Do You Support Scottish Independence?

It's a chance for it to free itself from a biased media

It's fairly unlikely that any ethnic nationalist/anti-immigration party would get many votes in Scotland (Though it's probably possible it might garner some support in the greater GLasgow suburbs). Partially because most people don't like the idea of involving race in politics (the BNP and UKIP always get soundly drubbed up here) and partially because Scotland is relatively pro-immagration; needing migrant labour to keep the economy functioning.

15 died in Peterloo. Not exactly the potato famine

Thatcher trialled poll tax in Scotland.

Nuclear weapons are on the Clyde because the English wouldn't allow them in the Thames or the Bristol Channel.

Scottish politicians would represent Scotland better because they are only representing our small country, not the entire UK.

Scotland is not an equal partner. It has less MPs and is treated as second to England.

Thatcher ruined Scottish industry. The SNP support our industry and our people (free prescriptions etc).

Scottish oil money has been used to build the channel tunnel and crossrail.

English politicians lied over Scottish oil reserves and lied about Scotland being a basket case.

Whatever about the financial aspect of it. its a chance for scotland to break from a union based on notions of imperialism, elitism and arrogance. It's a chance for it to free itself from a biased media, an inward looking isolationism. Irish men and women had to die to get its independence now scotland has a chance to do it in the polls.

Money is invested falsely. To create an impression that Scotland is best served in Union while our economy grows slower than the rest of the UK. Our people die younger than the rest of the UK. Our natural resources are pillaged to benefit the rest of the UK. Our children become more and more illiterate and innumerate. Our taxes are squandered on WMD's based here that Scots people and their MP's don't want!!

Indeed not, but whilst it seems you've swallowed the Big Book of Sinn Fein History wholeheartedly, I suspect your understanding of the potato famine is completely false.



Both utter lies. It is a matter of public record that the Poll Tax was introduced a year early in Scotland because Scotland was due a rates revaluation... one year earlier! Scottish rates were governed by an entirely different Act of Parliament.

As for nuclear weapons, there was no suggestion that they could have been placed in the Thames or Bristol channel for anyone to reject. It is widely accepted that the Clyde base's geography is especially suited to this - indeed, the CND claim that there are no possible alternative sites in England whatsoever.



So you are better represented as a smaller place? Surely then you should support city states and sovereign counties rather than an independent Scotland?



No, Scotland is an equal part - not an equal partner. That would be utterly obscene and completely undemocratic. The only 'partners' in the United Kingdom are the British people, sixty million of them, who are equal in law to one another.



Again, a lie. Manufacturing output from Scotland increased over that time. The SNP have virtually no powers to 'support industry' and have pursued anti-business policies like punitive business rates revaluations.

As for free prescriptions, I fail to see how diverting millions of pounds from frontline NHS staff to fund medicines for people who can already afford them is a good policy.



Well, all of it goes in the same pot. You might as well say the Welsh boozing money has been used to build the Forth Rail Bridge.



How could they? They were a matter of public record. Indeed, it turned out that the government oil projections from the North Sea in the 1970s were actually overly optimistic!



Just bigoted stereotyping from an ideology based on relentless negativity. I've never met a British imperialist; I don't think our people are arrogant either. In fact, I think we're fairly decent sorts.

As for isolationism - you might as well be suggesting that the earth is flat. The UK is unashamedly outward looking - indeed, it is the nationalists (unsurprisingly) who criticise that!



Actually, you're right - money is wasted. For example, by paying the salaries of 129 politicians in Edinburgh for a job which was once carried out (better) by a handful of Scottish Office Ministers. Labour and the SNP have poured money down the drain - free tuition for the middle classes, Edinburgh trams, ridiculous 'Homecoming' vanity projects.

It is completely unsurprising that Scotland, despite being massively overfunded,

lags behind places like the south east of England.

We have oil, it will pay for any troubles (although I ultimately would want a Celtic Socialist state - and possibly an Irish/Welsh/Cornish/Breton/Scotland union).

LOL you are absolutely deranged. Is this what your obvious hatred of England will drive you to? Encircling England in your bizzare Celtic union?

And an independent Cornwall? As somebody who grew up in South West England, nothing makes me laugh harder. What next freedom for Devon?

Don't kid yourself about the Free Kernow army, A bunch of bumpkins with a can of parrafin and a fag lighter more like! Some funny things go on over the Tamar!

Cornwall is a proud celtic nation, so don't mock it in that unpleasant way thanks...

they have their own language etc I suppose they should just be submerged into England and shut up right??

Yes, but that is because Scotland has essentially seen no immigration. Given the SNP is based around glorification of the nation, I would guess their base members would see mass migration (not the token Indian in a kilt) as a threat to that identity. There is no support for the BNP in South West England - which, outside Bristol, is almost entirely homogeneous, but it garners support in poor and segregated communities like Bradford (in which Scotland has no equivalent). I have no doubt that you would see an identical movement in Scotland (if Scotland was 15% non white like England, as opposed to 2% non white), I would turn what you said around, and argue that most people in England don't like the idea of involving race in politics - given that cities like Manchester, London, Birmingham, Leicester, Bradford, Leeds, Nottingham, Oxford, Bristol and so on have all transformed very quickly into very diverse cities, and none have any significant BNP or other nationalist representation. I think it is a low blow to make out as if Scotland is some sort of multiethnic paradise, compared to those nasty intolerant Angles. The actual reality is Scotland is the least diverse nation in Western Europe along with Finland - hence why there is very little ethnic nationalism (there is simply no need), and nothing to do with the Scottish mentality. Come back to me when Edinburgh is 55% White British like Birmingham (as opposed to 95%) and tell me that nobody in Scotland has a problem with mass migration...

You can make your long winded arguments but the Scottish people want freedom and they will get it

Got any proof of this?

Yeah I have been to Surrey with their fancy mansions and expensive cars, maybe you should move there if it is so great..

Our Celtic/Scottish culture is more valuable than English gold.

We have oil, it will pay for any troubles (although I ultimately would want a Celtic Socialist state - and possibly an Irish/Welsh/Cornish/Breton/Scotland/Manx union).

Our Celtic/Scottish culture is more valuable than English gold.

We have oil, it will pay for any troubles

(although I ultimately would want a Celtic Socialist state - and possibly an Irish/Welsh/Cornish/Breton/Scotland/Manx union).

The GERS report. Despite some tables in which a trick of accounting is used to cover up the deficit (which can still be found by looking at the ever increasing national debt figure) Scotland has run a deficit comparitive to the rest of the UK even when including North Sea oil revenues. Given that there is no reason a Scottish person should have any more right to North Sea oil money than an English person, the size of the deficit indicates overfunding.

This surely only holds while the union is still in place though, for afterwards resources are apportioned on a geographical basis according to the international laws of the seabed?

I see you have the EU flag? What do you nationalists really want?

I don't understand you, do you just want to swap Westminster for Brussels?

Personally yes - though I don't pretend I even speak for a significant minority amongst the nationalists; I'm way out there on a limb in that I want a USE.

Nationalists want independence for a variety of reasons; though most of them want it because they feel the UK state is not capable of governing Scotland efficiently. If a party is not governing efficiently we can vote them out - if an entire system of governing is not governing efficiently (or, and this is probably a more honest interpretation of the term, "in the interests of the common weal") then what's wrong with getting rid of it and replacing it with one that will?

Why?

Look how Greece and Ireland have been treated, you seriously think that the British state would treat Scotland with such brutal indifference? The EU and Eurozone have demonstrated they are willing to sacrifice entire nations like Greece for the economic good of core members like Germany, why would Scottish interests be better represented in this system?

Because we are all european together.

The British State has treated Scotland with such "brutal" indifference. H.J. Hanham's "History of Scottish Nationalism" (1969) has a copy of a memo (I can't remember if it was Home Office or Treasury, I think maybe the latter?) from 1967 detailing plans for economic management which essentially sell industries in Scotland out in order to protect industries in England; the recompense was to bloat the public sector north of the border in order to reduce the sting of the unemloyment that would inevitably follow. I don't blame them for making this call; in their position I would have done exactly the same thing because their job was to manage the big picture.

If you want to go looking for examples where Scotland's interests have been subserviated to the interests of the UK (or English) state then they are fairly regular from the 17th century onwards (Starting with dragging the Scots into the English wars against the Dutch and losing them the Baltic Sea Salt Trade). Let's not pretend it doesn't happen; but at the same time let's not pretend that anybody is being bad to anybody else - they aren't. The efficient management of UK state interests just seems to be consistently incompatible with Scottish interests - which is why I support seperation.

I don't hold any hope that the EU will be a utopia in this regard, but there's a reasonable case that because there are so many member states with so many different interests that this sort of conflict of interests will be less consistent than in a union where there is only one major partner with three relatively powerless satellites. Our interests will be trampled, but they will be trampled occassionally rather than systematically. Which is surely an improvement?

As for why? Because we are all european together, and I think a political and economic union would stand us in good stead to compete with China, India and the USA, because I think that a united europe would provide more opportunities for its citizens to enrich their lives both continentally and intercontinenally, and because I think that an isolationst mentality is a one way street to being a backwater.