0.47%

Effectively, independance would increase the weighting of their vote by 11.8 times than staying within the UK

I think you've missed my point (deliberately)?

The SNP moan that the Scots have a Conservative government 'forced' on them, even though they don't vote for them. Scotland represents between 4% and 8% of the UK population.

The Highlands and islands, by your account, represent 4.23% of Scotland, which is a similar enough percentage to make the comparison. If none of these vote for independence, they might have it forced on them by the weight of voters elsewhere in Scotland. It's no different to Scotland being forced to have a Conservative British government by the weight of voters elsewhere in Britain.

That's how democracy works, the majority rule. The SNP seem to think it's a special case and for some reason Scottish voters in British elections should have a larger share of the vote so that they can choose the British Government. That's the sort of 'Democracy' in Middle Eastern and African Despot countries where party members get a larger proportion of the vote.

IveSeenTheLight

Generali wrote: »

Very true. It also reduces their influence over international events from some to none.

Care to extrapolate on that?
Is international influence based on a countries population?

One could point to a number of individuals from various parts of the world who have been influential worldwide, regardless of their nations

IveSeenTheLight

kabayiri wrote: »

I am more interested in process pre and post the independence vote than anything else.

As I understand it, if a "Yes" vote were to prevail, independence is planned for March 2016 with elections set for May 2016.

It seems that the post independence plan is to allow the electorate to separate the decision of independance from who would initially govern under an independent country.

The door would be open for the Scottish electorate to vote whomever they wish