English-Scots border.
Well, it was British (ok, Britannia if you are being pedantic ;))-Scots border before it was the English-Scots border ;).
Quite right. Posted in error.
I still think letting 16 yr olds vote is a bad idea. When I was 16 in the US the voting age was 21, soon to drop to 18. I was an exceptionally serious and political boy, very aware of current events around the world, and I would have thought then that my peers had no business near a voting booth because they were neither serious nor political nor aware. Which was okay; I didn’t expect them to be anything but teenagers, and would never expect them to want to go near a voting booth.
Scotland this time seems different. My fear is that the show biz atmosphere will not just bring out the serious-minded kids who are weighing all the options, but also the rabble voting “Scotland! Fuck, yeah!” without a serious thought in their heads.
Yeah, I’ve always had an elitist bend, but its also that I cannot stand teenaged boys and, down deep, believe they should be carted off to workfarms and conservation camps until they are 22. 
I have similar misgivings, but the kids in the audience of the debate were bright, sparky and fully engaged and informed about the subject. I fear these were a minority, the clever kids who will go onto university.
The UK is a representative democracy. We employ politicians to mull over the nuances of constitution, economic strategy and international relations. That is their job. It is a big deal pass this responisbility to the electorate, most of whom are too busy getting on with their lives to consider these complicated questions.
But then again, this is a once in a generation event. I should think the whole country will be completely exhausted by 18th September.
MPs in Westminster each have a responsibility for a constituency which holds roughly the same number of voters. Part of their job is represent the interests of their constituency. When it comes to public service jobs, there is a policy of moving departments with large numbers of staff to areas that need jobs. Lobbying for jobs and encouraging economic development and private investment also happens on a regional and national level.
The big problem with independence and the divorce negotiations will be disentangling all that so that important government functions are not being handled it what will be an foreign country. It is the same with big businesses. Spliting Scotland off from the UK will mean they will have to reorganise their operations to take account of the fact that there will be two different economic/political regimes which may diverge.
All of the big organisations in the UK will have do a due diligence regarding Scottish independence. That is not a trivial task and it will reveal the restructuring costs and difficult organisational challenges.
Three hundred years of union will not come apart easily.
“Yes” campaign in turmoil as Loch Ness Monster moves official domicile to Windermere. The blows keep coming.
In other news,apparently Ben Nevis is relocating to Snowdonia.
absolutely not behind the wheel of a car or the front of a girl.
except for my boys, they were great.
Three hundred years of union will not come apart easily.
[/QUOTE]
It took 500 years of bribery and aggression, not to mention atrocities, for England to seize Scotland. 300 years to try to tame it, 10 seconds in the voting booth to go back to zero.
It seems like both England and Scotland were guilty of aggression and atrocities against each other before Union.
Which was a voluntary union, not a “seizure”. I’m sure this has already been explained to **crucible **in earlier threads.
You forgot to add “FREEDOM”.
England in the Middle Ages had around 3 million population; Scotland had up to a million. These weren’t vast entities, slouching towards Barbarossa.
Now and again either side would foray over the border, burning and looting: both were much the same, apart from the fact as I said, that Scotland was the poorest country in Europe, thanks entirely to geography.
The only bribery occurred with Henry VIII, interfering in Scottish politics and trying to join the twa countries in the War of the Rough Wooing, etc. — although cretinously he wanted to bar his Stuart successors in defiance of primogeniture — and at the 1707 Union. Scottish politicians were always eminently bribable.
‘There are few more impressive sights in the world than a Scotsman on the make.’ — J. M. Barrie
They ‘tamed’ it by fostering innovation and sharing Empire: the Scots were the backbone of the British Empire, and for a wee people, got absolutely everywhere to run it, from Westminster to trade, to soldiering to engineering.
It only takes 10 seconds to blow your brains out.
Semivoluntary at least. Scotland was having bankruptcy due to the failed Darien colony, and England was threatening to put tariffs in Scotish goods in retaliation for them not agreeing to the Hannoverian sucrssion. So England definatrly held the whip hand.
The second Union was voluntry. The first, the one which gets no respect was certainly not and although admittedly, the Scots were then involuntarily chucked out later.
I have two (10great) uncles who were starved to death by the English on a prison ship in New York Harbor. a bunch of (8 or 9 great grandparents) who had to flee for their lives with their property seized for being Jacobite supporters…I’m not the one to give the English any credit.
On the other hand, one of my other gggggggggrandparents, English, emigrated to Jamestown in about 1609, shipwrecked on Bermuda, wrote a tract about it and had the story stolen by this playwrite in London who became famous as a result 
the natives killed him about 7 years later, but his wife and sons survived the attack and founded a line that included 6 men who were with Boone at Boonesboro during the English/native attacks of 1777 and 1778. One of them has a statue on the Capital grounds in Lexington. In their case, 160 years of life in the ‘Colonies’ left them with no patriotism for England and an abiding thirst for land they could claim beyond the Blue Ridge.
So, I don’t doubt there are excellent reasons why Scotland should remain part of GB and NI, but when the thirst for independence strikes some particular Scotsman, he answers the question about his intention to vote for independence, “Damned Right!” A bit of watered down beer is not too big a price to pay for ‘Freedom’.
I wonder if it was put to a democratic vote, 1707?
I don’t know. And as a “yes” voter, I can tell you that I don’t give a shit. This is not about righting perceived historical wrongs.
It doesn’t matter, really, as nothing was put to a democratic vote then. It was ratified by the Scottish Parliament after many months of deliberation.