The Politics Thread

Now you are just showing your ignorance of Scottish affairs.

 

Not one of my strongest points, but I guess Scotland will probably keep the Queen. Trying to keep the pound though is a bit of a risk. She with lose a 1700 pounds subsidy per person that Scotland get from the UK and will also have to keep a positive cash balance. That means taxes in Scotland will have to increase at least 1700 per person per year. With little or no, or perhaps even negative income from North Sea Oil it could even get worse. I forecast some serious cuts in services and intorduction of severe austerity measures. What's wrong with Scotland having their own currency?

 

That is just wrong in so many ways but then it's not surprising because very few people outside Scotland appreciate the real position and quite a few in Scotland as well come to that.

First of of all you can't compare finances of an Independent Scotland with the present Scotland which is part of the UK. The myth of subsidy is successfully propagated by Westminster and the entire media in an attempt to frighten Scots into staying in the Union. Take the figures over the last 20 years and you will find that Scotland actually contributes to the UK. Ask yourself why they fight so hard to hang on to it. Oil prices are/will rise again but it has never been central to Scotland's finances, it could be of course and it could have been but the revenue has been largely spent by Westminster particularly by Thatcher to finance her reshaping of Britain's economy.

VAT; At present many of the receipts that would become an Independent Scotland's go to Westminster. Scotland's economy would change radically as an Independent state. For a start there would be big reduction in defence costs because we would be non Nuclear.

However the argument for Scottish Independence is about going her own way in a country with very different values from England the whole financial debate is a red herring. The real debate is about the future and the direction the two Countries want to take. Even if your argument was correct no independent county would want to give up it's freedom for 30 quid a week. So first of all you need to accept that Scotland is a county and that has different values to the Union it at present finds itself in. England will also benefit from having to reassess it's role in the world, at present it cannot afford a proper health service, yet it still goes around the world playing politics and trying to police other places. The Empire is dead and England needs to come to terms with that and Scotland needs to stop being one of the last colonies. .

 

I thought England was a Colony of Scotland, didn't James VI of Scotland become James I of England? Colony tends to be a bad word anyhow, IMHO many African countries would have been better off, or a least the people would be better off, if they had remained colonies. Not colonies as per Leopold II obviously, but using modern western values, minerals would have been exploited but roads, hospitals and schools would have been built rather than a very few very rich leaders with abject poverty elsewhere.

I think Britain has come to terms with the fact that the Empire is dead, most of the 'policing' nowadays revolves around terrorism. The information super highway that is the internet has made the world so small we are all neighbours. Our methods of 'policing' are out-dated and will never work. Putin uses modern techniques, individual assination and digital attacks with a nuclear deterent to back it up. It's the way to go. However we appear slow to catch up. Something about such methods is not 'Cricket'. One day we will learn, but until then you are right, we will not be able to provide a proper health service, we will waste our money policing the world.

You might be right, an independent Scotland might work, but why put barriers in the way like keeping the pound. If the Scots and English economies are going to diverge, surely it would be in your interest to be able to float/devalue/revalue your currency when it is best for the Scottish economy, not have to dance to the tune of Westminster. If not you may end up like Greece.

 

deedub, What I here when you speak of Scotland is what the media has trotted out. When you speak of Africa it is much more interesting because you speak from your own experience and that is always worth listening too. I don't agree with your assessment of African countries being better off as colonies because I believe that most of their problems arise from being colonies. The towel on the deckchair syndrome. The west got there first and therefore writes most of the rules it's what we in the UK suffer from with the big landowners, many of whom put their towels on the the deck chairs during the Norman conquest and still sit, causing most of us to have to fight for the remaining places.
Slowly slowly some of these situations are changed but progress is painfully slow and when the likes of Putin and Trump hold sway the direction is backwards. However much of a success or failure countries need to be Independent to forge their own path that doesne't always mean they will be better off in the short term, but it's long term that matters.
When many of us leave home for the first time we are often poorer to start with but the solution is what you and I have done in different ways. We learned how to get on in the world and set about trying to make our corner of it work, ending up in many cases better off than the home we left in the first place. We have to grow up and become Independent and so do countries.

 

How much would it cost to transfer Scottish money to Euros.......and would there be border guards?

 

I see leaders of many African leaders lining their own pockets just as colonists did so you my be right in saying the issues stem from colonisation but education, not independence is the solution. Independence and freedom are two very different things. Most of the 'towels' as you put it have been removed, often to the detrement of the locals.

In order for a successful transition to independence, proper education is needed together with investment in infrastructure and services. It is no co-incidence that modern mining companies almost always build roads, railroads, hospitals, sewers, provide clean water and electricity in order to carry out their business. They also provide schools and send locals abroad for training/education because an educated workforce is an advantage.

In order for independence to work, countries need economists, they need engineers, they need people who understand large scale farming, they need doctors, they need honest lawyers, they need educated politicians, not thugs. This takes time to educate people.

Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) was a country with problems, however, food was plentiful. The locals did not starve. There was obviously issues with white farmers owning everything, but those guys knew how to farm. They provided jobs, housing, health services for their employees. It was in their interest to do so. However, they provided no chance for locals to obtain wealth and provided very little education. It was not perfect but basic needs were provided.

Now look at the place. When the white farmers were ousted and the farms given to locals, the first issue was nobody had a salary. What happened? Irrigation pumps were sold as scrap, farm machinery was sold as scrap, no one had money to buy diesel for generators, it was and still is a disaster. Farms have gone to ruin, people are hungry, unemployment has rocketed and people don't have decent hospitals or sanitation. Economic mismanagement resulted in hyper-inflation. From being worth more than a US dollar when Mugabe took over, in 2008 it took a One Hundred Trillian Zimbabwe dollar note to buy a loaf of bread. Inflation was running at 79.6 trillian per cent (yes 79,600,000,000 per cent). Some form of transition should have been put in place but Mugabe thought he knew better. The country has gone backwards a few hundred years. It makes one want to cry, it is criminal.

I'm not anti independence, in fact I support it. However, it should have been carried out over a 50-60 year period in most African countries, not over-night. Just as the white farmers didn't provide proper education for their employees in Zimbabwe, because it would empower them, many of todays African leaders tread the same path. I just think that if independence had been delayed in a number of African countries, a better support system could have been put in place and wars avoided. Too many countries have and still are experiencing wars in order for people to win freedom, despite being independent for years.

 

It's a process deedub we went through it in the UK all countries go through wars and struggle it's the nature of human beings sadly. Corrupt leadership, greed it's every where.

 

And in other news.......
Dumpf gives daughter Ivanka an office in the West Wing. Good to see that he is taking on board the wide spread concerns and criticism of nepotism and cronyism!!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39335887

 

You have to factor in the reality that any Tory government cares little about what happens outside London and the South East unless there is some benefit to those regions in doing so. Independence is a no brainer for most Scots. Britain relies heavily on a financial and general services based economy. Most of that is centred on London because it is the hub of the financial markets outside New York. Destroying the coal, steel, shipbuilding and most manufacturing industries, outside of small light engineering has left Britain's economy in a fragile state. Scotland's value to Westminster is oil, otherwise it would happily concede independence, I'm sure.

 

Just wanted to agree that every country ends up being as good as its education system. Ours was world class until about 50 years ago. It went downhill at the same time a more flexible approach became popular, but that's a coincidence, I think. It's resulted more directly from K-12 education becoming the bottom of the career choice barrel. We get victims of the education system victimizing others.

 

one thing at school in our day,if you misbehaved for any reason you got the stick or 100 lines or more.So one had to pay attention.today they pretty much do what they like or mum will complain to the school board about cruelty.

I guess I believe in an eye for an eye. heaven forbid,but if someone kills someone in my family,they've got to go.
I don't want to hear someone saying corporal punishment is cruel.......was killing a victim legal?

 

A hacker has avoided jail for hacking The Sun's website to post a story saying Rupert Murdoch had committed suicide

I like to think because the judge said it was the best journalism seen in The Sun for years...

 

Well,well,well. the Irish tried to kill us,the Germans tried to kill us and now we have something else going on today...but we don't know who.
There's always someone trying to create chaos in the world. I guess it will always be the same until someone presses the button......

 

How terrible: armed police storm the House of Commons, and not one of them mistook Jeremy Hunt for a Brazilian electrician

 

Thoughts and prayers to the victims of today's outrage in our home town!!!

Too soon, HBIC. Several deaths reported and +20 seriously injured.

 

So Trump WAS tapped.

No doubt there will be a number of apologies on here today !

 

a Trump campaign manager being paid 10 million a year to screw up American politics,business and Lord knows what else. I'd tap 'em.Wouldn't you?

Hillary must be having laughing fits and waiting for next session of Trump lies.

 

Oh! That's 10 million from the Russians by the way!

 

What did the Chelsea owner do to inherit oilwells for goodness sake?