Split Thread Scottish Independence

Aw, bless. A FOTL who actually has a bit of land!

The most significant point is that there has so far been no official challenge to any of my 'unlawful' activities. (I stopped paying Income Tax, VAT and Council Tax, built a house without planning permission, put a car on the road with Forvik number plates and tax disc and various other disobedient actions). The counter at the top of the page tells you how long these have been going on without challenge. The authorities have gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid engaging with me because they know they cannot justify their authority here.
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He's a bit of an amateur compared to Robbie the Pict though.

Rolfe.
 
Giz said:
Because my country is the UK. I was born in the UK to a Scottish father and an English Mother. I am British, rather than MacNeill of the Hebrides (after all, why should the Western Isles be part of a Scotland dominated by lowland Scots? Those lowlanders are historically more culturally akin to Northern English than to the Highlanders and Islanders, pshaw I hear some lowlanders wear kilts as if they would have pre-1707!).

The UK has been one nation for centuries, it's tragic that an inferiority complex is pulling it apart now.
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Source? Maybe its a superiority complex?

The UK will still exist after independence.
 
D'rok said:
I agree. However, allowing Quebec to unilaterally secede based on that vote (if either of them had been successful), would also be utterly ridiculous. At that point, all of Canada has a legitimate stake in the outcome. Same goes for the UK if Scotland decides to secede.
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So what would you suggest, exactly?
 
richardm said:
I think what Giz is suggesting is that a native Hebridean probably doesn't have many more interests in common with the Metropolitan Kilterati Down South (in Edinburgh, that is) than he does with the current government, and is wondering, functionally speaking, what the difference would be.
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Indeed. But my point was that, as a native Hebridean myself, I disagreed with his assessment. You know, what with having lived there and been familiar with said people and everything......
 
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richardm said:
That is still true even when you have an intact United Kingdom. I think what Giz is suggesting is that a native Hebridean probably doesn't have many more interests in common with the Metropolitan Kilterati Down South (in Edinburgh, that is) than he does with the current government, and is wondering, functionally speaking, what the difference would be.
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Pretty much. The mischevious side of me also wonders how the SNP would react to any attempt to split parts of an independant Scotland (say, the Highlands and Western Isles) away from the Lowlands...

For what its worth, if a majority of the folks living in Scotland vote for independance then I would think that their wishes had to be respected. I would be saddened by it, and would feel that the country I grew up in, as an anglo-scottish Brit, had been needlessly dismantled but I'd have no stomach for trying to hold onto an area whose people clearly wanted out.

I will note that Darat's idea about requiring a certain turnout/percentage for any final vote isn't that unreasonable. After all, if nationalists get 49% to vote yes then they can always try again, and again... if they get 51% once, should that then be the end of the Union?
 
Just as a matter of interest, Giz, have you ever actually lived in Scotland and in particular the Western Isles? A bheil ghaidhlig agadsa?
 
Architect said:
Just as a matter of interest, Giz, have you ever actually lived in Scotland and in particular the Western Isles? A bheil ghaidhlig agadsa?
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Nope (and I don't speak Gaelic). I have visited but I grew up in London.

(I have a feeling that is like telling a member of the Rebel Alliance that you grew up on the Death Star)

(My Dad is from Barra, hence my selection of the Western Isles as an example of an area with economically/geographical/linguistic differences to a capital - whether London or perhaps in the future Edinburgh).
 
So, just to be clear, you've no first hand experience of the islands but are instead assuming - but no more than that - that people from the Western Isles will feel Edinburgh is remote in the same way as London and hence may have significantly differing views from those on the mainland?
 
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My immediate family is from the islands as well (though the other end of the archipelago). The idea of the islands seceding (seriously, as opposed to some mouthy unionist sounding off, or that FOTL loon), is just silly.

I don't necessarily think Giz is assuming anything. I think he and Lothian are simply mischief-making, dreaming up some sort of purity test where we're supposed to declare that we're happily in favour of independence for Eriskay on some sort of completely hypothetical basis, otherwise supporting independence of a country that has been in existence as a unit since the ninth century is hypocrisy.

Sorry, I'm not biting.

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
I think he and Lothian are simply mischief-making, dreaming up some sort of purity test where we're supposed to declare that we're happily in favour of independence for Eriskay on some sort of completely hypothetical basis, otherwise supporting independence of a country that has been in existence as a unit since the ninth century is hypocrisy.

Sorry, I'm not biting.

Rolfe.
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Sorry you feel it is mischief making. Avoiding hypotheticals is what I am trying to do. Why should we have to think of a hypothetical test for the seperation of Eriskay? Why should it not have the exact same test as Scotland?
 
Because there's absolutely no evidence that it's at all likely. Let's turn it the other way. If London voted in favour of independence from the UK, what would your views be?
 
Architect said:
Because there's absolutely no evidence that it's at all likely. Let's turn it the other way. If London voted in favour of independence from the UK, what would your views be?
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I would be against it as I am against an independent Scotland. But if Scotland does get independence then London (or the City) may want to take the same route if the people there feel they will be better off.

That is why I think we need a clear set of rules and criteria which decide whether an area can break away.

All I have seen so far is that “people should have the right to manage their own resources and destiny.” But it is not clear who that applies to. I understand that applies to the Scottish people as a whole but get the impression that it wouldn’t apply to any smaller group within Scotland.

Face facts people are greedy. Rolfe thinks that the people of Scotland will be better off with the oil money all to themselves. Perhaps the Shetlanders might feel the same way.

I want to know who should be able to decide to have independence. Perhaps it was in another thread but someone pointed out that in the last century over 100 areas have gained independence. Some of them would have been countries in their own right at sometime in the past others are brand new.

The key questions as I see it are;
Who decides whether a country should be split in two? Is it just those wanting to split off or the country as a whole?
What percentage of the vote is required to support the change?
What percentage of the population is required to support it?
Which parts actually split off?​

This last point is important. What if Berwickshire bucks the trend and votes strongly for remaining in the union while the rest of Scotland votes against, does Berwickshire go as well?

What if the SNP decide they want a separate country consisting of Scotland and Northumberland. The Scottish vote could make the voting in Northumberland redundant as far as the outcome is concerned.

Clear rules and principles are needed to decide who can seek independence and what is required for that to be achieved.
 
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This is a topic that has more undercurrents than appear on the surface, as I assume Lothian knows. Exactly this "divide and rule" strategy has been an explicit part of the dirty tricks campaign waged against Scottish independence by Whitehall.

Secret plan to deprive independent Scotland of oil fields

One Treasury official even proposed that a local campaign for independence in Orkney and Shetland should be encouraged so that Scotland would be denied access to more than half the North Sea oil. The idea was that the islands would prefer to throw in their lot with London rather than Edinburgh. [....]

One paper, by Graham Kear, under-secretary at the Department of Energy, suggested that the Northern Isles might be hived off from Scotland. He wrote: “If Scotland and the Orkney and Shetland Islands are both regarded as states, separate from the rest of the United Kingdom, median lines can be drawn to divide the United Kingdom Continental Shelf between Orkney & Shetland/Scotland and between Scotland/England.”

One way of doing this, according to civil servants advising Anthony Crosland, the Environment Secretary, would be to realign the subsea border between Scotland and England, so that it ran northeast instead of east.
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So quit with the disingenuous "what if?". We know where all this is coming from, we've seen it all before. (And that last bit was actually done - it was slipped through the Westminster parliament about ten minutes before the Holyrood parliament was inaugurated, to present Scotland with a fait accompli loss of about 6,000 square miles of maritime territory.)

This last point is important. What if Berwickshire bucks the trend and votes strongly for remaining in the union while the rest of Scotland votes against, does Berwickshire go as well?
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My God, do you English never learn?

Rolfe.
 
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Lothian said:
The key questions as I see it are;
Who decides whether a country should be split in two? Is it just those wanting to split off or the country as a whole?
What percentage of the vote is required to support the change?
What percentage of the population is required to support it?
Which parts actually split off?​
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1. Scottish voters decide if they want self determination. Scotland is not being split in 2.
2. A majority vote of the electoral turn out for the referendum.
3. As 2
3. Scottish parts

Lets say that the UKIP got into power and decided to withdraw from the EU.

Should the rest of the EU have a vote on it?
 
Architect said:
One could launch into an essay on cultural differences between different countries - the French, the Germans, our cousins across the Pond. One could look at the different outlook of, say, Scotland and England focussing on political or educational views.

One could talk about the long-standing different traditions in a range of different fields, from law to educational systems.

One could highlight the great poets - Burns in lieu of Wordsworth, McDiarmid in lieu of ...well, whoever the English have.

One could highlight language, at least for some of us, and a whole additional set of cultural traditions found across the Ghealtachd.

But the thing is, there's no point. You've clearly convinced yourself that (a) we're all 100% identical, (b) the SNP are some sort of BNP-type nutter jobs, and (c) World Government is just around the corner.

I have to ask: have you ever actually visited Scotland for any length of time?
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Yes. I've also spent time in other parts of England were the culture is different but I see no reason why this requires different government.

What needs from government do you have that are different from mine?
 
Architect said:
It's not him avoiding the issue. It's you.
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No.

Do you agree or disagree with this statement:

The SNP wants to split the people of this island into two groups.

I can't see how you can disagree with it really. Now:

The BNP wants to split the people of this island into two groups.

is also true, the two groups are indigenous (sic) British and the rest.

I would point you to my first post on this when I aid the SNP were“not much better than the BNP”. Not the same merely a similar idea of them and us.
 
Rolfe said:
So I imagine you were equally opposed to the breakups of Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, and the USSR.... Out of curiosity, are you in favour of wars of aggression, so long as the result is fewer separate political groupings?
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I think I have stated that democracy and represenation is rather important a few times now.

Rolfe said:
You said you could see no difference between the SNP and the BNP, because the SNP were for "Scotland for the Scots". Well, Labour, the Conservatives and the LibDems are all for "Britain for the British" in exactly the same sense that the SNP is for "Scotland for the Scots".

So do you agree that there's no difference between the BNP and Labour, the Conservatives and the LibDems? You won't be voring for any of them, because they represent something "ugly", right?

Rolfe.
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I wouldn't vote for them in the world elections if they had that stance no. When we have world elections I'll call them on it until now I'll deal with the political entity I am living in.
 
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