Apparently this has led to more people in Northern Ireland asserting their right to identify as Irish citizens in order to avail of cheaper college in Scotland. This includes many within the community who might otherwise be uncomfortable being identified as Irish citizens. 
Think a credible centre-right party, not named the Tories, would clean up in Scotland. Just my feeling from living there 10 years - a lot of Tory hate but equally a load of small-c conservatism IME.
Not a supporter of independence myself, for many reasons, (nearly voted Tory over it in the last election when I lived there, but bottled it at the polling station) but bottom line is similar to what Martin Hyde posted - such a separation demands a historic timeliness, an overwhelming case to be made - we’re light years away from those conditions prevailing IMO. I admire their taking a stand against the draining gravitational force wielded by the London city-state, and wish we could do similar in the North of England, but not to the extent of independence.
Speaking of timeliness - a rosier economic climate would have put a far different complexion on the vote. The walloping recieved by Iceland, Ireland etc in the crash has rocked confidence (all over) at quite a deep level IMO.
Fuck him! Prince Michael of Albany!
Yeah, Scotland has plenty of conservatism but their perspective over the past 40 years or so is that the Conservative Party is actually the English Party. Scotland used to have its own conservative party - the Unionists, a descendant of the old Liberal Party - which were subsumed into the Conservatives in 1965. Something not unlike the relationship between the German CDU and the Bavarian CSU prevailed.
Some have argued that Scottish conservatism may revive if the Unionist Party was reformed and the Conservatives disengaged.
Of course, the last King of Scotland was Idi Amin . . . did he leave any heirs?
Unfortunately, he ate them all.
Ah, of course if he were Scottish, it wouldn’t be as bad as it sounds. Maybe.
See post 69.
Why not?
In my rough layman’s understanding of the issue, there are criteria for joining that involve the status of one’s current currency, reserves and economic status, and actions you have to take to align your currency with the euro in order for transition not to perturb the wider Eurozone or crash your own economy. If you don’t control your currency, you can’t meet any of those criteria or perform those actions.
If I may attempt a crude metaphor, it’s like trying to step from one speedboat to another - if you’re in control of one you can pull alongside the other and match speed. If you’re just a passenger, at best you’d have to hope that the two get within jumping distance and that you can then fling yourself headlong into the other boat without killing yourself or landing on someone. It is unlikely to end well.
Yes, I’m daft, but I wasn’t making any claims about whether Scots would have a lot of changes, just that the rest of the world would care very little whether Scotland had finally kicked out the English, the wonderful neighbors who raped and burned across Scotland after the last feeble attempt to restore the Stuarts there. Their crimes created the USA so far as I am concerned.
I think some people are placing too much emphasis on ancient history such as the Stuarts, Bannockburn, etc. This is not Braveheart. That stuff has very little bearing on the contemporary question of Scottish separatism.
Honestly, this post is just silly. You do understand that no country can accept someone invading, with foreign assistance, and claiming to be king of the whole country (and Ireland), right? Especially when he wants to restore absolute monarchy? It’s always perplexing when people think a minority should be able to impose their will on a majority, and for the majority to use their power to win is some kind of bullying. Some people are just desperate to support “the little guy”, regardless of the facts.
Quite. And let’s note that there’s nothing in the 700-odd pages of the SNP’s policy document that says “We should be independent because the English are nasty, nasty people.”
FFS, in the last few hundred years the Scottish have much more oppressed by their own homegrown upper class than they ever were by the English (read anything by Andy Wightman for some devastating critiques on this.) As for “kicking out the English” - the Union came about when England paid off Scotland’s debts after Scotland’s failed colony in Darien.
Using pre-British stuff like the Stuarts to make an anti-British / anti-English case is just bizarre.
While this is, like the others, not relevant to Scottish politics today, if I recall correctly, the Darien incident also involved an English conspiracy to make Scotland solely liable for the losses.
There was no such conspiracy I’ve ever heard of. The English refused to invest in the scheme from the beginning and then refused to go to war with Spain of behalf of Scotland when things went south, but I can’t really say I blame them on either point.
Not entirely. No doubt there were selfish reasons for why the English government failed to support the Darien Scheme, another was that King William was quite wary at the time of provoking a general war by upsetting Spain, and it was recognised by William - as King of England and Scotland - that the area the Darien Scheme took place on was Spanish territory. So he issued a general warning to all his subjects not to trade or correspond with any Darien colonists.
Union didn’t take place because England and Scotland were doing terribly well as neighbours, or even because England was grasping for domination. England already dominated Scotland at that time economically and politically through the Union of the Crowns. The Union of Parliaments was brought about principally from fear of a Stuart restoration in Edinburgh would have wrecked the alliance against France.
I recommend the book The Union: England, Scotland and the Treaty of 1707 by Michael Fry, who is in fact a Scots nationalist (although not of the SNP stripe).
Missed the edit. I wanted to say that concern for the Succession was a concern shared by English and Scottish Unionists, but also Scots Unionists felt that Scotland could only become economically and politically progressive in Union with England.
Also, unlike the English Parliament, where the Treaty was rushed through with barely a debate, the Scots were given plenty of time to debate and approve each clause of the Treaty, and we able to add more clauses protecting the Scottish economy, and protecting the established presbyterian Church.
Am I mistaken in thinking that the East India Company conspired to prevent the Scottish company from getting investment from anywhere outside Scotland, thus making the loss a catastrophe for Scotland’s national economy?
Here’s what Wikipedia says: