As the SNP and Plaid Cymru work together in Westminster, it wouldn't surprise me that if there is a yes vote in Scotland, the PC campaign for the next Welsh Assembly elections will be based on "if the Scots can do it, we can as well".
Do you really think that its worse in "Redruth" than in some parts of "London"? No its not.. There are spreads in prosperity in all regions. London has a higher income per capita but there remains a large variation and the poor in London are poorer than the poor in Aberdeen for sure. Its not measured in pounds shillings and pence but quality of life. In order to open peoples eyes they need to put themselves in the shoes of the other party eg. Scots put yourselves in a Londoners shoes and that means a Scottish bus driver comparing with a London bus driver or teacher with teacher etc. not comparing oneself to a worker in the square mile. That square mile has to exist somewhere and by my definition the guys n gals there are overpaid but heh, am I bovvered, no, it really is not my business unless they do something morally or legally wrong. If scotland did get independence we in the North would increase our rhetoric against those money grabbing scoundrels in the central belt. Wherever central government is located be it county or national there is a bias of investment to that place, its nature and necessary.
The United Kingdom refers to more than one Kingdom united politically. Since Irish independence there are only two kingdoms left united in the UK - if one were to leave then you no longer have any united kingdoms. You have only one kingdom - England, a principality, Wales and a province, Northern Ireland. Having the same Queen does not maintain the United Kingdom any more than NZ and Australia are part of the United Kingdom -they are not - we simply have the same monarch. However for many political purposes you are unlikely to hear this in any official statements by the UK government as if the UK ceased to exist with the departure of Scotland, some might argue that the remnants of the UK shold themselves have to apply for EU membership - which might go down well in UKIP circles but not in others. I think the Union Jack (or Flag) is the official flag of the UK whatever its origins
I doubt it - they may push for as much responsibility without accountability, ahem, sorry, devolved powers, as possible, but they wouldn't dream of independence. They couldn't possibly survive and i think even the most passionate nationalist accepts that.
Agreed. The Welsh have no appetite for independence and have zero ability economically to be independent even if they wished for it.
Right with the first point but wrong, IMO, with the second. Yes it is to gauge opinion - and from what I gather, that is the reason behind the lack of 'nuts & bolts' to the SNP policy documents. There is, after all, little point in having fully fleshed out details if popular opinion is 'No' - that will come after the event. If the vote is 'No', indications are already there that Westminster will introduce legislation to stop any further referendum on the issue. A strange position to take though, one that appears to almost guarantee a 'Yes' outcome, I would have thought. probably not, for reasons as given above. You may well have a valid point there - it's not a case of the Scots hating the English as a stereotype - more likely one particular group of English, and not necessarily all Scots anyway. Common factors in that group are arrogance, disdain, selfishness and lack of compassion - not isolated to any particular area of England, but almost prerequisites for Tory party membership. Add to that the personal experiences that many have had - I've already documented elsewhere my own with many English, I've read accounts of others and I've seen comments in blogs expressing ant-Scottish sentiments. I've never personally seen any such attitudes towards the English, or other nationalities, up here - that's not to say they don't exist or haven't happened - I simply have never encountered them. Although living in a rural area, there are relatively high numbers of migrants up here - English, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and Eastern Europeans. I regularly work in schools where migrant, non-English speaking, children outnumber the locals by 4:1 - with never a hint of racial tension from children and parents alike. I guess what I'm saying is that it's not a case of Scots hating the English, rather, if there is any hate, it's the opposite way. But that is just my viewpoint of course. Re 'ego' - I'm afraid that is a prerequisite for politicians everywhere, not just Scotland. Why should Scottish egotists be denied their time in the sun when it is open slather for the Westminster ones? Yes the expectation under independence is for improvement, that much is obvious. The reality you claim may well be the case, but equally may well not be the case - the real reality is that only time would tell. The alternative on the other hand is already a given - reduced funding leading to falling living standards etcetera, as promised by Cameron & Osborne. So we are being asked to vote for, on the one hand, the promise of further falling living standards without any foreseeable improvement, and on the other the opportunity for improvement. Quite why anyone would prefer the former is really beyond me.
Common factors in that group are arrogance, disdain, selfishness and lack of compassion - not isolated to any particular area of England, but almost prerequisites for Tory party membership. Trouble is BB that you make a reasoned explanation of your view, but then you so often have to have a dig at the Tories which, I suspect, alienates and and antagonises others with a conservative viewpoint as well as me. This has the effect that the number one point I remember from your post is your untrue and insulting allegation about me, to the extent that I don't really care about everything else you say in your post. You may wish to reconsider whether it is worth including such insults in your post if you want them to be appreciated.
Part of the problem has developed in various regions of the UK where public employment has become too large compared to the private sector workers. Private companies will be able to see every month when they look at the balance sheet just how well things are going, but it is far more difficult to measure the productivity of a group of civil servants. Private companies have to look at can they afford to keep all the things that they would like to, but can they manage when times are difficult without them. The same will apply when a region finds that economies must made, but of course it is the ruling party that gets the abuse, not maybe previous leaders who didn't look to the future and allowed numbers to keep increasing. Along with Scotland, France has a high number of public servants and now finally Hollande has realised that the country cannot continue to borrow for ever he is forced into reducing the numbers. Government monies that are handed down to the regions are being reduced and various regional departments are being joined together to cut back on staff. Lionel Jospin started the problem here around 2000 and it has taken all these years for things to become bad enough to force the governments hand.
Mark - you may wish to publicly point out to others on here whose viewpoints are the opposite of mine that they are equally guilty of the same crime. Or you may not - it's not something that I'm particularly prickly over. As to the 'conservative viewpoint' issue - I see quite a distinction between those of a conservative leaning and those who are active conservative party members/leaders. I've already stated elsewhere that I've been in the former category myself, so any insulting allegations that you feel were made about you are equally applicable to me - and I never considered them as insulting. I have never, however, been in the latter category, to which my comments were aimed - and in my experience they are far from untrue. Call it the Australian nature in me, or call it what you will - but I don't believe in withholding verbal punches where I consider them due, the only thing I will refrain from is the personal invective for which there is no need. If you still feel insulted, I'm sorry that you do, but that doesn't change my viewpoint.
I think BB it may be "the Australian nature in me" which prevents you seeing an anti-English bias in Scotland. You are probably not perceived as English if you have a foreign twang to your accent. My son-in law was bullied throughout his schooldays for having an English accent and what makes it worse he says it was often the teachers who instigated it - with comments like "speak clearer boy, I cannot understand a word you say" On the other side in England I remember Scots being often amongst the more popular boys. I also have a suspicion that Southern accents are more widely loathed by the Scots as they remind them more of the "Queens English" or Tory voices. There is a lot of resentment in Scotland against England. One of the things that amuses me is the Scots hate it when their sporting heroes are praised as British. They always claim that they are called British when winning and Scottish when not. That is just not at all true. I have for years looked to see if there was any accuracy in that belief as it is so widely held. The Scots overlook the equal frequency of English sports people being described as British in similar situations. The English do not have a similar chip on their shoulder so don not even care whether English or British is used.
On the Tory question I do not support any party but have voted for many over the years. It is nevertheless true that Labour policies on economics simply mess up the economy. The only Labour government to have a fair record was that under Blair and most socialists revile him. Why? Because to get into government in 1997 he promised not to undo Tory economic measures for at least the life of his first term in office. Result - quite a good record. That continued in the second term too - but was wrecked when the arch socialist Brown wrested control - and wrecked our economy. The Conservatives have had very little choice but to implement austerity measures to try to restore some sort of balance. I guess it is what makes Democracy so good. We need the Conservatives to create the conditions to enable Labour to overspend and waste money culminating in a crisis to bring the Tories back in to mend things and let Labour have another go. As a result it is very easy to see Labour as the nice people and Conservatives as nasty. There is a parallel in divorced couples where one parent who tries to do the right thing is seen as mean and the soft "give the child everything" parent is seen as the good one.
Cuts in public spending are required, a thriving private sector is needed policies aimed at this balance will result in success whether independent or not, better chance as one in my opinion.
totally agree Aberdeen - and there is no reason why success cannot be used to provide good welfare too - they manage it in Scandinavia
Strange then that under SNP stewardship, yesterday's announcement on the current performance of the Scottish economy saw: *Permanent job vacancies rise at the fastest pace in eight years in January - in all eight jobs sectors monitored; *January was the eleventh consecutive month of growth in permanent jobs being filled; *Salaries rose strongly for those appointed to permanent jobs indicating increasing business confidence; *Scotland outperform the UK with higher employment, lower unemployment and lower inactivity rates; *The BDO optimism index, which gauges how well companies expect to perform in the next six months, rise to a new high of 103.8 in January, well ahead of the 88.9 score reported for January, 2013. These all appear to fit your requirements for success and are all achieved under the SNP - so..... Agreed, except there are two very obvious reasons why it won't happen, the first simply being the ideologies of the incumbent Westminster government, to whom welfare is an anathema, won't allow it. The second is that Britain, and probably most other countries in the world, is entrenched in a system that is never likely to change - all parties pay homage to big business, who in turn pay homage to the word 'profits'. The problem with that being that profits are constantly funnelled upwards to service greed and rarely downwards to service need. The proof of that is in the stats that someone quoted earlier regarding the distribution of wealth. Currently, I really don't hold any allegiance to any political party, but simply want something else to be tried as what we have at the moment doesn't work and hasn't worked for a long time. If anything, I'd probably prefer to see the Greens in charge - how they would perform in terms of the economy, I've no idea, but I'm fairly sure that had they been in power across the world when it needed them, we'd be in a better place to live. What I'd like to see is the Amazon rainforest remain a large rainforest, the polar ice remain polar ice, the Australian Bush remain something that resembles a bush rather than a wizened, dried-up, blackened stump, a thriving diversity of wildlife, a USA not smothered in three feet of snow - and the green fields of England remain recognisable as such rather than being knee deep in contaminated brown sludge. Cloud cuckoo land I know, but it's a nice dream...
All achieved within the union with subsidies from Westminster so...... Climate change is inevitible. Look at the sea positions and climate in roman times, its mans arrogance that makes some believe we are so in control....
Couldn't diagree more with this. Even at my lowly level if I want to implement something I need to have a very detailed Business Case drawn up explaining the reasons why and how I'm going to implement and manage it before it gets anywhere near the point of deciding whether or not it is viable to happen. It has always been in SNP's manifesto to strive for independence so why so they no have the details in place? Why have they seemingly not considered any contingencies for not being given everything they ask for? It's poor leadership, appalling politics, and a fundamental lack of understanding of how things work.
SNP are a one policy party which is based on playing the nationalist card. It's all they've got. Vote independence and everything will be ok. The Scots deserve more and better.
