Scotland to seek second independence referendum • Hacker News Board

Re: Scotland to seek second independence referendum

#211

Post by falsedan » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 3:50 PM UTC

zigzigzag wrote: post #206

pjc50 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economics are very disputable - the UK doesn't do regional apportionment of tax collection other than (just now) income tax, so not everyone believes the GERS number of £9bn. And now it's even more disputable with Brexit: what farm subsidies will Scotland recieve, for example? What's the future cuts scenario for the UK? What happens if the rUK starts mass deportation of EU nationals? Parts of England are a few Da…

I think that's nonsense. The GERS figures were accepted beforehand by the SNP themselves, and they're the best available. Even if they're out by 10% that's still a massive financial hole Scotland is looking at. Of course nationalists will now decide that the figures are inconvenient and so must be wrong, but their track record on economics isn't great - their prior plan involved building their fairer, kinder Scotland…

I think everyone here has a poor view of Tory voters, regardless of national origin.

Re: Scotland to seek second independence referendum

#212

Post by ApolloFortyNine » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 3:51 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #100

Disclaimer: I'm English. One can hardly blame them. I was a unionist during the first referendum simply because I thought we were stronger together and felt that the Scottish made the UK as a whole more liberal (which, to be clear, is a GOOD thing). But after Brexit one cannot blame or criticise them for wanting to leave. I want to leave too! If their choice is being part of a fairly progressive EU or a conservative/…

What's with the racist comment? Is it just a reference to one of the reasons for leaving being the refugee crisis?

Re: Scotland to seek second independence referendum

#213

Post by pjc50 » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 3:52 PM UTC

sambeau wrote: post #196

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Disclaimer: I'm a child of English parents who was born in Wales but grew up in Scotland. I have Scottish and English children, in-laws and cousins. I have a family home in Scotland but I currently live in England. My children live in England and Scotland. Some of us live in Italy. // This may be an indication of the problem. To my view your opener should be "I'm a child of British parents, born in Britain and grew…

I would have but that would have made things very confusing: I feel 100% British. My immediate family is scattered around the UK our forefathers were scattered throughout the British Isles—one half of the family was Irish. Even my English parents have Scottish blood somewhere down the line. Even worse for me, I'm an internationalist and I felt very proud to be part of the EU for many of the same reasons I felt proud…

> built on mutualism

Was it?

I mean, that's how it's taught in schools, but how well does that reflect the actual history? Certainly it doesn't represent the UK's history with Ireland, which really isn't taught in schools. That's how people like Melanie "wrong about everything all of the time" Phillips can write national newspaper articles in which Ireland has a "tenuous claim to nationhood".

This is kind of the problem, we have all this national mythos that runs up to about 1966 and then stops. And it doesn't bear scrutiny in the modern age. The last attempt at building a national narrative that worked for everyone was the Blair era "cool Britannia", and half a million dead Iraqis took the shine off that a bit.

Not to mention the inward focus of Unionism. Everyone looks towards London, but London doesn't look outwards. Occasionally it dispatches a foreign correspondent to Manchester to report on conditions. The average English person thinks of Scotland little and NI not at all.

Re: Scotland to seek second independence referendum

#214

Post by daleharvey » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 3:53 PM UTC

zigzigzag wrote: post #206

pjc50 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economics are very disputable - the UK doesn't do regional apportionment of tax collection other than (just now) income tax, so not everyone believes the GERS number of £9bn. And now it's even more disputable with Brexit: what farm subsidies will Scotland recieve, for example? What's the future cuts scenario for the UK? What happens if the rUK starts mass deportation of EU nationals? Parts of England are a few Da…

I think that's nonsense. The GERS figures were accepted beforehand by the SNP themselves, and they're the best available. Even if they're out by 10% that's still a massive financial hole Scotland is looking at. Of course nationalists will now decide that the figures are inconvenient and so must be wrong, but their track record on economics isn't great - their prior plan involved building their fairer, kinder Scotland…

Not gonna deny that my support for the SNP is heavily influenced by my large dislike for tories. Seems like an awful stretch to call that racism though.

Re: Scotland to seek second independence referendum

#215

Post by drzaiusapelord » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 3:53 PM UTC

selectodude wrote: post #204

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like India's recent growth have edged them out, but I just want to point out that's why, not because the UK is falling. Its just India is, finally, catching up to the rest of the world. This is good news for India and doesn't take away from the UK. Also, remember we're talking about an economy of merely 65m people that chimes in at 6th. UK GDP growth fits in at almost 2% which is where the USA sits at as well a…

UK GDP growth is almost entirely due to financial services and legal sectors in London, who just received the official notification that London is no longer the banking center of Europe.

Yet somehow everytime I see these fairly dramatic predictions about the US losing its petrodollar and the dollar collapsing or banking moving to $other_country, $cryptocurrency, etc or everyone switching to the Yuan or Ruble, etc they are almost always wrong.

I think you're dismissing how powerful inertia is in the financial sector and how the EU needs the UK and as such will work out agreements to keep things going. London wealth and banking is most likely very safe. Remember, London as the premier financial center of Europe predates the EU by a few hundred years. It is not an outgrowth of EU membership.

Re: Scotland to seek second independence referendum

#216

Post by blibble » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 3:54 PM UTC

rwmj wrote: post #201

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The UK government // That's short-hand of course for the "UK people's democratically expressed will". FWIW I don't vote conservative, nor support Brexit; but we can't solely blame the elite cabals - as this sort of phrasing tends to do - the demos are complicit.

People were led on by millionaire politicians and billionaire newspaper owners who flat out lied during the referendum. Politicians have been blaming immigrants and "benefit scroungers" for problems which are really caused by austerity. It would be nice to have an informed demos who could look past all that, but we don't right now.

come on, essentially the entire Western political structure was on the side of remain

they even shipped Obama over

Re: Scotland to seek second independence referendum

#217

Post by zigzigzag » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 3:56 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #83

edblarney wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The general feeling is that this vote will now succeed." Polling for almost a year (see Wikipedia) indicates that it will not succeed - there's only one of more than a dozen or so polls that puts independence ahead - and then only by one point. 'Remain' are ahead by 10 points in the rest. The easy trump card to play is the fact that Spain and others (Belgium) will not allow Scotland to join the EU, even if they do -…

> The easy trump card to play is the fact that Spain and others (Belgium) will not allow Scotland to join the EU, even if they do - it will take years. That argument played a lot better before the Brexit vote. The choice is now between "definitely out of Europe, possibly on bad terms" versus "hopefully rejoining Europe, possibly with interim deal". Personally I expect Spain to accept an independent Scotland as levera…

The UK isn't "threatening to expel financial services from London". That is some quite astonishing reality reversal.

The EU is threatening to legally force people to move to Europe from the UK if they want to continue selling services there. Neither the UK nor the financial services industry wants that, for obvious reasons. If it happens, it'll be the EU doing it, not a British government.

Re: Scotland to seek second independence referendum

#218

Post by pbhjpbhj » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 3:57 PM UTC

sambeau wrote: post #149

untog wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

London independence would surely only come with the complete collapse of the UK. Or it becoming an EU-like organisation. And that's not entirely impossible - there are enough regional independence movements that it's possible to imagine it. Much more likely, though, is that everyone argues about it for decades and nothing happens.

Total collapse of the UK is looking quite possible. - Scotland is likely to go (despite what the polls say right now) - Northern Ireland is quite likely to join Ireland - God knows what Wales is going to do

>- God knows what Wales is going to do //

It looks like the Cymraeg [language] loving Welsh-nationalists are likely to press for all schools to become Cymraeg language and demand all businesses to move that way too. That should push taxation to new levels, reduce school achievement further, and retard international businesses from entering/remaining in Wales.

Given the North-South divide in Wales (even amongst Cymraeg speakers) I'd expect the massive demographic differences to push it back to the pre-annexation days where Gwynedd in the North was the central power (due to Irish/Viking immigrants after the Roman exit AFAICT!). Cymraeg speakers in the low-population North will break away and enter an economy propped up by tourism. The South-East is 90% English speaking, has three-quarters of the population and relies on the M4 corridor for a lot of its economy it's staying close to England one way or another.

In short Wales is already starting to pull itself apart. The low-income Welsh people who benefited a lot from EU schemes [eg in The Valleys (S.E.)] voted to Leave though, I don't think they'd try to follow Scotland back to the EU. However there's still an undercurrent of "we were conquered by the English and will hate them forever".

An oft-overlooked factor that interests me is the Crown - what have they got to say about it all. I assume they're keeping their beaks out to ensure they keep Crown money and property but along with all of this it strikes me if they aren't going to retain a political union of "their" lands then there's no longer a regent in even the hands-off sense we have in the UK today.

Why you'd throw off rule of the Queen's government and choose to stay being Her subject is beyond me.

Re: Scotland to seek second independence referendum

#219

Post by falsedan » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 3:59 PM UTC

cmdkeen wrote: post #157

falsedan wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those banks also have access to the Bank of England as a lender of last resort Can you imagine a future where the independent Scottish government could arrange a similar deal with another financial institution, to cover them until ECB took on the role? > Pegging your currency to another when you don't have the fundamentals to match it tends to be of interest to George Soros When was Black Wednesday for Montenegro?

Given that the European Central Bank doesn't act as a lender of last resort for individual banks (and really doesn't like being for the Eurozone, cf Greece) it isn't going to step in to cover Scotland. So you're either looking at another Government or perhaps one of the massive re-insurers, can you imagine what the insurance premiums would be on that arrangement? The much more likely alternative is that the Bank of S…

> the European Central Bank doesn't act as a lender of last resort for individual banks

I do think they'd buy independent Scottish treasury bonds & then the independent Scottish government can use the proceeds for emergency lending. Isn't this how the German banks are covered?

Re: Scotland to seek second independence referendum

#220

Post by falsedan » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 4:00 PM UTC

fnord123 wrote: post #171

falsedan wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scotland already has three banks issuing their own bank notes (backed by GBP on deposit in their vaults). Independence wouldn't change that, except that the names on the notes would have to be changed from Pounds Stirling.

>Independence wouldn't change that, except that the names on the notes would have to be changed from Pounds Stirling . Pounds Sterling. Stirling is a city in Scotland.

wow, a typo

the joke is they'd also have to be changed from that