The Scottish referendum debate...

About to start

A bit petty I know but Salmond is annoying me by keeping moving forward to address the audience again, it gives an air of smugness.

The audience have made their mind up by the sounds of it so far.

Yes why is he doing that? Looks ridiculous.

I wish they would stop talking over each other!

I'm getting nowhere with this.

It has never been said that Scotland cannot use the pound, the haggis, the yen, it has been said that if Scotland leaves the UK the Bank of England will not be the lender of last resort. The only response I keep hearing is well if it doesn't you will be responsible for all the debt. Why would Scotland want to be an independent country yet be told how to run it's finances by the Bank of England.

It's going round and round in a circle and to be honest I am starting to change my mind and I am thinking it will be best for Scotland to leave and we can get on with our lives in the other three countries in the UK and if that means honouring the debt that the Scottish government has said it won't pay then politely but in all honesty that will have to be, so be it, we will fulfill our responsibilities but there will be a lot of bitterness.

The BBC chairman is crap by the way.

Alex Salmond is saying that he wants Scotland to continue to have the pound, which includes honouring its part of the debt.

Well said, pogs.

Countdown 25

I gave up ten minutes ago. What a waste of a programme.
I agree Pogs best get this over with it seems to have dragged up so much negativity and divisiveness.
The BBC man was rubbish.

I am p----d off hearing about the oil is ours so basically you other lot can bugger off and paddle your own canoe. It just makes me sad that everything I thought was good about the UK has become nothing more than 'what's mine is mine and what's your is mine too'.

I hope England, Wales or Northern Ireland never go down the road of working out which country makes more money and that becomes more important than the social, democratic way of life I thought we were all lucky to have experienced. Now I realise that I have had a fairy tale perception of the UK I am to be honest saddened and I don't think I will ever be able to forget the contempt shown over the last few months for the English in particular and to be honest I don't know how I will react in the future if Scotland does vote for independence as this has been quite telling.

As an English person I just feel sullied by the whole thing now.

The main BBC news has stopped talking about it already. Hmmm.

Sky is doing a fair job giving it more attention.

To be fair BBC news has started a better coverage of it now on FV 80

I thought it was a very ragged and badly controlled debate with far too much ranting. I did not think Alec Salmond came across as the statesman-like potential leader of a new country. He was more like a hectoring, arrogant soap-box windbag with pretensions of grandeur. And without plans for an agreed currency union firmly in place it is pretty obvious that the SNP cannot offer financial security or stability. So if you Scots vote yes, fine, but make no mistake, you're on your own from day one. You'll have to feed your bairns from your own little garden, not from your neighbour's big one. The duty of the UK will be to look after its own interests solely.

papa excellent post

I am not clear on this, can anyone clarify please:

If Scotland votes yes, then, as a newly independent country will they cease to be a member of the EU?
If they wish to be a member of the EU ( and do they?), then do new members have to use the Euro ie become part of the Eurozone?

So if this happened they would use the pound pro tem then change to the Euro upon acceptance into the EU.
Could the Scottish pound vary in value against the pound sterling, which would make business between the two
countries difficult?

I may have missed a few points along the way which explained all this, apologies if someone has posted on this before.

You will find your questions answered here, rose. It was on the previous page but you obviously have not noticed. There are a lot of links on the link, but the debate is not easy.
https://fullfact.org/scotland/

As the actual Independence Day is not until March 2016, Scotland as part of the UK till then will still be in the EU. The current Scottish Government and opinion polls in Scotland have expressed the wish to remain in the EU. It is hoped that negotiations would be completed within the 18 months and Scotland would then remain in the EU. The current EU president has stated that iScotland would be a 'special case' NOT a new country seeking admission. It is inconceivable that a pragmatic EU would 'throw out' a nation with the biggest oil stocks of any EU country and the most extensive fishing grounds.
To join the Euro takes time as there are conditions, including that the member state must have a Central Bank, so Scotland could not join on day one even if it wanted. If Scotland cannot negotiate a currency Union with rUK (the preferred option) then they will almost certainly still use the pound, informally, at least in the short term. In either of these cases the pound would have the same value whether it was a rUK pound or a Scottish pound. If in time, Scotland sets up its own Central Bank and own currency, not tied to sterling, then, of course, there would be an exchange rate, just as there is at present between the £sterling and the Euro, Dollar, Kroner, etc. and trade would continue across borders and currencies just as it does now throughout the world. HTH

This morning's Telegraph:

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scottish-independence/11055096/Yes-Scotland-tells-supporters-to-tweet-controversial-NHS-claims-during-TV-debate.html

I didn't see the first debate but found last night's compelling. Alex Salmond annoyed me by always interrupting and grunting whilst Alistair Darling was speaking, and his posturing in front of the podium.
They were cut short too often and never finished one subject before moving on too quickly.
I need to learn more about the Independence but cannot really see how Scotland will manage all on their own when they so many of them are so divided.

Thankyou Djen for the link again, such a long thread I missed it.

Thankyou G23 for your post which makes it a lot clearer now.

Alex Salmond is still creepy. Hope the Scots vote him out at their next election.

Whatever happens about Scottish independence, a big red warning light is now flashing. That is about the resurgence of narrow-minded petty nationalism and racism on both sides of the border as symbolised by the recent bad-tempered public exchanges between Salmond and Darling. If these spill over onto our streets, in pubs, clubs and our homes, as is already beginning to happen, then heaven help us. All the progress of the past 300 years of union will be at risk and we will be in a Balkans-like situation of civil strife and ethnic-cleansing. In that sad event the contest will be very one-sided. Salmond may actually have provoked the renaissance of English nationalism, which could be a very large and ugly beast indeed.

I think it was bad tempered because neither of them were really on top of their subject.

Salmond tried to dominate proceedings, because he was aware of his poor performance last time, but still didn't treat the electorate with respect, by answering some very fundamental questions.

Darling was hind-bound by the fact that he represented the British Government, which as a largely Tory one he was on a looser from the beginning. So much of what he had to say was limited by that and if he could have simply represented the Labour viewpoint he would have had a more coherent argument.

I am not sure that I agree that there is a lot of Nationalism contained within the English borders. History doesn't suggest this. I think more to the point is that the English will simply shrug and say "get on with it" more what I do think is that they won't give an inch with regards to the economy and such like as they will feel to a certain extent rejected.

I found them constantly talking over one another (and they were both guilty of doing that and what was with Alistair Darling pointing his finger and even making jabbing motions with it? Very rude) irritating - it just went to show they had no intention of discussing anything, just intent on making their own points which is why people were left feeling they hadn't learned anything new.

On the currency front - why can't Scotland have its own Scottish pound (as we do)? The Manx pound isn't underwritten by the UK Government so I'm a bit puzzled by that (we keep the same exchange rate as it is more practical).

I'd also like to ask another question if anyone can answer it: when they were talking about Trident being removed, it was mentioned that if Scotland did that, the rest of the UK would have to follow suit; there was so much talking over each other that I couldn't hear properly and then the Chairman moved things along quite quickly. Did I hear that correctly? If I did, why would the rest of the UK have to follow suit by removing all their nuclear WMD?

I think the point I saw elsewhere was that they would have to find somewhere else equally suitable to put Trident, and build the facility from scratch, which would cost a bomb (to borrow a phrase) and that once it was removed from one part of the British Isles, no-one else would be ready to say "Oh yes, put it in my backyard"

Well holly I think the problem for the UK is where to put the submarines. I think that the most likely place would be Devonport, but we still have to think about where to put the warheads. At the moment they are tucked away in some Scottish hill, so I guess with Dartmoor being so close with its granite bedrock that would be somewhere but I have not read any expert talking about this. The UK will not give up it's nuclear capability very lightly.

Must the cost would be enormous I would have thought.