Be Excellent To Each Other

from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8535946.stm

Just reading about the SNP's proposals for a referendum. Do people, especially us English folk, care about the Union or should the various parts go their seperate ways?

My instinctive reaction has always been that if the Scots want to leave, we should bid them a fond farewell (and ensure we get to keep the nuclear bomb), but I've never really thought about it too deeply. Does the break up of the UK matter? Or is the Union forever?

What happens to the oil would be quite important.

Also the splitting of assets. Such as the BBC.

Primary reason for devolving would be getting shot of your bomb, IMHO.

I'd completely overlooked the whole oil factor! Any divorce would get hankered down in negotiations and not just between the factions - though as I favour 'Home Rule all round' a proper federation would allow us to keep the UK seat on the UN Security council and provide for a system of defence of the islands etc.

Certainly, the present set-up where Scottish MPs can vote on English matters is untenable, especially if they might prevent another party, secure in England, from getting a majority. But I've never detected a yearning for a formal split this side of Hadrian's Wall.

I'm pretty sure having nuclear capability guarantees you one of the permanent seats on the UN Security Council.

Well, no. See: India, Pakistan.

Although I think all the permanent members are the only ones who have signed the Non proliferation treaty.

Will we get St Georges Day as a Bank Holiday if we split?

Sorry - I meant if you've got one, they're not going to boot you off.

Hence the name.

Didn't it just start with "People who won WWII"? Only the Us had the bomb when it began.

Aye.

(a) There's not much oil left so we don't really care that much. Anyway, they'd, at best, get a percentage of the oil revenue, what with us having paid for all the infrastructure. Otherwise I suppose they could pay us for all of that and we'd sell them the oilfields. Still, that would require them having money. See (d).

Plus, we've got the Falklands! Money times are here again.

(b) We'd keep the nuclear stuff where it is. No Act of Reverse Settlement would pass without us basically having a Scottish Gitmo within which we could park our phallic reprensentations of England's Mighty Sea Power, metaphorically thrusting ourselves in and out of Bonny Scotland's rear.

(c) I had thought that in most opinion polls most Scots have said they would rather not be independent, so this strikes me as a coming disappointment for Salmond.

(d) Given the comparatively large percentage of the workforce in public sector jobs in Scotland I'd be intrigued to see them survive on their own tax revenue. Also, when my wife was doing the government departmental capability reviews (most govt departments are rubbish, it turns out, but very good at arguing to have the reports made to be more complimentary), she went up to Edinburgh to review the Scottish Executive, and a senior civil servant said (and I quote) "under the Barnett formula we've got more money than we know what to do with". Independence isn't going to be good for the bank balance.

(e) I don't think we'd be splitting any national assets (other than potentially the oil, as per (a)) with the Scottish government whatsoever. For instance, there's no way we're going to hand them the Tornado squadron based up in Lossiemouth or wherever it is. Scottish licence fee payers could continue to watch the BBC, though.

(f) The SNP are a bunch of racist wankers.

How can they be racist when we're the same race as them?

Awesomely, according to the UN, racism (or at least "racial discrimination") is defined in the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination as being on the basis of:

"any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin"

Racism isn't about race, it seems.

Give them Cornwall as well.

Don't want it, you keep it.

FTFY.

I'm unsure of devolution. If it actually happened it probably wouldn't be as bad as eejits in the pub make out, but it's not going to be the greatest thing ever like the SNP make out. There would need to be major changes, but we'd get by. Personally I reckon decentralisation of government is a better plan for the UK & so does that big Tory tube, David Cameron.

No please take it...gratis.

No, SRSLY. Give it to France or something.

I'll take it.

Now, where did you leave those nukes?

No Government is serious about decentralisation. How else would they ensure they can fuck around fix the problems with education, health etc.

Decentralisation is absolute anathema to political power. If you don't control them, how do you make them obey you? Because when the shit hits the fan about failing schools or failing hospitals, the public won't take "nothing to do with me" as an excuse.

Quite. Mr Tube will literally say almost anything that sounds like a vote winner at the moment though.

I am unsure about this as well.

I like the romanticism of an independant Scotland but it is hard to understand the fact from the fiction about the issue, especially when the SNP are saying it's the best thing ever and Labour are saying it will be the death of Scotland. I really don't know how I'd vote if a referendum was ever offered.

I am fairly happy with how the SNP have governed Scotland over the last few years though. My main problem with their politics was caused by their position on Nuclear power but that was because I was working in that industry. Their election is what kick started my attempts to find a new job. My girlfriend wouldn't have her job if it weren't for them-one of their election promises was to have a major recruitment drive for the police and that has certainly happened. If it hadn't happened then Jen could still have ended up with that job but it would have been a year plus for the application process never mind getting a start date.
I'm not unhappy with the union though and I don't have a problem with England or English people like a proportion of the Scottish population might have.

You'd never learn the secret of our magic flying treens if it happened.

We don't need the secret, we keep our underground where it belongs.

I say go the other way, get rid of Scotland, England and Wales and have the United Confederation of Cornwall.

Scotland can fuck off or stay, I don't give a shit. What I do care about, though, is that if they choose to stay, then they should have the EXACT same laws, or if they don't want that then their ministers can have precisely 0 comment on English/Welsh laws. As it stands right now, Scotland is in a sweet spot where they get everything without really doing much :/

Wouldn't it be funny if instead England and Wales had a referendum on whether to boot out Scotland and it went through?

That simultaneously drilled Cornwall off to drift away on its own accord?

Fascist Anglo-imperialist scum the lot of you.

My argument is that there's no point in an independent Scotland, to be honest. We'll all be in a federal Europe eventually, well within our lifetimes, and by then, Scotland will be able to gain more autonomy as a state within a wider federation.

As an Englander I don't care if Scotland is separate or not.

I treat the rivalry between England and Scotland as being on a jokey level like the rivalry between North and South England.

My girlfriend doesn't plain get" the whole England-versus-Scotland thing. They're just different types of British people, who are much more similar to each other than, say, the Flemish are to Walloons, or even West Germans to East Germans. She thinks Scottish and Welsh separatism ridiculous too, as the nations they wish to "revive" ceased to exist centuries ago, it's all nationalism based upon self-serving mythology and illusionary distortions of history. I agree with her, to be honest.

Oh I agree. It's OK to be patriotic and proud of where you come from, but to denigrate the inhabitants of other nations just because you happened to be born a few miles the other side of the border is just silly.

I don't really get it & I grew up surrounded by it

The whole versus thing can be good banter with the right people, but usually someone takes it too far, feelings get hurt & it stops being a joke.

That's a slightly odd thing, though.

I also see it as a silly, mostly imaginary divide. But, in reality, I know that the divide does exist, and though I do not care, some people really care. I don't get cabs from the train station in Lancaster unless someone is with me or if I absolutely can't manage my bags. The reason is the drivers hear my accent and straight away change. They always say they hate Londoners (because as soon as they hear that you sound vaguely southern you are obviously a Londoner) that southerners are rude, obnoxious, rich prats... (completely missing the irony of the YOU'RE REALLY UNFRIENDLY rant they are barking at me), and it can be a bit in your face when you are travelling alone.

My mother's ex, the evil one, was Scottish. He hated the English and England, as he never tired of telling everyone. Most people don't care, but those that do seem to really care to a scary level.

(I know that there will obviously be Englishers/Southerners that feel equally stupidly about their Northern-dwelling counterparts, I've not seen it as because they've no reason to say these things to me , but I wondered if Scots/Northerners here ever get told how much they are hated by folks from the south or people from England?)

I knew an irish guy who hated England and the English. He was going to Manchester University. Obv the Irish ones were too good for him, or something?


ps: I'm well up for a Eurofederation. NOW PLZ.

I think I'm probably more in favour of Europe than I am of independant Scotland. Again that is from an ignorant stand point with very little actual knowledge of the issues surrounding it.
I am not ashamed of loving my national identity however and think it's a shame that people seem to use their national identity as a weapon or a flashpoint for arguments. I love being Scottish and I love Scotland. It's not blind patriotism either, more just an appreciation for a beautiful country.

Fair enough. We all have our own identities and self-identification of our places in the world. A sense of pride and belonging is positive; it's the more insular, us-versus-them nationalism I can't stand.

Have to add my girlfriend's view on the situation is influenced from her East German background. I didn't actually know this before having a German girlfriend, but there's still a strong East/West cultural divide, and the latter can be completely unpleasant to the Easterners. Even some of the W. Germans at her university have bigoted views, and they would've barely been out of nappies when the wall came down. Rather disturbing.

Let them vote, and then whatever comes of it, it's their own fault. I'm inclined to favour independence, if only because there seems to be a decent case for it, far more so than in cornwall or basque, and it's obviously in our mutual interest to co-operate on a lot of matters anyway.

Plus I'd like to have a country nearby that I can emigrate to in case england goes totally to shit before I get good at spanish again.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-16478121

I think they'll lose.

(But, if not, don't expect us to bail you guys out again when you blow all your treasure on an ill-conceived venture in the New World)

What bugs me, and I probably should write a longer post on this, is that I've never been sure what the SNP mean by 'independence'. After all, off the top of my head, they would still have to trade with England, either in the EU or outside of it, there would still be defence matters for negotiation, and matters like cross-border migration are unlikely to be any different to what is currently the case.

Whatever their plans are, I suspect they are a whole lot more concrete than those of UKIP/Tory Eurosceptics about cutting ties with the EU.

Do our North British friends have any views on their First Minister's announcement?

so far as I can tell its all about having something to shout about and grafitti on things, the hate type seperatism always seems to be based around historical events that have been taken out of context. And football.

"Independence" I dont know what this will entail but I get the impression that a piece of paper will be signed, everyone can shout hooray! and wave little flags and then it will all settle down a bit hopefully. If so then let it happen, it might shut the nationalists up for a while

edit: written from scotland

I'm wondering if the date is significant. Not the idea 2014 marks x-number of centuries since such and such a battle, but that it would occur before the full effects of the Scotland Bill, if passed, were felt bu the populace. After all, that Bill makes Scotland pay its own way far more than is currently the case, and that would provide Scots qwith a taste of what divorce would entail.

They want the same as Ireland, essentially: to be rid of the English and to then jump headlong into the warm bosom of the EU. And then they'll instead be fucked by the Germans and the French, but won't be part of a country large enough to potentially fight back a little. I think it's all going to go swimmingly.

What I think's even more bizarre about this whole situation is that I know relatively few Scots in favour of independence, and the polling at the moment is very low (mid-20s to high-30s), which is clearly why the SNP want to wait. They're hoping the Tories will make such a mess of everything and that the SNP will swing back into everyone's good books. The thing is, a government isn't forever (I'll be amazed, even given its weak performance of late, if Labour's not much stronger by 2014), and so I hope whatever vote happens isn't just some knee-jerk reaction against a bunch of fuckwit Tories and is taken for the good of the future of the people. Of course, if the rest of the UK got a vote, I bet you'd see a rather different result to what the polls say in Scotland, along the lines of "don't let the door hit your arse on the way out"—at least from a large chunk of xenophobic English Daily Mail (etc.) readers.

(For the record, I'm not hugely fussed either way on the vote, although I do slightly prefer the idea of the UK's continued existence over the otherwise inevitable break-up that would lead to its individual components bickering on this tiny island. I just, like I said, hope the Scots vote in a manner that's not reactionary.)

In a Scottish referendum I will be voting to retain the Union. Most of the Scots I've met are awesome types, but there's a significant proportion with such a giant fucking chip (deep fried) on their shoulder about England that it obscures their view to all else. Salmond is a omni-chinned shitbag that will probably get independance, eventually, and send the country up its arse while somehow still blaming the Westminster government for it all.