Should Scotland be an independent country?

ewenny

If they want it, let them have it and see them survive on their own.

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Only trouble is some daft institution like the EU would susidise them or bale them out and the rest of Uk might have to chip in!!

gm_xone

ewenny wrote: »

If they want it, let them have it and see them survive on their own.

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Only trouble is some daft institution like the EU would susidise them or bale them out and the rest of Uk might have to chip in!!

Uninformed nonsense.
Scotland is NOT subsidised by the rest of the UK.

Public spending in Scotland is £1200 higher per head than the UK average, but Scottish taxpayers contribute £1700 per head more than the UK average. That's a nett contribution to the UK of £500 per head.
In other words, Scotland receives only 70% of our own money back from Westminster.

gm_xone

Question for MSE.

As there's obviously been a recent notable shift to voting patterns, will further notes now be added to all the applicable parts of your poll to reflect and explain this?

Northern Ireland and Wales voting - which were both initially showing as slightly against independence for Scotland and then marginally in favour - are now increasingly displaying an acceleration for a "No" preference.


It has been noted that you also changed your original Note from...

""Note: The 'I live in Scotland' vote started rising rapidly late Monday evening. Most of the additional votes were 'yes' (beforehand, 'No' had been winning). Our suspicion is there's been an email/social media campaign to get 'yes' votes - so please take this result with a pinch of salt."

to...

"Note: We have detected unusual voting patterns on the 'I live in Scotland' vote – inc a disproportionate number of Scottish voters (even taking into account the topic). Its likely there’ve been email/social media campaigns to drum up voters. So the result may be far from representative."

londonlydia

I'm English and I'm hoping that the vote says no. I think a split would be incredibly messy, and the estimations of whether Scotland can survive are really finger in the wind.
For instance, the biggest questions for me are whether the large multi national companies with bases in Scotland will stay there if they went independent...especially certain defence contractors. I suspect they would move out sharply, despite the cost, as they wouldnt want to risk the instability.That's an awful lot of people out of work suddenly.

Also, I'm guessing that the calculations have the assumption that everyone based in Scotland will stay there. I have a few friends living and working in Scotland, who have all said they would move back to England given a potential split as employment wise and business wise the uncertainty and settling period just wouldnt be worth it. I'm sure they are not special cases, and I wouldnt be surprised if a chunk of the working people (who are paying tax) decide to up sticks. Thats a danger in terms of the balance between those adding to and those taking from the pot.

Anyway, overall I think it's sad if any of the home nations want independence. And out of all of them, I would say England struggles for it's own national pride the most despite having the most people...and yet it seems is the only nation happy to stay in this together!

picardshair

gm_xone wrote: »

Question for MSE.

As there's obviously been a recent notable shift to voting patterns, will further notes now be added to all the applicable parts of your poll to reflect and explain this?

Northern Ireland and Wales voting - which were both initially showing as slightly against independence for Scotland and then marginally in favour - are now increasingly displaying an acceleration for a "No" preference.


It has been noted that you also changed your original Note from...

""Note: The 'I live in Scotland' vote started rising rapidly late Monday evening. Most of the additional votes were 'yes' (beforehand, 'No' had been winning). Our suspicion is there's been an email/social media campaign to get 'yes' votes - so please take this result with a pinch of salt."

to...

"Note: We have detected unusual voting patterns on the 'I live in Scotland' vote – inc a disproportionate number of Scottish voters (even taking into account the topic). Its likely there’ve been email/social media campaigns to drum up voters. So the result may be far from representative."

Well that is a fairer message, though how they can tell its a disproportionate number of Scottish voters is beyond me. I would like to see the calculation that makes it disproportionate.

picardshair

londonlydia wrote: »

I'm English and I'm hoping that the vote says no. I think a split would be incredibly messy, and the estimations of whether Scotland can survive are really finger in the wind.
For instance, the biggest questions for me are whether the large multi national companies with bases in Scotland will stay there if they went independent...especially certain defence contractors. I suspect they would move out sharply, despite the cost, as they wouldnt want to risk the instability.That's an awful lot of people out of work suddenly.

Also, I'm guessing that the calculations have the assumption that everyone based in Scotland will stay there. I have a few friends living and working in Scotland, who have all said they would move back to England given a potential split as employment wise and business wise the uncertainty and settling period just wouldnt be worth it. I'm sure they are not special cases, and I wouldnt be surprised if a chunk of the working people (who are paying tax) decide to up sticks. Thats a danger in terms of the balance between those adding to and those taking from the pot.

Anyway, overall I think it's sad if any of the home nations want independence. And out of all of them, I would say England struggles for it's own national pride the most despite having the most people...and yet it seems is the only nation happy to stay in this together!

Defence contractors...strange and uninformed. Scotland, as part of the union, has far less shipbuilding orders than the average country in Europe due to the UK's lack of focus on manufacturing. The UK government prefers the finance sector to generate wealth (though we all saw how well that has done in the last 5 years of recessions). Isnt it strange that one of the countries with a great deal of shipbuilding skills gets so few shipbuilding orders?

As for people and businesses leaving the country, many people said the same thing in the late 90's before devolution and nothing significant happened. In fact Scotland's economy has faired well even during the recessions while in the last 5 years Scotland's population has increased by 300,000 to the largest it has ever been. All those fears are scaremongering.

There are plenty of English who want rid of Scotland, just check the Daily Mail or Telegraph comments on Scottish stories.

londonlydia

Can I just answer a fallacy I've seen a few times on here... there are other places in the UK you could store the nuclear subs, it's just where they are at the minute is good and there is no point moving them. For instance, look at where the submarines are actually made (clue: it's in England). And whilst may Scots may object to them being stored there, dont discount the amount of people working in defence industry in Scotland who will lose their jobs if they go.

gm_xone

picardshair wrote: »

Well that is a fairer message, though how they can tell its a disproportionate number of Scottish voters is beyond me. I would like to see the calculation that makes it disproportionate.

They quite possibly basing it as being "disproportionate", because (currently) there's more Scottish votes than English ones.
However, given that this is a Scottish-only "issue", you might well expect there to be significantly more interest in Scotland - especially with social media campaigns highlighting the poll - and therefore an influx of people indicating their choice.

As I, and others, have indicated already, a lot of polling is mostly unreliable - polls very often display the result you want them to show, rather than them being a true and impartial reflection on the topic.

picardshair

londonlydia wrote: »

Can I just answer a fallacy I've seen a few times on here... there are other places in the UK you could store the nuclear subs, it's just where they are at the minute is good and there is no point moving them. For instance, look at where the submarines are actually made (clue: it's in England). And whilst may Scots may object to them being stored there, dont discount the amount of people working in defence industry in Scotland who will lose their jobs if they go.

It may be good for you, but for those in the Glasgow area, around 2 million, who live 30 miles away or less I would think would prefer it to be much much further away. Most of the nuclear warheads, at least 160, are based in Faslane.

As for jobs, BAE Systems didnt think so, they kept the workforce and skills at Glasgow and abandoned Portsmouth.

happyinflorida

I'm very happy for the Scottish to be independent, if they want that.

What I don't want is for anymore of England's money to go in their coffers.

I am furious that the Scottish think it ok to allow their own people to have free university education but not the English, especially when any Tom, !!!!!! or Harry from Europe can go to one of their uni's for absolutely nothing to pay at all. Is that right or fair? No it is not.

Hopefully this will also stop Scottish MP's in our English government making decisions that are good for them and bad for England. We have had enough of their terrible politicians, like Gordon Brown, who have been a nightmare. Bog off the lot of you IMO.