Scottish Independence

[Flanged]

EDIT: The UK government has promised even more money to Scotland if it stays, more? more you say?

They haven't promised more money, only more powers.  It's only the same powers they were promising months ago anyway, and would still leave the national parliament of Scotland with fewer powers at it's disposal than a Canadian province, US state, or German Lander. 

It's unlikely we'll ever get as much back as we contribute anyway.  Annual public spendng per head in Scotland is £1,200.  The tax contribution per head is £1,700. 

There's no way we'll ever be given back anything close to what we put in under the Union - that's not how it's supposed to work.     

what a joke and they have now turned down the idea of an English Parliament, the Tories are so far removed from reality its actually hilarious, England is what put them in power but they are OK to shaft the English people with low government funding, how sad. I guess the Conservatives are gonna lose even more seats to UKIP next general election, utter tools.

I was very impressed by how quickly the English regions, city councils, and Welsh Assembly started demanding more powers for themselves!  As soon as Westminster made the (false) promise to Scotland, everyone else was on their feet demanding better treatement too.  Makes me proud.  Just keep pushing them and you'll get what you want in the end.  We've forced open the gates for you - an English Parliament is actually on the agenda for the first time in 307 years - and now the castle is yours to storm. 

 

[Wellenbrecher]

I loled, pretty hilarious political protest/joke.

The inner city of Glasgow doesn't look like what Frankie Boyle told me it would be. I feel betrayed, somehow.

 

[Flanged]

The simple truth of the situation is that the UK has nothing to gain in allowing Scotland to use the currency and much to potentially lose.

The UK has quite a lot to lose from denying a currency union too - at least 10% of Sterling's current GDP backing would go, as well as the backing of the massive natural resource asset in the North Sea which has kept the pound strong for (most of) the last thirty years, plus £100 billion per year in exports that would no longer be counted as part of the UK's balance of trade.  It is ultimately a decision for the Uk Government to make though.

Anybody worried about the Union flag should sleep easy.  It still has St. Patrick's saltire as part of it, though Ireland got independence in 1922.  The blue that's used in the Union flag isn't even the same colour that's on the saltire anyway.  Many Commonwealth countries have miniature Union flags in the corner of their own national flags, though they are not part of the Union.  The UK is still often called Great Britain, even though we lost Little Britain (Brittany, in France) a very long time ago. 

In short, nothing will change with the Union flag, because nobody in a position of power will care enough to change it.

 

[Flanged]

The inner city of Glasgow doesn't look like what Frankie Boyle told me it would be. I feel betrayed, somehow.

The city centre's not too bad, it's mainly the outlying schemes that are rough. 

 

[DrBlacksmith]

He gotted Rekt

 

[Jhessail]

Private Eye does an expose:

Spoiler

 

[Leonidas300]

FREEDOM!!! 

Spoiler

 

[dan1993uk]

It's unlikely we'll ever get as much back as we contribute anyway.  Annual public spendng per head in Scotland is £1,200.  The tax contribution per head is £1,700.

No its not... government spending in Scotland is over £10,000 per head and is more than Scotland currently generated in government revenue per head, even when including oil revenues, we already had this discussion like 5 pages back and if you want to find information on it, its pretty easy, the government tracks (as would be expected) every £ of revenue generated from Scotland and every £ from revenues spent there.

The UK is still often called Great Britain, even though we lost Little Britain (Brittany, in France) a very long time ago. 

Independence = Existence? No.

 

[Flanged]

Sorry, I misspoke.  Public spending per head is £1,200 higher in Scotland than in the rest of the UK, as you pointed out earlier, but Scotland contributes £1,700 per head more to the Treasury than the rest of the UK.  So we lose out by roughly £500 per person from being part of the Union.

We would also have a lower deficit and higher GDP if we were independent, as mentioned earlier, and confirmed by Professor McCrone in his evidence to the Lords' Committee on the Economic Impact of Independence:

 

[Flanged]

Private Eye does an expose:

Spoiler

That's not too much of a surprise.  You should read the stuff he comes out with. 

Here's an example:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scottish-independence/11073598/Alex-Salmond-Meet-the-bully-behind-the-mask.html

 

[Mage246]

This accords with every other study I've ever seen of North Sea oil-

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/17/business/international/scottish-independence-movements-wager-on-energy-could-prove-risky.html

Relying on North Sea oil is extremely risky.

 

[Eктωρ]

I'm hoping for a yes vote.

 

[Harkon Haakonson]

Me too. No reason for England to be allowed to control territory that never had any legitimate business beings theirs.

 

[Moose!]

Sorry, I misspoke.  Public spending per head is £1,200 higher in Scotland than in the rest of the UK, as you pointed out earlier, but Scotland contributes £1,700 per head more to the Treasury than the rest of the UK.

Source? Because from what I've read, Scotland contributes around £700-800 more per head, not including North Sea oil revenue. From my understanding, the difference stems from whether or not one considers the majority of the oil revenues in the North Sea to rightly belong to the Scottish (as Salmond contends) or to the UK as a whole.

 

[K-64]

I'm hoping for a yes vote.

I would as well... except for the fact that the people are in the entirely wrong mindset, and they're already being damaging and trying to bully people into also voting yes. While there is a lot of scaremongering coming from the no side of the fence, the yes side is actually cutting people's phone lines and setting farmers' cattle on the road, simply because they put no signs up in their fields.

While I support an independent Scotland, the fact that people are taking the wrong attitude about it, and largely wanting it out of anti-English and/or anti-Torie spite means I think it would end up horribly.

 

[Eктωρ]

People are **** all around. I think there's a lot of structural matters like Oil reserves and stuff like the fact the average person in Scotland will have more say in their country that make me believe it's better that way. The UK is okay, but Scotland is effectively other country, it's kind of absurd they have to be submitted to the English Parliament.

 

[Flin Flon]

I'm hoping for a yes vote.

I would as well... except for the fact that the people are in the entirely wrong mindset, and they're already being damaging and trying to bully people into also voting yes. While there is a lot of scaremongering coming from the no side of the fence, the yes side is actually cutting people's phone lines and setting farmers' cattle on the road, simply because they put no signs up in their fields.

While I support an independent Scotland, the fact that people are taking the wrong attitude about it, and largely wanting it out of anti-English and/or anti-Torie spite means I think it would end up horribly.

Blame Dryvus.

 

[dan1993uk]

We would also have a lower deficit and higher GDP if we were independent.

This is not actually true, using the Scottish governments own figures you can see that, this is from 2012-13 budget.

The Scottish government puts Scotland's total revenue generated at £48.1 billion (8.1% of UK revenue), including oil income it puts it at £53.1 billion (9.1% of UK revenue), while total expenditure of the Scottish government (and its per capita share of the UK debt) totals £65.2 billion (9.3% of total UK spending), As you can see this creates a £12.1 billion deficit. That is a 18.6% deficit in the budget, the latest UK deficit figure I know of is 17% which was from 2011 and it was recently announced that the UK's deficit is currently lower than it has been since the start of the crisis so we can presume it is slightly lower than 17% but not by much just to be safe.

That means that the current UK deficit is lower than an independent Scotland's would be if its revenue and expenses stayed the exact same, which I don't think they will considering Mighty Salmond wants to increase public spending by 3% and I do not think that the Scottish government pays for its part of the UK military (not 100% on that one) so a newly created Scottish military would add more costs. Not to mention if Scotland went independent it would reduce the UK deficit slightly due to it being higher than the UK one, but not by much because Scotland is only like 8-9% of the revenue/expenses. It also obviously does not take into account any economic decline that Scotland may or may not face.

Source: http://scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2014/03/7888

Also what you mean is GDP per capita, not GDP, an independent Scotland would have a GDP around $230 billion while the post Scotland UK would have one around $2.1 trillion. GDP per capita of Scotland would be around $50,000 which is pretty high by European standards but much lower than the only other oil state (Norway, $101,000), it would of course be higher than the UK, which has a measly $38,000.

Go go Scotland, Independence!

 

[Wolfang]

And so a historic day begins. This vote will impact Belgium, Spain etc very strongly as well.

 

[dan1993uk]

And so a historic day begins. This vote will impact Belgium, Spain etc very strongly as well.

Do you think if Belgium split the respective areas would join their relevant countries? (Wallonia-France Flanders-Netherlands). It would be interesting to see in my opinion, Belgium's government seems like a complete mess as well, so would it really be bad for anybody if they did just split?