"Should Scotland be an independent country?"

[BigV]

raucous cheering

North lannatshire (sp): yes by a narrow margin (4k votes)

[BigV]

Glasgow: 366k votes cast, 79% turnout. 194k yes, 169k no


country totals about 55% no, 44% yes.

[BigV]

six authorities remaining, all expected to vote no.

YES needs another 465k votes to make it to 50% plus one. unlikely.

[limey]

I am a bit embarrassed to be part of a nation that voted against its own independence. I am a Yes voter feeling a little raw today.

[DanaC]

I can understand that.

Personally, this was the result I was hoping for - close enough run to force real and significant change, and hopefully kickstart a true devolution of power from Westminster out to the regions of England, as well as the countries of the UK. But not an actual end to the union of the countries.

Selfish, I know - but Scotland leaving the union would fundamentally change what it means to me to be British (in terms of my national identity - I realise Scotland would always be British in terms of being on the landmass of Great Britain).

I watched a tv debate about it a few days ago and heard someone put forward a socialist argument in favour of the No vote. It was the first time I've heard a genuinely convincing one. Neil Oliver, the archaeologist. He really impressed me. It was in response to the idea that Scotland could effectively become independent from the Tory led economy and be more able to tackle poverty and build a more socially inclusive society. His argument was that we are, whatever our national identities, one island - inextricably linked through our cultures and history - different parts of one family - and he found the idea that Scotland might become an enclave of hope and social change, thought interesting, also a way of turning its back on the rest of that family - that there are cities all over the island that face poverty and distress, with many people unhappy with the way Westminster governs. The biggest reason for hope though, he argued, was the massive percentage of people who got involved, registered to vote (and in the end did vote) - if that could be replicated across the whole island, we could force real change for all of us.

The way I see it - the problem isn't that Scotland is ruled by England - it's that the whole of the Britain is governed by Westminster. Scotland is a nation, and it is part of a union of nations. But that should be reflected in the way it is governed. My ideal would be something far closer to a federal union of independent nations than what we now have. And I think the whole process of the referendum will force that to happen.

To me: Scotland didn't vote 'against independence', but for union.

[DanaC]

Quick point: @ Bruce - just to be clear - we didn't become the United Kingdom because England invaded and conquered Scotland. The king of Scotland inherited the English throne and united the two crowns under him.

The whole 'British' project - the empire building, the cultural and economic explosion was all led by the Scottish. We'd never have been the power house we were without the Scottish at the fore. They led all of it. They were the mainstay of the army, the colonial expeditionaries, the cultural rennaisance, all of it. Left purely to the English, Welsh and Irish we'd have been nothing.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Quick point: @ Bruce - just to be clear - we didn't become the United Kingdom because England invaded and conquered Scotland. The king of Scotland inherited the English throne and united the two crowns under him.

Then why isn't my name MacGregor?

UK political leaders and many European governments are strongly urging the Scots to vote against independence. Scottish independence, the “No” campaign argues, would bring few if any of the claimed benefits; on the contrary, it would cause many economic calamities, ranging from financial panics to the flight of jobs and industry from Scotland. Moreover, an independent Scotland might be excluded from the European Union and NATO.

That wouldn't make sense.

The rest of the UK (called the “RUK” in the current debate), including England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, would quickly and efficiently negotiate the terms of independence with Scotland, agreeing how to share the UK’s public debt and public assets, including offshore oil and gas. Both sides would be pragmatic and moderate in their demands.

At the same time, the EU would agree immediately to Scotland’s continued membership, given that Scotland already abides by all of the required laws and democratic standards. Similarly, NATO would agree immediately to keep Scotland in the Alliance (though the Scottish National Party’s pledge to close US and British nuclear-submarine bases would be a complication to be overcome).

Both Scotland and the RUK might agree that Scotland would temporarily keep the British pound but would move to a new Scottish pound or the euro. If such monetary arrangements are transparent and cooperatively drawn, they could occur smoothly and without financial turmoil.

That's a possible and plausible scenario. However if the dickheads prevail...

But if the RUK, the EU, and NATO respond vindictively to a Yes vote – whether to teach Scotland a lesson or to deter others (such as Catalonia) – matters could become very ugly and very costly. Suppose that a newly independent Scotland is thrown out of the EU and NATO, and told that it will remain outside for years to come. In this scenario, a financial panic could indeed be provoked, and both Scotland and the RUK would suffer economically.

The key point is that the costs of separation are a matter of choice, not of inevitability.

Link

[Aliantha]

Limey, maybe you should encourage the people of Arran to become independant.

[limey]

Many of us Yes voters in Scotland felt that if we seceded then we'd have been able to bring about change quicker which we hoped would serve as a catalyst for the rest of the UK. One way to explain this was, as they say in airplane safety videos, put on your own oxygen mask before helping anyone else. So, not turning our backs on the rest of the family but helping ourselves so that we could be better able to help everyone else.

[tw]

Originally Posted by limey

Many of us Yes voters in Scotland felt that if we seceded then we'd have been able to bring about change quicker which we hoped would serve as a catalyst for the rest of the UK.

Many who voted Yes had no idea how quickly the economic complexity, damage, and harm would have been created. Too many assumed economic activity would have continued unabated. Too many assumptions without first learning how deeply economic activity affects virtually all other parts of life.

So what would by have called the new currency? A Gall in honor of emotional reasoning that required it?

[DanaC]

I think that argument has merit.

[DanaC]

But that was an unknowable, tw. That's something that couldn't possibly be known until after the fact - one way or another. There's nothing to say that it would have led to financial collapse. Neither side of that argument could truly say they knew which way it would go. And, though I believe the continued union offers more opportunity for strength and growth, I also think Scotland would have been perfectly able to be a strong economy alone.

[DanaC]

This is what Neil Oliver had to say about it - and I pretty much sums up my own thinking on it, thoug much more eloquently:

Having spent years working on the television series Coast, I think it’s fair to say I’ve seen as much of this United Kingdom of ours as anyone else living here. It’s a project that has changed my life in several ways. It has certainly caused me to fall in love with the place – the whole place. Circumnavigate these islands as often as I have, and one thing above all becomes clear: the national boundaries within them are invisible and therefore meaningless.


People living in a fishing town in Cornwall have more in common with the inhabitants of a fishing town in Fife than either population has with the folk of a town in the Midlands. They have a shared experience and a common history of coping with lives shaped by the sea. The coast is another country – the fifth country – and it unites and binds us like the hem of a garment.


The differences that are discernible as you travel around Britain are simply regional ones – made of accents and architecture, geology and geography. Of course I am all in favour of people having the power to make decisions about their own patch, but I am utterly opposed to the idea of breaking centuries-old bonds in order to make that happen.


The United Kingdom is a beautiful, wonderful place. The whole world knows this. Right now, this very day, thousands of people are trying to come here and live among us because the UK is known as a place of tolerance, free speech, stability, safety (more or less) from religious or ethnic persecution. It has been a beacon of hope for generations. Every sane adult knows there’s plenty wrong here, too – but the faults lie not with the place but with the way it’s governed.

I read in the papers that 97 per cent of Scots eligible to vote have registered to do so. If the referendum debate has been worth anything, it has been in the way it has reminded people of the value of voting. If the governance of the UK needs to be fixed, then it can be achieved if 97 per cent of the population engage in the debates that matter and then take action at the polling stations. But we do not need to break up the UK to do this.

Naturally, I am as appalled by the idea of a family depending on a food bank in Bradford as I am a family depending on one in Glasgow. I am horrified and shamed by the thought of a child going to bed cold and hungry in Plymouth, or Cardiff, or Elgin. To turn our backs on the suffering of neighbours – and see only to our own needs – is profoundly un-Scottish. At least, it has nothing to do with the Scotland I was raised in.

During the Scottish Enlightenment, this nation of ours shone brighter than at any other time in its history. The luminous characters who made it so could never be accused of thinking small. Hume, Hutcheson, Kames, Smith – the list goes on, all of them thinkers who could surely be described as believing themselves citizens of the world, unbound by the physical geography of the land of their birth.

Francis Hutcheson had the chair of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University. Among much else, he taught that happiness was not some magic substance, falling from God and the sky like manna from heaven. Instead, he said, happiness could be achieved, worked for and gained. And it was best gained by working hard to improve the lives of others. Some kernel of this thinking made it all the way to the American Declaration of Independence, and the concept of the “pursuit of happiness”.

We Scots have always been disproportionately represented in every field of worthwhile endeavour. The very notion of Great Britain itself was ours! When our James VI became James I of England as well, he embarked on grand plans to unite the whole place. Great Britain belongs to us: it was Scots who practically ran the British Empire – we were certainly hugely over-represented, in terms of our population, in every nook and cranny. We led from the front every time.

We have gone out into the world and made it better, as entrepreneurs, merchants, soldiers, churchmen and as simple citizens. We are an international success story without equal. Why, oh why are we suddenly pulling in our horns and thinking small? If you’re a Scot, like I think of Scots, then if you find the way to the promised land, you take everyone with you, not just the few. We go as a United Kingdom or we don’t go at all. That’s the Scottish way.

I have little time for this year’s crop of politicians. However, my hackles do go up when nationalism rears its head. Some Scots claim to be saying a “quiet” Yes to independence that has nothing to do with Alex Salmond. For me, that claim is disingenuous. There is a river running through Britain now and it has the power to force us apart. That river is nationalism and it is rising all the time. We must cross that river, all of us – English, Irish, Scots and Welsh.

To my mind, the way you cross any river is to hold hands. You wade out together and keep a tight hold left and right. The Yes camp is instead suggesting we should let go of each other. If we do, all our chances of survival will be diminished. We risk being washed away.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...ink-small.html

[glatt]

I have two conflicting thoughts that can be summed up with two images from American history.

Independence, yeah!


Divided, we fall.


Kind of conflicted. Both sides have good points. But with Scotland, it's none of my business.

[DanaC]

The thing is though, America sought and gained independence from a political state thousands of miles away and which ithad no input into. It was entirely one sided.

Scotland, England and Wales all exist together on a small island - and we've been intermingling, squabbling, uniting and dividing for thousands of years. Our cultures are inextricably linked. I totally understand that the Scottish feel that they are ruled by a southern nation with whom they have little in common. but that also holds true for the north of England - the culture of the North of England, Newcastle, Lancashire and Yorkshire, has far more in common with the culture of Scotland than it does with the culture of London. At the borders (which have shifted many times over th years) there is very much a hybrid culture.

Many of us in the North of England want the economic and political power to be devolved outwards to the regions, rather than concentrating in the South as it does now.