Tuesday 26 November 2013

Scottish Independence

It seems that the pretence that Scotland may vote for independence is carrying on with Alex Salmond setting out what he would do if Scotland committed suicide and voted to leave the union.
Not perturbed by the treasury pointing out yesterday that independence would mean a raise in income tax of £1000 per Scot, Salmond has done his own maths and come up with the sum that each person in Scotland would be £600 better off.
He has also promised the freshly independent Scottish nation would join the EU and NATO, cut corporation tax, extend free childcare and increase the minimum wage, keep the pound and the Queen, drop Trident nuclear weapons, the Union Flag and the BBC.
I don't think for a second that the Scottish will be shortsighted enough to vote to go it alone next year, it would be be broke within a week and begging for the BBC and the likes of Dr Who and Qi when they are forced to watch endless repeats of Rab C Nesbit and Take The High Road.
That said, if Scotland does vote for independence and waves goodbye to the English, Welsh and Northern Irish, we will really miss...erm...give me a sec...damn.

2 comments:

Nog said...

What the heavens is wrong with all you Europeans wanting to break up into little bits? When a Texan more than half-jokingly talks of independence (secession), he's branded as insane, and rightly so.

Is the UK really that bad to Scotland? What is this about? I guess the question that one must always ask is who is the big money who stands to make more money with an independent Scotland?

If we Texans can put up with the Californians and the New Yorkers, the Scots should bear the English.

-Nog

Cheezy said...

Nog: There's a rumour that some Scots believe that if they're independent then their oil will make them all rich. Fantasy Island stuff! Oil wealth enrichens the already-oil-rich - I thought everyone knew that. Plus there's currently only a couple of decades left of it, and no guarantee of any more. Nevertheless, the leader of the SNP is pretending his name is 'Alex Hugo Chavez Salmond' in order to garner their votes.

I fear that the economic result of independence for the Scots could be disastrous. As the Guardian said yesterday:
"The reality is that Britain has long clamped the "golden handcuffs" of welfare dependency on the Scots, subsidising them annually by some £1,000 a head more than the English. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, admittedly on a worst-case base, reckons Scotland will need an 9% rise in income tax to compensate for losing Britain's subvention."

However, it's perhaps not surprisingly that the issue generates more heat when the Tories are in government in Westminster, as north of the border they're about as popular as gonorrhea.

Referendums can be notoriously hard to predict but at the moment I'm suspecting they'll ultimately vote No.