Posted on 08/23/2020 10:08:43 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
“Scotland has 5 million people, it has industry and services”
I was there a few years ago. It seems the three major industries are Whiskey, Wool, and government.
Thinking itself safe from invaders, Scotland thinks independence would mean it could save money on defense. Sort of like Canada or Germany. Canada spends 1.3 percent of GDP instead of 2 percent. Germany 1.4 percent. However, Scotland received more in welfare from England than it would save in defense. So, at some point, reality should set it.
Last time Scotland voted on leaving the U.K., it thought it would fetch a lot of money from North Sea oil. Then, they realized Scotland’s part of North Sea oil was nearly depleted. At current prices, British north sea oil isn’t profitable to extract.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_Scotland%27s_oil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_oil
Scotland did get back that ‘Stone of Destiny’, time will tell if they fully realize what was returned to them.
He was great as Dr. Who. The scripts needed a little work here and there.
The UK would suddenly become a much more conservative place without Scotland.
Capaldi was a lot better than the current Doctor. The scripts during his era may have needed a little work, but they were masterpieces compared to the crap the new extra-woke showrunner has been putting out the past two seasons.
The independence movement assumes that Scotland would then be able to join the EU as a new member, but Spain might veto that—not wanting to set a precedent for Catalonia to try to break away from Spain.
There is no such thing as independence in the EU.
It has a lot of banking and financial services.
it's never going to rival England - which is too large, but at $200 billion will be a mid-sized economy. Denmark or Norway have a GDP of 355 or 400 billion USD with a comparable population. Scotland will be initially poorer
For many years until 2017, Scotland paid more into the national pot than it got out of it.
Also, with Scotland out of the UK, industries will not move to London, but rather move to another English-speaking center that would be in the EU
There is a lot of independence in the EU - those are independent countries, unlike the nations in the UK
Why would any country want to take over Scotland with its welfare burden? It doesn’t need a military. Costa Rica gets along fine without one. Whether Scotland can survive without England supporting it is another matter.
(True, English is one of its two official languages, but very few people speak Gaelic as their first language and probably all of them are also fluent in English. My only visit to Ireland was in 1980--I overheard some people speaking Gaelic between themselves, but they spoke fluent English as well.)
I was in Edinburgh right before the referendum, There were YES signs everywhere.
Kinda surprised when the results were no but the reality is Scotland is just too dependent on GB.
hearing a propah Oirishman speaking “English” - you might think it were a different language
Not this one. The Union has been a wondrous thing, and it would be a sad day if ever it were to be dissolved. The sum of the parts would be very much less than the whole.
The big problem with that is that the UK needs an RAF base in Scotland to police the GIUK gap. An SNP defence spokesman once suggested that RAF Lossimouth would be used as a bargaining chip (read ‘blackmail’) in order to get into NATO without having to spend 2% of GDP on defence and in spite of causing anger within NATO for neutralising the UK nuclear base on the Clyde (despite NATO being an explicitly nuclear alliance).
However, the silver lining is that the Shetlands and Orkneys are strongly opposed to independence, and there has been talk of them having their own referendum to either stay with the UK or become a self-governing Crown Dependency like the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands (Jersey and Guernsey). The latter would be an extremely tempting offer as it would give them access to much of the oil field resources coveted by the Scottish nationalists, and in return, we could relocate the air base to one of those islands and Scotland’s stragetic location would be irrelevent.
The big problem with that is that the UK needs an RAF base in Scotland to police the GIUK gap. An SNP defence spokesman once suggested that RAF Lossimouth would be used as a bargaining chip (read ‘blackmail’) in order to get into NATO without having to spend 2% of GDP on defence and in spite of causing anger within NATO for neutralising the UK nuclear base on the Clyde (despite NATO being an explicitly nuclear alliance).
However, the silver lining is that the Shetlands and Orkneys are strongly opposed to independence, and there has been talk of them having their own referendum to either stay with the UK or become a self-governing Crown Dependency like the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands (Jersey and Guernsey). The latter would be an extremely tempting offer as it would give them access to much of the oil field resources coveted by the Scottish nationalists, and in return, we could relocate the air base to one of those islands and Scotland’s stragetic location would be irrelevent.
Costa Rica gets along fine without one because they know Uncle Sam would take a very dim view of another country invading them and would send a carrier task group and boatloads of marines to come and break all the invader’s sh*t.
That is the trouble with a lot of these small, self-righteously pacifist countries, they already know that much bigger and more powerful nations will come and defend them if they are threatened by another foreign power but they don’t want to contribute to their own safety and security.
Similarly, although Scotland would have a tiny defence force to provide a tokenistic provision for their own defence and regional security, they (the ScotNats) know that ultimately, England (or the rUK) could not tolerate any attempt to invade or attack Scotland for their own security and would soon rush up over the border to secure the beaches if there was any hint of a threat.
The Republic of Ireland too, for all they despise us as the foreign power that once excercise sovereignty over them, relies on the RAF to defend their skies, free of charge, and so they can save a ton of money in not spending taxpayers money on a few Gripens to police their airspace. Again, we can’t afford not to because a threat to Irish airspace is also a threat to the UK and they know it.
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