Scottish independence

[Charliebear322]

Can someone explain to me like I’m stupid why Scotland can’t have independence from England

Err... the Seven Lean Years and the consequences of the Darién Scheme all fixed and making a profit 6 years later??
1707 is after the Act of Union and creation of new Scottish Exchequer.

Don’t want it. Voted on it and said naw

England leaving the UK would solve an awful lot of problems.

Quite simple. The Scots won't vote for it.

The SNP talks a good game, but they can't get the votes.

Someone, somewhere & in sufficient numbers vote SNP.

For now.

Nationalism once released is a tricky wee genie to bottle back up.

Ireland will reunite, Scottish independence? No idea. But devolution is here forever. And there will never, ever by a Conservative FM in Holyrood.

Because the majority of us don't want it.
We're stronger together.

Latest 2 polls disagree with you.

But as I also pointed out, these polls are swings & roundabouts.

Let's be blunt. Nearly 50% +/- 5% prefer Brussels to London, the European Union to the United Kingdom.

And incidentally, the Stuarts united the thrones. That went well. Protestants invited the Dutch King William to invade their own lands to remove the rightful monarch. Even now, now Catholic can sit on the throne.

Seems Charles is Defender of All Faiths bar Catholicism.

Ask yourself one thing, why was David Cameron shitting his pants at the thought of a split? Surely if we were such a drain in the economy he’d have been glad to get shot of us. We pay more into the economy than we actually get back as our spending budget.

How much do they get from Scotland before giving us our budget? You’d be losing that and it’s more than we get back!

No, that's not how it works.

Scotland decided democratically to remain in the UK. Then, subsequently, the UK (including Scotland) decided democratically to leave the EU.

It was one adult, one vote - it wasn't run on a regional or constituency basis. Thus approximately 85% of those votes came from people in England, because England makes up approx. 85% of the UK population. 38% of Scots also voted in favour of Brexit and the majority of Londoners voted to remain; therefore, if we're somehow looking at it from a purely 'regional' basis, far more Londoners were taken out of the EU against their collective will than were Scots.

The 'once in a generation/lifetime' agreement was made regardless of the result. Is anybody seriously suggesting that, had the vote gone the other way, there would have been an insistence on another referendum 7 years later to make sure that Scotland still wanted independence and to offer the opportunity to reconsider and to rejoin the UK?

Incidentally, whatever your feelings on either or both decisions, I really struggle to see why the (slim) majority of the UK population wanting to regain independence from the EU and their own sovereignty are seen as such a load of backwards, xenophobic, stupid, narrow-minded bigots; yet just under half of Scots wanting to regain independence from the UK and their own sovereignty are bold, brave, positive, forward-thinking freedom-seekers. The widely-touted 'liberal' view - that Brexit is bad and Scottish independence is good - makes no logical sense whatsoever.

Of course, a lot of people voting for Brexit were not just focusing on positively regaining sovereignty but plenty also had xenophobic, negative, bigoted reasons for voting for Brexit. Presumably, exactly the same must have been true for IndyRef?

A lot of people do not know their history.

Take the financial collapse leading to thd Union. Why was that? Read "Elizabeth's Sea Dogs". The East India Company lobbied for the English navy - the most powerful, efficient & deadly - to enforce transit taxes on non-English merchantmen. There were other factors but punitive fiinancial transport taxes did not help.

Most successful monarchy? Gaelic monarchies did very well: David, Alexander, the Bruce...and the Stuarts were removed from their rightful place by dint of their Catholicism.

As a side note, the Officer Commanding British Forces in the American War of Independence, at his trial, commented that it was more a civil war where Scots-Irish colonists - both Catholic & Presbyterian - defeated Britain. Karma?

And the UK deficit is?

As a Brit who also happens to be English, I think the complaints about the Barnet Formula and about who contributes and who costs the most are silly and illogical - whilst we are all one sovereign nation together.

Of course, the simple economies of scale are going to mean that a tenth of the population occupying a third of the land mass will cost more 'per person'. I live in a rural English county with no very large cities or towns, meaning that - if you boil it down to cost 'per person', the roads, schools, hospitals and many other publicly-funded overheads in my county will also be considerably higher than the same in Greater London, West Midlands county and other large, densely-populated conurbations.

We're either one country or we're not - and if we are, why on earth is anybody surprised by the simple logical financial consequences of basic demographics?

Because we had a “once in a lifetime” referendum and voted against it

@SprayWhiteDung I agree.

Just one "point". We are not "One Nation" or a "Sovereign Nation" nor even "Ine Country".

We are four Nations in a consensual political union united under a single Crown. Hence the Act of Union was a union of Crowns.

In Northern Ireland, under the terms of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement, once in a generation is actually defined, in writing as being seven years.

I understand why pro-UK voters want once in a generation to mean never again whilst they are alive, or 100 years or something. As long as it never happens.

That is not constitutional nor fair on new voters. Times change. Governments & Countries come & go. The Irish, for example took their independence by force but resulted in Northern Ireland.

Anyway. I wish you all the best. 2014 was a heated time & being "Northern" Irish myself I should know better than to engage in constitutional debates!

Take Care, folks. May there be better times ahead , and soon.

I’m pro independence. I voted Yes last time.

If there was a referendum tomorrow I’d vote No.

I am no longer prepared to hold my nose and vote SNP at any election. I don’t think they are competent and I doubt their integrity.

I’m extremely angry that I’ve been left politically homeless.

Not sure on Ireland. I suspect it will cause a massive civil war plus I am not sure the Republic actually wants the burden.

The problem with all this rhetoric is whose lifetime - which generation ?

What do you say to someone who is now 29 and who had no say in 2014 ? They have to wait until they are what ? 50 ? Another 21 years ?

How many people will there be in 2034 - twenty years on from the last referendum - who did not vote in it ?

And - most pressingly - what when that number becomes the majority of voters in Scotland ?

(We'll draw a veil over the fact that the union with England was hardly democratic to start with, because that rather undermines the case for the Union ....)

To be fair was 1603 democratic when many English didn't want James VI as their King? It has been both ways undemocratic.

I voted yes in the Referendum. I would vote no now.

Our politicians (apart from a few exceptions across all political parties) have shown themselves to be credulous, craven and incapable.

We seem to have increasing numbers of politicians who have no experience outside of politics or university and/or are primarily activists for a specific cause with no interest in representing their constituency on a range of matters.

Until the calibre of our politicians improves dramatically, it'll be a no from me.

I rather think you've missed the point of Kings ....

@SerendipityJane unfortunately the person that said it was Alex Salmond, so I can’t answer for him but even with the definition of a generation that would count as when a child is born then have children of their own, the Oxford dictionary considers this to be 30 years so still a long time off

Well he's dead now, for what it's worth.

I'm not Scottish and am quite happy for Scotland to decide it's own fate under the principle of self determination inherited by the UN from the post WW1 consensus.

It's all very well saying '"once in a lifetime" or "once in a generation" as long as you are prepared to face your own youth on the battlefield' as Eisenhower once said.

@SerendipityJaneim well aware he’s dead, that’s why I’ve put unfortunately in the first sentence of my reply.
I am Scottish and have lived in Scotland all my life and am more than prepared to face my own youth on the battlefield.
The youths that I know are thoroughly fed up with the SNP and the way they are treating females so I can’t see there being much of a battle