I am currently very pro Scottish Independence…

[Iheartscotland]

what do you think, objectively, are the best arguments for independence?

and/or

for remaining in the union?

Answers that are well reasoned and backed up with facts and figures would be great, but you know- go with whatever you feel.

its not like the SNP want to give any proper answers to the practical questions. They’d much rather operate in the realm of emotions than the real world where being able to raise funds to pay for welfare spending actually matters for governments.

NS did not say a word against those sending death threats to one of her own MP’s. She couldn’t even say that such action had no place in a modern, progressive country. She should have been setting the tone but she was silent. She’s no leader.

As for my stance on independence, someone unthread put it very eloquently about the lack of planning for an independent country at any point which should have been an obvious move.

Oh and don’t forget, telling us we couldn’t go between council boundaries and popping us in tiers to keep us controlled like sheep and then lecturing us on how we mustn’t travel to England Manchester etc, etc.

All of this and now, leaving just as the covid times WhatsApps are surfacing too- you can bet there were some v.interesting exchanges in ScotGov chats. Will we get to see those?

Sunak's glowing description of the Single Market making N.Ireland a magnet for inward investment will do wonders for the SNP.

Does he not know Scottish ppl can see and hear him? Plenty of English and Welsh people pissed off too of course.

But an independent Scotland would need to apply for admission to the EU - meeting the criteria and convincing Spain. It’s not a given.

The starting position for an independent Scotland is neither access to the EU single market not the UK. Scotland would need to negotiate that access.

Whereas the issues for Northern Ireland are important to the EU (and Ireland in particular) to resolve, no such incentive to create special deals would exist for an independent Scotland that wanted to have its cake and eat it too. Why should special measures be put in place to admit a country to the EU and still allow it to pretend it’s part of the UK in the ways that suit it? Both the EU and the UK would have to be willing to negotiate a compromise for a third country neither of them is responsible for.

This post reads just like the sort of nationalist flight of fancy the SNP like to offer in place of discussing the practical realities.

I would like the pro- indy people to explain why the representation of 1 MP per approx 100,000 people is unfair, Scotland already has more than an exact share as places like Orkney, Shetland and Western isles have an MP without the equivalent population. so technically it is over represnted not under represented at Westminister.
all western democracies work in roughly the same way with members of parliament representing roughly equal numbers of people so does the house of representives in USA , so a small state like North Dakota (1) will have many less representatives than California (52) when you look at a map of USA with Democrats in blue and republicans in red about 90% of surface is red but that's about 50% of population, when you look at UK map the conservative blue mostly rural areas look huge compared to red areas but after most elections there are only a few % points between parties;- landslides are not the norm. in the Scottish parliament representation is related to population hence glasgow has more MSP's than argyll

So why do you think Scotland should have more say that it's share of population indicates?

Before Scotland could apply to join the EU it would have to show it met various criteria. At independence there will be no evidence to show anything as everything will be set up from scratch. It will take years to build that evidence - and this is BEFORE you even apply. It is delusional to think the EU would even start to consider bringing a brand new country with no track record of anything into the EU.

@Cottagecheeseisnotcheese is this in reference to a specific post here? Or is this just a general talking point you come across a lot?

How could you trust a government arguing for independence when they can’t even set up a 20 p deposit bottle return service? I’ve chuckled over that thought for a week now .

This will hopefully be on the radar of the population at large . My hairdresser- own business, young mum with husband working offshore says she has little time to notice politics but the bottle scheme was on her radar and she said basically like all their policies full of hot air and no substance .

I think in general, a system for bottle returns is a good idea. But it needs to be UK wide, not Scotland specific. Everyone with half a brain can see that running 4 different schemes in the UK is crazy.

@Iheartscotland both
a fundamental principle of democracy is one person one vote, so take Brexit , I am talking about voting not which side you voted, it was a nationwide vote so surely every single person's vote is worth the same whether you have a mansion in the cotswolds, a terraced house in Bilston, a tenement in Govan a croft in Skye or a house in Mornington Cresent, a sheep farm in Wales, a semi in Belfast etc etc; some people seem to argue that because Scotland and Northern Ireland on average voted remain while England and Wales voted leave that they were not getting what they voted for, so Scotland was leaving EU when it voted to stay that somehow it wasn't right, as I said I'm not actually discussing "brexit" it could be any issue at all as such but how you can claim it wasn't right that the majority vote counted; i heard that some people thought that 2 nations for and 2 against made it 50/50 and that the four nations should be "equal" so the votes of one nation counted the same despite huge population differences ie effectively 1 Scottish vote = 11 English votes, 1 Welsh vote = 2 scottish votes etc so thinking Scotland should have 25% of a say with 8% of the population and England should have had 25% of a say with 85% of population
in the EU seats are determined by population so Germany has much much more influence than Portugal, this is not the same as asking individual governments to ratify a treaty as that is not subject to population voting, some within EU countries do have this that alterations have to be put to referendum
General elections are different as some seats are safe seats so it seems your vote counts for less in a safe seat ( regardless of being red/blue/yellow/ orange etc) than if you live in a key marginal

Re the bottle returns scheme - we already have a fantastic system where I live in Scotland - I chuck my drinks containers in a wheelie bin right outside my home and the council takes it away to be recycled.

The expectation of the proposed new scheme is of of reverse vending machines at supermarkets etc dispensing a refund of the deposit on receipt of the containers. But many supermarkets and council car parks already have bottle banks etc.

Maybe more bottle banks at schools, in parks etc might reduce the litter aspect of drinks containers but I can't see the people who chuck their buckfast bottles and fizzy drink cans on the ground bothering to return them to supermarkets for 20p.

The Sainsbury's at Braehead has one of those reverse vending machines. It's NEVER working.

A bottle return scheme is only worthwhile if it increases recycling.

London will make its self independent next and then everyone else in the U.K. will be well and truly fucked. It makes no sense. It's ill thought through.

Whenever those in Scotland complain re we didn’t vote remain London didn’t either on the whole. Maybe we should upski too.

The problem for me with the parliamentary representation issue is it doesn't actually mean anything in terms of having any government power - no matter what Scotland does at the ballot box we still end up with a Government we didn't vote for. I'm old enough to have trudged round the doors canvassing to try and get Thatcher out. In my idealistic youth I could never believe the Tories just kept getting. I was always against independence and believed in all standing together for the betterment of all etc.. But they say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results - and that's what brought me to believing in independence, which I came round to during the referendum. It just gets to the point where it's depressing living in a country where you know your vote makes do difference at all. You might as well just play a game of hangman on your ballot paper. If anything, time has just reinforced my view. I mean if Boris Johnson can get in, what hope is there? That's where my stance on independence comes from - it's about democracy.

I know this isn't what your looking for OP - I'm not trying to put the 'best case' for independence, or tell others who don't believe in it that they're wrong. But, basically, that's what originally brought me round to the view, and I suppose, still is, for me, at the heart of it

no matter what Scotland does at the ballot box we still end up with a Government we didn't vote for.

The majority of Scotland voted Labour in 1997 and we got a labour government, same in 2001, and 2005. What is more, from 2007 until 2010 we had a Scottish Prime Minister, and before that he was chancellor for many years.

From 1997 we had a Scottish Prime Minister - Tony Blair was born in Edinburgh and was educated at Fettes.

And don't forget Alistair Darling......

it is simply not true that Scotland gets what it didn't vote for, sometimes it did sometimes it didn't just like Wales, sometimes we only got a labour government because of Scottish labour MP's, at every election some groups of people sometimes get who we don't vote for, at all these elections Scotland had the correct proportion of MP's based on population, in fact because of the smaller island populations it actully has 2-3 MP's more than strict population would give, lots of Scottish MP's have been in cabinet and some Prime ministers Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling are not from the dim and distant past

Regarding the UK Government, it's also starkly different from the Scottish Government in that the ultra wealthy are in charge. The goldfish bowl of these ultra wealthy individuals and their ultra wealthy friends controlling the press just doesn't happen in Scotland and Wales.

Lots of people seem comfortable with that, however, I personally feel it's important that people who aren't born into generational wealth are making the decisions which affect us.

Ah, Alistair Darling who said, "Scotland has been balancing the books of the rest of the UK for years" or words to that effect.

Does that matter? To some people it will, to some it won't.

Well, as he was chancellor, second most important office, under a Scottish PM. it would suggest Scots have far more input into running the UK than many independence supporters would have us think.
He also said if the Scots vote to leave the 300-year-old union and then keep sterling, adopt their own currency, or join the euro, the country will be plunged into unparalleled economic uncertainty.
"The downsides are immense, the risks are amazing, the uncertainties I just don't think are worth gambling on, Darling said. "There are times when you should gamble and there are times when you shouldn't."

This stuff is just how democracy works - some people always get something they didn’t want or vote for.

How well do you think the views of Orkney and Shetland would be represented in an independent Scotland?