Does Scotland want away from the UK not England.
Is core of Scottish Independents being hype up by the press over Scotland hate toward the English and England feeling being the same.But is it more the other way round that Scotland hate being apart of the UK the same way Catalans and Basque feel about being apart of country that has not,nothing to do with the culture so the core issue is does Scottish people hate bing apart of the UK.
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I's not about England, it's about Scotland wanting to be in charge of it's destiny. Hopefully it will be the start of regional democracy across the rest of the UK (London already has its own assembly)
But that doesn't mean the reason they don't feel part of it is because they hate the English.
Scotland careless about England and the rivalries it old news.
But just can't get on together.
Do you really think everyone in evil England is descended from hordes of Saxon invaders in the 5th and 6th centuries??
I see it in the same way many people in the UK want out of Europe to have their own say and control. The problem is the idea is borne out national pride only useful 200 years ago. Like the UK and europe union you cannot turn back the clock back to when Britain had an empire and could go alone. We are better off being in europe even with all the silly rules on hoovers it does not off set the advantages we have trading with the block europe gives us.
In a similar with Scotland that national pride can only go so far it does not put food on the table. At some point you have to face the practical aspect of what it means to stand on your own in a global market place as a country of just 5 million people.
It is a case of not so much what happens with the vote or just after but the fact their is no going back. The future of Scotland will be set on a course to go in a different direction for ever. A direction towards closer ties with the European union and acceptance of the Euro. In a sense if you want a degree of control it will never be total and it will always come at a cost.
Us English would be very happy - we wouldn't have to subsidise you anymore. Cos Wales and NI are massive subsidy junkies.
Sorry - but socialism costs money. Enjoy the massive cuts if that happens.
You can only speak for yourself. I would hope that most English people aren't that unpleasant and mean-minded.
I'm not Scottish and I'm not taking a position on Scottish independence, but I won't stand for lazy falsehoods like the one invoked above.
As an English person, I value the Union. Which means I would like Scotland to remain part of the UK. It will be very sad indeed if they vote to leave the rest of us. After all, the UK would no longer have the Loch Ness Monster. We'd have to put a new one into Lake Windermere!
The rich areas are supposed to support the poor areas, not keep it all for themselves, thats the whole point of a union.
This is fine in prinicple but there are two problems;
Firstly, there are poor areas within Scotland - it's not all one homogenous mass of people earning the same wage.
Secondly - and perhaps more importantly - the "whole point of a union" is greatly undermined if the majority within that union continues to elect governments who don't actually believe that the rich areas should help out the poor areas; and as a result they either do nothing towards that aim or actively work against it by introducing regressive policies which help the richer areas hang on to more of their wealth. That's whats happened over the last 35 years - and should Scotland decide to go independent the person most directly responsible won't be Alex Salmond or David Cameron - it'll be Margaret Thatcher.
Typical nationalist cant. You loudly proclaim your pride and your desire to be independent, yet express your hatred for people that refuse to give you free gifts. If you want to be independent, be independent, you can't expect England or Switzerland or New Zealand to help you pay for it.
This is rubbish. Even under Thatcher, the poorest areas of Scotland were being given billions to rebuild houses, infrastructure etc. I lived in Glasgow through the Thatcher years and practically the whole city was rebuilt from top to bottom. The fact that the bulk of this money was squandered on municipal corruption, a garden festival, jobs for the bhoys, poor planning choices and sub-standard housing stock was entirely the fault of the Scottish political class, not Mrs Thatcher.
What on earth are you on about? I live in Wales, I'm not a Scottish Nationalist, I'm not even a Welsh Nationalist. And I have not expressed hatred for anyone. Are you confusing me with someone else?
But not to the detriment of the area that is better off
Yep Scottish Labour , who are about to be given their marching orders
You were accusing Thatcher of undermining the Union because during her day, according to you, rich areas did not support poor ones. This was false, under Thatcher huge sums of money were given to Scotland, Liverpool, the North East etc to spend. This money was wasted by incompetent corrupt leftists, who then blamed Thatcher for their own failings.
If you want to talk anecdotal evidence then I can counter yours with my own. I have cause to visit Glasgow on a semi-regular basis (I was last there in July) and from personal observation if the city was completely rebuilt during the 80's then it would seem that the “billions” of pounds of investment during the 80's was spent on about 15 streets in the city centre, the merchant city and the west end. None of the outlying areas to the south and west of the city centre look like they've received a penny since they were built. Get a taxi from the city centre to the airport and you'll drive through areas of Paisley where buildings still stand boarded up, roofless and derelict today. I've also been given the guided tour around Castlemilk and the Gorbals – and they certainly weren't “completely rebuilt” during the 80's.
The tories pulled the same garden festival trick in other seriously deprived cities who were the victims of Thatcher's revolution if I remember correctly. Thatcher herself considered them a waste of time, money and energy – but Heseltine realised that some of these communities were a tinderbox and argued for what was basically hush money and distracting pretty colours for people they considered left-wing malcontents - when what these areas actually needed was employment (I don't need to remind you of the 3.2 million out of work under Thatcher) and support in transitioning to a more mixed local economy that wasn't so dependent on a small number of large (and in some cases state-owned) employers in heavy industry. None of the tories at the time pursued this course of action - as far as they were concerned they weren't governing in the interests of these places, so they just left them to rot, albeit with a few gimmicks like the garden festivals to present the appearance of doing something and the falsehood of actually caring about the plight of the people who lived there.
Also, I believe the site of the Glasgow garden city was supposed to be redeveloped soon after the event for housing, but ended up sitting idle for many years because the developers pulled out due to the late 80's housing crash. Personally, I'd apportion responsibility for that failure on the government which undertook the initiative (and also set housing policies which led to the crash) but I suppose you're going to blame that on militant bolshevism and ineptitude at Glasgow city council too?
I didn't claim that the funding taps were turned off completely (a step which would have been absurd) – I claimed that measures were taken throughout the past 35 years, not just in Scotland but throughout the whole of the UK, which made it easier for the wealthy to hang on to a greater proportion of their wealth rather than see that wealth redistributed more extensively to the poorer areas that BrokenArrow mentioned. Want some examples?
- The top rate of income tax in 1979 was 83%, in 1990 it was 40%
- VAT (a regressive tax) was 8% in 1979, 17.5% in 1991 and stands at 20% today.
- The scope of VAT was significantly expanded in 1993 to include gas and electricity
- The right-to-buy scheme offered a massive bung in terms of subsidised property prices to those who could afford to take out a mortgage but offered nothing to those who couldn't.
- The attempted (and thankfully botched) attempt to impose the regressive poll tax as a replacement for the system of local rates which preceded it. And please don't forget Scotland was used as a guinea pig for this particular warped social experiment by virtue of having it imposed there a year before everywhere else.
Now I know you are definitely confusing me with someone else - I have said nothing of the sort. An apology from you seems in order!