Fear of Scoxit?

I feel that if you are going to vote for something then you need to know as much about it as possible. I think so many people didn't research the implications of brexit before they voted. I do feel Scotland (and Wales) need to be able to have more control over what happens in this country, if the only way that is possible is independence then that should be supported. What applies to London doesn't always work for those in other parts of England let alone Scotland or Wales.
 
I used to work with a guy from Wick Caithness, which is about as far north as you can get in Scotland without getting wet. When he was young, he worked in various places in Scotland as an engineer, but everyone he knew told him, "You have to move to Manchester". He resisted any assignments in Manchester (England) for a while but he finally caved and took an assignment there. Once he had an English company address on his resume, it opened a whole new world for him. He could work as an equal in any English company after that whereas before, he would not have been able to get a decent job.

What are Scots going to do once they need a passport and work visa to go from Scotland to England?

What currency are they going to use?

Is the EU really open to having Scotland join once England is gone? The EU does not want another PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain) fiasco with countries that drag the economy down. But the EU may want another English-speaking country besides Ireland as a place where American companies can set up shop, gain access to the EU and contribute to general growth. Do the people of Scotland want to close themselves off from the opportunity to get work experience and gateway jobs in England?

Do you really believe things can't get worse?
 
The Bronze said:
You don't mean Theresa "Brexit means Brexit" May do you?
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She's better than Cameron, Brown, and Blair. Also out of all those in the running to take over as Tory leader, she was the best of the bunch.

Scotland leaving would be like if individual states in the US decided they wanted independence.
 
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nightshade said:
I feel that if you are going to vote for something then you need to know as much about it as possible. I think so many people didn't research the implications of brexit before they voted. I do feel Scotland (and Wales) need to be able to have more control over what happens in this country, if the only way that is possible is independence then that should be supported. What applies to London doesn't always work for those in other parts of England let alone Scotland or Wales.
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I agree with this. And this is where there are fault on both sides of the debate, and where the majority of the politicians involved should hang their heads in shame. From my point of view I see the EU as an outdated system which has created more problems than solved in recent year. Plus I think it is reasonable to want greater control over our own boarders. Though I am very much Pro Immigration and hate that so much of the debate has become about that. Its also a shame that I don't have faith in May and the Tories to get us a good deal. But only time will tell on that one.

As time has gone on I have seen more the Scottish point of view on wanting to leave the UK. It is taking a gamble though. If the result comes back the same this time, then it will seem a waste of time. And no one can say for sure if they will be better off anyway. My guess is that before long they will get a second chance to vote. But this time if the result is the same, then I think that really has to be it for a generation then.
 
As an Englishman, I can see positives and negatives in Scottish independence - I work for a Scottish registered company, and I remember the angry response from Scottish staff to the announcement a couple of months before the referendum that in the event of a Yes vote, the company would re-register in England. Unlike Brexit, Scottish independence could be negotiated over a period of time and would probably have to be- you would need to sort out things like the share of the UK national debt, responsibilities for infrastructure and so on. One of the problems, I recall, was that the Scottish financial sector was disproportionately big compared to the rest of the economy, and an independent Scotland would never be able to bail it out in the event of another financial crisis.

I think the key thing is that Scotland kept its institutions - legal system, education etc. so it functions more like an American state than a region of the UK- personally I'd like to see more devolution in England, but what's interesting is that twenty years of devolution really seem to have energised politics in Scotland so that nothing is taken for granted any more. Campaigners for Yorkshire devolution will tell you that Yorkshire has a larger population than Scotland and a bigger economy than Wales!
 
Bloody oath mate.
I've been told that Bluebird and GwenRaiden will come a visiting if I don't say the right thing.
 
November
November
Winter would melt in summer
Just a quick follow up on the current farcical situation in the UK. We're about to make the biggest decision of a lifetime and leave the EU. That referendum result was heavily influenced by a pack of lies about funding our NHS, which is acknowledged here by the director of the campaign.

The Vote Leave director admits that Brexit wouldn't have won without the £350 million for the NHS lies

The party that called the referendum in the first place, through fear of losing votes to their slightly further right sister party, gained power through widespread electoral fraud in 2015.

The whistleblowers who admit that they unwittingly helped the Tories commit electoral fraud

The Scottish would be mad not to at least consider independence given that the vast majority of their country voted against both of these outcomes.
 
The Bronze said:
Just a quick follow up on the current farcical situation in the UK. We're about to make the biggest decision of a lifetime and leave the EU. That referendum result was heavily influenced by a pack of lies about funding our NHS, which is acknowledged here by the director of the campaign.

The Vote Leave director admits that Brexit wouldn't have won without the £350 million for the NHS lies

The party that called the referendum in the first place, through fear of losing votes to their slightly further right sister party, gained power through widespread electoral fraud in 2015.

The whistleblowers who admit that they unwittingly helped the Tories commit electoral fraud

The Scottish would be mad not to at least consider independence given that the vast majority of their country voted against both of these outcomes.
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Sorry but I don't buy that. First of all I doubt that most people actually believed that promise. And second like Trump getting elected I think a big part of Brexit came from a protest vote.
 
Mr Trick said:
Sorry but I don't buy that. First of all I doubt that most people actually believed that promise. And second like Trump getting elected I think a big part of Brexit came from a protest vote.
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I agree that some would have been a protest vote, but many of the campain lies came thru on my social media. People who Aussies would consider well educated, but with very busy lives, unable to spend a long time researching, I gather. The people who liked and shared these blatant lies were teachers, psychologists, speech therapist - the type of people who 'should' know if given appropriate time and resources. How are the less educated to know what the university educated do not?

Our state election is tomorrow. In the midsts of the advertisements, it it extremely confusing to me. Do the disabled vote over there? I am very easily swayed by any threat to free medical or welfare, but cant know until after the vote if they had lied this time.
 
I agree that a lot of people who voted were uncertain exactly what they have been voting for (though that claim is becoming overused too), and that's because people representing both sides of the debate were guilty of not giving them the information to make a truly informed vote.

I don't understand how this guy who has come out can know for certain why people voted. Only they know that surely. Think this is just someone grabbing a headline. And certain people from the remain side are now looking for things to convince others that leaving the EU was the wrong choice. The reality is that hardly anyone who voted to leave, now regret their decision. If there was another vote today I highly doubt the result would be different.
 
Mr Trick said:
I agree that a lot of people who voted were uncertain exactly what they have been voting for (though that claim is becoming overused too), and that's because people representing both sides of the debate were guilty of not giving them the information to make a truly informed vote.

I don't understand how this guy who has come out can know for certain why people voted. Only they know that surely. Think this is just someone grabbing a headline. And certain people from the remain side are now looking for things to convince others that leaving the EU was the wrong choice. The reality is that hardly anyone who voted to leave, now regret their decision. If there was another vote today I highly doubt the result would be different.
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I don't think there should be another vote because on the chance the outcome was different then you would need another vote to do a best of 3. Of course the remain campaign would want to stop at a second vote if they got their way. I agree with you that hardly anyone who voted to leave regrets their decision. The UK voted leave so we should leave.
 
The next step for me is for all political parties (or the main ones anyway) to get to together and discuss what is the best way to leave the EU and I think the public should be involved in that process too.
 
Scotland should seriously rethink the idea of joining the EU. Brexit will be short term pain for long term gain.

Past performance is no guarantee of future stability. The problem with the EU is that most of its member countries that use the Euro (unlike the UK that retained the Pound Sterling) can no longer devalue or revalue their currency to make up for balance of trade issues. Countries like Greece that allow civil servants to retire at age 55 on a pension of 90% of previous earnings have to compete with countries like Germany that have set the retirement age as 67 with a lesser pension. Normally Greece could have devalued the drachma in step with the lesser amount of work individual Greeks perform but with a common currency, they are dragging the entire EU down. The EU is also ill-equipped to handle any form of natural disaster and the earthquake cycle is getting more intense in Europe.

The EU was slow to react to the terrorist threat and the refugee crisis and therefore when incidents happened, it spawned the rise of islamophobic political parties within member countries. A failure of the economy of any one country in the EU can bring the entire edifice down. And to a large extent, the EU is not a democratic institution. It has the European Council made up of the 28 (soon to be 27) national governments, the European Commission that negotiates trade agreements, enforces antitrust legislation and most importantly, proposes legislation. The 751-member European Parliament is elected by voters in every nation but its members cannot propose legislation and have little control over the budget. There is no equivalent to a private member's bill in democratic institutions and the long delays and lagging response are built into the system due the separation of elected members (who would see the need for proposed legislation) and the commission and there is no guarantee that the commission would act on any input from members of parliament. One example of this was that the UK government wanted to abolish the tax on feminine hygiene products but they couldn't because they are not a sovereign nation in the EU - that decision would have to be proposed by the commission then voted on with the vote taken over all of the EU member countries. This was one of the examples used in the UK in favour of Brexit.

The plus side touted for the EU is that people can take jobs in any member country without the usual hassles of work visas and citizenship quotas. But there would still be a way of getting foreign workers into the EU - just not as transparently as it is done now. (I was once offered a job in the US under an H1-B visa which allows foreign workers to live and work in the US and there is an equivalent in the EU - you would just have to convince your intended employer that you are worth the extra paperwork over someone from within the EU.)
 
But the question I was wondering was in relation to the article. If you are British do you fear Scotland leaving the UK? They forecast the pound falling even further, they forecast the loss of the North Sea Oil reserves. It sounds to be like it would really be a hardship on the UK if Scotland left. That's what I was wondering; if the UK fears the impact Scotland leaving would have on their economy.
 
I'm not sure about that- the flip side of the coin is that a lot of public money goes into the infrastructure of Scotland, particularly in maintaining links to the islands and sparsely-populated areas of the Highlands. Large areas in and around the central belt of Scotland- essentially the most densely populated region of the country, between Glasgow and Edinburgh, have never recovered from the loss of traditional industries - coal, steel and engineering.

The reason the pound would fall further would be because the level of uncertainty about the future of the UK would just start to snowball. Our situation at the moment is that if the current government fell, there just aren't the people in our politics with the necessary experience to hold things together.
 
Ianigsy said:
The reason the pound would fall further would be because the level of uncertainty about the future of the UK would just start to snowball.
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Exactly. And also the perception of the UK to those it's wanting/needing to trade with. I think it would make it extremely difficult for the UK if Scotland left. If I were in the UK I would be worried. But hey, the US will always be your pals.
 
Its a time of change and instability all round. For me the key is the single market. If we stay in that then I don't really see many problems a foot. But I don't trust that this government really wants to do that. Or at least they don't seem to be fighting for it.

Another thing that Scotland has to remember is right now most of the expects are actually predicting that they would be worse off finically if they left the UK.
 
A whole lot of people I know are at the point they do not even care about the economy or currency; they just want their independence. People are ready to take any risk because it's a case of "can't get any worse" when the end result would be freedom from the Tories.
 
GwenRaiden said:
A whole lot of people I know are at the point they do not even care about the economy or currency; they just want their independence. People are ready to take any risk because it's a case of "can't get any worse" when the end result would be freedom from the Tories.
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The Tories won't be in power forever though. And this is a long term and big picture decision. Think there are bigger things in play than who happens to be in power right now.
 
GwenRaiden said:
A whole lot of people I know are at the point they do not even care about the economy or currency; they just want their independence. People are ready to take any risk because it's a case of "can't get any worse" when the end result would be freedom from the Tories.
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It's just strange how eerily reminiscent all of this is to me.
 
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