To think Scotland has a better future than England

[hadenough]

The state of the UK today makes me utterly depressed. A Brexit voted for on the basis of lies, an anti-immigrant rhetoric, and a general attitude of unwelcome.

But yet, in Scotland, the message is very different - a focus on welcoming people to the country, an opposition to Brexit, and a real debate about the future.

It genuinely saddens me to be part of a wider country that appears intent on going back, but never forward.

‘What do we not have that we could not be a successful independent country?’

Enough money. Sorry.

I agree with Trixy that the cognitive dissonance is just mind blowing. People weeping and wailing over Brexit and coming out of a 40 year union and how awful and difficult it’s going to be.....

THEN USING THE EXACT SAME ARGUMENTS AS THE BREXITEERS TO JUSTIFY COMING OUT OF A 300 YEAR UNION!!

The yes voters and Leave voters sounded exactly the same to me. Same arguments. Same empty soundbites about ‘taking our country back’. Actually also sounded quite similar to Trump voters tbh.

You do remember that they moved 1700 shipbuilding jobs from Portsmouth to Glasgow pretty much ending shipbuilding in Portsmouth don’t you?

@trixymalixy you do realise they moved them back don’t you? It’s was political game playing and sadly it worked!!!

Lifesavingorange, how would Scotland not have enough money? We have good industries, exports, resources, we have water, we have energy, we have plenty of coastline? What makes us uniquely unfit to be independent, compared to other similar sized countries?

I'm with Fflamingo SNP are ruining Scotland. Treating Scottish adults like naughty school children that don't know how to behave.

Named person has not died a death, they are still plugging away with it despite High Court telling them that it breached Human Rights - we'd be a bit fked without that bit of EU legislation. School teachers having more rights than parents is just wrong.

Alcohol minimum pricing - seriously how to encourage a black market of folk driving up and down the M74?

Drink drive limit - that is so low that normal law abiding careful citizens are scared to have a couple of glasses of wine in case they are still over the limit in the morning.

But great your wean can sleep in a cardboard box.

@soddingunicorns if you can link me to anything that shows that to be the case then I’ll concede the point to you.

I’ve googled and googled and cannot find anything that says so.

Just because a country can be independent does not mean it should and certainly does not mean it will thrive.

Scotland has many resources and industries, that is true. We also enjoy a high standard of living and have many expenses. That’s not even taking into consideration the eye watering cost of separation.

The books don’t balance. Scotland would scrape by as an independent country. It simply does not have sufficient resources to thrive.

And Lifesavingorange, the union with the EU and the union with the UK are completely different. Scottish laws are already separate in a lot of ways from other UK laws. Plus, the EU union has rules - if you want in the common market, you have to have the four freedoms. The UK doesn't. So we should be able to negotiate withdrawing from the UK union just fine. The reason Brexit is so difficult is that the UK doesn't want to comply with the rules. They want a bespoke agreement which suits them. The UK could leave at any time but are tying themselves in knots.

Plus the UK had no plan for Brexit. None. Scotland had a white paper in 2014 - you may not have agreed with it but it was a plan, and now there is the growth commission report and we are going to discuss and debate and agree plans and issues. All for withdrawing from the UK union. So Brexit and Scottish Independence are poles apart and your trying to conflate them (and your name calling) is just making you look desperate.

Off to Tesco at 8am to do our weekly shop
I would rather have Sunday’s for family time and Church.

There's too much emphasis on scottish literature in the SQA English. It's restrictive.

My DS did no Shakespeare at all in school. He studied two films for Standard Grade and Higher English. Jaws was one of them. I assume that English pupils who would like to study films can opt for media studies, an option not available to scottish children. By the way, he got an A band 1 for higher English so he was clearly capable.

Drafts of submissions are allowed home, which obviously facilitates cheating.

Both my DC had panicked last minute sessions with an English tutor (they went to different schools) who gave them different texts to study for their exams.

My DD was advised not to sit higher English in S5. Fortunately she did sit it and got an A.

I'm sure most scottish teachers do a great job. Criticising the curriculum isn't a criticism of the teachers.

"Scotland ...simply does not have sufficient resources to thrive"

Don't make me laugh. We have an embarrassment of resources for a country of our size.

‘So we should be able to negotiate the UK union just fine’

The sheer naivety is quite disturbing.

so 1700 were lost but 2000 secured

Also, the Clyde yards were “guaranteed” the building of 13 new warships, which dropped to 8, then dropped to parts of 8. All of which was part of the Better Together campaign to keep shipbuilding on the Clyde and was presented as fact.

Agree lifesavingorange. Surely one thing that the Brexit negotiations should be making clear to everyone is that it just isn’t that simple, and anyone who says so is either lying or desperately naive.

Thankfully this is all moot as Westminster have put the kibosh on indyref2 and support for independence has fallen since 2014. I think we reached peak independence in 2015 tbh. The moment has passed.

Excuse me while I roll my eyes. I meant 'just fine' in comparison with the sterling job the UK are doing with Brexit. But you go ahead and take bits out of my post and sneer at them in isolation.

Drink driving limit....exactly same as Europe. I am quite happy to have the alcohol driving limit lowered as my DD was seriously injured in a car crash, by someone who had been drinking, but not over the ( old) legal limit.She was in hospital for a month, and still suffers from effects of a brain injury 5 years on.Got charged with dangerous driving etc, but not drunk driving..

Re min pricing of alcohol, well unless you are drinking cheap booze and gut rot, it won't affect you. In fact , there are discussions about bringing it in in England.

Complaining that Scotland is treating people like children because you can’t drink and drive (because it kills people) and you have to pay more for your booze is a thoroughly ridiculous argument.

There ARE problems with alcohol, particular to Scotland, and the SNP have introduced measures to limit the damage. And still people are angry???

Named Person was good in theory, not in practice. I’d be happy to form an opinion if and when a revised proposal came about. It was in direct response to cases like Brandon Muir, Liam Fee and other children, known to SS who died because of a lack of communication between agencies and a lack of focus. It was well intentioned but poorly thought out.

Gosh Lifesavingorange, that's got to be a big relief for you. So Westminster won't allow Scotland an indy ref? Why not? In case the support for independence is more than you think?

Some 'union', where Westminster won't allow Scotland to leave. More like a prison. Another difference between the EU and the UK, eh?

Where does that say 1700 Clyde jobs were moved to Portsmouth?

this doesn’t seem to suggest that the 1700 jobs moved to Glasgow are likely to return to Plymouth

Also the Clyde yards are building 13 ships. 8 type 26 and 5 type 31.

I find it hilarious that anyone thinks anything to do with brexit is a negotiation. The U.K. has no leverage, no bargaining tools and is relying on the goodwill of the nations we’ve effectively just told to fuck off to make Brexit run smoothly.

The U.K. government can’t veto Indy 2, they can ignore it but they can’t stop it happening.

What leverage or bargaining tools would Scotland have in negotiations to leave the Uk? Why would it be any easier?

The EU states (now including Spain) have said they wouldn’t veto and independent Scotland joining the EU, which would give us significant bargaining tools/leverage.

Personally I think any talk of independence needs to wait until after Brexit. Both together is too much for people to cope with. And as proven by both the last Indy ref and the shitshow that was the EU ref, voting on something so crucial without access to the full facts is ludicrous.

What relevance does eu entry have in any negotiations with the U.K. when it comes to Scottish separation?

Sorry if you missed it Nyx but we had a referendum in 2014. You lost. There is no evidence that despite Brexit there is increased appetite for independence so there is no need for a repeat of what was a costly and unpleasant exercise last time.

No, unionists are not averse to indyref2 because we are scared. We know you’d lose again. We just don’t want to go through months of nasty, divisive unpleasantness again for the same outcome.