Referendum on Scottish Independence

[Pangur Bán]

Looks like the cybernats aren't interested in a goodwilled independence.

If you want to take the hard-road take it. I wouldn't be so embittered and spiteful in our divoce because you'll lose out when we split the marital assets .

Anyway, i cannot wait to see the look on your face when you realise you have another 50 years within the UK

Your post is pretty embittered and spiteful, though ... for what reason?

Anyway, i cannot wait to see the look on your face when you realise you have another 50 years within the UK

You're right that No will probably win this time, but you probably won't get to see my face--this being an anonymous gaming forum (sorry if that disappoints you).

 

[Antilogic]

What is the minimum number of people required to make an independent nation work any way?

 

[Pangur Bán]

What is the minimum number of people required to make an independent nation work any way?

It's one of those things people say, probably based on analogies from their ever day life, that have no evidence from reality. As a rule, smaller countries are richer, the smaller the richer. No country anywhere is suffering because it is 'too small' ...except maybe Gaza.

 

[Traitorfish]

So, a bunch of celebrities, mostly English, mostly C-list or below, have issued a public letter pleading with the Scots to stay in the good old Union.

This list included television historian and Enoch Powell enthusiast David Starkey, who in April, 2009 declared that:

"If we decided to go down this route of having an English national day, that means we become a feeble little country, just like the Scots and the Welsh and the Irish."

They must think we're a pack of bloody halfwits.

 

[Farm Boy]

They must think we're a pack of bloody halfwits.

Are you exceptional rather than the norm?

 

[Traitorfish]

In that I really am a bloody halfwit? Yes.

 

[Farm Boy]

Fair enough, I am too!

So as I'm looking from the outside, is this really as similar as the impression that I'm getting that it's like the rural/urban divide in the USA, only with Europe's special breed of baggage when it comes to 1,000+ years of history?

 

[Pangur Bán]

So, a bunch of celebrities, mostly English, mostly C-list or below, have issued a public letter pleading with the Scots to stay in the good old Union.

This list included television historian and Enoch Powell enthusiast David Starkey, who in April, 2009 declared that:

"If we decided to go down this route of having an English national day, that means we become a feeble little country, just like the Scots and the Welsh and the Irish."

They must think we're a pack of bloody halfwits.

At least Ben Fogle is a step forward from the gun boat and bayoneted face.

But to the serious point, indeed, the culture seems to breed a sense of entitled superiority and self-awareness-lacking. The feeble misfit folk of Scotchprovince in seeking to regain independence and keep the oil for themselves are showing complete ingratitude to British beneficence and greatness. Their press tells us nationalism is bad while bombarding us with flag waving and symbols of military triumphalism.

 

[Traitorfish]

So as I'm looking from the outside, is this really as similar as the impression that I'm getting that it's like the rural/urban divide in the USA, only with Europe's special breed of baggage when it comes to 1,000+ years of history?

Not really, no. Scotland is a socieonomically diverse place, probably the most so in Britain, and any given point on the Scottish map probably shares more in that sense with another point in England than with many places in Scotland. Clydeside is far more like Merseyside than it is like the Outer Hebrides, for example.

What sets Scotland apart is more than anything else its institutions, the fact that most major public are either independent, as the health and educational services, or autonomous subsidiaries, such as the BBC. Most civil society organisations are similar: we have own Trade Union Congress and professional bodies, and the major political parties maintain distinct Scottish sections. And of couse, since 1999, we have our parliament, which has provided a strong focal point for all this, allowing many Scots to think of themselves as a sovereign civic community, an authentic demos, in a way which they might have struggled to do previously. Scots are able to refer to a shared public life in a way which, for example, the Welsh aren't quite able to, and which as nebulous a category as "urban areas" certainly aren't able to.

 

[Farm Boy]

That still sounds similar to me after you breaking it down.

 

[Pangur Bán]

autonomous subsidiaries, such as the BBC.

I know what you were meaning, but for others BBC Scotland is not in any way autonomous. This poll was interesting:
http://newsnetscotland.com/index.ph...eals-lack-of-faith-in-bbc-scotland-management
But since the beginning of the independence campaign BBC Scotland news has essentially been scrapped as a meaningful news source (until October anyway) with the power the staff previously had essentially being abolished. BBC Scotland staff can't even open their blinds without calling their overlords:
http://www.mortgagebrokernews.ca/ne...nal-permission-to-open-the-blinds-181315.aspx
BBC Scotland's budget for many years now has been captured by HQ through a process of internal colonialism ... the 'regional funds' of BBC Scotland are now spent by a small HQ cabal with nothing more than BBC Scotland branding. If you've wondered why you don't get many Scottish football matches or Andy Stewart like stuff like you got in the 90s, that's why (this has affected all BBC regions btw, not just BBC Scotland).

In fairness, BBC Alba is different (partially because of its independent budget, partially because of its non-integrated staff).

 

[Traitorfish]

That's a very fair point, BBC Scotland is very far from a genuinely Scottish institution. But even then, I think it's still significant that people are exposed to even the false image of a separate BBC, because for all the thoroughgoing Unionism of the institution itself, it still cements this sense of a distinctly Scottish public sphere.

That still sounds similar to me after you breaking it down.

It might be hard to communicate, given that American public life is already quite decentralised by European standards. The thing to stress is how atypical the Scottish experience is within Britain; 90%+ of Britons live in a large, centralised state called England & Wales, with a shared set of public and civil institutions, which are themselves usually quite centralised. Then there's this thing, Scotland, sitting just next to it, with most of the structures and many of the trappings of a state, by which is somehow not a state. It's as if the United States consisted of just two states, "America" and "Texas".

(This all ignores Ireland, of course, but you sort of have to when giving the basic overview, because nothing complicates British history and politics quite so much as Ireland.)

 

[Farm Boy]

It might be hard to communicate, given that American public life is already quite decentralised by European standards. The thing to stress is how atypical the Scottish experience is within Britain; 90%+ of Britons live in a large, centralised state called England & Wales, with a shared set of public and civil institutions, which are themselves usually quite centralised. Then there's this thing, Scotland, sitting just next to it, with most of the structures and many of the trappings of a state, by which is somehow not a state. It's as if the United States consisted of just two states, "America" and "Texas".

(This all ignores Ireland, of course, but you sort of have to when giving the basic overview, because nothing complicates British history and politics quite so much as Ireland.)

So is the push just raw nationalist pride then? Or is it frustration over lack of shared culture, experience, and instituations coupled with the fact that one area is useful for its production of certain resources but constantly held relatively powerless before the alien, bigoted, and uncaring majority elsewhere whenever they decide to screw your lives up for the hell of it?

 

[Traitorfish]

The second one.

I mean, that exaggerates it, and I think most pro-independence Scots are quite aware that a lot of other Britons, particularly in the North and in Wales, are in the same boat they are. Manchester or Leeds are no better represented by the Mos Eisley-in-suits we call a parliament than Glasgow or Dundee. And I don't think most of us imagine that the English actively hold us in contempt: if anything, they seem to forget we exist. But there are not clear prospects off changing that within the Union, and when we have the skeleton of an independent country already in place, solidarity finds its limits.

(There's even an argument, maybe tenuous but not unreasonable, that leaving is the best thing we can do for fellow arse-end-of-UKers, because shattering the rump-Empire will discredit an already wounded and humiliated establishment, opening the door for a serious reform movement. It comes down to whether the English and Welsh want change as much as the Scots do.)

 

[Farm Boy]

You're more me than I think you realize. And vice versa.

(Except for the contempt thing. Here the contempt is pretty visible.)

 

[Paul in Saudi]

What kind of world would it be where we cut ourselves off into ever-smaller tribes? French-speakers cannot live alongside English-speakers. blacks with whites, Jews and Muslims. This is madness and the path to endless war.

 

[Traitorfish]

My next-door neighbours are Polish and I live down the road from a mosque, so I'm not sure that's a fair description of what's going on, here.

 

[Pangur Bán]

What kind of world would it be where we cut ourselves off into ever-smaller tribes? French-speakers cannot live alongside English-speakers. blacks with whites, Jews and Muslims. This is madness and the path to endless war.

'Cut[ting] ourselves into ever-smaller tribes' isn't a fear you should have about the modern world.Modern capitalist globalization is something none of us can stop, for neither its good nor its bad qualities. But none of that has anything to do with removing the veto corrupt London elites have over Scottish democracy. Don't use the rhetoric of a noble cause like internationalism to facilitate oppression.

 

[ywhtptgtfo]

My next-door neighbours are Polish and I live down the road from a mosque, so I'm not sure that's a fair description of what's going on, here.

Do your neighbours agree that Lwow belongs to Poland?

 

[Farm Boy]

'Cut[ting] ourselves into ever-smaller tribes' isn't a fear you should have about the modern world.Modern capitalist globalization is something none of us can stop, for neither its good nor its bad qualities. But none of that has anything to do with removing the veto corrupt London elites have over Scottish democracy. Don't use the rhetoric of a noble cause like internationalism to facilitate oppression.

And I read the same exact words and concepts leveled against me when I advocate for more meaningful power at the level of the states rather than in Washington. So I'm not really sure anyone is going to have "noble cause" in something like this, are they? Just the cause they think serves themselves better.