Are you in favour of Scotland leaving the UK?

[LadyMaryCreepyCrawley]

Lucky bastards!

LadyBeagleEyes I know how you feel. i have many English friends and relatives too and people assume some kind of anti-Englishness automatically. Tiring to say the least.

Yes, and there's too many reasons for it being a good idea...

Well considering our parliament (Cornish Stannary) predates Scotland's I think we should be first to go. :)

Cozy - i know you are only joking about speakign English, but its a myth that all Scots spoke Gaelic. Only the highlanders did. Most people live on the East Coast or in the central belt and those areas traditionally spoke Scots, which is a lot like English but uses words like "merket" instead of "market".

(Actually when you think about it, most people still speak Scots, not English.

Gaelic was spoken all over Scotland, actually.

i love england and the english, i just don't like them getting to vote for their govt when i don't get a shot of voting for mine. and even the 'them' is dubious because i'd say that the south is ruling over the north in that regard. it's all very complicated...

Let em go if enough of them are stupid enough to vote that way. Most though seem sensible and are ignoring these calls. I was particularly cheered by a group of 16 yr olds interviewed on Sky who seemed quite against it and rather bemused their elders were in any way for it. Seems its a very narrow age group that think its a good thing.

On one condition though, the rest of us get a referendum if they F* it up and want back in and/or bailing out in ANY way.

no, jennyp, I am really sorry but it simply was not.

I was sure that the Gaelic language wasn't spoken in Borders, West Coast, tohught it was confined to Highlands/Islands?

or maybe we are talking at cross purposes. Exactly when do you think Gaelic was spoken throughout Scotland?

Scottish Gaelic may be more correctly known as Highland Gaelic to distinguish it from the now defunct dialects of Lowland Gaelic. Of these Galwegian Gaelic was spoken in Galloway and seems to have been the last dialect of Gaelic to have been spoken in Lowland Scotland, surviving until the Modern Period. By the 18th century, Lowland Gaelic had been largely replaced by Lowland Scots[citation needed] across much of Lowland Scotland. According to a reference in The Carrick Covenanters by James Crichton,[22] the last place in the Lowlands where Scottish Gaelic was still spoken was the village of Barr in Carrick (only a few miles inland to the east of Girvan, but at one time very isolated). Crichton gives neither date nor details.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Gaelic#section_2

Gaelic speakers in Scotland (1755?2001)
Year Scottish population Speakers of Gaelic only
1755 1,265,380 289,798
1800 1,608,420 297,823
1881 3,735,573 231,594
1891 4,025,647 43,738
1901 4,472,103 28,106
1911 4,760,904 18,400
1921 4,573,471 9,829
1931 4,588,909 6,716
1951 5,096,415 2,178
1961 5,179,344 974
1971 5,228,965 477
1981 5,035,315 N/A
1991 5,083,000 N/A
2001 5,062,011 N/A
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Gaelic

I'll try that again!
Gaelic speakers in Scotland (1755?2001)
Year Scottish population Speakers of Gaelic only
1755 - 1,265,380 - 289,798
1800 - 1,608,420 - 297,823
1881 - 3,735,573 - 231,594
1891 - 4,025,647 - 43,738
1901 - 4,472,103 - 28,106
1911 -- 4,760,904 --- 18,400
1921 - 4,573,471 - 9,829
1931 - 4,588,909 - 6,716
1951 - 5,096,415 - 2,178
1961 - 5,179,344 - 974
1971 - 5,228,965 - 477
1981 - 5,035,315 - N/A
1991 - 5,083,000 - N/A
2001 - 5,062,011 - N/A
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Gaelic

ItsAllGoingToBeFine - are you aligned to the SNP by any chance? I sort of recognise the things that you say as similar to the things I heard when I had several friends in the SNP.

No, well I'm not a member or anything. But I did vote for them as my vote would have been wasted on the Greens. I am all for independence though and I have definite socialist leanings, I used to use my second vote for SSP before Tommy Sheridan left.

I never use the SNP site for info as it is a bugger to navigate but I guess most people who want independence and are left leaning will tend to use the same sort of sourced for their facts?

Yes.

Its probably all different now. When I had friends in the SNP/ attended a couple of conferences etc, there were two distinct factions. On the one side were the romantics (mostly older people who lived in NW Scotland). The romantics wanted a roaming in the gloaming Scotland.

The central belt was socialist leaning, playing to the underclass/ working classes in areas like Govan.

Both had the same goal, i.e. an independent Scotland, but beyond that they had no shared vision about what an independent Scotland would ideally look like.

The party leadership played a very clever game of saying the right things to both sides, whilst somehow each faction was deaf to what the other faction were being promised.

I suspect that this is why Alex Salmond is still detail-lite about how he believes things will actually work in practice. (Obviously how it will actually work in practice once there is an independent Scotland, is that the leadership of the day will do what they please).

I'm Scottish but have lived in England for over 15 years so won't get a vote. I wouldn't vote for Independence at this juncture though. Eck Salmond has a grounding in Economics & therefore can come out with some pretty persuasive-sounding rhetoric BUT the finer points that people need/practicalities have not been articulated by the SNP satisfactorily. It's all very well saying we can dot the i s & cross the t s after we've won the vote, but I'm sure most people would rather have that information beforehand.

If a "yes" vote is returned, it could take years to put into practice. Given Alex Salmond hasn't got a record of good health, chances are, he'd not be in a position to put practicalities into place.

People have to remember that not all leaders of the SNP/First Ministers are going to have the "charisma" & economic experience of Eck & that they are voting for change which ,potentially, could last for hundreds of years & not the lifetime of a Parliament.

I guess we'll have to see what this white paper says when it comes out. Looking forward to reading the results of the consultation too.

It's pretty patronising though to suggest that Scots don't have the experience and charisma to go it alone :(

I'm not so sure that Alex Salmond is the economics guru that he makes himself out to be. I seem to recall that he wanted an independent Scotland to join the euro a few years ago (and you didn't have to know that much about economics to know that the euro was a disaster waiting to happen).

Given Alex Salmond hasn't got a record of good health

You know I do sometimes worry for Alex Salmond's health. There was a photo in the Scotsman or Herald last week which was taken circa 2006, he's changed a lot. I know politics is an ageing game (look at how Obama has greyed) but he's got a tough couple of years ahead of him and would want to take care of himself a bit more.

People spoke Gaelic in the lowlands till the 70s, some members of my family are involved in trying to revive it.

This is fairly irrelevant to the independence debate

Didn't there used to be a Gaelic programme on TV. Cuir Car? or something like that? I wonder what happened to it?

Alex Salmond says Scotland would keep the pound.

But should England let them? After all, sterling was an Anglo Saxon invention in England.....

If Salmond really wants independence he should invent his own money.

There's a Gaelic channel. My Gaelic is basic at best though.