View Full Version : Has your attitude toward Scottish independence...
percy toboggan
01-Feb-09, 11:56
...changed? In view of the global financial turmoil, and the fact that smaller countries like Ireland & Iceland are seen to be struggling?
Can Scotland go it alone?
I voted yes, although I wouldn't want Salmond at the helm. Can't stand the man, the way he talks at, and not to, people. Plus, he favours Scotland remaining in the EU-how can we be independant in Europe? Same way as the UK is 'independant' yet has to follow EU rules.
teenybash
01-Feb-09, 13:23
I voted yes.........Scotland needs to be freed up from the ties of Westminster and the EU under the present terms. Too many chiefs and not enough indians. Let Scotland get on with making its own decisions based on what is good for Scotland. There are plenty of capable Scots beside Mr Salmond who would be fit for the job, although I quite like him and his attitude...........he is not a weak man and I do admire his passion.
I am all for Scottish independance. More so now than ever. We need to sever all ties with the EU and get on with it. Just not under Salmond he is a plonker.
cuddlepop
01-Feb-09, 14:37
I voted yes just like before,our current economic crisis hasnt changed my opinion.
At least if we were independent we would have got our budget threw first time and not had to play games with Westminster,which last week was all about.:roll:
I've never been a strong advocate for total independence but I voted for the last option nonetheless.
I fear our revered banking and financial systems have been dealt a mortal blow, at least when it comes to membership of the elite classes.
Would RBS and HBOS have even survived last October's crisis in an independent Scotland? I fear an independent Holyrood wouldn't have been rich or powerful enough to bail them out. Would they have both gone under or would an English Westminster government have stepped in and bought them out? I think Westminster would have saved HBOS/Halifax because they'd have had no choice and maybe RBS because of its NatWest interests in England but they would both now be English banks and the Scottish economy would be dependent on Westminster.
Am I being realistic or pessimistic? I don't really know. :confused
tomacomen
01-Feb-09, 17:48
SNP are pretty much just stirring up narrow minded plebs into voting for them. Who the hell cares whether someone is scottish or english? Who cares about making AC/DC into scottish patriots? Who the hell cares if Mary queen of scots' body makes it back to scotland or not?
I would prefer to have the Scottish Parliment removed completely, its a total waste of money which really has no power what so ever. Where else can a tube like Alec Salmond (someone who seems to think that a true scotsman is someone living in barbados!) be the main voice, he can hardly even stand his ground in the real parliment.
Im far from being not patriotic, but i fail to see a party who's sole ambition is to turn idiotic racism to their favour the best solution for scotland.
Hmm, wonder what wonderful responses i will receive to that!
cuddlepop
01-Feb-09, 18:01
SNP are pretty much just stirring up narrow minded plebs into voting for them. Who the hell cares whether someone is scottish or english? Who cares about making AC/DC into scottish patriots? Who the hell cares if Mary queen of scots' body makes it back to scotland or not?
I would prefer to have the Scottish Parliment removed completely, its a total waste of money which really has no power what so ever. Where else can a tube like Alec Salmond (someone who seems to think that a true scotsman is someone living in barbados!) be the main voice, he can hardly even stand his ground in the real parliment.
Im far from being not patriotic, but i fail to see a party who's sole ambition is to turn idiotic racism to their favour the best solution for scotland.
Hmm, wonder what wonderful responses i will receive to that!
You'll find that everyone is allowed an opinion,no matter however misguided they are.;)
tomacomen
01-Feb-09, 18:03
If you have a little look into the figures that SNP keep firing out you'll find that they are definately misguided!
Alice in Blunderland
01-Feb-09, 23:35
I fear an independent Holyrood wouldn't have been rich or powerful enough to bail them out.
Am I being realistic or pessimistic? I don't really know. :confused
No Crayola not pessimistic realistic......................Holyrood dont seem to have enough money to put into our schools or roads so how on earth would they be able to pump money into failing banks :confused
Funding for many bodies does not cover what is needed to fund the service.
Healthcare, Social work ,Education................the list is endless and they all have shortfalls in budgets. :(
I voted for the Scottish Parliament but would never do so again. I think it was a lost cause when it built that monstrosity at Holyrood and the amount of money that has been wasted since.
I certainly did not have the present set up in mind, and certainly don't want total independence.
I feel we have been a part of the United Kingdom for too long and none of the four countries can do without the other three no matter what anyone says.
Don't forget the old saying - "United we stand, divided we fall"
ywindythesecond
02-Feb-09, 00:29
Percy,
Your poll misses out the option "It never was a good idea".
tomacomen, absolutely spot on as far as I am concerned.
And Fly, I didnt vote for a scottish parliament, and I was surprised when it was voted for. But I accepted that that was the will of the Scottish people and looked forward to the new concensus government we were promised. Straight away the Lib dems jumped into bed with labour for a little taste of power and we were instantly back where we started under Westminster except we now had a hugely expensive additional administration to fund as well.
The Scottish Trashitall Party hasn't long to go in Government. You can fool some of the people some of the time....etc etc
Hmm, wonder what wonderful responses i will receive to that!
My wonderful response is to agree with you, especially in light of current world economic mess.
I was never a nationalist but over the past few years with a developing cynicism in politics and in particular politicians I began to think why not? However the recent economics turmoil hitting the world has made me more aware how connected we all are in this global village of ours.
Now, I would suggest we stuff the Daily Mail up Percys shirt, deport the two of them to the moon and just live and let live. :eek:
I must admit I am not an avid follower of the Everyday happenings in Holyrood but I get the horrible feeling that it is a massive case of “Work expands to time allotted”.
I would have thought that if they only sat on one day a week would tend to focus their minds more on what the important issues are and cut out the wasted time spent on petty point scoring and pot stirring.
I’ll admit that although I spent a fair amount of time here before Holyrood started it was not enough for me to decide if it has made a great difference.
Just out of curiosity has anybody found Holyrood has made a great difference to how Scotland has been run with respect to practical day to day things or has there been little difference at ground level?
percy toboggan
03-Feb-09, 16:59
....Now, I would suggest we stuff the Daily Mail up Percys shirt, deport the two of them to the moon and just live and let live. :eek:
charmed I'm shooer :confused
Snapshot of my work bag today old chap will see the Telegraph;Times;Guardian & Mail nestling within- plus a copy of 'Scotland Outdoors'...I've even read most of 'em.
I'm far from a one trick pony gleeber , and others deserve lunar exile far more than myself....or have you been watching Wallace & Gromit?
Thanks to all who voted (and commented) , it's stiflingly close....I suspect any referendum on the matter would come down heavily behind the status quo....flawed, and infuriating as it might be to some good people.
I've never been a strong advocate for total independence but I voted for the last option nonetheless.
I fear our revered banking and financial systems have been dealt a mortal blow, at least when it comes to membership of the elite classes.
Would RBS and HBOS have even survived last October's crisis in an independent Scotland? I fear an independent Holyrood wouldn't have been rich or powerful enough to bail them out. Would they have both gone under or would an English Westminster government have stepped in and bought them out? I think Westminster would have saved HBOS/Halifax because they'd have had no choice and maybe RBS because of its NatWest interests in England but they would both now be English banks and the Scottish economy would be dependent on Westminster.
Am I being realistic or pessimistic? I don't really know. :confusedI did a bit of reading about this. Not a lot but a bit.
This year's Holyrood budget is 33 billion pounds.
RBS and HBOS were rescued by the Westminster government. I don't know the exact figure but the amount of hard cash
put into RBS and HBOS was in the region of 33 billion pounds with loan guarantees of several times that figure. This has put UK plc into a bad financial position. My banker friends say there is no way an independent Scotland plc could have done that. An independent Scotland would have been ruined by the collapse. Just like Iceland was and Ireland nearly was and still could be.
It could have been Darien all over again except this time we couldn't have blamed the English.
Scary!
I've just been informed that this cash wasn't as hard as I thought it was. I don't understand what I've been told so I'll leave what I said for now.
I did a bit of reading about this. Not a lot but a bit.
This year's Holyrood budget is 33 billion pounds.
RBS and HBOS were rescued by the Westminster government. I don't know the exact figure but the amount of hard cash
put into RBS and HBOS was in the region of 33 billion pounds with loan guarantees of several times that figure. This has put UK plc into a bad financial position. My banker friends say there is no way an independent Scotland plc could have done that. An independent Scotland would have been ruined by the collapse. Just like Iceland was and Ireland nearly was and still could be.
It could have been Darien all over again except this time we couldn't have blamed the English.
Scary!
I've just been informed that this cash wasn't as hard as I thought it was. I don't understand what I've been told so I'll leave what I said for now.
What has the Scottish budget as dictated by Westminster have to do with the ability of an independent Scotland to do anything, may I ask?
BTW, it was about 25 billion which was put into the Scottish Banks, the rest went into Lloyds.......but bear in mind that it was the actions of a UK government which relaxed regulations to the point of non-existence, then sold off the family silver that put the UK, and as a result Scotland, into the position we are. Other countries with different policies have not fared as badly as we have.........and are you saying that an independent Scotland which does not have to obey the dictat of Westminster would not have done things differently given the opportunity?
Unionist economics have led us to where we are today....could an independent Scotland have made a bigger mess of it? If we were not in the Union, would the banking bailout at the level it was have been necessary at all?
If we had had a fair 1979 referendum, knowing all the facts which were hidden by the UK Government, and had independence then........would we be like Iceland........or Norway?
If we had been independent before the advent of a Labour government in Westminster, would we be in as bad a way as the UK without the cost of illegal wars etc?
Countries hardest hit by the Banking crisis are those with large financial sectors with little regulation and supervision and heavy involvement in the subprime markets............can you.......or anyone ......say they are confident that an independent Scotland would have been one of them?
Lol, if, if, if! We are in February 2009 not discussing what might have happened if the rules had been different in March 1979. That was 30 years ago, I was answering the question OQ not going off on a 'what if' session. :lol:
Maybe RBS wouldn't have taken over NatWest and BOS wouldn't have crawled into bed with Halifax in an independent Scotland and maybe they wouldn't have been in a mess but that wasn't the question. We are where we are now and there's nothing any of us can do about how we got here. I was thinking of independence in the current situation.
The £33 billion budget of Holyrood will be less than the budget of an Independent Scotland but probably not enormously less. I'll be lazy and let you tell us what it would have been. :D
I totally agree with you Crayola... to only rescue RBS alone would have bankrupted Scotland... Mind you saying that, maybe Scotland would have been rescued by TATA of India... Curied Haggis...hmmm... I could go that...
Angel...
Boozeburglar
15-Feb-09, 00:25
it is hilarious hearing people talk about "rescuing" a bank
none are rescued
thir debt is only moved from the private to the public
it is hilarious hearing people talk about "rescuing" a bank
none are rescued
thir debt is only moved from the private to the publicYup, we provided their profit and now we service their debt.[disgust]
it is hilarious hearing people talk about "rescuing" a bank
none are rescuedTry telling that to the staff of Lehman Brothers, a bank which is no more. According to some reports RBS and HBOS were in the same perilous state last year and it has been claimed by some that they were only a few hours away from being unable to continue.
thir debt is only moved from the private to the publicThat's a very big 'only'!
piratelassie
18-Feb-09, 00:59
United we stand, devided we prosper....Just look at Norway for example
A good book to read about the history of Scotland and it's beginnings and thoughts of independence is....
'How the Scots Invented the Modern World'....Heavy duty reading but rather interesting...
For such a sma' Country we have had so many Great People.......
And Scotland's Greatest Export......... It's People!
Don't know enough about the UK system nowadays, but I have read that several years ago the RBS and it's affiliates was the largest Bank in the World. Of course many of the Banks they took over were American duds.
Should Scotland be independent.................Everyone has an opinion.
Mine is No. We would never make it......
Having left Caithness long ago and traveled....a saying crops up.......
Limited by one's own imagination:
And Lybster School was a great teaching establishment!
A good book to read about the history of Scotland and it's beginnings and thoughts of independence is....
'How the Scots Invented the Modern World'....Heavy duty reading but rather interesting...
For such a sma' Country we have had so many Great People.......
And Scotland's Greatest Export......... It's People!
Don't know enough about the UK system nowadays, but I have read that several years ago the RBS and it's affiliates was the largest Bank in the World. Of course many of the Banks they took over were American duds.
Should Scotland be independent.................Everyone has an opinion.
Mine is No. We would never make it......
Having left Caithness long ago and traveled....a saying crops up.......
Limited by one's own imagination:
And Lybster School was a great teaching establishment!Scotland is God's own country, it's people are it's wealth, "Here's tae us, Wha's lek us, Damn few and their all deid".
Lol, if, if, if! We are in February 2009 not discussing what might have happened if the rules had been different in March 1979. That was 30 years ago, I was answering the question OQ not going off on a 'what if' session. :lol:
Maybe RBS wouldn't have taken over NatWest and BOS wouldn't have crawled into bed with Halifax in an independent Scotland and maybe they wouldn't have been in a mess but that wasn't the question. We are where we are now and there's nothing any of us can do about how we got here. I was thinking of independence in the current situation.
The £33 billion budget of Holyrood will be less than the budget of an Independent Scotland but probably not enormously less. I'll be lazy and let you tell us what it would have been. :D
What makes you think that an independent Scotland would have rescued either of the banks in the way Westminster did, anyway.......we'd have had no great obligation to prop up English, American and Dutch constituents.......those parts of the banks which, incidentally took on the toxic debt. I'd have thought that we'd have gone the 1990s Swedish route..and independence now would allow us to reform the banking system by doing the sensible thing and letting the unsupportable go to the wall.
Bear in mind that this is a Global Crisis because of an almost world wide unregulated capitalist system, and those which are least affected are those countries which have retained a modicum of control over their financial sectors.....or those banks not involved to any great extent in the sub-prime market (which was an accident waiting to happen however sparse the "bankers" financial expertise)
I don't know what the income of an independent Scotland would be......because I don't know what taxation etc regime the government would set in place, and I do not know how negotiations would go with the division of debt and assets.
Given the toxic debt is predominantly English and American, I see no reason why Scotland should be stuck with paying for even 8.5% of it. I'd hope any Scottish negotiations will result in HBOS and RBS being hived off from their English and American constituent parts, and the bailing out of purely English entities such as Northern Rock left with the rest of the UK.
I do know that we will not be in the position of having to run our economy to suit the south of England. For many years Scotland has had the lowest average economic growth of any small west European country. It is no coincidence that Scotland’s economy is a responsibility reserved to Westminster. :roll:
If Scotland was in a position to deal with
constitutional matters
Foreign policy
Defence and national security
fiscal and economic policy
immigration and nationality
energy: electricity, coal, oil, gas and nuclear energy
common markets
trade and industry, including competition and customer protection
drugs law
broadcasting
elections and the registration and funding of political parties
some aspects of transport, including aviation, railways, transport safety and regulation
employment legislation and health and safety
social security
gambling and the National Lottery
data protection
firearms, extradition and emergency powers
equal opportunities
and other reserved matters neither you or I know what would happen. But could we possibly have made a bigger mess of it than Westminster?
Yes, independence in the current climate would be difficult..but not impossible..and the sooner the better, imo, before Gordon Brown dishes out any more to the banks and raises the National Debt to silly money proportions which are going to be just as hard for the UK as a whole to service as it would be for Scotland to service its share on its own now.
In fact, without the oil income, the UK would be unable to repay the trillion £s of borrowing it appears to be heading towards.
So independence sooner rather than later, please, before we get dragged further into the toilet of a mismanaged UK economy, which is expected to be the hardest hit of any of the developed countries as a result of not just the banks, but Gordon Brown creating toxic debt.
percy toboggan
21-Feb-09, 16:56
Well, looking at the poll results you're defintely not a fickle bunch.
Totally divided yes...fickle...no.
Resolute and minds made up...Cameron might play a blinder and offer the English a referendum on Scottish inderpendence. I feel the reuslt would be equally close, with a small majority favouring you take the high road all on your own.
I'd vote NO mind! I like the Union.
A useful exercise and I humbly thank all who have taken part at my behest.
What makes you think that an independent Scotland would have rescued either of the banks in the way Westminster did, anyway.......we'd have had no great obligation to prop up English, American and Dutch constituents.......those parts of the banks which, incidentally took on the toxic debt. I'd have thought that we'd have gone the 1990s Swedish route..and independence now would allow us to reform the banking system by doing the sensible thing and letting the unsupportable go to the wall.An independent Scotland wouldn't have propped up RBS and HBOS in the same way because it couldn't have done, it wouldn't have had enough resources. I don't think letting the non-Scottish bits die would have helped because it was the banks as a whole that were in trouble, not the various bits. I don't know what would have been left but I suspect it wouldn't have been possible to chop off the bad bits and be left with good bits. Anyway, RBS was controlled from Edinburgh so all the debt belonged to Edinburgh.
Bear in mind that this is a Global Crisis because of an almost world wide unregulated capitalist system, and those which are least affected are those countries which have retained a modicum of control over their financial sectors.....or those banks not involved to any great extent in the sub-prime market (which was an accident waiting to happen however sparse the "bankers" financial expertise)Can you give us numbers to support your argument? You may be right but leading countries whose economies are based more on manufacturing and exports than ours went into recession before we did and have suffered greater contractions than we have.
I don't know what the income of an independent Scotland would be......because I don't know what taxation etc regime the government would set in place, and I do not know how negotiations would go with the division of debt and assets.
No, but you know what it would be to within a factor of two and we would have had at most 10% of the UK government's income so it wouldn't have been anywhere near enough to bail out RBS and HBOS.
Given the toxic debt is predominantly English and American, I see no reason why Scotland should be stuck with paying for even 8.5% of it. I'd hope any Scottish negotiations will result in HBOS and RBS being hived off from their English and American constituent parts, and the bailing out of purely English entities such as Northern Rock left with the rest of the UK.How can you say RBS's toxic debt is predominantly English? RBS is a Scottish company through and through. You might get away with that argument for HBOS but not RBS.
Nit picking aside, I don't know whether splitting the banks as you suggest is possible, nor do I know whether it would help. It's an interesting question though and it's something I hadn't considered. Do you have any references or do we have any senior bankers on the Org?
I do know that we will not be in the position of having to run our economy to suit the south of England. For many years Scotland has had the lowest average economic growth of any small west European country. It is no coincidence that Scotland’s economy is a responsibility reserved to Westminster. :roll:I'd like to think you are right but I think we could easily have made more of a mess of things in the last 30 years than the actual governments did in that time. Remember how much we in Scotland looked to the state to provide jobs in the 70s and 80s. We would surely have fared worse if we'd carried on like that for another 20 years. Conservative policies towards Scottish industry were a disaster but Labour could easily have been worse if for the sake of argument if they had taken us to independence in 1979.
If Scotland was in a position to deal with
constitutional matters
Foreign policy
Defence and national security
fiscal and economic policy
immigration and nationality
energy: electricity, coal, oil, gas and nuclear energy
common markets
trade and industry, including competition and customer protection
drugs law
broadcasting
elections and the registration and funding of political parties
some aspects of transport, including aviation, railways, transport safety and regulation
employment legislation and health and safety
social security
gambling and the National Lottery
data protection
firearms, extradition and emergency powers
equal opportunities
and other reserved matters neither you or I know what would happen. But could we possibly have made a bigger mess of it than Westminster?
I think we could easily have made a bigger mess of it. The state-socialist policies of Scottish Labour and the left-leaning SNP in the whole of the 80s and even the 90s would have led us to hopelessly uncompetitive bankrupt state-controlled decline long before now. :(
An independent Scotland might have done better if it had had radically different policies than those of Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP in the 80s and 90s but I suspect we would have had to suffer the policies those opposition parties had in place at the time and that could easily have been as bad and possibly worse than the Tory ones we actually suffered.
Yes, independence in the current climate would be difficult..but not impossible..and the sooner the better, imo, before Gordon Brown dishes out any more to the banks and raises the National Debt to silly money proportions which are going to be just as hard for the UK as a whole to service as it would be for Scotland to service its share on its own now.
In fact, without the oil income, the UK would be unable to repay the trillion £s of borrowing it appears to be heading towards.
So independence sooner rather than later, please, before we get dragged further into the toilet of a mismanaged UK economy, which is expected to be the hardest hit of any of the developed countries as a result of not just the banks, but Gordon Brown creating toxic debt.It's not obvious to me that the UK will be hit worse than exporting manufacturing countries and the evidence so far doesn't support your claim. You may be right and I can see good arguments for that but only time will tell.
It's clear that you are in the independence at all costs camp. That's ok but I try to base my analysis on independent thought rather than the assumption that we'd be better off independent.
SNP are pretty much just stirring up narrow minded plebs into voting for them. Who the hell cares whether someone is scottish or english? Who cares about making AC/DC into scottish patriots? Who the hell cares if Mary queen of scots' body makes it back to scotland or not?
I would prefer to have the Scottish Parliment removed completely, its a total waste of money which really has no power what so ever. Where else can a tube like Alec Salmond (someone who seems to think that a true scotsman is someone living in barbados!) be the main voice, he can hardly even stand his ground in the real parliment.
Im far from being not patriotic, but i fail to see a party who's sole ambition is to turn idiotic racism to their favour the best solution for scotland.
Hmm, wonder what wonderful responses i will receive to that!
I might have put things a bit differently but in the main I agree with what you say
Cinderella's Shoe
14-Mar-09, 20:37
And so do I.
As I indicated above, I'm not in the 'independence at all costs camp' but my political and economic positions are much closer to Oddquine's than to those of most posters on this thread. The SNP attract narrow-minded plebs but so do all the other parties. They also attract many very thoughtful voters.
The SNP won more votes than any other party in the 2007 elections and as the largest party they are the duly elected government of Scotland, albeit by the skin of their teeth. They have distinct policies from the other parties and in many areas I think their policies are better than those of the other parties. I don't like Alex Salmond but I have a lot of respect for his achievements.
This thread is utterly, utterly boring. Please let it disappear into the ether-see 'The Thread Triangle' thread.
Why bother posting on a thread you find boring?
I couldn't find any challenging threads on the front page when I logged on earlier tonight so I went back and looked for unanswered replies to my posts.
It's a public forum that requires the public to engage in trivial or topical discussions, arguments, convivial conversation or give an opinion. I gave my opinion. ;)
I suppose the future of Scotland doesn't affect you down there but I would have thought you would still have some interest in your home country.
At the moment it doesn't affect me but I will always have an interest in my home country, especially Caithness-my adopted home, which is why I joined this forum. Hopefully in the future I'll return to Scotland to live permanently and with any luck Alex Salmond will have retired by then too.
But it's still a boring thread.
Would hate to be independent,I am British and not just "Scottish".
Couldnt imagine not having Liz as our queen,that just wouldnt be right.
I am british and want to stay that way!!!
An independent Scotland wouldn't have propped up RBS and HBOS in the same way because it couldn't have done, it wouldn't have had enough resources. I don't think letting the non-Scottish bits die would have helped because it was the banks as a whole that were in trouble, not the various bits. I don't know what would have been left but I suspect it wouldn't have been possible to chop off the bad bits and be left with good bits. Anyway, RBS was controlled from Edinburgh so all the debt belonged to Edinburgh.
Well, exactly............but all the constituent parts are separate identities to all intents and purposes......... the role of the Scottish based hierarchy was to produce targets and leave the methods generally up to the management of the other parts........and of course to expand too fast and too stupidly. (It was the best day when Fred the Shred left the Clydesdale....believe me!)
I guess Scotland would have had to cut its coat according to its cloth, rather than throw the country into debt for a generation or more to bolster up a system which had patently failed.
The correct strategy with an unwieldy conglomerate like RBS is to break it up into its constituent parts and find answers for each of them...as Sweden did with its banks in the 1990s.
After all, is the new CEO of RBS not looking right now at shrinking the bank, selling off parts of it, downsizing others and pretty well disbanding the Global Marketing division? Although the very fact that it is now part-nationalised makes that more difficult because he will be forced to hold on to parts he may wish to hive off/contract to to meet the government reflationary objectives.
Incidentally, much of the RBS losses came from their efforts to evade tax by investing in huge tranches of so-called mortgage-backed securities as part of tax deals...............ie the subprime market. In fact, much of the current problems in this global crisis were driven by the tax avoidance schemes of banks ("structured trades") undertaken by their Global Markets Departments.
So instead of the knee-jerk reaction so popular with Nulabour of throwing money at a problem without thinking the results/methods through, doing in the first instance what is going to be necessary anyway, would have saved the taxpayer now, and for generations to come, loadsa bucks..............ie a National Debt bigger than the UK's GDP. Before pumping taxpayers money into RBS or HBOs...or any other one come to that, the "good bank" should have been separated from the "bad bank".
Where is the logic of restructuring after providing big taxpayer bucks to shore up the banks rather than restructuring first and then providing less to shore up those parts of it that work?
And where is the logic in allowing other banks to continue with the "legal" tax avoidance which brought them low, while bolstering them with taxpayers' money...........as with Lloyds TSB?
I'd have hoped/hope in an independent Scotland we'd have learned from the failings of a UK Government and closed the loopholes left by them which have been so often highlighted in the past and ignored....or do you think we are all Gordon Browns?
Would hate to be independent,I am British and not just "Scottish".
Couldnt imagine not having Liz as our queen,that just wouldnt be right.
I am british and want to stay that way!!!
You'd probably still have Liz..but as Queen Elizabeth rather than Queen Elizabeth II.
percy toboggan
15-Mar-09, 17:11
We should all stick together. More unites us than divides. It's only churlishness and insecurity that drives the independence movement thus far. Minnows find it hard to swim upstream and to be honest we are facing one heck of a slog in the next few years.We should swim in a shoal of tens of millions.
As an Englishmen Wales and Scotland are very much a part of me. I was in Wales only yesterday (see blog) - visiting a castle built by the English to keep the Welsh at bay ! These family feuds, and the cementing of bonds forged for good or bad over more than one and a half thousand years are unique to these islands. In the Balkans they'd burn one another - here we simply hope the others football team gets beaten! (if yer Welsh or Scottish - most Anglos want you lot to win!)...nor is there the savage enmity that has existed across the Irish sea. The time honoured fermentation of cultures on this single British mainland has produced a model for all of mankind. We can genunely celebrate our miniscule differences while appreciating the advantages of not killing each other. We are magnificent...and apart we are rather less so.
The fact that we are all led by a bunch of tossers is regrettable...but we will always prevail. Put an Englishman, a Welshman and a Scot in a corner of the pub for the night and the last thing they will discuss is Culloden, Offas Dyke, Falkirk or Bannockburn. It will more than likely be an alcohol induced re-enactment of Rorke's Drift, covering a myriad of topics...including who is buying the next round.
We should all stick together. More unites us than divides. It's only churlishness and insecurity that drives the independence movement thus far. Minnows find it hard to swim upstream and to be honest we are facing one heck of a slog in the next few years.We should swim in a shoal of tens of millions.
Churlishness and insecurity, Percy? Well, thanks! :roll:
I'd have said that the insecure were those among us who are unable to acccept/believe the ability of the Scots to govern themselves if they so wish....given that over the years they have governed many other countries...............and the churlish those who produce epithets such as Minnows find it hard to swim upstream...or those illustrated in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saqQnj0LKlQ&feature=channel_page
As an Englishmen Wales and Scotland are very much a part of me.
And you are welcome to feel that way, Percy.....but please allow others to feel that the other countries in the UK are not a part of them.
percy toboggan
15-Mar-09, 18:46
]Churlishness and insecurity[/I], Percy? Well, thanks! :roll:
Originally Posted by percy toboggan http://forum.caithness.org/images/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://forum.caithness.org/showthread.php?p=518512#post518512)
As an Englishmen Wales and Scotland are very much a part of me.
And you are welcome to feel that way, Percy.....but please allow others to feel that the other countries in the UK are not a part of them.
...that'll be a result of the churlishness and the insecurity then, will it? ;)
...that'll be a result of the churlishness and the insecurity then, will it? ;)
Nope..........just reminding you of the fact that some of us feel British and some of us don't. :D
Whitewater
16-Mar-09, 00:26
I'm a Scot and very proud of it. I'm British and also very proud of that. We have been better off under the union than at any other time in our history, Britian has been good for the Scots, and who knows we may soon be saying we are proud to be European. Why not, look what we can get out of a union like that. Sure, we all gurn about it at times but it is for the best.
Pity the poll is now closed, I would have voted NO.
piratelassie
16-Mar-09, 01:07
Oddquine, I think you should stand for scottish parliament, I would deffinately vote for you..
Powered by vBulletin® Copyright © 2024 vBulletin Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.