No way are you fair minded in this you are clearly a NO supporter because you set out below their entire strategy. ie Ask questions that cannot be answered fully until after the referendum when both sides will negotiate all these matters. For example currency.
Extract of a letter in the Herald from Eamonn Butler, Director of the Adam Smith Institute: ............ (quote removed for space)
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YOur quote is from one member of the Adam Smith Institute who happens to be a "Yes" supporter. Thereclearly are other views - but you do not accept that. Try another Adam Smith Institute article.
Would an independent Scotland sink or swim?
Written by Henry Hill
As the United Kingdom approaches its date with destiny and the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, the debate surrounding the possible shape of a post-Union Scotland are only going to get fiercer. What Scotland might look like outside the United Kingdom, whether Scandinavian utopia or isolated backwater, is one of the key fronts on which the battle for the hearts and minds of Scottish voters will be fought.
Alex Salmondâs vision, designed to maximise separationâs appeal, is of a Scotland with options: joining the Euro; membership of the Common Market without the single currency; keeping the pound. All intended to give the impression that an independent Scotland would be the master of its own economic destiny.
Yet there are good grounds for suspicion that this is not the case. For a start, it is unlikely that Scotland would be able to claim automatic membership of the European Union as the SNP often claim.
In the instance of Scottish independence, the continuity-UK would almost certainly qualify for âsuccessor stateâ status under international law, due to possessing (much) more than 50% of the territory and population of the United Kingdom as presently constituted.
Thus the UK would retain its identity and membership, leaving none for Scotland to inherit. Were Scotland to then apply for membership in its own right, there are further hurdles. The UKâs treasured opt-out from the single currency is not offered to new members; likewise the option of joining the European Economic Area without acceding to the EU.
Thus Scotland would either have to join the EU, single currency and all, or not at all. Even assuming the SNP retained their former enthusiasm for the single currency and took the plunge, thereâs no guarantee theyâd be accepted. Spain, Italy and Belgium are all wrestling with their own separatist movements and will not want to establish the precedent of secessionists gaining EU membership â see Spainâs position vis-Ã -vis Kosovo.
If not Europe, then what? In an effort to soften the blow for soft-unionist Scots, the SNP are keen to stress the links that they would seek to retain with the UK. Scotland could, the nationalists argue, keep the pound, and British submarines could still be stationed at Faslane to fend off the fear of defence cuts.
Assuming all this was true (and in the case of defence it almost certainly isnât), Scotland on the pound would be tied to the British economy without having a say in the governance of it, while trying to keep whole communities going via sustaining now-foreign military bases.
The SNP thus risk locking Scotland out of the UK without breaking free from it. As the pro-Union campaign put it, there are polities outside the UK with similar relationships. Until recently, they were called âdependenciesâ.
You do not know me and have no idea what my experience of the world is so it's a little foolish to make assumptions.
People often acuse others of that which they are guilty of, as you just did.
I am English.
Sorry but you made a little foolish assumption that I am a NO supporter without knowing anything about me too. In that you are incorrect. I support neither side. I do not follow the NO Camp's strategy - all I do is ask the sensible questions that need to be asked. The defensiveness of the Yes campaign is frightening. Is it wrong to ask questions about what indepemdence means BEFORE the die is cast? Of course it is. Any sensible person who buys something questions and gets facts in advance of committing themselves. I find your view that you should vote Yes and then find out what you have got incredible.
