The New Fat Scotland 'Thanks for all the Fish' Thread.

Shakethedisease

mollycat wrote: »

^^^^ "Prominent part of the debate", I said.

It wasn't.

It was though. Remember that Spanish guy on Marr.. Jose something. BetterTogether dined out on that till the day of the referendum.

Herzlos

mollycat wrote: »

^^^^ "Prominent part of the debate", I said.

It wasn't.

It was constant chatter from Better Together, in most of the press, on TV. It'd have been hard to miss

paparossco

Jose Manuel Barroso

Herzlos

Fran_Klee wrote: »

It's not what England would do that should be worrying you but what would the EU do?
Do you honestly believe that ignoring rules (just as Catalonia tried, remember) is going to endear a little, troublesome nation to the EU as a prospective new member?

We'll already be out of the EU by then. Give it a few years for the international community to accept us as a sovereign nation and we should be good to join.

Have they been threatened with nuclear weapons too like you just have?

I didn't threaten anyone with nukes - we don't want them and would never use them, but you can't threaten us with them because we're in possession of them.


We could sell them down to England though, which'll go some way towards our deficit

Moe_The_Bartender

Herzlos wrote: »

That's the tricky one, we knew an EU referendum was on the way (I don't think a date had been announced?) but the Better Together campaign made a huge deal about how leaving the UK meant leaving the EU, and that the only way to stay in the EU was to stay in the UK. I don't think anyone (including Cameron) honestly believed they'd vote to leave the EU.


It's not fair to blame voters for voting based on what they were told. Unfortunately like Brexit that was a lot of scaremongering and claims that were walked back on within hours of the result.



Westminster proposed the Brexit referendum (opposed by the SNP), and Scotland voted to Remain in the EU, but is being pulled out anyway. I won't argue that Britain as a whole voted to leave, but we're only talking about Scotland here.



Does the same apply to leaving the EU when we voted to join it in 1973? That's another vote on the exact same issue.

You'll retort that it's not the same EU in 2016 as in 1973 and you'd be right, but it's also not the same UK in 2014 and 2020 - the UK chose to leave the EU after that.


What wording change would you suggest? I don't recall there being anything in there limiting it to a single vote.


I will add that it's not as if denying a referendum (and they'd deny it on any grounds, just like they'll ignore the result whatever happens) will put this genie back in the bottle. People don't tend to give up on this stuff when they are being treated as an inferior rather than an equal.


It's been 99 years since Northern Ireland was carved off, and that's still a mess. All of the other territories are still resentful generations later. We can hold a grudge.


As Shakethedisease said, even if we are denied a referendum, there are going to be more and more demands to do something else - acting without consent of the Union, refusing to acknowledge Westminster, doing our own thing anyway.

What is England going to do, occupy us? We've got the nukes.

Herzlos - the British people did not vote to join the EU in 1973. It did not exist at the time. Neither did we vote to join the EEC as the Heath government did not give us the opportunity. Had he done so, opinion polls at the time suggested that he would have lost.

It’s all very familiar, isn’t it? How the political elite always know what’s best for us.

Herzlos

Moe_The_Bartender wrote: »

Herzlos - the British people did not vote to join the EU in 1973. It did not exist at the time. Neither did we vote to join the EEC as the Heath government did not give us the opportunity. Had he done so, opinion polls at the time suggested that he would have lost.

It’s all very familiar, isn’t it? How the political elite always know what’s best for us.

Sorry, 1975.

Enterprise_1701C

Herzlos wrote: »

We'll already be out of the EU by then. Give it a few years for the international community to accept us as a sovereign nation and we should be good to join.




I didn't threaten anyone with nukes - we don't want them and would never use them, but you can't threaten us with them because we're in possession of them.
P

We could sell them down to England though, which'll go some way towards our deficit

If you are "in possession" of the nukes, does that mean car park owners are in possession of all the cars on their land?

If you have another referendum then the same provisions will be put in place as last time in case you actually vote for independence, the subs would leave your waters, and the jobs would leave your shores. Probably be a good idea as you would have no defence forces.

Enterprise_1701C

Herzlos wrote: »

Sorry, 1975.

Still doesn't change the facts. It was a trading bloc then, simple. It was not the political behemoth it is now.

Herzlos

Shock horror! Stuff evolves over time!
The EU isn't the same thing as it was 40 years ago, thus a new vote on membership was apparently reasonable. By the same measure, the UK isn't the same thing it was 6 years ago, so a new vote on membership is also reasonable.


You really can't defend one and attack the other, that'd be hypocritical.


Though I do find it really odd that the people so aggressively against Scottish Independence seem to be the same people who are so aggressively against the EU. I don't understand the cognitive dissonance there but it seems to match the narrative of the right wing press. Curious, isn't it?

Enterprise_1701C wrote: »

If you are "in possession" of the nukes, does that mean car park owners are in possession of all the cars on their land?

If I lock the car park gate, good luck getting the cars out without my help. Legally I wouldn't own the cars, but how does that help you?

If you have another referendum then the same provisions will be put in place as last time in case you actually vote for independence, the subs would leave your waters, and the jobs would leave your shores. Probably be a good idea as you would have no defence forces.

That's fine, we don't want them. The cost in proportion to the jobs produced from it is a joke too. We're paying something north of £1m per job. I'm pretty sure we can do something more productive with the money.

abz88

Herzlos wrote: »

I didn't threaten anyone with nukes - we don't want them and would never use them, but you can't threaten us with them because we're in possession of them.


We could sell them down to England though, which'll go some way towards our deficit

Quite a lot of comments to go through since I logged off last night!
Coming back to this point that I had previously missed around "we have the nukes, that is a combination of an over simplification of things and being outright incorrect. The UK's nuclear deterrent is made up of 3 separate parts, 1) Nucelar Warheads 2) Ballistic missiles 3) Vanguard class submarines.

1) The Nuclear Warheads - we have somewhere in the region of region of 200 of these and they are kept in Coulport, so we have most of the Warheads (apart from the one's on board the patrolling submarine) and they are loaded on and off the subs before/after they go on patrol. However, they are designed so that they can only be fused, armed and fired from a ballistic missile (kept separately) so even if a Scottish Army/Malitia stormed Coulport having the warheads is in no way useful as they couldn't be used. The warheads also have parts designed and built in the US, England would be the least of our worries if US nuclear secrets were at risk...
2) The ballistic missiles. We don't technically own any of these, they belong to a pool of shared missiles with the US and we are given them at random from the pool which is kept in the US. So the only ones we have at present are onboard the 4 submarines which may or may not be in Scotland and the only "live" missile will be out at sea. Again, should a Scottish Army/Malitia storm HMNB Clyde and somehow capture a nuclear submarine, it would a) have no nuclear weapons on board unless they also took Coulport and were able to get the sub there and arm it and b) you would have stolen US property... given Trump has just openly assassinated the head of the Iranian military without the consent of the country who's soil the attack took place on, I can't seem him having any hesitation in taking out anyone in illegal possession of US missiles.
3) The Vanguard class submarines. We have 4 of these, due to our policy of continual at sea deterrence, one of these is always on patrol somewhere beneath the waves in silent mode. This is the only one that is armed with nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles. Communication to the patrolling submarine can only come from a facility in Hertforshire, so we would have no way of contacting them or finding them. The other submarines will either be in the Clyde, down in Plymouth where they undergo maintenance or out on drills (in both cases with no warheads on board).

So "to have the nukes" we would need to be in possession of a vanguard submarine with ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads onboard which is essentially impossible and ignores the fact that there would be another sub out at sea fully armed and in sole communication with England. On top of that we would have stolen US property related to their own nuclear weapons programme which would be one of the most stupid ideas any country could have if you want to a) be taken seriously on the international, EU and NATO stage and b) not be totally obliterated by US forces.