Scottish Independence (the sequel)

Don't think Osborne has done the "NO" vote any good with his speech. Clearly they now see an independent Scotland as a distinct possibility. Threats just wont intimidate Scots people, just more likely to strengthen their resolve. Rethink needed Cameron and co.

(13-02-2014 14:32 )SOCATOA Wrote:  Threats just wont intimidate Scots people, just more likely to strengthen their resolve. Rethink needed Cameron and co.

You're not paying attention.

It's not a threat, it's a statement of fact.

It's no more to do with Cameron and co, than with the other political parties, as Labour and the Liberal Democrats have said the same thing.

There won't be any rethink, because sharing the pound with Scotland is not a feasible option for the UK.

(13-02-2014 14:56 )dominar rygel xvi Wrote:  You're not paying attention.

It's not a threat, it's a statement of fact.

It's no more to do with Cameron and co, than with the other political parties, as Labour and the Liberal Democrats have said the same thing.

There won't be any rethink, because sharing the pound with Scotland is not a feasible option for the UK.

If Scotland do go for independence, there will be a rethink, by all the party's. And not just on the subject of the pound. And it still sounds like a threat, as far as the SNP are concerned. Just giving the SNP more ammunition. That's just my opinion.

there wont be a rethink Salmond doesnt have a leg to stand on its not in UK interest to go into currency union with scotland because of whats happened to the eurozone has shown monatary union doesnt work.

this isnt the partys saying it the Bank of England saying it as well as an independanct civil service report

If the SNP think that if they don't get the pound they won't take their share of the national debt then I think the rest of us should have a vote to decide which assets we repossess as recompense. I'll start the ball rolling by suggesting we take the oil fields.

To take such a bold but risky step such as independence there should be a clear cut winning argument for a yes vote - there clearly isn't. The argument about an independent Scotland being securely founded on north sea oil has long gone - production peaked a while back.

A confident viable new nation should want its own currency yet Alex Salmond wants to retain the pound. It isn't that many years ago that he was a massive fan of the euro and claimed Scotland could be the next Iceland. The guy whilst a canny tactical politician is no statesman capable of launching a new nation. Any new nation worth its salt should want the flexibility its own currency gives it in good economic times and bad. That a new nation does not want to form its own currency to me seems to show a lack of fundamental confidence in its own viability. That the UK would not want an independent Scotland to use the pound is sound economically because a faltering Scotland would destabilise the UK's monetary policy. Just look at the chaos the weaker member economies have caused in recent times within the Eurozone. The only way to ensure these risks do not occur would be to have co-ordinated monetary and fiscal policies, but this is only really possible with political union - which we have with the United Kingdom!

A new confident independent Scotland should have its own head of state - Salmond wants to retain the monarchy.

Salmond wants to have a shared army, but would refuse to have nuclear submarines based at Scottish bases.

How long will free higher education and free prescriptions last in an independent Scotland will dwindling revenue sources?

The SNP claim Scotland would automatically and smoothly become a member of the EU - clearly not true to anyone with a basic knowledge of EU law.

The notion that's the Scots are somehow an oppressed minority under the English yoke is palpable nonsense. They have always punched well above their weight across the political and intellectual spectrum. There is no sane reason to throw away the security of the Union for a collective of dubious SNP assertions post-independence .

Whilst there has been some minor movement in favour of the yes vote (usually when the absurdly upper-crust etonian English Tories pipe up) the opinion polls have consistently been in favour of staying in the Union. For an decision as big as this surely there should be an sizeable majority in favour before anyone felt comfortable about going ahead with it. Could an independent Scotland really be securely founded on a 51/49 yes vote?

As an Englishman (although I really have always described myself as British when required for the purposes of officialdom - and I'm not really all that hung up about nationalist labels of any sort) I have no interest in keeping a reluctant Scotland in the Union. If there was a clear unequivocal case that Scotland would thrive as an independent nation I'd be in favour of a yes vote too, wish them all the best as a new nation and look forward to a future of peaceful, mutually beneficial co-operation between Scotland and the remainder of the UK. However, I don't think such a case has been made.

we will still be making profits from the oil because all the oil companies are based in the city and are part of the FTSE 100 so we will get the tax from the profits we will still charge VAT and the Duty on Petrol will stay the same only thing we cant charge the companies for extracting it

scotland will have to charge its own VAT and Duty so the scottish motorist will prob have to pay more to fill up there tanks

(13-02-2014 13:17 )dominar rygel xvi Wrote:  Why would an independent Scotland want the UK pound anyway?

An established, relatively stable currency with generally low interest rates and good credit rating.

Oh... and the small matter of the Bank Of England acting as "lender of last resort" when Smallmind, I mean Salmond's grand plan goes tits up.


No, I can't think of any good reason why an independent Scotland would want to carry on using Sterling..

(13-02-2014 15:04 )SOCATOA Wrote:  If Scotland do go for independence, there will be a rethink

No there won't. The UK will never share their currency with Scotland or with anybody else. It just isn't a good idea.

The only truly logical position for a truly independent country is to have its own currency.

This would take some persuading however in the current economic climate of fear (despite headlines of growth etc; a lot of people are still not seeing this actually translate into any pay increases or job security for those in work, whose position has been eroded by stagnant wages, food price inflation, soaring utilities bills and all the rest over the last few years ).

Hence the SNP's fudge of a currency union, which doesn't seem to be a well-thought out policy; and also the not-politically insignificant necessity of not scaring into the "No" camp the majority moderate population, who, contrary to all the stereotypes, are not rabidly foaming at the mouth anti-English; except maybe during the worst tabloid jingoistic excesses during a soccer World Cup or similar : and that's hardly any basis for a risky exercise in setting up a new nation state.

And you have to ask yourself whether anyone in the UK really wants a Scotland with a separate currency. No serious UK-wide business on either side of the Scotland/England border wants to have to deal with currency exchange in cross-border trading.

In terms of a currency union, in theory anything is surely possible technically with enough political will on both sides. The Bank of England seemed to be pointing this out in as neutral a fashion as they could. However this clearly isn't the case politically at the moment, nor seems likely to be as all Westminster political parties seem to have ruled out currency union. However, is this an economic decision or a political one ? Probably a mix of both in truth. It doesn't appear that the economies within the Union at present are as divergent from each other when compared to different countries in the Eurozone ? Wasn't the BOE saying that for a currency union to work there would need to be mutually agreed stabilisation mechanisms in place should problems of divergence due to differing economic policies either side of the border arise in the future ?

This surely isn't so different as the way the current central UK government policy in theory is supposed to balance out regional economic variations within the Union, eg. between an over-inflated foreign investor driven housing bubble in London and Southeast and differing conditions in the rest of England/Wales, by targeting regional investment / public spending / tax incentives accordingly ? It would just have to be more formalised if it has to work between different nations within a currency union rather than across the UK as it is presumably supposed to work at the moment. Trouble is this particular coalition govt doesn't seem to believe in this, indeed it seems to believe in centralising as much as it can; cutting money from local councils while at the same time capping what they can borrow/raise locally, and selling out the delivery of vital services to private interests whose only motivation at the end of the day is to turn a profit. (The point of privatisation, public-private partnerships or whatever surely isn't to make services better, it's to offload debt and spending commitments from the Treasury in order to make UK plc balance sheet look good to all those money market speculators who have the power to bring down any nation whose policies work against their interests).

Previous government wasn't really any better in this regard- they were just as wedded to self-interested PFI deals which just mean the taxpayer gets shafted for poorer services in favour of unnecessary profit driven "management consortiums" who aren't actually interested in delivering a quality service running hospitals or running care homes, they're just interested in screwing the taxpayer for as much profit as they can. Market forces only really work if people have a genuine choice. How is that supposed to work with essential front line services ? Do me a favour. Where are you supposed to go ? These services are so complex and vital to current society that they are a natural monopoly. So regardless of whether they are publicly run or privately run; they will always tend to favour the producer rather than the user, unless they are rigorously regulated and are properly funded. If taxes aren't there to pay for them, then public services fail. If the business model of privately run "Trusts" or whatever you want to call them is fundamentally flawed, then you'll get the same result. But with the necessity of bailing them out with public subsidy, because the political and social cost of having these services fail is too awful. So now you're paying twice, for a poor service. Either way Joe Public is the ultimate loser; cos' they've got nowhere else to go.

SNP in Scotland isn't any better in this regard - it has frozen Council Tax in Scotland unilaterally regardless of individual local councils' different capacities and needs to raise revenue and pay for services in their own areas.

So the real question which never seems to be asked, is that -beyond the vociferous minority of deluded Braveheart-swallowing posturers, why would the rest of Scotland vote for independence ? The real answer to that seems to be a desire to have more control over fiscal and taxation decisions than is currently the case, and by a determination - hardened by long years of Conservative rule in the 1980s indifferent to the destruction of all indigenous manufacturing industry (not just in Scotland it should be added, but look at the North of the country as a whole) - to protect themselves from right of centre policies and ideologies which they consistently voted against at General Election after General Election, but which were maintained across the UK as a whole by a minority of right of centre voters in the South, and which policies were perceived to have a disproportionately harsh effect on those areas that hadn't voted for them in the first place.

Most opinion polls in the Scottish Referendum question however seem to support the theory that a lot of the "silent majority" of undecided and "No" voters would rather vote for the option of greater devolution powers - more capacity to raise revenue, control taxation, rates etc. But none of which would necessarily be possible/ work with a currency union either. But a newly independent nation with a totally new currency would also be likely to be at risk from the global markets, which "punish" decisions they don't agree with (because they are not in the self-interest of the large global wide, tax dodging enterprises who don't care about nations at all; and who only recognise one interest - the right of themselves to make as much money as they can anywhere in the world by any means necessary, legal, illegal or otherwise; not to mention the whole electronic stock market speculation merry go round of making illusory money out of nothing by pseudo scientific computerised gambling that's called "trading" or "financial services". )

So there seems to be no easy answer.

But it all serves as a distraction, and nobody really asks the real questions : why are market forces in every inroad of our public services the only answer ? In whose interest is it really ? Is it entirely unconnected with well connected lobbying and private interests ? Regardless of which govt we have, left of centre or right of centre, the creeping erosion continues. The politicians run scared. You have to ask what the point of any of them is. They increasingly represent no one but themselves - and the large private interests which bankroll them. All that happens is that every few years these private interests switch their allegiances from one to other, to ensure that no matter what the outcome of a General Election, they can carry on regardless.

But who cares about any of that when we can just present it on TV as a Political "X" Factor popularity contest between Slick 'Eck Salmond and Eton Toff Cameron and make it a hysterical racist issue about scrounging soap dodging Jock layabouts being subsidised by dynamic economically-thrusting Southerners , and all the other hoary old clichés ?

And as if I know anything about it