Referendum on Scottish Independence

[Cheezy the Wiz]

I've heard plenty of talk from silly English lefties that when Scotland achieves independence that a big chunk of the North should go along with it.
What do you think about that?

Why not? They get raped by Westminster as much as Alba.

Really there should just be a cordon around the outskirts of London, the rest of which is a separate country.

 

[Quackers]

London is a foreign city, it ceased to be English a long time ago.

I don't buy the argument that the deprieved areas of this country are down to Westminster. I accept if you were a coal miner circa 1981 you can legitimately blame Westminster for losing your livelyhood, but it is freaking 2014 now. Poor parts of the country like in Scotland or in parts of the North cannot expect London to wave a magic wand and create eternal prosperity. Central government has ploughed money into the likes of Liverpool since the days of Thatcher and to little success.

There is a cringy victimhood mentality "woe is me" in areas of the country.. "wuh...wuh westminster so mean!".

A Scottish/Northen England state may solve those problems but it will be harder without the aid of Westminster.

 

[Traitorfish]

London is a foreign city, it ceased to be English a long time ago.

"No, I didn't mean them, I meant the-"
Aye, sure you did, pal. Sure you did.

 

[hoplitejoe]

I went to london the other day, can confirm that I needed my passport to get in.

 

[Kyriakos]

London is a foreign city, it ceased to be English a long time ago.

I don't buy the argument that the deprieved areas of this country are down to Westminster. I accept if you were a coal miner circa 1981 you can legitimately blame Westminster for losing your livelyhood, but it is freaking 2014 now. Poor parts of the country like in Scotland or in parts of the North cannot expect London to wave a magic wand and create eternal prosperity. Central government has ploughed money into the likes of Liverpool since the days of Thatcher and to little success.

There is a cringy victimhood mentality "woe is me" in areas of the country.. "wuh...wuh westminster so mean!".

A Scottish/Northen England state may solve those problems but it will be harder without the aid of Westminster.

Depends on which London you mean. South of the Thames is another continent, maybe somewhere where the river Congo flows

 

[Borachio]

Why not? They get raped by Westminster as much as Alba.

Really there should just be a cordon around the outskirts of London, the rest of which is a separate country.

I agree that London, cosmopolitan place that it is (looking at you, Mr Q), is remarkably different from the rest of the country in terms of wealth, facilities, population density, transport infrastructure, culture and Boris Johnson. I've long felt that the M25 could provide a handy frontier.

As for Scottish independence, I honestly can't think of any reasonable objection to it. Which isn't to say there wouldn't (given a yes vote) be some considerable problems over disengagement from the UK (it's just a very complicated thing, imo) - none of which are insurmountable, though.

We live in changing times. Why, the Act of Union was only yesterday! And wasn't that only because Scotland had managed to bankrupt itself over Darien?

Given a no vote? Doesn't that just mean that independence is postponed?

But please, Scotland, don't leave England to the not so tender mercies of the Tories, I beg you. Not right now.

 

[Traitorfish]

Given a no vote? Doesn't that just mean that independence is postponed?

That's the elephant in the room. A "No" vote now will embarrass the SNP, to be certain. It'll be a while before they can try to give the referendum another go. But they will, because nothing is going to change in Westminster, except for the worse. Scottish grievances will not be addressed. And it will only be so long before another 10%, 20%, maybe 30% of Scots come to realise that while independence is a gamble, so is Union, and Union is offering far less generous odds.

The Union has lost Scotland quite as surely as it lost Ireland in 1914: the question now is really just the precise terms of separation.

 

[bhsup]

Can we use this "London is different" argument to kick NYC the hell out of the USA?

 

[Traitorfish]

You have to understand, Bshup, when Quackers says that London is different, he doesn't mean culture or values or anything like that, he means that the majority of its population are ethnic minorities. He doesn't mean "foreign" in a metaphorical sense, that it's like being in a foreign country, he means that its population are literally foreign, in his eyes, that they are not of the English Volk.

That's not a mast you want to nail your colours to.

 

[bhsup]

*sigh* Oh well. Someday. NYC and Kansas.... booted.

Oh, also I thought of something that might make more English be supportive of your cause. What if you guys could get Obama to promise that if y'all vote yes and leave, we conquer Ireland, bring it freedom and democracy, and then gift it to the UK?

 

[Quackers]

You have to understand, Bshup, when Quackers says that London is different, he doesn't mean culture or values or anything like that, he means that the majority of its population are ethnic minorities. He doesn't mean "foreign" in a metaphorical sense, that it's like being in a foreign country, he means that its population are literally foreign, in his eyes, that they are not of the English Volk.

That's not a mast you want to nail your colours to.

1 / 3 are foreign born.

Only 44% are white British. London died a long time ago.

 

[Traitorfish]

Even that 44% exaggerates the city's Englishness, because a lot of people who fill in a census as "White British" will in fact be Irish, Greek, Jewish, and so on. Throw in the Scots and Welsh, and I'd be surprised if the number of authentic Anglo-Saxons in London reached one third of the total.

It all started when you let those Flemish wool-traders in, back in the fourteenth century. If only you'd known where it would lead...

 

[Borachio]

Yes, in Volkisch terms, London died long ago. 1590-ish? (Nah. I've no idea.)

I wonder how much racial/cultural purity there is in the UK as a whole. I've never seen any sign of it myself.

 

[really]

*sigh* Oh well. Someday. NYC and Kansas.... booted.

Oh, also I thought of something that might make more English be supportive of your cause. What if you guys could get Obama to promise that if y'all vote yes and leave, we conquer Ireland, bring it freedom and democracy, and then gift it to the UK?

Google, Microsoft, Apple et al won't let that happen.

We have plenty of gaps in our infrastructure if you fancy funding another Marshall Plan?

 

[Kyriakos]

Some areas likely are English (or at least 'white') by huge margins, eg the more 'high-class' parts of London (anything around the museum of natural history, parts of the second zone, the palace areas, likely also the embankment area).
It is pretty certain that below the Thames the majority would be poor immigrants and very low income working class people.

 

[Traitorfish]

Poor people aren't really English, either, they're the remnants of the original Celtic population. You can tell because of the shape of their heads.

 

[Kyriakos]

Poor people aren't really English, either, they're the remnants of the original Celtic population. You can tell because of the shape of their heads.

/ \

 

[Borachio]

Who are the English? It's a quite perplexing question. My best guess: it's whoever's left over after all the other self-identifying ethnicities are removed.

Hey, you remember what it was like at school being the last picked for the footie teams?

 

[Quackers]

Even that 44% exaggerates the city's Englishness, because a lot of people who fill in a census as "White British" will in fact be Irish, Greek, Jewish, and so on. Throw in the Scots and Welsh, and I'd be surprised if the number of authentic Anglo-Saxons in London reached one third of the total.

It all started when you let those Flemish wool-traders in, back in the fourteenth century. If only you'd known where it would lead...

True I fill out white British to hide the family secret....the Irish ancestor /shudder.

Some areas of London are like Pakistan or Jamaica. You cannot escape it. They have been colonised. Do you think this is desirable?

 

[Traitorfish]

Who are the English? It's a quite perplexing question. My best guess: it's whoever's left over after all the other self-identifying ethnicities are removed.

Probably true, and a little tragic. There's certainly no need for it to be that way: it's not like "British", an identity which was invented pretty much wholesale in the early modern period to describe identification with a particular state. But that's the problem, really, that as the English failed to distinguish "Britain" from a Greater England, they've lost a sense of themselves distinct from the British state. You're left with an Englishness that has little if any positive content, an identity that's distinguished from Britishness only in that it excludes people who aren't white and can't prove at least five generations of local ancestry, and who's going to get excited about that except racists?

Some areas of London are like Pakistan or Jamaica. You cannot escape it. They have been colonised. Do you think this is desirable?

Desirable? Not in itself, I suppose, I'd prefer to see a little more mingling, a little more cosmopolitanism.) And my impression is that, among younger generations, those born or raised in the UK, that's pretty much what's happening. Look at the "London multicultural accent", which is neither Cockney nor Caribbean nor quite anything else. It may not be reflected in settlement patterns quite yet, stuff like that tends to be a bit sticky- I mean, there are still neighbourhoods in New York that are "Jewish" or "Italian"- but I've seen no reason to think that you're looking at some sort of enduring Balkanisation.

Mostly I think, it doesn't do me any harm, so who am I to dictate that it should be done otherwise?