From the comments, on Scottish independence

In response to my original post, Alex Buchanan writes:

Where to start? As a Scot living in Scotland and very much intending to vote YES I have to take issue on many things stated here. First of all your emphasis on the term “partnership”. There has never been a partnership between England and Scotland, Scotland has always been told what to do and if Scotland doesn’t like it Scotland has to lump it. We are more socially aware of our society with a more caring emphasis on what is good for OUR nation, Scotland, as a whole, not the dog eat dog right wing politics of England which is more of a right wing society. See Tory and ukip voting patterns. As for the currency we will be using? It will be sterling! Sterling does not just belong to England and if we’re in a currency union or not, we will still use sterling just like many other former commonwealth countries did before. The matter of us being in the EU is still debatable. Many EU institutions have intimated that Scotland will be welcome with open arms and even some unionist politicians have said we will have no problems joining. Ask your Westminster government they can get the answers. By the way I don’t think it has escaped your notice that we are already dominated by the EU and Westminster to boot. So what’s new? We can cut out the middle man whose sole interest is to look after London first. We are also getting an in-out referendum on membership of the EU in 2017. Can you tell me if we’ll still be in the EU after that? Tell me Tyler? What is the mechanism for evicting an already member of the EU? I don’t think there is one.

You cite that we have no practical reason to leave. Well how about self determination? How about being able to take decisions for ourselves? How about not going into useless wars? How about not having nuclear weapons, that England won’t have, located on our doorstep? Or how about having our wealth squandered on the South East of England while we are accused of being subsidy junkies? Are they practical reasons?

Alex Salmond has sound economics to back up his claim of Scots receiving more money under Independence. UK government records show that we contribute 9.9% (no doubt massaged down) of the exchequer’s total income, but we receive back only 9.3% back in total spend. Whereas the latest treasury figures were disowned straight away by the professor who they used as a source for their findings. The professor said that they had misrepresented his figures by a factor of 12 times more.

No being British is not good enough. I see day-in-day-out my country being turned into a region, a region of Britain you may say, but when in reality we all know what Britain means to the people down in England, don’t we? Britain simply means England in most people’s eyes in England. If you looked at the latest census carried out in Scotland you would have seen that nearly 75% of the population consider themselves Scottish and not British, only a mere 18% considered themselves Scottish and British. If it’s any consolation to you I can’t understand many English dialects either. Try listening to a Geordie, Scouser, Brommie, Cockney or even someone from Pashtun.

I expect the YES vote to prevail and I just want to point out to you that ignorant articles like this will hasten that vote.

He is an articulate fellow, but he hasn’t changed my mind, quite the contrary.

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