Is Scottish independence a 'good or bad' thing?

I'm not sure if it's been discussed, but doesn't Labour get a lot of support from Scotland?

That and the fact BAE are pouring money into Scotstoun which will be the only option out of the docks mentioned capable of building these ships.

By all means they could build them elsewhere. Cost them a bit mind!

You can think wishfully all you like but the Type 26 frigate contract won't be signed until after the referendum and the British government is unlikely in the extreme to commission major warships from abroad in peacetime. It would rightly face a massive backlash from voters and British suppliers alike for not protecting British jobs and for commissioning such vital defence assets abroad. It just won't happen, and nobody in their right mind could possibly think it will. We already pay a significant premium to build in Britain and will continue to do so.

Not even Nicola Sturgeon is now trying to make a case that it will, preferring to talk about supporting "our shipyards through our own naval procurement, support for exports and, where it is appropriate, diversification away from military contracts".

The writing would be on the wall for Scottish military shipyard workers, though they could always move to Portsmouth or Barrow. BAE is hoping and expecting that Scotland will remain within the UK, and I assume its executives will increasing wear brown suits if the polls show the vote getting significantly closer.

Any relaxation of the policy (which won't happen, but let's deal with the hypothetical question anyway) would have to result in major benefits to Britain, and the only valid one would be to buy the ships considerably cheaper. Scotland obviously can't do that (as, if it could, it would be doing it already) but Japan or South Korea can.

The CEO of BAE has acknowledged that the Clyde is shutting in the event if a yes vote.

Has he?

Can I see that please, I've never seen such a statement.

BAE Systems has significant interests and employees in Scotland, and it is clear that continued union offers greater certainty and stability for our business.

In the event that Scotland voted to become independent, we would need to discuss the way forward with the Ministry of Defence and UK government, and work with them to deliver the best solution in those circumstances.

Has he?

Can I see that please, I've never seen such a statement.

Has he?

Can I see that please, I've never seen such a statement.

I really don't understand why anyone would waste their breath arguing that the UK would continue to order such military assets from abroad when they don't have a technology shortfall to justify it. It really is a silly argument. The British yards are perfectly capable of taking over from Scotland, possibly with a certain amount of investment, certainly. The SNP has timed the referendum rather badly on the particular issue of the frigates, though it has a better chance of keeping some carrier work.

And the fact remains that there has been a 400% increase in the use of food banks which isn't a short-term fix but a constant humiliating necessity for those people that according to your facts are coming out of poverty.

Has he?

Can I see that please, I've never seen such a statement.

Thatcher might be dead, but her politics live on in the likes of Cameron and Osborne. Scottish people do not want to be stuck under this sort of rule.

Like so many of the black and white things still said about Thatcherism, it is a convenient myth. In fact, Scottish support was crucial to her coming to power. At the 1979 election, the Conservatives won over 31% of the Scottish vote, an increase of almost a third on the previous election – when they had been led by the much less carnivorous Edward Heath. In 1979, the Tories also won 22 Scottish seats; had these gone to other parties, Thatcher's 44-strong majority would have disappeared entirely.

Four years of abrasive Tory government followed: the decimation of manufacturing, the harsh dogma of monetarism, the beginning of modern British military adventuring with the Falklands war. Did Scots reject it all in disgust? Not exactly: Tory support in Scotland at the 1983 election dropped by just 3% (it fell in England too). At the 1987 election, the Scottish Tory vote slipped another 4%. But then, at the 1992 election – the Conservative victory that ensured many of the Thatcherite changes to Britain would not be reversed – Tartan Toryism revived again, increasing its vote share to 26%: still higher than Heath had managed in 1974.

In 1992, even after 13 years of Tory rule, after the early imposition of the poll tax on Scotland, and countless tin-eared Thatcher trips north of the border, a large minority of Scots approved of what the Tories had done to their country. In a close election, that approval was quietly pivotal for Thatcher's deceptively rightwing successor John Major.

The Tory vote in Scotland did not finally collapse until the 1997 election, when it fell by a third, never to recover. Why did this rejection of Thatcherism – if that's what it was, rather than enthusiasm for the Thatcher-revering Tony Blair – take so long to happen? Speaking to the Tory blogger Iain Dale in 2008 about his country's feelings towards the Thatcher government, SNP leader Alex Salmond said: "We didn't mind the economic side so much." He went on to add: "We didn't like the social [policy] side at all," and to furiously deny that he had given Thatcherism any kind of endorsement. But the first minister also gave an economic prescription for Scotland that might have come from an 80s Tory: "We need a competitive edge, a competitive advantage – get on with it, get things done, speed up decision making, reduce bureaucracy."

The SNP's Thatcherite side lives on in its promises to cut corporation tax and air passenger duty in order, it is claimed, to create a more dynamic country. And Thatcherism lives on in Scotland's economy and society.

Thatcher might be dead, but her politics live on in the likes of Cameron and Osborne. Scottish people do not want to be stuck under this sort of rule.

Where would the work come from to keep it going? Certainly not a future Scottish navy which would require minimal ships!

I thought they were built in Poland?

And interesting take on it.

http://thinpinstripedline.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/bagpipes-bayonets-bluster-and-bugger.html?m=1

http://thinpinstripedline.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/sinking-without-trace-future-of.html?m=1

Thatcher might be dead, but her politics live on in the likes of Cameron and Osborne. Scottish people do not want to be stuck under this sort of rule.

I have to echo what has been previously said by others about Salmond here. Today he advocates economic liberalism to a degree that would have placed him no where other than the Tory Party in the 1970s and 80s.

Lady Thatcher changed the entire political dynamic in the UK. She won an ideological argument, and now all mainstream politics are framed within a broad consensus-area that would have seemed radical centre-right beforehand.

You say Scottish people don't want Thatcher-like policies, but it's worth noting that Margaret Thatcher secured more votes in Scotland than the SNP ever did. I suspect if she was around today, there are plenty of Scots who've moved away from the Conservatives who'd come back.

She'll live on in the politics of Scotland for decades to come. Quite fitting, as Scotland is the birthplace of Thatcherism, as she admitted herself: "the Scots invented Thatcherism, long before I was thought of".

People often use the 'more pandas than Tories' line to show how Scots don't vote Conservative. Perhaps a better question would be how a party securing nearly 20% of the vote only gets 1 out of 59 MPs.


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That'll be down to the UK electoral system. Scotland of course decided on proportionate representation