Scottish independence

granny

Thanks for your courteous reply.

One small point about Her Maj. I have a poster showing her pedigree on the back of our loo door. She is definitely as Scotish as she is English and Welsh. Can't see any Irish blood though!

Something very fishy newist

Forgive me for asking such a simple (almost naive) question but what I can't understand is Why?

As previously mentioned we are a very small island and as a Northerner (Geordie) I feel more in touch with Scotland than I do with the South of England. Obviously the feeling isnt mutual .

I'll try to explain on Sunday

I am half English half Welsh, married a Scotsman and have lived in Scotland for the past 45 years. I have worked in the NHS for most of my working life and now retired. My children were born and raised here and consider themselves to be Scottish. BUT I am sad indeed that our first minister has spent his valuable time and our money on this independent campaign, when he could have done so much more.
Most of our friends and people we speak to all agree that the Union should remain and that to go it alone would be financial suicide. We are but 5 million souls here north of the border. How on earth will we be able to fund all our services, the figures don't add up.
Even with a no vote, the seed is set, and the yes campaigners will try again. I have witnessed quite aggressive demonstrations among the yes voters. One in particular at a charity 10k road quite recently, when there was a small band of people waving the Scottish flag with a big yes across it, and chanting for Independence, and getting rid of the Westminster shackles. I found it threatening and for the first time in my married life felt that I didn't belong here. Both my husband (who is Scottish) and our children feel that we will probably emigrate to England or Wales.
I wish to remain BRITISH and so do many here.

gillybob it has nothing to do with not liking other nationalities, that is not the case at all. Those voting for independence would rather be governed by a Scottish Government rather than Westminster. It's all down to politics not a personal dislike of what the media are peddling that the Scots don't like the English. If that were the case, I would not have many dear friends and family scattered throughout England some of who live in Ponteland.

Thistledoo I too am English, living in Scotland since 1981 and feel the same as you. My 'Scottish' children have already moved away for various reasons and if the vote is YES, I probably will too - it will certainly help me to make a decision I have been struggling with for some time since being widowed. I personally know less than a handful of people who will vote Yes but of those, 3 are exceedingly aggressive in their argument, are unable to stand back and appreciate that not everyone has the same opinion as they do and one even refused to use a Union Jack serviette and took it as an affront that it was offered to them (completely innocently I have to add). My hairdresser, a born and bred Scot frae Fife, told me yesterday that he would be devastated if there were to be a Yes vote. He told me that first and foremost he considered himself to be British and secondly a Scot. It makes me very sad to witness the devisiveness and almost hatred which this campaign causes between friends and neighbours

I was born in England and now live in Scotland, I have a friend in her middle 70s, even though her husband is English, she is so anti England its quite scary, If Alex Salmon asked her to take up arms and man the borders to keep the English out she would. She was brought up to hate the English because "they stole our country" her words.

It is Sansom not me that makes the links to the Nazis. Worth a read is all I am saying.
Re Basque nationalism I don't see there is anything to get offended about any more than if I had drawn parallels with the Irish wanting to be independent of Britain. What I am saying is that nationalism of this case often leads to some degree of terrorism in both these cases. This cannot be denied. So please don't tell me off agus or take offence granny23.
I would like an answer, if anyone has one, about the benefits of nationalism as such because there seem to be a number of down sides to it if you look around. Am struggling to see the upsides. I am Welsh, so perfectly understand the slights and pro-S-of-England bias. But the corollary is not necessarily that it is a good idea to split up our small and vulnerable nation into even smaller and vulnerable nations.
Oh and going back to the subjects of the vast cost of separation - - the cost of applying to be a member of the EU if Scotland left. And the cost of maintaining its own set of embassies around the world...

I have heard French who don't like the Germans, English who don't like the French,Canadians who don't like the Americans etc. etc. There will always be people like this to be found in every country. The awful comments I have heard like this, I think is through ignorance and I tend to ignore them.

I thnk that, if the vote goes against Scottish Independence the subject isn't going to go away and nationalism will rear it's head. That's my fear . For that reason I want it to go ahead [but feel incredibly sad about it ].

I think that there are so many awful things happening in the world, with which we might help, that whether the Scots go it alone or not is really of little importance. Self serving politicians do not impress me, nor does fervid nationalism.

I think Tegan addresses a potential problem.

My dear Theseus is a Scot, as many of you know, but that is where my interest in Scotland lies, and there alone.

Granny23 and Agus I'm just wondering, without ill intent, if we had real proportional representation (PR) in this country would you still be so keen to support independence for Scotland?

Surely the Scots and the rest of the UK are not so very different from each other.

There are many parts of this country that feel alienated.

We had a French member of our bookclub whose family were originally from eastern France, the Alsace-Lorraine region. She said that during WW2, cousins were fighting cousins.

Are we really so very different in these small isles that we need to have separate countries?

I'm with Einstein (it doesn't matter if he didn't actually say it) on nationalism:
"Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind."

This is funny too, and probably pretty close to the truth in my part of Scotland

My own opinion is that the issue of nationalism and a wish for independence occurs when there is too much emphasis placed on, and money going into, one particular area of a country.

I'm a Londoner but my feeling is that the UK has relied far too much on the City of London and its corrupt financial institutions, rather than on creating meaningful and useful products and jobs.

I really hope that Scotland does not go for independence but I can see why they are concerned that they might be stuck with a right wing, backward looking government even if the vast majority of the Scots vote for something different.

But if you're not happy with a government do something about it, not just walk away. Someone said on the radio today what if Scotland turns into this wonderful Utopia;surely everyone is going to want to move there, then what will happen? What will be the policy on immigration etc?

It's more than just being governed from Westminster. Bitter wars have been fought between England and Scotland in the past and many Scots retain a feeling that Scotland is not a 'free' country but just a satellite of England. Wanting independence comes from the heart not always the head.
Never-the-less Granny23 has put forward some coherent and logical reasons why an independant Scotland is more viable than I'd previously thought.

It worries me somewhat that some of the reasoning behind the vote for Scottish independence is the hatred of the English. I do hope that my words do not offend anyone which is not my intention I am just beginning to feel a little bit uneasy (and sad) about it. My mum is in hospital at the moment and the lady in the bed opposite is Scottish. I had a very interesting conversation with her last night in which she told me that there were no hospitals in Scotland who were able to treat her very complex condition and thus she was a frequent visitor to Newcastle. She told me that she prays that the Scottish people "see sense" and vote NO for independence. One of the reasons she sited was that both her and her dear son rely on an English hospital to keep them alive and it worried her a great deal as to what would happen to them (and many more people in a similar situation) if and when Scotland became independent.

Aka; The first paragraph you have written has chilled me to the bone.

Anyway; lets put politics to one side because I've just been hearing that there has been a terrible accident in Glasgow, and I'm just praying that people haven't been hurt .

I, from my very comfortable situation - Scottish born & bred, living in Scotland with my close family all nearby, can still understand the dilemma faced by those whose hearts are in England although they live/work in Scotland. If the shoe were on the other foot and for some reason, I and my family were stranded in an England about to become independent I would be torn in two. Being 'British' has meant that wherever your place of birth or whatever your parentage, no matter where you lived within the UK it was still your Country and you could travel the world on a British Passport. This loyalty to Britain has been steadily dwindling since WW2 as evidenced by a recent piece of research which showed that throughout the UK the majority of people labelled themselves as primarily Welsh, Irish, English or Scottish with British coming a poor second and for many not featuring at all. My new SIL, now committed to living the rest of his life in Scotland, mainly because he believes it to be the best place to bring up his DD, tells me that he will always be a Yorkshire man first and foremost. He will be voting YES but his dream is that given time the northern English counties will vote to come and join us .

Gally It is interesting to hear other points of view. Almost all my friends, and ALL my family are YES voters so I only come across committed Unionists when door stepping or at a Public Meeting or street stall. I keep waiting for a good debate about the issues but am afraid that all they offer are arguments of the 'too wee, too poor, too stupid' to manage our own affairs genre.

Jess I don't 'get' the 'small and vulnerable' scenario. The UK has the 22nd biggest population of all 242 independent countries in the world. If you subtract the 5,000,000+ living in Scotland the rest of UK would only slip down one place in the table, swopping places with Italy. An Indie Scotland would come in at 118th just below Denmark and Finland, more or less equal with Norway and above Ireland, New Zealand, Uruguay, all but one of the former Yugoslavian states, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia and well above Iceland (position 178, population 325,010). So not really that small in the scheme of things. As to the vulnerable? Questions for Jess - Vulnerable to what? Size does not offer any protection from natural disasters, we do have the hateful trident missiles which are supposed to act as a deterrent but as we have no intention of using them and could only do so with the explicit consent of The USA President (and the whole world knows this) what use are they? and exactly whom are they supposed to be deterring? Who are the enemy? Perhaps there is some rival foreign power, laughing like a chookie as we fall further and further into debt while spending 100s of billions (of USA$ by the way) pretending to be still a world power.

Tegan and Bags if you substitute the phrase 'the right to self-determination' (which is after all what the referendum is about) for the loaded word 'Nationalism'. It has been 269 years since there was last a stand up violent fight among us and even that owed as much to Catholic/Protestant hatred as political or nationalistic issues.

RIVERWALK I have writ that large because I believe yours to be the best question we have had on this thread. I do think that a decent system of PR would have made a huge difference in perceptions of democracy in this country. There are loads of us older voters who for their whole lives might as well have pissed into the wind as vote Tory in a safe Labour seat or vice-versa. With PR every vote would count towards the final result and give everyone a say in how we are governed. Under FTP, smaller and new parties and Independents, unless support is concentrated in one or two constituencies cannot get a toehold, except perhaps at a bi-election where every vote does count. The SNP spent years contesting all Scottish seats and attracting around 30% of the vote but it was spread to thin to win many seats and the Mantra at a general election was always 'Vote Labour to keep the Tories out'. Under the PR system adopted for the Scottish Parliament (and no threat of a Tory Government there) the SNP vote has zoomed up until they now have a clear majority in the Scottish Parliament.

PR for UK elections was an idea doomed from the start by virtue of opposition from the two big parties and the weakness of the Lib Dems in dropping it from their list of demands when their support was needed. The big 2 would much rather have a chance of total power some of the time than some influence all of the time. This is the reality of our so-called democracy - that more voters vote for parties who do not get into power than vote for the 'winners' and thousands, nay millions more do not vote at all because they know it will not affect the outcome.

Eloethan I totally agree with your analysis.

I too think the voting system needs changing.

Some Scottish people may well hate the English and some English people may well hate the Scots but they're the sort of people that thrive on nastiness and conflict and I hope that most people are not like that.

I always identify myself as British, rather than English.

How can people in Yorkshire vote to leave England ?