So, no share of national debt for an independent Scotland then..

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

Uk treasury has recently announced that it will guarantee the entire debt in the event of independence.

Osborne is to definitively announce there will be no monetary union (or will he?)

Scottish Government has already pointed out that if the UK takes this position there would be no reason for them to take on a share of the national debt.

But surely Osborne et al are cutting off their noses to spite their faces? Just one example - rUK gets loads of oil/gas from Scotland, surely they would have to pay more if it were in a different currency?

Sorry wrong thread. Will have it deleted.

Because you said that my view about Scotland was because i was Scottish? You made a personal statement I think.

Do you live in Scotland? I do and as I said before I don't recognise my country on this thread. Scotland isn't perfect by any means but it is full of decent, hard working people who welcome immigrants and are generally tolerant of others. I think we deserve to make our own minds up about how best to govern our nation without being patronised, chided and subjected to personal remarks.

I don't want nuclear subs here and never have. It's not childish, it's my view. We don't need them.

bideyinn

I might have made the point a bit less strongly, but I think you are being oversensitive. No one accused you of racism.

You say that you don't recognise the way Scotland is being portrayed on this thread, and you have at least implied that I am making stuff up.

I'm afraid it reminds me of an incident not long after I arrived in Scotland. There was some rather self-congratulatory media comment about how Scotland didn't suffer from issues of racism, unlike a particular country to the immediate south. A couple of days later, an Asian man was beaten up in Kelvingrove Park in what was clearly a racially motivated attack. I remember the a senior policeman saying "Scots don't do this".

A few years later, some Scottish football fans murdered a man in France. Craig Brown described them as "not true Scotland fans". It was a very revealing, albeit inadvertant, use of the No True Scotsman fallacy. Insisting on community standards is fine, but it can morph into a form of wilful blindness.

On this thread, a number of people have stated their belief that anti-English racism is a part of Scottish life and culture, and have given reasons for their belief. Your response appears to be that you "don't recognise it". Unfortunately, that is a common reply, and does provide grounds for stating that your own background blinds you to it.

As for nuclear subs: could you explain why you think flatpackhamster's remarks were anti-Scottish as opposed to merely being pro-nuclear?

Not sure if this is the place for it, but a quick constitutional question. Presumably independence has to be effected by an act of the UK Parliament, to which the queen gives assent in accordance with constitutional convention. Assume that independence is clearly a "good thing" for Scotland (accepting figures that Scotland is a net contributor to the UK economy ); conversely it ought to be a "bad thing" for everyone else. If all the major UK political parties think this, then how can the Queen justify assent to something that's bad for most of her subjects? Or for that matter how can the government recommend it?

Taking a counterfactual, if Scotland were a major drain on the UK economy and the rUK MPs decided to vote to kick Scotland out of the UK, I can see it would be a controversial situation....

(Note: I am a kiwi living in London with mixed Scots, Welsh, Irish and English ancestry if it makes any difference. And apologies for ignorance, I have only just started looking at the detail of the debate....)

Legalalien…I’m guessing Olly Cromwell and others took away any option of monarch veto’s on legislation they don’t like, even on such an important constitutional issue such as this. And as the queen would have signed off on the Scottish Referendum, via the people’s parliament, giving power to the people of Scotland to decide, democratically the queen would not have a constitutional leg to stand on trying to block it now. IMHO.

The Monarch would still have to give Royal Assent. The last time assent was refused was in 1708 (Queen Anne, so after Cromwell). I don't think Parliament voted on this so there can't have been consent.

There's an established convention that requires the consent of involved royal parties before a bill is put to MPs. As Scottish independence would affect the Queen's hereditary revenues wouldn't any bill presented to Parliament need her consent?

I googled the following and according to Wiki;
"A referendum on whether Scotland should be an independent country will take place on Thursday 18 September 2014.[1]

Following an agreement between the Scottish Government and the United Kingdom Government,[2] the Scottish Independence Referendum Bill, setting out the arrangements for this referendum, was put forward on 21 March 2013,[3] passed by the Scottish Parliament on 14 November 2013 and received Royal Assent on 17 December 2013[4][5]

The question to be asked in the referendum will be "Should Scotland be an independent country?" as recommended by the Electoral Commission."

We could argue the Queen could NOW say that as her palaces are falling apart she NOW can't afford to lose Scotland and do a runner (with the Corgi's close behind) rather than sign, but I'll leave that speculation to others.

bideyinn

Because you said that my view about Scotland was because i was Scottish? You made a personal statement I think.

Do you live in Scotland? I do and as I said before I don't recognise my country on this thread.

The point I was making was that you wouldn't.

Scotland isn't perfect by any means but it is full of decent, hard working people who welcome immigrants and are generally tolerant of others.

Unless they're English.

I think we deserve to make our own minds up about how best to govern our nation without being patronised, chided and subjected to personal remarks.

Yes, if only the debate was grown-up and mature, how much better it would be. We wouldn't have Salmond lying about joining the EU and Euro, for example.

I don't want nuclear subs here and never have. It's not childish, it's my view. We don't need them.

No, you wrote 'WMDs'. That isn't the same as nuclear subs. The world might not 'need' nukes, but they're out there and the UK has them as a deterrent. You've lived under the shield of that deterrent all your life.

TheHammaconda Thu 20-Feb-14 14:01:50
The Monarch would still have to give Royal Assent. The last time assent was refused was in 1708 (Queen Anne, so after Cromwell). I don't think Parliament voted on this so there can't have been consent.

There's an established convention that requires the consent of involved royal parties before a bill is put to MPs. As Scottish independence would affect the Queen's hereditary revenues wouldn't any bill presented to Parliament need her consent?

Even if Queen Anne did this, it doesn't mean the current Queen has the power regardless of whether this is a legal possibility.

The monarch has become increasingly a figurehead since the end of Queen Victoria's reign. What is legally possible is different to what is actually possible in 2014 in a democratic framework. Using powers like this would be more likely to cause a constitutional crisis in the sense that it would create a backlash against the monarch and the striping of even the most basic of her powers. She would be extremely unwise to do this and go against something that have been voted for even if it was to her own detriment.

Queen Victoria refused assent to some colonial legislation (this was in the very early days before the power was delegated to governors-general as it is now).

But that aside, I agree with theHammaconda. Royal assent is the last step in the process by which Parliament enacts law. While the Queen may legally refuse assent, there is a very strong convention that she will not do this. Her refusal in the face of Parliament would cause a constitutional crisis, possibly leading to the abolition of the monarchy.

As I expect people have gathered, a Yes win in the referendum would not cause Scotland to be independent. The Yes vote would have no significance in law at all. In order to be independent, the Westminster parliament would hve to enact legislation providing for Scotland's independence.

I recall Salmond and Sturgeon et al saying that the Scottish Parliament had the power to enact legislation providing for the referendum. Another SNP figure (Ewing?) has said the current Scottish parliament is a revival of the pre-1707 parliament. This is all bollocks. Had the Scottish Parliament been allowed to conduct the referendum under its own purported powers, I wonder if (following a Yes vote) its SNP members would have tried to provide for independence under its own powers. Probably.

Isitmebut

Oliver Cromwell's reforms were pretty much all overturned after the Restoration in 1660. If you read about how Charles II conducted his government, you will see he tried to do without Parliament as much much as he could, and was in fact able to do this in the latter part of his reign by being in the pay of Louis XIV of France.

The political event that established our current arrangements was the Glorious Revolution of 1688. After Charles' brother James II was turfed out, his replacement William of Orange gave royal assent to the Bill of Rights, which established Parliamentary supremacy for good. The Glorious Revolution isn't really celebrated, but it is perhaps Britain's most important constitutional moment.

And yes I know that the Bill of Rights 1688 is English parliament legislation, but its application post 1707 has been across the board.

Nuclear subs are weapons of mass destruction ( which is what I said). I'm not sure that they protect me but I am sure that they make my part of the world a target in any nuclear attack. I didn't say that a positive stance on these subs is anti Scottish but it would be a benefit of independence to get rid of them.

I don't recognise these views of Scotland, that's not because I'm blinkered, I've just never come across any real rascism against English people. A great many of the English people I know that live here are voting yes. Part of my family are English, With English accents, living here and they don't recognise it either. I'm sure rascism must happen but I don't think its widespread nor the cultural norm.
A personal attack and accusation of casual rascism was most definitely made. It simply isn't true.

I think independence in Scotland will be good for both Scottish and English, (or rUK).

Thank you for that excellent information Toadinthehole, that teaches me for "guessing" within a heated debate, I should know better.

I hope I wasn't too long-winded :)

bideyinn

So you reject what others have asserted because 1. you've never seen anything that you recognise as racism and because some of your best friends are English.

Golly .

I really really hope the Scots see through Salmond's plan. It's simply not credible and he's desperately trying to win by appealing to emotion and not reality.

Can Scotland go it alone? Of course it can. Would it be better off? In my opinion no. Not in the long run.

Salmond is selling that it will be easy peasy to negotiate a clean break from the UK. They'll of course keep the oil, a bit of the national debt, keep the pound, join the EU and freed from Westminster interference life will be cushdy.

Except....there's a lot of big IF's there.

As anyone whose gone through a divorce knows, rarely are they clean. Rarely does one person get everything they want.

So what about the interests of rUK? Once Scotland votes to go it alone, why would we want to let Scotland use the pound? Well Salmond says it makes sense because it would cost £500m in additional business costs if we didn't. Sorry but £500m is barely worth mentioning if you are measuring it across our whole economy. Our GDP is measured at something like £1.5 trillion.

If we did let Scotland share the pound in effect we have to guarantee Scottish banks and hope that the Scottish government don't borrow too much to destabilise our economy too. Personally I'm not a big fan of sharing money like that. It's like separated couples waiting for a divorce agreeing to continue to use a joint bank account. It's just a recipe for disaster isn't it?

Yes Scotland has oil & gas now. But from what I've read it's pretty much common knowledge that this is on the decline. Yet Scotland has an aging population and large welfare bill with a left leaning socialist mentality. In the long term things will get much tougher. Of course we all hope Scotland's economy does really well. But as a small country with precious few natural resources other than oil & gas things growing an economy isn't as easy as it sounds.

And as a new independent country the assets of RBS & HBoS will be 12x the size of the Scottish economy. In other words Scotland couldn't mount a banking bailout if it had to.

It just seems utterly bonkers to me. The only response Salmond seems to have is "Oh they're all lying!". What? All three main parties, the BoE chief, the head of the civil service and the president of the EU....they're all lying about the problems that lie ahead??? And we should believe Salmond instead who simply says everything will be peachy??

The main clinchers for me are Trident and the NHS. I don't want to see the NHS becoming privatised like it is in England. I also do not feel that Trident is best placed where it is.

Everyone keeps forgetting about renewable energies...when the oil runs out there are other alternatives! Jings, it's not all about the oil!

I know it would not be easy to begin with, living in an independent Scotland. Life isn't easy as it is either! I don't think anyone has made out that the road will be straightforward. But you have to balance this out with the needs of Scottish folk too. The current situation just is not working.

bideyinn

Nuclear subs are weapons of mass destruction ( which is what I said). I'm not sure that they protect me but I am sure that they make my part of the world a target in any nuclear attack.

Except that they aren't there, are they? Two of them are hidden somewhere in the world at any one time and the ones at home are on refit so aren't armed.

You're happy to enjoy the benefits of the protection but aren't prepared to accept the costs. How very Scottish.

I didn't say that a positive stance on these subs is anti Scottish but it would be a benefit of independence to get rid of them.

And as I wrote earlier, I'm sure the people who work on those subs and those families would not see it as a 'benefit'.

"How very Scottish."

Jeezo, have you heard yourself?! Would you like me to start making sweeping generalisations about Welsh English or NI folk????

toadinthehole thanks for clarifying - that's what I thought. The legislation passed to date says that Scotland can have a referendum but it doesn't cover what will happen if there is a yes vote. There needs to be another Act of Parliament and although the outcome of the referendum gives some moral imperative to agreeing the terms of independence, it doesn't create a legal right to independence.

All very much like an agreement to agree in a commercial contract. And there seem to be a large number of items to be agreed. I see the yes campaign materials say that most countries manage to agree terms of separation within 18 months, but I wonder how many of those cases are situations where it was an amicable separation.... (Not sure whether this one would be or not)

Just to add, "the Dismissal" (of Gough Whitlam) is within my living memory, suspect us antipodeans take a more robust view of prerogative powers as a result.