I was playing around with Formerly United Commonwealth/Kingdom of Southern Nations and Provinces.
I seem to recall that there is a Scottish pound. Its a different looking note, much more prevalent in Scotland, but acceptable everywhere.
Three Scottish banks can issue notes, as can some in Northern Ireland too, although of course they all represent pounds sterling rather than being separate currencies. One of the oddities is that you can get Danske Bank notes in Northern Ireland now, since it took over an NI bank - a Danish bank group issuing notes in the British currency.
It is just a different banknote, not a separate currency. It is still backed by the Bank of England, but issued by a Scottish bank. There are also similar notes issued by banks in Northern Ireland, and some other provinces (but not Wales).
Try exchanging one for anything overseas. It might be a proper pound note, but it gets anything from funny looks to downright refusal. I was once offered 80p in the pound exchange as well. Faintly amusing.
But that happens a lot with “real” currencies too. You pretty much have to spend all your Nepali or Cambodian money in country. You can’t even get Cambodian or Lao money exchanged in Thailand.
Sure, but this is a real UK Pound - one of the main currencies that is accepted almost everywhere on the planet. The guy that offered me 80p in the pound would cheerfully accept a Bank of England pound note at face value, but not the Scottish one. In principle, the only difference is the design of the note, not the currency. Both are backed by the same government, and are interchangeable in the UK.
Oh, that sort of thing happens in the UK as well - it shouldn’t, but it does.
Yep. On my first trip to the UK, I had a Scottish 5 pound note left over when I made my way to Wales, and one of the small-town locals gave me the stink-eye when I gave it to him, as if it wasn’t real money or something.
The Scottish and Northern Ireland banknotes are not legal tender, and they’re not widely accepted in consumer transactions outside Scotland and Northern Ireland respectively.
Technically, they are promissory notes - you can present them to the issuing bank and demand legal tender currency in return - but since the issuing banks tend not to have many branches outside Scotland or Northern Ireland, actually redeeming the notes could, in theory, be a considerable inconvenience.
In practice it’s not, since any UK clearing bank will negotiate them for you at no charge. So the traditional reluctance of merchants in England and Wales to accept them probably has more to do with the inconvenience of handling cash which includes non-uniform banknotes - greater likelihood of counting errors, plus you can’t hand them out in change since customers generally don’t want them and can’t be compelled to accept them.
The Scots are not fools. Here is a prediction of how they will vote:
FOR=23%
AGAINST=57%
DONT KNOW=12%
SPOILED BALLATS=8%
If they were to go independent Labour would never win another election.
There are 40 labour seats in Scotland.
Labour won its last three elections with majorities substantially larger than 40.
You mean Labour would never win another election in rump-UK?
Even if that were true, why would that bother the Scots, if they were independent of the UK? I don’t think you quite grasp what this independence lark is all about.
It does make for some pause inducing issues for both political camps. Right now the Conservatives and Labour are single parties. If Scotland secedes, there will be four parties. The political landscape will be significantly changed. Labour England, is probably not too thrilled at the idea of losing Scotland, as it provides a very welcome safe set of seats. A good majority gets turned into a a marginal one, if not outright defeat. The Scottish Conservatives probably are none to thrilled either, as they are probably looking at many many years in the wilderness, even though their English counterparts may be much bolstered. Scottish Labour might relish the thought of a safe election or three, but still might miss the fact that they are now no longer part of running a much bigger pond. I rather suspect that both sides of politics will have the feeling that they might prefer the status quo, if for no other reason, that is what they are comfortable with.
The question of a Scottish currency might well be the elephant in the room.
I think you’re overlooking the fact that the UK is already a federal state, in effect. Scottish Labour’s aspirations are directed towards governing Scotland much more than towards providing a small number of Scottish Labour members to support a Westminster administration made up of mostly Englishmen. Yes, as long as Scotland is in the UK they’d very much like the UK to have a Labour government, but if Scotland leaves the UK the fact that they won’t have the opportunity to participate in any Labour government the UK may have is not really a big deal.
The Scottish Conservatives are already a marginal political movement in Scotland, where they hold just 15 seats out of 129. Their political heritage leads them to favour the Union, plus the only way they are ever going to influence the government of Scotland is by maintaining the Union, and hoping for a Tory government in Westminster. So both for reasons of principle and self-interest, they will oppose independence. But they are such a marginal force in Scottish politics that their stance on the matter may not be terribly relevant to the outcome.
As for currency, I don’t think an independent Scottish currency is on anyone’s agenda. They either link to the pound sterling, or they adopt the euro.
It wouldn’t bother them, of course, but nevertheless the Scots aren’t going to vote YES. It simply isn’t going to happen.
There’s a big difference between giving it the Braveheart braggadocio in interviews and opinion polls, and actually voting to have the purse strings cut.
And seeing as even the most pro-independence opinion polls have barely even hinted at a majority Yes vote (and they have likely been influenced by giving too much weight to the opinions of young people), there is not a hope in hell that Yes will win.
Actually, the opinion polls show that young people are even more averse to independence than older people. Which I find heartening as it suggests they are less sectarian than their parents.
Labour would certainly win elections, from time to time, in a UK without Scotland. It would just be a little more difficult. They won England comfortably in 2005, despite Tony Blair’s falling popularity (and despite getting fewer votes than the Conservatives - remember that the relative geographic concentration of their support makes a Labour vote count for more - in that instance, 50% more seats!)
Even if they did find themselves persistently losing elections, they would obviously adjust their policies and style a little, as they did in the 1990s.
I have had problems a couple of times with NI bank notes while in England but I always say “If I were making a counterfeit note I’d make it look like all the other ones”.
When I worked at Queen’s University in Belfast, I remember we had to warn students from China and N. America that if they decided to day trip to Dublin, the Irish police did sometimes stop buses for stop checks. They’d send students who hadn’t applied for a visa to visit Ireland back to the border.
I also seem to remember that there are border checks at the moment in Scottish ferry ports, for those travelers who wish to enter and illegally settle in the UK not via France but Ireland. They arrive in the south of Ireland, travel north to Belfast, then take the ferry across to Scotland.