Scottish Independence

Very very sadly, I am (as a non-Scot) also starting to slide into the "let the buggers have what's coming to 'em" camp. If it wasn't for the inevitable short to medium term impact on the economy of the remainder of the UK due to the huge uncertainty that will exist while the disentanglement mess is sorted out. IMHO there just appears to be such a huge element of having cake and eating it going on and it will massively unravel in the event of a Yes vote. I note that Salmond has not in the last few years repeated his assertion that an independent Scotland would prosper in a similar vein to Iceland. I wonder why not.

I feel sorry for the those who have stood by a No position, and I feel sorry for all of us that the level of information/debate appears to have been so poor. I can of course see that the ability to get rid of unwanted current/recent point policies such as the 'Bedroom Tax' is a fine intellectual reason for throwing away 300 years of history, the mutual benefits which the UK has bought - cultural, financial/economic - and walking blindly into an uncertain future where the basis of how the basics of an economy are going to run are unknown (new currency anyone ? or shadow use of the pound with no control), and short/medium term membership of the EU, Nato are extremely questionable etc. etc.

And the worst of it now is that even if NO prevails, it will be close enough that business will view this as just a temporary period of major uncertainty until another vote is demanded in a few years time. Hence why I'm almost sliding into the "lets get it done" camp.

I have the feeling given Mr Sillers' comments in general many of the Scotland based businesses who are looking to re-domicile if there is a yes vote may actually be actively thinking about re-domiciling before the vote just in case there is a yes vote and the SNP come true on Mr Sillars threats of a day of reckoning.

Interesting/thought provoking article in the Times today from Matthew Parris (as always - even if one doesn't agree with what he might have to say). I think he's right: whatever way this goes, it is highly likely the Union in its current shape/form is pretty much dead.

Its one thing to offer the Scots (or rather the current residents of Scotland) a vote on independence. But we are now in a situation where all the 'Union' parties have committed themselves to a massive transfer of powers and decision making to Scotland. This has massive constitutional implications. I don't recall voting for any party in the last electoin which ran a manifesto of such transfer / increase of powers to Scotland while they retain the right to have MPs sitting in the parliament of the 'Union' - and in numbers significantly out of proportion to their population - being able to continue to vote on matters which increasingly don't affect them. And to have their numbers count towards which party is able to form a govt. of the 'Union'. The situation was already a tad 'difficult' - with massive additional transfer of power, this must become untenable.

Personally I think that a referendum in rUK should be required before any parliament feels it has the right to enable transfer of such powers while allowing Scotland to remain within the Union and with the current parliamentry structure. Either we are a Union, a Federation, or separate. But we should not have an effective Federation served by political structures which reflect a Union.  Not without the rest of us having a say: this is not something which should be in the gift of politicians who were not elected with that remit.

if you're Scottish and have the vote, visit www.BraveNewScotland.com and if you agree with some of it, tell your friends (and enemies).

Sadly for the UK, it's not hard to drum up nationalist support, as it's an emotive subject.  It reminds me of Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic's rhetoric before the breakup of Yugoslavia.  He quickly secured his political position and popularity, but it all went sour not very long afterwards.  

The problem is identifying those "expats". You can't exactly say "show us your passport", after all. It's really a case of people self-identifying as Scottish, and that's such a tenuous concept and so open to abuse, that it'd just be unworkable. Just think about all those Americans who claim they're "Scotch", despite the fact that none of their ancestors have been there for several generations...

Going for residence at the time of the vote is really about the only way they could have worked it.

It is not an issue since they could have applied the normal expat rules (though they apply don't apply to the Scottish/Welsh/Northern Irish assembly elections only to Parliamentary elections) namely that you are a British Citizen and you were registered to vote in the UK (though in this case it would be Scotland) no more than 15 years ago. But this is not what was wanted by the SNP since expats are with their global experience potentially more likely to to vote No and idealistic inexperienced 16 and 17 yearolds are more likely to vote Yes.