Why is Scotland so different?

[Indiestarr]

Does anyone have any insight? Presumably Scotland has the same post-industrial decline and deprivation issues as the north east of England and Wales, and yet their vote was pretty much the complete opposite of these areas. How is it they are almost uniformly progressive when the rest of the UK (NI aside) is anything but?

I do enjoy a lot of tweed :)

well 1) Scotland can raise taxes while part of the UK now and spend more on public services already,
2) Trident - how much is Scotland's contribution - we need to know, does that add up to enough of a saving to be worth revoking the possibility of a UK bailout
3) the EU Scotland voted to stay in - again, how much is this worth to Scotland?

We need clear answers on this before we can make a good decision - otherwise we're sentencing ourselves and our kids to years of bad economic times. Surely Brexit has shown how little control countries have over the financial markets, what the markets think of their credit rating, business confidence etc. etc.

Realistically, I suppose similar people exist all over the world.

However, looking at the population of the south east and taking into account that there are Home Counties type enclaves everywhere, I think in England they might be a majority. (which is why Londoners are only half joking when they say if Scotland goes, they want independence too).

Interesting thoughts merrymouse. I am a bit confused about why a vote on being part of the EU has anything to do with attitudes to immigration and so I hesitate to get into the whole migration conversation. Perhaps my confusion tells you everything you need to know about why Scotland is different. However it is probably worth pointing out that 70% of the £100k or so ethnic minority population in Scotland lives within the £600k population of Glasgow and a sizeable proportion of the remainder lives within the greater Glasgow conurbation. My perception is that the pattern for East European migrants is similar. 20% of Edinburgh's population self identifies as non-Scottish but of that 20%, 12 are English and 5 are Irish. To me, having lived in both places and with inlaws in the home counties, Glasgow and Greater Glasgow feels very much like London. The rest of Scotland is, as indicated on the thread, much less diverse.

On the question of class privilege I think the fact that Scotland has Ancient Unis of the same status as Oxbridge in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Edinburgh is significant.

On the ABE phenomenon I have never heard any of DH's English relatives transfer support to Scotland and I am not offended by this. It does irritate slightly that the Wimbledon masses do struggle to accept Andy Murray and were he not SO successful they would still be and were for a long time hankering after what might have been for Henman. The athletics World seems much more UK rather than Home Nation centric and I wonder if that is because of the influence of the Northern regions within the English set up.

Interesting comment in The Times by Hugo Rifkind;

"What lingers with me now, though, is the efforts made through that campaign [Indyref] to prove the likes of me wrong. In Scotland that summer, the term “civic nationalism” soared to prominence, denoting a nationalism that was tolerant and non-xenophobic. The phrase attracts smirks in Scotland today, chiefly because whole army of vicious cybernates didn’t get the memo, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t heartfelt...”

".. It [Leave] sold populism hard. Yet it didn’t try. It didn’t see it its own scary bits and seek to push them away. It didn’t seek to disown its demons. Not ever. Not once."

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-nationalist-genie-is-now-out-of-the-bottle-wvht3wzkt

It's all a bit silly isn't.

How can it be doom and gloom when we haven't even got out of the EU yet.
It's all doomsayers and scaremongering.
Come back in 10 years and let's discuss it all again.
Who now is constantly referring to the crash in 2008, many remember it but it rarely is mentioned in political debate. It's behind us now. As Brexit will be.
The nuclear accident in Japan in 2011 caused their markets to crash, who is talking about that now?
Stockmarkets go up and down all the time. Exchange rates go up and down all the time, mining countries have recently fallen severely.
Calm down folks.

claig

No, we just don't like elites.

Bloody hell, claig. That's a bit rich, seeing that the top tier of politicians in England are public school types... including your favorite Nigel Farage (yeah, I know he's not a 'common man').

It's all doomsayers and scaremongering.
Come back in 10 years and let's discuss it all again.

Yes, we'll be saying "remember when Boris pretended to want to leave the EU, and they almost never spoke to us again after Farage made that stupid speech, and then we clawed our way back to being almost like Norway, and then we finally got back in again just last week. Why did we do that again?"

Well I am full of fucking doom and gloom as it looks like I'll be losing my job. So you can fuck right off with your scaremongering bullshit. This is real and it's happening now.

Ah shit, sorry to hear that trixy. What do you do, if you don't mind me asking?

Same as you statistically.

Oh no, Trixy, are you a Euro MP? Never mind you will be able to swan around from now on on the humungous pensions they pay themselves (for a couple of years of living a luxury life with v generous living allowances).

coupled with the English accent remark (which was made by some horrible old bat with an impenetrable local accent

So you object to folk picking up on your son's accent yet sneer at the local accent?

I think the school your son goes to sounds appalling and not representative of all schools. Back in the day I was briefly bullied for having an English accent in primary school, but the school came down hard and it has never happened again. No negativity at all. Dd thanks to me also has a very obvious accent and has had no issues at all, probably aided by the fact that the school is so diverse.

Oops, hadn't noticed there was a whole other page

Trixy I am really sorry to hear about your job

roseformeto
My experience of Scotland is very different to what you are saying.
It live in a smallish town. We have a relatively diverse population given our location (semi rural) and population size (85000). Edinburgh is REALLY diverse. Not only from 2nd generation immigrants but newcomers choosing to live here.
It never used to be this diverse granted. Things have changed.
I think Scotland is different politically be a sue we have always been the underdog and had governments in power we didn't vote for.
Also the Indy ref woke a lot of people up. The MSM media coverage of the referendum was pretty biased IMO. So a lot of folks don't trust MSM anymore.

Hugo Rifkind
Bloody hell. Malcolm's son. What else is there to say.

Claig I can assure you that named persons has been extremely controversial and most people who are aware of the implications find it unacceptable. What amazes me is that a lot of parents don't really know about it and how it will affect them. IMHO the reason a lot of Scottish people voted Remain was because we had not been given clear information of how it would work if we did leave. Having recently been through the referendum for independence many people cited the same reason for voting no on that occasion. Quite simply the leave campaign was just pie in the sky (as proven since the result) and the Scots saw through this.

I hope we get a move on and get the second Scottish referendum done with. All this unknown is hardly going to help the economy/ house prices etc.

'Claig I can assure you that named persons has been extremely controversial and most people who are aware of the implications find it unacceptable'

tini8, that is excellent news. good luck to you all up there, I hope you can defeat that somehow. I am just glad we haven't got Blair and the Gang in power down here, or I fear we would be getting some of the same.

'IMHO the reason a lot of Scottish people voted Remain was because we had not been given clear information of how it would work if we did leave.'

Yes, you are probably more clever than us down here, but I think lots of us didn't care about plans because we don't believe our politicians, we have lost trust in them, so plans would make no difference. All we wanted to do is get out. We know that when the shit hits the fan, our civil service will swing into action and sort things out, so we weren't too worried.

'Quite simply the leave campaign was just pie in the sky (as proven since the result) and the Scots saw through this.'

Yes, it was pie in the sky we wanted because of the idealistic principle of sovereignty and independence, the same principle you had the IndyRef about. We didn't care about the detail, because we believed that things would sort themselves out afterwards.

We took a risk because we didn't believe our politician and this was our only chance to escape as well as sticking two fingers up to the lot of them as well.

Did anyone hear the Scottish MEP Alyn Smith at the European Parliament today? He begged. He actually, literally begged. To a standing ovation. He said "Scotland did not let you down. Please, I BEG YOU, do not let Scotland down". Seriously. How do Scots feel about that?

Not in the least surprised.
We were told by SNP members that the Scottish people wanted independence so we had a referendum - then what do you know they didn't want it after all, or not a majority.

Now we are being told we want to be in the EU. Well I don't and will vote out or No to independence.

And I think the arrogance of MPs makes people more likely to vote against them (eg Brexit)

Honestly, it made me cringe, and I am not even Scottish.
It's really interesting to get the views of Scottish people on here, from both sides, because you are right: Nicola Sturgeon is pretty much the only person we hear from, and the media just seem to assume that she speaks for Scotland.

Itsall no, not sneering at local accent at all. She herself said it was strong.

What I object to is a supposedly qualified 'professional' blaming dyslexia, dysgraphia and dyspraxia and asd traits on a childs accent which was 'like his parents'. That attitude I sneer at yes as it is entirely unprofessional. The 'horrible old bat' bit was nothing to do with her accent or nationality, you'll just have to take my word for that!

Lucky you for not having encountered it lately. My dd is going into a class next year if we cannot escape in time with a male teacher who loathes kids with English accents. She has a more local accent than my ds but he will still torment her with it.

Did anyone hear the Scottish MEP Alyn Smith at the European Parliament today? He begged. He actually, literally begged. To a standing ovation. He said "Scotland did not let you down. Please, I BEG YOU, do not let Scotland down". Seriously. How do Scots feel about that?

I'm a naturalised Scot & I don't see the problem. Beg means "to ask someone earnestly for something" or "implore" I thought Alyn Smith spoke with dignity.

I think that compared to Farage he did rather well really

Really? That's not how I heard it at all. Begging doesn't sound remotely dignified to me.