do the Scottish get a huge advantage?

Ok, i won't argue here, simply i can't, however possessions of the crown? i might be grasping at straws here but does that not include the commonwealth?

I would have simply said Britain however i do not remember mentioning culture specifically. BUT if you went to any of these countries and asked their population to which country they belonged would they not state the corresponding country. As is similar in Scotland to my understanding the Majority of people in Scotland still choose to be called Scottish over British though i may be wrong however we are going horribly off topic in my eyes so i will submit the point.

London does not have an assembly devoted to it? Nor does Cumbria? I apologise if i missed your point.

Thank you the information you have actually taught me a few things which is always good.

I agree i can't argue with this, But i feel it is over represented in comparison to Wales and N.Ireland, Not England. As England has the majority, it cannot be blamed on Scotland for them being indecisive instead of acting as a unit.

I may be wrong but it is well established that Scotland would 'keep' the Queen

That's confusing because i do know for a fact it has the power to overrule anything the Scottish Assembly try to pass.

And one last thing you mentioned oil in another post, Scottish Adjacent Waters Boundaries Order 1999 as part of the devolved parliament of Scotland was Scotland not given (i think) 80%+ of the oil populated waters.

That oil belongs to all the UK btw. Its not to fund someone's socialist agenda.

On a pure technicality you're incorrect. Look up Sewel motions.

If you know anything about the law you know it's all a matter of opinion. Plus there's hardly an 'overwhelming' majority in England for Scottish independence. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/9015374/Britain-divided-over-Scottish-independence.html)

Happily, the overwhelming majority of Scottish people don't want independence. The fact that you make the comparison of a child at home would - I suggest - show your own immaturity rather than that of the independents. It's national politics, your jejune comparison doesn't do it justice.

What technicality is that? Under the Sewel motions the Scottish parliament has to ratify legislation passed by Westminster. Hence it can overrule.

International law is civil law, as opposed to English case law, so it's not a matter of opinion (not open to interpretations by judges)

Different opinion poll to the one I saw, the yougov poll gave a much higher proportion of English voters in favour of Scottish independence.

Wooo, go Freud. No, it's more a reflection of my opinion of the sort of DM reading people who hold that sort of confrontational attitude. As a matter of national politics and rivalries, jejune comparisons do more than justice. In fact if anything I was being rather complimentary.

No, the commonwealth is not a crown possession - it's a binding alliance of many countries which all recognise the Queen as head of state. Crown possessions are various small islands and chunks of land around the world still under direct governance from London (and then there are crown mandates, like Antigua & Barbuda, which are autonomous commonwealth countries but which London can still directly intervene in. Eg after a spate of massive corruption scandals the government of Antigua was replaced temporarily with a governor in London)

Absolutely every Palestinian will claim to be Palestinian, and every Kurd will claim to be Kurdish! I missed out Tibet as well. They are more fiercely nationalistic than the most blue-face-painted Scot. But they are not separate countries. And the Scots have nothing on the Irish either, North or South.

About London and Cumbria...actually they do! Although I don't believe the Cumbrian one has more power than a local council, the London Assembly has quite a bit of executive power, as does the Mayor.

On representation in Parliament - Scotland is over-represented (8.3% population, 9% seats) London is under-represented (12% population, 11% seats) England overall is marginally over-represented (80% of population and 82% of seats including London, 68% population and 71% seats without) NI is the most under-represented (2.9% population, 2.7% seats) and Wales is most over-represented (4.8% population, 6% seats)

Regarding who the HoS of a Scotland would be, nothing at all is established. That was just a hasty SNP statement around the time of the Jubilee when it was mentioned Independence may mean loosing the Queen - nothing has been formalised with regards to that. (Though it is, I'll agree, highly likely that Scotland would enter the Commonwealth on its creation. Scotland certainly has more Monarchists than England!)

Regarding overruling - a veto is very different to executive power. It can veto, but equally it can't pass new legislation exclusively for Scotland without a vote in favour in the Scottish parliament.

Regarding Oil - that would become invalidated under a separation, and so an equivalent treaty would need negotiating. (Because the waters it is describing would become in part the property of a different country. The treaty would then have to be ratified etc by both sides' parliaments.) Even so, SNP statistics always assume 100% of North Sea oil revenue, a 20% loss would be a huge dent in their budgets.

Regarding the losses to Scotland - 3bn is a conservative estimate, and that is proportionally larger than England's deficit but is currently subsidised by the rest of the UK. It's also ignoring the debt repayments when certain parts of the national debt would be transferred (including I suspect the RBS liabilities) which would be higher than the UK pays as a whole on those debts because an independent Scotland will have a higher borrowing rate.

Further it would have to cover all sorts of other additional costs - Scottish universities still receive a sizeable part of their funding from the UK research council, which the Scottish government would have to pick up, but is currently not counted in Scottish spending because it's dealt with by a UK-wide body, and there are other similar amounts of money not counted in those figures (What's the lottery money flow like? I suspect net into Scotland)

And although I agree there are other things Scotland could give up, the question is what? Their additional healthcare services? Their arts funding? Infrastructure projects? Public sector jobs? Military spending? (I've seen the SNP mention that one, I'm not sure they've thought about how many Scots would be put out of work by that!)

If Scotland becomes independent, it loses EU membership and will have to apply again.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9118606/Lord-Kerr-Independent-Scotland-would-lose-EU-membership.html

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/2011/11/08/independent-scotland-eu/

The reality may very well be that Scotland will continue to be in the EU, but although some commentators think the reapplication is a formality, the renegotiation of terms will not be, i.e. it is highly likely it would have to adopt the euro as all new members do. A lot of people within the Eurozone countries really do not like the fact that Britain has the pound.

So a) I wouldn't take that for granted and b) the reality is the tuition fees in Scotland would shoot up; one reason being that they'll lose the same terms of trade with the rest of Europe as they have now.



As far as the oil goes, some Scots claim 'it's Scotland's'. There are studies, it seems, which suggest that it may be mostly English, some which suggest that it may largely go to Scotland. The reality will be that Scotland will get to keep precious little of the depleting supply. Westminster just won't allow it.

Sewel motions are the referral of a devolved matter from the Scottish Parliament to Westminster. So the Scottish Government wouldn't be overruling anything. It is literally a case of Westminster legislating on a devolved issue. Plus, the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty means all your talk about 'overruling' is a little bit previous. If Westminster wishes to legislate, it can legislate, and the Scottish Parliament be damned.

Lord Bingham thought the Iraq war was illegal, both the US and UK governments have a battalion of lawyers who will tell you it was not. International law is not uncontested law.

Please provide it.

I'm not sure why you think I'm psychoanalysing you?

In civil law both sides are allowed to make a case, it's just that the wording of the law is not open to interpretation when a verdict is reached. So when there is a civil law case, the cases are made that their side is factually correct according to the law (an argument over what the facts are, rather than how the law should be understood.) What the law says and means is not a matter of opinion in civil law.

So cases over who should get what waters would, under international law, come down to arguments over the presence of ridges of islands that may be exposed at very low tides connected to either mainland, or exactly where the border runs as it hits the sea and whether in fact low or high tide should be used etc

Also they'll tell you it was "justified", not "legal". They deflect from the "legal" point.

It was YouGov, as I said.

If Scotland decide to go independent, who do you think
The oil will belong to then? There is no way the UK can lay claim to it. I'm not disagreeing with you as I hate that Salamand or what ever name is

'status' of a greater constituent.

this is horribly confusing... I don't know or understand why you posted this. It merely supports my beliefs that England still maintains the Majority of power, Whilst... i felt Scotland was over represented compared to the N.Ireland and Wales but apparently i'm wrong its Wales who is most over-represented i'm learning a lot today.

It would seem i imagined it my point, my apologies... I honestly can't say more than that, iwas pretty confident about something relating to that but best i can tell i dreamed it up entirely.

I would continue to argue but anything i do in an attempt to find evidence always returns to completely unrelated Scottish independence articles, i am sorry for my failure on this matter.

Sorry to burst your bubble but don't take anything the SNP say at face value, chances are if Scotland becomes independent they won't have anything to do with the Shaping of the new Scotland, its a sad fact people seem to forget. Otherwise chances are separation would be along the borders in which case 80+% of the oil would belong to Scotland but cheaper trade agreements would be drawn up. Or the Agreement would my used to maintain control over the majority of oil populated waters.

Quite possibly. But i'm admittedly showing my lack of in depth knowledge to continue this Argument. I know of the elements but i don't know how they intercede exactly and do not wish to start tripping over myself.

Firstly that although true, is irrelevant the Cost of 3bn a year is including the funding. to my knowledge and i'm not going to go raiding through prior threads about Scottish independence just to find the link to prove otherwise, so i'll give you the point on this one. talking about the lottery aren't Scots some of the most avid ticket buyers?

Military spending simply, Btw i don't like the SNP they either lied to me or changed their policies either way i no longer agree with them. However you neglect to realise that the British Armed Forces will remain, the 'Scottish' members won't just up and leave. The upkeep cost would then rely on The remaining UK to keep them employed or to fire them. (not fair admittedly but fact).

What do you mean by this?

Just some stats to help get to the bottom of the matter - the concept of democracy requires that all people receive equal representation or say in the legislation procedure.

England does hold the majority of power, but that's because it's the majority of people and that should always be the case. Equally you could take Scotland, Wales, Ireland and everywhere north of Essex, call them "the north" (as we do in the south) and talk about how it holds the majority of power. But again it should, because it contains the majority population.

I think what you've missed out on thus far is just how many people live in England. Scotland is less populous than London. It's what proportion of representation that people receive in different places which determines whether the distribution of seats is fair or not.

I do recall the SNP mentioning something RE the monarchy so you haven't entirely imagined that, but nothing formalised let alone legislated regarding the issue.

Well yes, of course civil servants would deal with most of that. But the most that Scotland could possibly hope for is to keep it at 80%, even that might be hard to get past the English who would be, tbh, pretty bitter - a government that wasn't seen to fight over that would be likely signing their own death certificate.

I strongly, strongly doubt that. It will likely include direct government funding, but it will almost certainly neglect indirect funding. (The whole reason governments do indirect funding is so they can neglect it from that sort of figure)

The Scottish are some of the largest buyers, but there is also a lot of lottery funding awarded to Scotland. No idea what the net flow is.

You're probably right. Chances are we would fire them, it wouldn't be feasible either financially or logistically to keep them and move everything (families and support staff as well) down bellow the border, and to keep them where they are would require huge concessions from Hollyrood (and likely still not be affordable). All the defence industry stuff would have to move too because that's all classified. That would be very harmful for Scotland's economy, a lot of people would be out of work.

Yes they do gain a massive advantage in a number of ways. First and foremost they don't have to pay £9000 in fees, which is very significant.

But it goes even further. In terms of governance, Scottish people get more public money spent on them than anywhere else in the country, both Westminster and Holyrood end up coining money for Scots. I think I remember it as being something like 1/3rd more public money money spent per head than those across the border in County Durham.

The Scottish also have a disporportianate influence in our Parliament, when us English now have no say in theirs - the West Lothian question

*why the negs? They are plain and evident political facts which point toward a distinct advantage, especially in the area of education

Yawn!!!

I wish people would check the facts without making these bigoted and uneducated comments.It is true that scottish people get more money spent on them than any other nation in the UK.....But it is justified,such as Scotlands oil contributes to 11% of the britains GDP alone! and scotland receives 8% of public money from the UK purse.It doesnt take a mathematician to work out if thats fair,going by this alone we should receive more,but i guess we'll have to wait until independance! The blame is with the westminster goverment,if Scotland and Northern Ireland can afford to fund their education system,then surely England can too.Its not Scotlands fault you voted in the tories!

I may also add,im Scottish and studying in England so will also be paying £9000 a year fees just like you guys.

Please care to inform me with all your omniscient wisdom how what I said was "bigoted" and "uneducated"; when the three facts are essentially true, and were put forward without malice nor prejudice. I also notice you failed to mention the West Lothian question, because lets face it you are banged to rights on that one.

And for your information if I could have, I would not have voted for the tories in 2010, nor will I in 2014.

I'm ashamed to say I live in his constituency...

I think this is true, they want more and more UK applicants instead of Scottish so are restricting the places available for us. For example, the difference between the list of vacancies available here http://www.dundee.ac.uk/clearing/scottish_eu/ and here http://www.dundee.ac.uk/clearing/rest_of_uk/ at Dundee Uni is massive it feels like it's going to become like the divide between UK/EU applicants and Internationals tbh.