It is apparently a thing.
With less than two weeks to go until Scotland’s referendum, polls suggest an increase in those favoring independence from the United Kingdom, with one survey for the first time putting the “yes” vote ahead.
I don’t really have that much of an opinion, except to note that the apparent willingness of the English to let Scotland go if the vote goes that way is a bit of a change, historically speaking. Typically England always did its best to keep the damned place.
If Scotland leaves the Union it’ll kill the Labor party for the foreseeable future.
Does Scotland even have the tax base to support it’s socialist tendencies? Might be the best reason to let them go. They may be disabused of a great many assumptions.
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Of course, Scotts would probably start emigrating south…
or have their benefits sent north. You can do that in Europe, actually. The Scots who emigrate south will be the responsible ones, leaving behind the Neds.
I wish Scotland would wake up the morning after with a hangover, cut the tax rate and shriunk the benfits – in fact, that is the great John Fund argument, that Scotland will become Slovakia in a kilt. More likely, it will become a second failed state on an ever shrinking British border, receiving prop-up subsidies from London and Brussels, and squabbling with Irish cousins over who gets the multinationals. It will make Greece look like Switzerland.
The bigger problem is that with a shrunken armed force, the UK simply can’t be a player alongside the US, Canada & Australia, should a unified military response ever be required.
What the UK SHOULD do is have Prince Harry offer signed 8×10 glossies to every 16 year old who takes a selfie voting yes. And they need to have a huge Better Together rock concert on the border, with the Queen parachuting out of a plane with the members of One Direction and all 97 of her corgis.
Stop the pie charts, bring out the hashtags!
I actually support Scotland’s independence.
As Jeff noted, the fact that Paul Krugman opposes it is a big argument that you’re right to do so. 🙂
I was ambivalently amused about the whole idea; then I found out Paul Krugman is against it. http://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2014/09/08/scottish-independence-is-a-terrible-idea/
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Based upon the theory that the opposite of anything Krugman believes is an unqualified Good, I no wholeheartedly support Scottish independence.
I now wholeheartedly support.
Enough of my ancestors died fighting to keep England out of Scotland, that I wholeheartedly support Independence.
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That it might give my degraded distant relatives a good deal of incentive to grow the (bleep) up, and cripple Labor is merely frosting on the cake.
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My take on it is simple:
You can easily make a case of the nations staying together for the greater glory of the United Kingdom.
But the Leftists, who are dependent upon the nations staying together, are fundamentally unable or unwilling to make that case.
They can’t renounce their International orientation, and they can’t renounce Socialism.
Poor little commies. They’re on the wrong side of history.