The Big Scottish Independence Debate

[Oddquine]

 

Tis actually illegal to park on a pavement. Also p!sses me off but if you want to do it and I want to walk by pushing a pram. I will not move onto the road. Instead I'll squeeze past and if the pram leaves scratch marks then oops!! 

Its not my car, I don't park on pavements either, I spotted it in Invergordon.

 

Where in Invergordon is there a pavement that wide and that level...having tripped along them a fair bit?

[IBM]

 

 

Tis actually illegal to park on a pavement. Also p!sses me off but if you want to do it and I want to walk by pushing a pram. I will not move onto the road. Instead I'll squeeze past and if the pram leaves scratch marks then oops!! 

Its not my car, I don't park on pavements either, I spotted it in Invergordon.

 

Where in Invergordon is there a pavement that wide and that level...having tripped along them a fair bit?

 

Out the Saltburn road, its not your car either then?

[Oddquine]

 

 

 

Tis actually illegal to park on a pavement. Also p!sses me off but if you want to do it and I want to walk by pushing a pram. I will not move onto the road. Instead I'll squeeze past and if the pram leaves scratch marks then oops!! 

Its not my car, I don't park on pavements either, I spotted it in Invergordon.

 

Where in Invergordon is there a pavement that wide and that level...having tripped along them a fair bit?

 

Out the Saltburn road, its not your car either then?

 

Ah.that's why I don't recognise it........never walked as far as Saltburn, Unfortunately it's not mine....if it was, it wouldn't be parked in Invergordon!  Best I could do re four wheeled advertising would be an equivalent logo on one of them shopping bags on wheels (which is an idea! )

[PullMyFinger]

I see Anas "will you sign this, Nicola" Sarwar couldn't be arsed going to Westminster to vote on abolishing the bedroom tax. Obviously Anas "if we were in power tomorrow, we'd abolish bedroom tax" Sarwar had something better to do. Claims he didn't know about the vote? If he was my MP I'd be livid. My MP voted against the tax, most of you here have an MP that voted to keep it. Aye, Better Together indeed!

[Oddquine]

http://www.heraldscotland.com/business/opinion/the-nations-going-south-and-scotlands-paying-for-it.1384420754

 

Better Together?  Really?

 

I like the last sentence.it says it all!

 

Scotland is the only country in the world to have paid for its own economic decline. It allowed oil revenues to flow south in the 1980s to finance Margaret Thatcher's City-centred deindustrialisation. Now it is about to do it again. Never have so few paid so much for so little.

[IBM]

Not a paper I normally read but a very good article and like you say Oddquine, the last sentence says it all.

[Charles Bannerman]

The verdict of the generation which would have to live with the consequences of a yes vote....

 

http://www.inverness-courier.co.uk/News/No-vote-in-independence-referendum-22112013.htm

[Kingsmills]

The verdict of a small number of teenagers from a small town who will also have to live with the consequences of a no vote.

[Oddquine]

In the end...a minority of the population which cares one way or another is going to have to live  with the consequences of a vote which wasn't their preferred option........poor wee souls! ..That is what is called first past the post democracy!   Difference is that Referendum democracy is one person/one vote/two distinct and different options.......not, as in the UK elections for a party of Government.one person/ one vote/ a multitude of options (few of which will give different outcomes in practice, tbh).  So given that I don't remember any UK government which has had even a straight 50%  of the popular vote .....if the Referendum gets more than 50% of Scottish popular vote....for whichever option, then that is what will happen.....and those who voted for the alternative will have to live with it in the short term  However, in my opinion, there would be real  merit, if there was a NO vote in 2014, which did not meet the criteria approved for the 1979 referendum, (as in 50+% of the vote,,which it got.....but less than 40% of those on the voters roll...which it was never going to get)  to continue the fight for Independence from 19/9/2014, 

 

Edited to say that I'd be interested to know how much the current generation in school is told about Scottish History, particularly the actions of England re  ensuring the failure of the Darien situation....AND the effects on Scotland from membership of the union from 1707 to date...AND how much they are told about Scottish Oil and its benefit, currently wasted by successive UK Governments.  When I was at school, I got no Scottish history.....I could regurgitate every English Monarch from Wiliiam the Conqueror on,..... but hadn't a clue about Scotland before the Union....because that had nothing to do with "Britain" and it took me years to realise that William the Conqueror in England, had nothing to do with Scotland before the Union, 

 

Does anyone know if our current teenagers are getting the real deal re the Union and the past from their teachers yet?

Edited November 23, 2013 by Oddquine

[Charles Bannerman]

Interesting post where I see that:-

 

A -  the post-NO vote fall back position is being prepared revealingly early and

 

B - we have another fine example of that traditional nationalist sentiment - "It's all the b&$%&£d English fault anyway."

[Oddquine]

Interesting post where I see that:-

 

A -  the post-NO vote fall back position is being prepared revealingly early and

 

B - we have another fine example of that traditional nationalist sentiment - "It's all the b&$%&£d English fault anyway."

A  If the post to which you allude is the one of mine immediately before your response......I am surprised that you take personal opinion as representative of anything other than personal opinion....but then, that is what both sides do.......produce talking heads to give personal opinions slanted to whichever side of the great divide they support.  Unfortunately, it is currently a very one-sided contest, as the Pro-Union faction has the politicians in Westminster, with the connivance of the print media and the BBC trying hard to scare us into voting NO.  Now why on earth would that be.....given we are the subsidy junkies from hell.....you'd expect that Westminster would be gagging to see the back of us?   Care to explain why they are not?

 

B Now, now....I simply asked if the teaching of Scottish History had improved at all since the years from 1952 -1965 when I was at school in Scotland...when it was, in my school practically.......nay completely....non-existent.  That was the fault of the UK Government, which was in charge of education in all parts of the UK, not the English people....but hey........why would anyone expect a pro-Union  "journalist"  to interpret information without doing it through union flag embellished specs?

Edited November 24, 2013 by Oddquine

[The Mantis]

Interesting post 

I thought it was too Charles. A shame that you couldn't bring yourself to engage with it!

[Alex MacLeod]

There's no engaging and no debate with Charles. Its his way or no way. Much like the engagement and debate that got us into the union. I challenge all to read a bit of Scottish history. More especially that period from 1650 to 1707. Read about Scottish world trading and about the lengths the East India Company went to destroy that trade. Read about the pirate ships sponsored by the EIC that stole goods destined for Scotland and sunk the ships that carried them and the attempted retaliation by Scottish pirates in the Indian Ocean.

[Yngwie]

You've actually raised a pro-union argument.

 

When faced with Scotland as a foreign country - a competitor for trade, jobs, investment, tax revenues etc - England/RUK will do whatever it can to gain an advantage for its own people.

[Oddquine]

You've actually raised a pro-union argument.

 

When faced with Scotland as a foreign country - a competitor for trade, jobs, investment, tax revenues etc - England/RUK will do whatever it can to gain an advantage for its own people.

 But it isn't really a pro- Union argument..is it? Seems to me,it would be better described as an anti-James VI  of Scotland and I of England/shared monarchy argument, because James VI, when he became James I of England did what so many from Scotland do..went down South to aggrandise and improve his own position...and promptly bought into being "English" with English loyalties only..as he and his favourites were chasing the big bucks...In fact.....our first shared monarch's opinion of,and attitude to, Scotland was not a great deal different to that pertaining today among those who make their living from sucking on the publicly funded teat in Westminster.

 

A pro-Union argument would be the Union setting out what they envisage the Union will be like and what  Scotland's place in it will be if we vote NO to Independence...but there appears to be little chance of that.  After all, Scotland will only be a country as foreign as the Republic of Ireland.....and they had a much easier passage to Independence...getting  a currency union, open borders etc...... with none of the pouting, foot-stamping, huffing, puffing and scaremongering that we are getting from Westminster......but then they did it by fighting for it......with guns and bombs....so maybe trying to be civilised about it is where we went wrong.

 

Our situation was/is different...we have a Union through the monarchy as well as the later political Union. Scotland, unlike Ireland and Wales, was/is not an occupied and/or annexed country....so calling time on the political Union would only make us as foreign as Australia and Canada etc who also share the monarchy. Certainly  I, for one, foolishly thought that commonsense would prevail, and we'd be grown-up about a divorce.....as in we could have a civilised conversation, without rancour, vitriol and personality assassinations etc before a vote and then get on with life as neighbours and friends/allies whichever way the vote went. 

 

A YES vote would have put both the rUK and Scotland in a better place than we have been living together under Westminster, as the Unionist subsidy junkie epithets would go......as would the blaming Westminster/England for everything which goes wrong in Scotland .....and a NO vote  would not, as it probably will, given the tone of what has been passing for debate in the UK media so far, forever go down in history as the control freakery, downright lies and nastiness of a few hundred MPs in Westminster protecting their jobs and the money in their pockets.....much as we all still remember the "parcel of rogues in a nation" and the failure of the Darien Venture as directly attributable to the shared monarch of the time and the actions/inactions of the English Parliament.  Scots have long memories!

 

 

[Charles Bannerman]

You've actually raised a pro-union argument.

 

When faced with Scotland as a foreign country - a competitor for trade, jobs, investment, tax revenues etc - England/RUK will do whatever it can to gain an advantage for its own people.

Absolutely Yngwie. What do you expect to happen if you are trying to open up colonies and your neighbour, who also happens to have an unfortunate history of attempts to invade or harass you, sets up in opposition.

Do you:-

A - Ignore your neighbour's activities.

B - Say "Welcome on board old chap. How can I help you mess up my colonial apsirations?" or

C - Do your best to put a spanner in the works?

 

Or to translate that into a footballing idiom - you are in the First Division and striving to reach the SPL ahead of your rivals Ross County. They put in a bid to buy Dennis Wyness who has two years of his contract to run.

Do you:-

A - Sell him but at a price.

B - Say "Of course you must have him. Take him for free since it will help your efforts to reach the SPL before us." or

C - Tell County where to go?

 

There really is so much self-pitying tosh spoken about Darien by the nationalist lobby. Darien was a complete fiasco from the very start and didn't need the intervention of the English to secure its demise.  For goodness sake they went out there loaded with trinkets and combs to sell to the natives!!

The whole thing was a horror story of mismanagement and naivety from the very start. The Scots promoters of the scheme were simply the architects of their own sorry demise.

However the "b&$%&£d English" brigade I referred to in an earlier post have jumped on this (and certain aspects of the likes of Glencoe and Culloden as well) in an attempt to create some kind of Anglophobic reaction, and the myth that the failure of Darien was some kind of English conspiracy.

The reality eventually turned out to be that, IF (and I emphasise IF) creating an empire is what floats your boat, the Scots joined up with the English in 1707 and almost immediately discovered that they were Better Together  in that Scots played a pivotal role in Great Britain then setting up of the largest empire in the history of the world.

 

Similarly in the event of a yes vote next year, don't expect UK continuing to bend over to help you - such as Salmond seems to expect with respect to the pound (although I gather there are divisions on that one.) UK continuing will and should look after its own interests first and foremost.

 

PS - Oddquine, the "shared monarch of the time" was actually Dutch and had, until her demise in 1695, been married to a member of the Scottish House of Stuart.

Edited November 25, 2013 by Charles Bannerman

[starchief]

Leaning more to No now.  Nicola's proposition of increasing the population is a complete anathema to my viewpoint.  For a myriad of social, environmental and economical reasons, I'm against population growth in Edinburgh, Scotland, the UK, Europe and the World.  I couldn't vote for anyone that has that as a main plank of their policies.

 

Also, although I was very pro-Europe a few years ago, the near-collapse has turned the EU from a federal-leaning organisation into a centralised undemocratic monster.  All the other countries had to join the Euro with the EU.  Scotland may be different but apparently Spain will not accept simple inherited accession and I see no reason why the rest of the UK will join in with a Sterling-zone, except in the very short-term.  Just enough to cut their ties.

[Charles Bannerman]

Leaning more to No now.  Nicola's proposition of increasing the population is a complete anathema to my viewpoint.  For a myriad of social, environmental and economical reasons, I'm against population growth in Edinburgh, Scotland, the UK, Europe and the World.  I couldn't vote for anyone that has that as a main plank of their policies.

You are absoultely right there Starchief. People keep binding on about human induced climate change and completely fail to observe that the fundamental problem is not energy use habits but world population. That is the basic issue behind the climate change debate and a lot of other resource based problems on this plant.

So it's therefore just a wee bit ironic that that self appointed environmental paragon Al Gore is one of the main offenders against the planet - because he has FOUR kids.

 

Oh... and as I write... live and exclusive from the public launch of Alex Salmond's Wish List at the Glasgow Science Centre - in an independent Scotland, Caley Thistle WILL get a new manager.... with his salary paid from the Oil Fund

Edited November 26, 2013 by Charles Bannerman

[Alex MacLeod]

 For goodness sake they went out there loaded with trinkets and combs to sell to the natives!!

 

Unlike those who went out with gunpowder and ball and took what they wanted by force, rape and pillage.

[Caley Stan]

Leaning more to No now.  Nicola's proposition of increasing the population is a complete anathema to my viewpoint.  For a myriad of social, environmental and economical reasons, I'm against population growth in Edinburgh, Scotland, the UK, Europe and the World.  I couldn't vote for anyone that has that as a main plank of their policies.

 

 

What are the economic arguments against increasing the population of a sparsely populated country with an ageing population?

[starchief]

Immigrants from poorer countries willing to work longer for less money.

Edited November 26, 2013 by starchief

[dougiedanger]

Immigrants from poorer countries willing to work.

 

Sorted 

[Charles Bannerman]

So that's it then? The Sermon at the Science Centre. "Full of sound and fury signifying nothing" (I must admit I am also tempted by the phrase which immediately precedes that in Macbeth's Act V soliloquy  )

 

After all that fuss and buid up it was a bit like getting summoned to the headmaster's office, only to discover that he doesn't actually own a belt, so all he can do is shout at you!

Edited November 26, 2013 by Charles Bannerman

[starchief]

 

Immigrants from poorer countries willing to work.

 

Sorted 

 

Only when you class a brain surgeon as the same as a low-skilled person.  Immigrant isn't a nationality or a measure of skill or employability.  Each must be judged on merit and need for the country.  Amongst some nationalities, unemployment is 5x that of the host (and it's not down to racism either as there are clear differences between countries of the same race).

 

And economics isn't the only reason.  For every new person, energy must be burned and resources must be found.

[dougiedanger]

So that's it then? The Sermon at the Science Centre. "Full of sound and fury signifying nothing" (I must admit I am also tempted by the phrase which immediately precedes that in Macbeth's Act V soliloquy  )

 

After all that fuss and buid up it was a bit like getting summoned to the headmaster's office, only to discover that he doesn't actually own a belt, so all he can do is shout at you!

 

That's the thing CB, some people want to live in a modern, forward-looking, properly democratic country, and are not caught in eighteen-oatcake wishing for the return of the days of the Life Boys, the Bumber's Laney, and the Caddie f*ckin rats.