To be gobsmacked at how lucky we are in Scotland with our low tuition fees? Hats off to you lot elsewhere in the UK - and foreign students!

[49CremeEggs]

Completed my first degree in my teens to early twenties. Got it completely free thanks to SAAS.

I'm starting a second unrelated undergraduate degree in September for which i will have to fund the last two years myself (it's an allied health professional course, so SAAS will still pay the first two years). Each year costs approx £1,850, so I hope to save £4,000 by the time i'm due to start my third year.

However, for the rest of the UK, it's £9,000 a year! For foreign students coming here to study, it's £13,500 a year

Why on earth does it vary so greatly? It's completely unfair.

Makes me realise just how lucky i am to be in Scotland. And i hope SAAS is still around in twelve years' time when my dd will (hopefully) be starting to think about uni.

Not meaning to sound patronising, but hats off to all you non-Scottish students. How on earth can anyone afford to study elsewhere? Do you get loans?

I took out a loan for living expenses during my first degree. Think it totalled to under £3000 for the whole course.

Safe to say, if i wasn't living in Scotland, i'd have moved here in a jiffy if it meant no tuition fees.

"he has a big shiny face and really annoying manner"

oops, sorry, getting too personal now

nicecuppachar..I assume you are talking from the perspective of a Scottish person there..given that Scotland contributes more in revenue than it takes out Don't know what you mean about the teams though

Got the whole family in stitches here. LTB

"He says I am being over sensitive when he criticises me"

"He called Andy Murray Scottish until he was in the Wimbledon final when he supported him"

fanjo what, you've never heard of supporting Anyone But England?

nicecuppachar..i have heard people moaning about that yes. But I wasn't sure how it fitted in with your allegory as England don't subsidise Scotland and Scotland contribute more in revenue than we take out.

So you must have been talking about Scotland subsidising England. Doesn't then make sense for an English person to be supporting "anyone but England"

"There's always a different rule fo him and a different rule for me. I was forced to pay poll tax against my wishes when he didn't have to."

actually

"he always bangs on about subsidising me when I actually have a better paid job, so I don't know what he is on about"

There's more red flags in the Anglo Scots relationship than you'd find in a labour party conference.

"he always bangs on about subsidising me when I actually have a better paid job, so I don't know what he is on about"

:o I love this!

"He makes me look after his dangerous belongings, I have to keep them in my pocket, he doesn't mind if I become a target or get killed because of them".

Trident.

"He has special relationships with other women. He told me he was going to leave her if she didn't give him more money but she wouln't give him any. Yet he keeps going back to her. Actually I think he's a bit needy."

:)

"He said he was going to build me a big house but he didn't give me enough money to finish it and humiliated me when I had to go and ask for more."

"He thinks I should pay for his OWs childrens education and resents the fact that I want to pay for mine to go to uni."

:)

I may be a bit thick, but I'm not quite getting your analogies, polly.

"He picks fight with foreign men and makes me do the actual fighting / dirty work while he sits around discussung it and taking the praise for being tough."

:)

Read upthread old lady.

Aye, some of those last few need translating

LTB could be the yes campaigners slogan

This is interesting.

I wonder when Scottish people are friendly to my face at work/ school gates/ in the pub, the attitudes above see what they are really thinking - I am from south London.

I think the 'anyone but England' stuff shows a lack of confidence in the same vein as the tabloid football 'war' against Germany.

I find these independence debates odd as I have a different conception of Scottish identity. I have lived here for 10 years, I have children in school, I pay taxes, I work for NHS Scotland.

I am friends with Scots and the many immigrants from all over the world who are my neighbours - I don't see independence as a rejection of England so much as a bid for self determination. I see the traditional England / Scottish animosity as tedious and irrelevant to independent - surely the point is that Scotland has to find a new identity as an independent country, home to people of all races, colours and creeds.

The attitudes above are only insulting/mocking

a) The Tory Government.
or b) The sort of English poster who comes on these threads and says England is subsidising Scotland and makes anti-Scottish comments.

Since you are not like that, you don't need to be wondering anything about what Scots people are thinking.

HTH :)

But it's not the people of England that anyone has a problem with, it's not personal, it's about being ruled by a different country, by a government we didn't vote for.

I would like to move to Scotland,i have only been to Edinburgh ad Tobamory though,but both seemed nice friendly places.I know the whole place isn't like that but neither is England!

It is not clear that the oil in the North Sea is Scotland's. According to some legal definitions a lot of it is in English waters.

From Wiki: "by international convention maritime boundaries extend along the line of the land border. Looking at the Scottish English land border this heads north east from Berwick pointing towards Bergen in Norway rather than east towards Denmark as envisaged by many. A large proportion of the North Sea oil fields would under this scenario therefore belong to England not Scotland."

Post independence, there would be a massive and expensive wrangle to establish title to the oil.

"New house" Scottish Parliament building
"Picks fights" Iraq / scots soldiers
"Special relationships" Europe & US
"Education" obvious surely

:)