Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

As part of the U.K. it doesn’t have to be good. Pooling and sharing ... what every nation state does. Wealth is transferred from rich areas to poor ones. What a lot of Nats haven’t realised is that as an independent state, rather than as a nation that is a constituent part of a larger state, pooling and sharing occurs only within its own borders and out of its own resources.

Scotland is still a top 20 economy in world terms, but it has a top 5 expenditure. Living within its means would prove painful, and not just for the first few years. This is something the Nats have worked very hard to obfuscate but, largely since 2014, the truth is now quite widely understood amongst Scottish voters and one of the reasons Sturgeon hasn’t gone hell for leather after another referendum is that she knows a lot of work must first be done on building an economic case that sounds credible.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

So, even if the UK left the EU and Scotland became independent, it looks like they wouldn't be able to rejoin the EU until they reduced their debt.

Presumably we joined the EU as the UK and not as the seperate countries??

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Correct - only the United Kingdom has the right to enter in to international treaties. Scotland is not recognised as a nation state at the UN or anywhere else (nor is England for that matter).

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Isn’t that also what the EU does?

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Scotland has it's own tax raising powers and as such should be held responsible for it's own over-spending.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

I wish someone would enlighten my FiL it's irritating when he goes on about how great the SNP are and how 'the tories' (he says that a lot) are responsible for ALL the worlds ills - going back to Roman times.

Sadly there's no reasoning with him.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Yes, and we are one of the few net contributors to the EU budget.

Whereas, Scotland is dependent on wealth from the rest of the UK. This fact is most probably the main reason why the SNP is so hell bent on staying in the EU.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Not really.

The EU budget is small compared to a full national one, and the EU essentially has no direct tax raising power (albeit it automatically receives a slice of VAT receipts).

EU funds tend to be focused on strategic projects like infrastructure or other economic development. Such projects make a useful contribution to the places where they are located but they are nothing like the scale of wealth transfer that ensures a more-or-less uniform level of health, education and social service provision within a nation state.

The EU even lacks the basic mechanisms to prevent uneven currency accumulation within the Eurozone, both contributing to the recent crisis and hampering the solution. In the USA, which is amongst other things a single Dollar currency zone, around 60% of tax is collected at the Federal level. This helps ensure poor Louisiana is still recognisably in the same nation state as California, which even as a fully independent state would still have a G7 economy.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

I wish people would stop saying that 62% of Scottish people voted to remain in Europe. It is only 62% of Scottish people WHO VOTED chose to remain.

The actual turnout was a low 67% which means that of the Scottish electorate, 42% voted to remain, 25% voted to leave and 33% had no opinion either way.

Nicola knows that there is a very vocal minority shouting for Independence and if another Scottish Independence is called, the silent majority might turn out to vote, a risk she can't take.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

According to that logic, in the UK, since 52% of 72% voted to Leave, only 37.4% voted to Leave... ;)

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

gosh darn it Hugh, I'm no good with statistics (although I do know 5 out of 10 is 50%, and 90% of cats 'that expressed a preference' would rather eat Whiskas than any other cat food) . . but you got me thinking about the % of voters that placed the last two Governments into power :D

how low was it, if you can do a quickie? ;)

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

I don’t agree with the logic, because if you don’t vote, you don’t count - I was just pointing out the flaw, in my eyes, of following that line of thought...

However, it will be amusing that if we have a General Election this year (as is looking more and more likely), it will be ‘democratic’ to have had 4 elections in 9 years, but if we had a 2nd referendum (the 2nd in 3 years), that would be ‘undemocratic"...

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Having General Elections is the normal process.
Having a second referendum because you didnt like the result of the first one is not.

:)

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Especially ‘advisory’ ones... ;-)

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

A referendum is always advisory in our constitution, even if it’s set up to automatically trigger legislation to come in to effect (which this one wasn’t), because Parliament can’t bind its successors and a future Parliament can always repeal something done by a predecessor. Referendums lean on precedent for their authority, which in the few cases they have been used in our constitution, means that Parliament enacts the result of the referendum (or does not, in the case of status quo).

It is undemocratic to hold a second referendum because it contravenes both precedent and the specific undertaking that the result would be enacted. It undermines public trust in the process and automatically dilutes the authority of any future referendum result, on whatever issue.*

It is not undemocratic to hold repeated general elections because that is the customary means (established by centuries of precedent) by which our constitution deals with a situation where a government cannot get its business through Parliament.

* To drag this back on topic, Sturgeon is playing a very risky hand by voicing support for a second referendum. If she ever manages to win one in Scotland, her words will return to haunt the entire Nat movement.