An Independent Scotland? Yes, may I have another, sir...

[fastpat]

Inch by inch, Scotland and Wales are following Ireland's lead in becoming independent. Fortunately, they've not had to wage a campaign of force against the occupying power, England, so things are going well, just slowly.

The devolution of the super-nation state continues.

We'd be a more united kingdom with an independent Scotland

Simon Jenkins
Who cares, really, if the Scots one day choose independence? Would it matter if Wales and Northern Ireland, larger than half a dozen European states, wanted their own government as well as their own football team? It need not alter their allegiance to the crown. Gordon Brown and David Cameron, likely combatants at the next election, last week deplored any “loosening” of the union bond, as if it would jeopardise the security of the state.

They join a legion of London politicians to whom “the union” remains a quasi-religious cause. Both Margaret Thatcher and John Major went to Scotland and wrapped themselves in the Union Jack, wiping their party off the map in doing so.

*
For the past five years the Scots and Welsh have shown a mature response to devolution. They rejected formal independence in favour of greater autonomy. When granted it in 1998 they used it, for the most part, sensibly and now want more. If denied it, more Scots told last week’s Sunday Times they were for independence than against.

Why this should terrify the English beats me. Beyond the British Isles, Britons are ardent for political fission. They imposed federalist constitutions on their colonies (and on the Germans after the war). They supported Slovenian and Croatian separatism and went to war to assist Bosnians and Kosovans to break the Yugoslav federation.

From Biafra to Tibet, from Catalonia to Ukraine, British sentiment has always tended towards the separatist and the small guy. It loathes anything called a European union. Yet at home the opposite juices run strong. Any nationalist surge from the Celtic fringe is seen as a threat.

Scotland and Wales once endangered the security of the English crown and union was an understandable talisman of macho monarchy. That danger ended with the Tudors, or at least with the Jacobites. Maintaining union has become a tired political cliché, a ghostly compensation for the loss of empire. The Conservatives, despite dropping the word Unionist from their title, remain obsessed with the subject, while Labour fears any loss of central control. To celebrate ethnic diversity at Westminster is compulsory; to celebrate regional diversity is akin to clog dancing. It “threatens the union”.

The devolution of legislation or at least deliberation to a Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly in 1998 was seen by the many Blairites as an act of weakness, only tolerated in honour of John Smith, the former leader. Blair no sooner conceded it than he fought, unsuccessfully, to control it through his own nominees. Yet devolution remains his one constitutional success. Its institutions are not universally popular — no form of government is these days — their cost is high and their human calibre low. But twice as many Scots are now in favour of devolution as are sceptical. Welsh opposition, once as high as 40%, has halved in five years.

Nobody can visit Edinburgh or Cardiff today and not sense a marked change in confidence and mood. Ask any Scot where he or she lives and the answer is unequivocally Scotland, not Britain. Jack McConnell and Rhodri Morgan are seen as leaders not just of factions but of countries. Devolution has yielded two of the finest parliament buildings in Europe. The local media report and debate to a degree unimaginable before. Even the Welsh, so tentative about devolution at first, have acquired a political identity, a focus of argument they lacked before.

Any sensible politician should want to take this process forward. Yet both Brown and Cameron implied that devolution reflected on the potency of the state. Were they to delegate so much as a penny rate to the Scots or Welsh it would be like Mary Tudor losing Calais. Much-needed reforms to the regime thus seem a lost cause, whether a cut in the number of Scots and Welsh MPs or an end to the Barnett formula for subsidies from London.

Yet nothing so vexes the devolution debate as its version of Fermat’s Last Theorem, the West Lothian question. It knits the highest brows and calls forth tomes of precedent. Why, it asks, should Scottish MPs be able to vote on “domestic” English policies when the converse does not apply? How can this inconsistency be? Nobody asks why there is no such question elsewhere in Europe. Why is there no Galician question, or a Corsican one, or even a Schleswig-Holstein one? The answer is that these questions have long been answered.

The West Lothian question could be met crudely by devolving tax-raising power to Scotland and Wales and reducing their number of Westminster MPs. They would have a reduced influence over English legislation while their assemblies would decide for themselves how far to tax and spend.

Greenland and the Faroes honour the Danish state and crown and are represented in the Danish parliament, yet are autonomous in all domestic affairs and even excuse themselves from the European Union. There are many ways of skinning the West Lothian cat.

But the question dissolves if Westminster MPs were to behave like Scottish and Welsh ones back home, and have no responsibility for the delivery of public services in the cities and counties of England. There is no reason why Westminster MPs, wherever they are from, should be debating and deciding on matters which across Europe (and in Scotland and Wales) are matters for subsidiary government.

It is the spectacle of MPs arguing over school admissions, hospital waiting lists, magistrates’ decisions or the siting of housing estates that makes West Lothian so vexing.

Almost every nation is a federation, a union. Most countries have constitutions that distinguish “common interests” from provincial and local ones. The United Kingdom parliament need be no different. It deals with defence and foreign affairs, economic policy, migration and trade and maintains a rough balance of equity in the distribution of taxes across the union as a whole.
End page one

[fastpat]

Page two
In the matter of public services it should confine itself to setting and monitoring minimum standards. Just as it no longer dictates the pattern and priority of Scotland’s education or health service, its planning and economic development, so it should not do so in England. It should devolve such activities to the counties and cities that used once to be responsible for them and are still so in most continental countries.

Subordinate political entities have shown themselves able to run a full range of public services, accountable to local electorates. It cannot be true that the British are uniquely incompetent at this, unless British politics has made them so. Evidence shows that devolved autonomy yields greater public satisfaction than aloof authority.

*
The over-centralisation of health and education has reduced these services in England at present to near chaos, joining tax credits, farm payments and computerisation. The cover of last week’s Public Finance magazine says it all: “Government on verge of nervous breakdown”.

As Brown recognised in his speech, globalisation has led to a layering of loyalties. More Britons have mixed parentage. Most Scots now have English relatives. Everyone professes “halves and quarters” with the enthusiasm of a medieval genealogist. Indeed we shy nervously away from anyone who shouts “I’m English and proud of it”. The United Kingdom is a melting pot both of foreigners and of its component nations.

There is a world of difference between glorying in this communality and deciding how best to arrange its government. Even people who profess loyalty to Germany, France and Spain expect respect and autonomy as Bavarians, Corsicans and Basques.

Denied that autonomy, their loyalty slides downwards to their group, not upwards to their nation (which is why dictators always crush group identity). Rulers who deny equilibrium between central and local democracy find, as did Madrid in the 1990s and the Tories in Scotland, that locality veers towards separatism.

The fact that Scots and Welsh crave more control over their lives cannot justify the jeering response of Westminster politicians, that they are out to threaten the union. As globalisation pulls in one direction territorial roots pull in the other.

Any “union” between the two is well advised to listen to both. A Scotsman is more likely to be loyal to the crown if the crown renders unto Edinburgh what is rightfully Edinburgh’s.

Thatcher and Sons, an exclusive extract from Simon Jenkins’s new book, News Review

[widebody911]

Of course, we all know what happened to Ireland...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=OKBCCDOUS9U

[fastpat]

Originally posted by widebody911
Of course, we all know what happened to Ireland...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=OKBCCDOUS9U

That's the funniest I've seen all week.

Good show!

[dagriff]

Originally posted by widebody911
Of course, we all know what happened to Ireland...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=OKBCCDOUS9U

Being half Irish & having the surname Griffin, I take double offense to the racial stereotyping and personal slur.
I will be writing to the American Government to ask for lots & lots of money, just as soon as I sober up and beat the wife into making me one of those Scottish deep-fried Mars bars.

[fastpat]

Originally posted by dagriff
Being half Irish & having the surname Griffin, I take double offense to the racial stereotyping and personal slur.
I will be writing to the American Government to ask for lots & lots of money, just as soon as I sober up and beat the wife into making me one of those Scottish deep-fried Mars bars.

Here, eat your Haggis and shut up.

[Moneyguy1]

Just ally yourself with the Grand Duchy of Fenwick. Follow their lead!!

[rob justice]

Next year is the 300th anniversery of the union here.
I think that after 300 years - Scotland's independance is now overdue.
England won't let us go without a fight though, we have everything they need in abundance so the route to an independant Scotland will be anything but easy.

[Jim Richards]

Originally posted by Moneyguy1
Just ally yourself with the Grand Duchy of Fenwick. Follow their lead!!

Yes, much better than France.

[pmajka]

"But what's it all mean Basil?"

--Austin Powers.

[fastpat]

Originally posted by rob justice
Next year is the 300th anniversery of the union here.
I think that after 300 years - Scotland's independance is now overdue.
England won't let us go without a fight though, we have everything they need in abundance so the route to an independant Scotland will be anything but easy.

I wish you all the best of luck in your devolvement.

How many Englismen would have to leave Scotland in order to facilitate it's independence? Just curious, I'd suspect that, like the yankee presence in my state, there are quite a few that have purchased property because it's lower cost than in England.

And last, a more sensitive issue, is there any talk about using the Scottish Courts to recover land taken by the English government from some clans and given to other clans as a means of purchasing their loyalty? A sort of "equaling" things out a bit.

[gaijindabe]

Originally posted by fastpat
land taken by the English government from some clans and given to other clans as a means of purchasing their loyalty?

I want me wee loch back you ba$tard!

[gaijindabe]

Get in my belly!

[Steve PH]

Just to even things up a bit from next year it looks as though the UK will be getting a Scottish Prime Minister, Tony Blair will be stepping down and most likely be handing the reigns over to Scottish MP Gordon Brown. Obviously this means everyone from Lands end to John O'Groats will have to find a family tartan, learn the bag pipes and toss the Caber without expection even if your Muslim*.






*There is bound to be a get out clause for some groups!

[dagriff]

A wise man once said "A country gets the Police force it deserves"



Loved that show.
Love that pipe aroma ..........

[rob justice]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Steve PH
Just to even things up a bit from next year it looks as though the UK will be getting a Scottish Prime Minister, Tony Blair will be stepping down and most likely be handing the reigns over to Scottish MP Gordon Brown. Obviously this means everyone from Lands end to John O'Groats will have to find a family tartan, learn the bag pipes and toss the Caber without expection even if your Muslim*.



Remember they already have a Scottish Prime Minister. Despite the fact its a huge embarrassment to him, Toni Blair was actually born in Edinburgh.
Gordon Brown is a traitor through and through who has sold his soul for English Gold. An image of everything thats been wrong in Scotland for the last 300 years.

[Steve PH]

Tony kept that quiet!

Quote..
Gordon Brown is a traitor through and through who has sold his soul for English Gold. An image of everything thats been wrong in Scotland for the last 300 years. /Quote

Your just bitter regarding Gordon's support for the England football team during the World cup aren't you?! Not that, that did us any good anyway.

Personaly I would be more than happy for Scotland and Wales to become independent, really ought to be put to a referendum.

Yours
Steve the Sassenach!

[rob justice]

Despite the fact Gordon Brown is my MP, the way he's bending over backwards to try and appeal to the English voters would make one sick.
Last week he was actually using the death of his own child to try and win votes. There's no new lows that man can achieve.
Unlike Toni Blair who tries to forget he's a Scot. Gordon Brown is actually embrassed by the fact and it's now becoming a hinderance to his political career.

[fastpat]

Originally posted by Steve PH

Personaly I would be more than happy for Scotland and Wales to become independent, really ought to be put to a referendum.

Yours
Steve the Sassenach!

Anything that gets government closer to those governed is a positive I think. Scottish and Welsh independence would do that.

Good luck gentlemen.

[Steve PH]

I would never welch on a deal but on the other hand I would never spell Welsh as Welch, trust me you don't want to go upsetting the Welsh people!