If there is a Yes vote & the B.of.E let them have the pound then I'm emigrating to Oz & taking my £££ with me to spend over there !!
But isn't the pound as much Scottish as English? What did they use before the union? And anyway, what difference does it make if they use the 'pound' so long as it's a Scottish Pound as opposed to the UK Pound?
I've never studied economics but it's obvious a country needs a currency and a newly independent Scotland has three options: €uro, £ sterling or their own brand new Scottish pound. The €uro is currently unpopular but it worked for Ireland from 1991 onwards (Erm) as they pursued a policy of decoupling from London economic policy. Sure there was a crash but that's a risk of running your own house in the way they did. £sterling monetary union has been ruled out by Westminster. Why would the Bank of England allow another nation to use the currency and then cede places on key committees? Running their own currency would soon expose the nationalists to economic reality. They have no history and would have to run a tight ship to establish credibility. Free tuition, and an expensive Scottish NHS would have to be paid for through taxes and borrowing.
What's interesting is that the web suggests polls have stabilised but four different polls have four different majorities for the status quo...from 4% to 15%. One article suggests the yes camp is gaining but not quickly enough to win through... Higher up I see @se9addick has refuted my suggestion that the Snp has nowhere to go after a no vote. I respect that view and hope to meet a long standing friend from Edinburgh (who is a Hearts fan) and will be keen to get his take.
I hope that the sweaty's all vote Yes & then the moaning f***kers can then all leave England and settle back in cold Jocko land. After 6 months they'll wonder why the voted to go it alone, seeing as they will have no money, food or living.
Good riddance I say.
You don't really get how it works, do you? Similarly you're not so hot on the use of basic punctuation either. If you love England that much you should learn the language before you go commenting on matters that are clearly well over your pay grade
A few additional snippets of information gleaned from Hargreaves Lansdown. I suspect the SNP haven't listed these in their "Yes" vote literature.
The Scottish financial services industry accounts for some 200,000 jobs and £800 billion of assets. In 2012 it reported earnings of £11.2 billion, 86% of which were produced by sales to the rest of the UK.
89% of the NISAs and 91% of the pensions managed by Scottish firms are on behalf of non-Scottish clients. The UK Treasury has declared UK NISAs would cease to be available to Scottish savers in their current form, in the event of a 'yes' vote.
41 trusts are incorporated in Scotland, including some of the oldest and most venerated names in investing. Their combined assets of £21bn represents a fifth of the industry. The majority of the investors are based in the rest of the UK.
Scotland only accounts for about 2% of FTSE 350 sales, but its independence would still present several companies with significant challenges.
No campaigners never mention all the UK civil service jobs north of the border, all of which will have to be re-patriated if Scotland becomes a foreign country, but the Faslane jobs always get a mention. Odd that - a redundancy is still a redundancy. What makes shipyard jobs more special than office and call-centre jobs?
A few additional snippets of information gleaned from Hargreaves Lansdown. I suspect the SNP haven't listed these in their "Yes" vote literature.
The Scottish financial services industry accounts for some 200,000 jobs and £800 billion of assets. In 2012 it reported earnings of £11.2 billion, 86% of which were produced by sales to the rest of the UK.
89% of the NISAs and 91% of the pensions managed by Scottish firms are on behalf of non-Scottish clients. The UK Treasury has declared UK NISAs would cease to be available to Scottish savers in their current form, in the event of a 'yes' vote.
41 trusts are incorporated in Scotland, including some of the oldest and most venerated names in investing. Their combined assets of £21bn represents a fifth of the industry. The majority of the investors are based in the rest of the UK.
Scotland only accounts for about 2% of FTSE 350 sales, but its independence would still present several companies with significant challenges.
I visit Scotland regularly as i used to live there and have friends that are on both sides of the referendum....I will say that of those friends i have, the split is 50/50...those that have a despise of England are voting yes and those that are using their head are voting no and these are not youngsters these are mature gents.
One of them who is voting no said that there are 5 million scots there 2 million are under 16 and retired there are about 2 million working and the rest are dossers and unemployed. They dont know how they are going to pay for it.
Last time i visited i asked one of the SNP councillors who was whipping up support in Edinburgh, what will happen to all the thousand of jobs lost on the west coast of scotland (faslane etc) plus those on the east coast at Rosyth when trident goes...He shrugged his shoulders and said they will get jobs elsewhere and enterprise zones will replace the sites...thats how much they care.
I been watching the debates and find it amazing to think if I was a Scot I would be voting for the best of the bad bunch because Alex Salmond fails to answer a simple question and you have Alister Darling who was the worst Chancellor.
There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest how Scotland can survive on their own. If Scotland gains independence and fails badly it would be the rest of the UK to save their skins and they will eventually rejoin the UK again which would put us back in recession. There so many ties between the UK and Scotland and I can imagine most of the jobs in Scotland would be put at risk.
I can understand why Scotland may want to be directed by the Scottish parliament rather than Westminster but the SNP have failed to answer whether they will be part of the EU or not. They would basically transfer powers to the EU so they would not be gaining independence. If Scotland stays in, they would be entiled to more powers which Cameron offered in the first place.
On a side note, what would happen to Orkney and Shetland? Should they be allowed to stay in the UK?
So, Ed Miliband has now explained to the Scots that there would be a formal border with guards. (Not good timing or political sense whatever the truth of the matter - surely the cantankerous Scots will just see that as typical spiteful Westminster interference and be even more likely to vote Yes?) Anyway, presumably that would work the other way too but English tourists who didn't have passports would just decide to go somewhere else other than Scotland for their holidays rather than shell out £250 (approx family of 4) for passports? However shiny and new their current official documents - Scots will, presumably, have to shell out to pay the new Scottish agencies for new ones - so that's a passport, driving licence, road fund (?) number plates with some new numbering system, TV licence, what else? Other mundane simple little things to consider: Scots with personalised number plates would suddenly find themselves having a plate that had been cancelled by DVLA Swansea and as you don't own a number they'd lose the transfer value? We've already mentioned Scots losing their tax-free ISA accounts - would a new Scottish Govt. allow transfer of the value held in tax free accounts to new Scottish ones? Scots born in Scotland but living in rUK being chucked out if Scotland fail to get EU membership or if UKIP win an election. (They'd just be illegal immigrants wouldn't they?) England and Wales at last free to adopt Central European Time and get nice long summer evenings without complaints from Scottish farmers about milking cows in darkness in the winter. Extra duty on their whisky to help promote the sale of Bushmills Whiskey and Penderyn Welsh whisky. A new international prefix for their telephone numbers (+422 is the first available one - no +44 for the Scots). New mobile phone numbers too maybe? A nice new set of credit cards in their wallets or sporrans. (In the main credit card companies don't like issuing cards to foreigners living in foreign countries.) There must be more.....
So, Ed Miliband has now explained to the Scots that there would be a formal border with guards. (Not good timing or political sense whatever the truth of the matter - surely the cantankerous Scots will just see that as typical spiteful Westminster interference and be even more likely to vote Yes?) Anyway, presumably that would work the other way too but English tourists who didn't have passports would just decide to go somewhere else other than Scotland for their holidays rather than shell out £250 (approx family of 4) for passports? However shiny and new their current official documents - Scots will, presumably, have to shell out to pay the new Scottish agencies for new ones - so that's a passport, driving licence, road fund (?) number plates with some new numbering system, TV licence, what else? Other mundane simple little things to consider: Scots with personalised number plates would suddenly find themselves having a plate that had been cancelled by DVLA Swansea and as you don't own a number they'd lose the transfer value? We've already mentioned Scots losing their tax-free ISA accounts - would a new Scottish Govt. allow transfer of the value held in tax free accounts to new Scottish ones? Scots born in Scotland but living in rUK being chucked out if Scotland fail to get EU membership or if UKIP win an election. (They'd just be illegal immigrants wouldn't they?) England and Wales at last free to adopt Central European Time and get nice long summer evenings without complaints from Scottish farmers about milking cows in darkness in the winter. Extra duty on their whisky to help promote the sale of Bushmills Whiskey and Penderyn Welsh whisky. A new international prefix for their telephone numbers (+422 is the first available one - no +44 for the Scots). New mobile phone numbers too maybe? A nice new set of credit cards in their wallets or sporrans. (In the main credit card companies don't like issuing cards to foreigners living in foreign countries.) There must be more.....
The plan, I believe, is that Scottish people would continue to use their UK passport until it expires and then renew on a Scottish passport. I'm sure that I read that even post independence Scottish people would qualify for new UK passports in the same way that all people in N Ireland qualify for Rep. Ireland passports.
I highly doubt there will be mass deportations of Scottish people !
51 Yes / 49 No according to the latest YouGov poll, excluding undecideds. Think this poll is somewhat skewed due to a couple of factors:
- Out of those who expressed a preference to a particular political party, only SNP voters had a majority of people voting yes. The numbers behind the poll also indicate a far greater proportion of those polled preferred the SNP than is actually representative of the population of Scotland, therefore skewing it towards a Yes vote
- When it comes to referenda and a two-horse race with an incumbent and a challenger, undecideds usually veer towards the status quo/the incumbent. This is a known phenomena with plebiscites, generally because human beings are usually risk-averse and unwittingly take a 'better the devil you know' attitude when unsure of a decision. 7% of those polled remain undecided, so there is still all to play for
This is definitely the most astonishing poll of the whole referendum, and will serve as a wake-up call for Better Together, who have really dropped a bollock in recent weeks, what with Darling's pisspoor performance in the second debate, as well as letting that hopeless buffoon Gordon Brown appearing on TV to defend the union, despite the well-known existence of his 'curse' on anything he goes near. It was, however, noted in the 2012 US election that polling agencies were desperate to get the tightest poll possible when all other analysis pointed to an Obama landslide. Generally it was noted that polls displaying a tight race or even a shock win for Romney got better coverage and made the headlines, whereas the more accurate polls that indicated a decisive Obama win were ignored. I have a feeling that's what has happened here. The bookies appear to still be confident of a No vote, with a bet for No having a very poor payout.
I feel the next 2 weeks will be very interesting. It should be a tight result and whatever happens afterwards won't be straightforward; in the event of a tight No, Salmond might even call for another referendum or devo-max, whereas a tight Yes might lead to Westminster dragging their feet, claiming the mandate for ending the Union wasn't large enough to merit such a drastic outcome.
Anyone can call for a re-run if it is tight but perhaps that is determined by the legal framework which was used to set up the vote. Perhaps the latest is a rogue poll and the next one might reveal this to be the case? But the fact that the better together campaign is failing to communicate why Scotland is better together is fairly damning on the head names and the strategists and publicists. Let's hope not too many shocks and that the don't knows see sense else our United Kingdom starts coming apart. In retrospect, I fail to see why only Scotland gets a vote as it mirrors the Crimea situation as well as sending shock waves through Spain, Belgium and any other European country that has history in terms of different people's being merged... Which is practically everyone?
So, Ed Miliband has now explained to the Scots that there would be a formal border with guards. (Not good timing or political sense whatever the truth of the matter - surely the cantankerous Scots will just see that as typical spiteful Westminster interference and be even more likely to vote Yes?) Anyway, presumably that would work the other way too but English tourists who didn't have passports would just decide to go somewhere else other than Scotland for their holidays rather than shell out £250 (approx family of 4) for passports? However shiny and new their current official documents - Scots will, presumably, have to shell out to pay the new Scottish agencies for new ones - so that's a passport, driving licence, road fund (?) number plates with some new numbering system, TV licence, what else?
Ed's a bumbling fool if he thinks that this would ever become a reality cos a precedent is there for freedom of movement, just look at the Republic of Ireland who bombed us into ceding independence and yet today there's absolutely NO policing of the frontiers between it and the UK!
If the vote is as close as the polls suggest, whatever happens won't be the end of matters by a long way. If Yes get it by 50.05%, and get independence, then all the no voters are going to scream merry hell about all the changes and say they didn't vote for it in the first place...however 'democratic' a majority win is. Looks like you need at least 60/40 one way or another for this affair to be resolved.
Most organisations look for a 2/3 vote in favour of constitutional change for just this reason! It needs a large consensus to follow through on the detail - someone has screwed up...bye bye Cameron for I can't see the Queen keeping faith in a first minister who dismantles the kingdom... Yeah I know the Queen doesn't really select the government but Camerons position looks very bad.
What annoys me is that the Yes campaign insists they can keep the £. The fact is they can't, it belongs to the Bank of England...which they don't want to be part of. For example its the BOE who decide interest rates and if Scotland are not part of the UK then they wont have our interest rates as that is set in £ sterling, and hence they will not have our fiscal policy. So where do they go? Euro? they need to ask permission and have fiscal adherence to join, which they don't have. The final solution is to have their own currency, but what do they align it to? For me, and I'm part Scottish through my gran-dad, they should vote NO and stick with the union, they wont have a the fiscal power to survive on their own. However if they go, we should let them and see how they get on, but there should be NO fiscal, economic, or defence help. They choose their bed, let them lie in it.
What annoys me is that the Yes campaign insists they can keep the £. The fact is they can't, it belongs to the Bank of England...which they don't want to be part of. For example its the BOE who decide interest rates and if Scotland are not part of the UK then they wont have our interest rates as that is set in £ sterling, and hence they will not have our fiscal policy. So where do they go? Euro? they need to ask permission and have fiscal adherence to join, which they don't have. The final solution is to have their own currency, but what do they align it to? For me, and I'm part Scottish through my gran-dad, they should vote NO and stick with the union, they wont have a the fiscal power to survive on their own. However if they go, we should let them and see how they get on, but there should be NO fiscal, economic, or defence help. They choose their bed, let them lie in it.
They can use the pound (or any internationally traded currency) and they do want access to the BoE - the three main UK political parties have said they won't give them that access.
What annoys me is that the Yes campaign insists they can keep the £. The fact is they can't, it belongs to the Bank of England...which they don't want to be part of. For example its the BOE who decide interest rates and if Scotland are not part of the UK then they wont have our interest rates as that is set in £ sterling, and hence they will not have our fiscal policy. So where do they go? Euro? they need to ask permission and have fiscal adherence to join, which they don't have. The final solution is to have their own currency, but what do they align it to? For me, and I'm part Scottish through my gran-dad, they should vote NO and stick with the union, they wont have a the fiscal power to survive on their own. However if they go, we should let them and see how they get on, but there should be NO fiscal, economic, or defence help. They choose their bed, let them lie in it.
Totally agree.
Problem is if everything goes wrong for them it would end up being US to fix it and they will end up joining the UK again.
So, Ed Miliband has now explained to the Scots that there would be a formal border with guards. (Not good timing or political sense whatever the truth of the matter - surely the cantankerous Scots will just see that as typical spiteful Westminster interference and be even more likely to vote Yes?) Anyway, presumably that would work the other way too but English tourists who didn't have passports would just decide to go somewhere else other than Scotland for their holidays rather than shell out £250 (approx family of 4) for passports? However shiny and new their current official documents - Scots will, presumably, have to shell out to pay the new Scottish agencies for new ones - so that's a passport, driving licence, road fund (?) number plates with some new numbering system, TV licence, what else?
Ed's a bumbling fool if he thinks that this would ever become a reality cos a precedent is there for freedom of movement, just look at the Republic of Ireland who bombed us into ceding independence and yet today there's absolutely NO policing of the frontiers between it and the UK!
Silly old politician!
That's only if they join the Schengen Area, Ireland isn't part of the Schengen Area.
What annoys me is that the Yes campaign insists they can keep the £. The fact is they can't, it belongs to the Bank of England...which they don't want to be part of. For example its the BOE who decide interest rates and if Scotland are not part of the UK then they wont have our interest rates as that is set in £ sterling, and hence they will not have our fiscal policy. So where do they go? Euro? they need to ask permission and have fiscal adherence to join, which they don't have. The final solution is to have their own currency, but what do they align it to? For me, and I'm part Scottish through my gran-dad, they should vote NO and stick with the union, they wont have a the fiscal power to survive on their own. However if they go, we should let them and see how they get on, but there should be NO fiscal, economic, or defence help. They choose their bed, let them lie in it.
Totally agree.
Problem is if everything goes wrong for them it would end up being US to fix it and they will end up joining the UK again.
If the US want to fix it, let them. Not sure about the americans joining the UK though.
Who is going to play the part of Alex Salmond when they make the film ? I vote, bring back Oliver Hardy, with Stan Laurel playing the part of George Osborne. Quote, this is a another fine mess you've got me into to Stanley !
Comments
The €uro is currently unpopular but it worked for Ireland from 1991 onwards (Erm) as they pursued a policy of decoupling from London economic policy. Sure there was a crash but that's a risk of running your own house in the way they did.
£sterling monetary union has been ruled out by Westminster. Why would the Bank of England allow another nation to use the currency and then cede places on key committees?
Running their own currency would soon expose the nationalists to economic reality. They have no history and would have to run a tight ship to establish credibility. Free tuition, and an expensive Scottish NHS would have to be paid for through taxes and borrowing.
What's interesting is that the web suggests polls have stabilised but four different polls have four different majorities for the status quo...from 4% to 15%. One article suggests the yes camp is gaining but not quickly enough to win through...
Higher up I see @se9addick has refuted my suggestion that the Snp has nowhere to go after a no vote. I respect that view and hope to meet a long standing friend from Edinburgh (who is a Hearts fan) and will be keen to get his take.
The Scottish financial services industry accounts for some 200,000 jobs and £800 billion of assets. In 2012 it reported earnings of £11.2 billion, 86% of which were produced by sales to the rest of the UK.
89% of the NISAs and 91% of the pensions managed by Scottish firms are on behalf of non-Scottish clients. The UK Treasury has declared UK NISAs would cease to be available to Scottish savers in their current form, in the event of a 'yes' vote.
41 trusts are incorporated in Scotland, including some of the oldest and most venerated names in investing. Their combined assets of £21bn represents a fifth of the industry. The majority of the investors are based in the rest of the UK.
Scotland only accounts for about 2% of FTSE 350 sales, but its independence would still present several companies with significant challenges.
One of them who is voting no said that there are 5 million scots there 2 million are under 16 and retired there are about 2 million working and the rest are dossers and unemployed. They dont know how they are going to pay for it.
Last time i visited i asked one of the SNP councillors who was whipping up support in Edinburgh, what will happen to all the thousand of jobs lost on the west coast of scotland (faslane etc) plus those on the east coast at Rosyth when trident goes...He shrugged his shoulders and said they will get jobs elsewhere and enterprise zones will replace the sites...thats how much they care.
There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest how Scotland can survive on their own. If Scotland gains independence and fails badly it would be the rest of the UK to save their skins and they will eventually rejoin the UK again which would put us back in recession. There so many ties between the UK and Scotland and I can imagine most of the jobs in Scotland would be put at risk.
I can understand why Scotland may want to be directed by the Scottish parliament rather than Westminster but the SNP have failed to answer whether they will be part of the EU or not. They would basically transfer powers to the EU so they would not be gaining independence. If Scotland stays in, they would be entiled to more powers which Cameron offered in the first place.
On a side note, what would happen to Orkney and Shetland? Should they be allowed to stay in the UK?
Anyway, presumably that would work the other way too but English tourists who didn't have passports would just decide to go somewhere else other than Scotland for their holidays rather than shell out £250 (approx family of 4) for passports?
However shiny and new their current official documents - Scots will, presumably, have to shell out to pay the new Scottish agencies for new ones - so that's a passport, driving licence, road fund (?) number plates with some new numbering system, TV licence, what else?
Other mundane simple little things to consider:
Scots with personalised number plates would suddenly find themselves having a plate that had been cancelled by DVLA Swansea and as you don't own a number they'd lose the transfer value?
We've already mentioned Scots losing their tax-free ISA accounts - would a new Scottish Govt. allow transfer of the value held in tax free accounts to new Scottish ones?
Scots born in Scotland but living in rUK being chucked out if Scotland fail to get EU membership or if UKIP win an election. (They'd just be illegal immigrants wouldn't they?)
England and Wales at last free to adopt Central European Time and get nice long summer evenings without complaints from Scottish farmers about milking cows in darkness in the winter.
Extra duty on their whisky to help promote the sale of Bushmills Whiskey and Penderyn Welsh whisky.
A new international prefix for their telephone numbers (+422 is the first available one - no +44 for the Scots).
New mobile phone numbers too maybe?
A nice new set of credit cards in their wallets or sporrans. (In the main credit card companies don't like issuing cards to foreigners living in foreign countries.)
There must be more.....
I highly doubt there will be mass deportations of Scottish people !
- Out of those who expressed a preference to a particular political party, only SNP voters had a majority of people voting yes. The numbers behind the poll also indicate a far greater proportion of those polled preferred the SNP than is actually representative of the population of Scotland, therefore skewing it towards a Yes vote
- When it comes to referenda and a two-horse race with an incumbent and a challenger, undecideds usually veer towards the status quo/the incumbent. This is a known phenomena with plebiscites, generally because human beings are usually risk-averse and unwittingly take a 'better the devil you know' attitude when unsure of a decision. 7% of those polled remain undecided, so there is still all to play for
This is definitely the most astonishing poll of the whole referendum, and will serve as a wake-up call for Better Together, who have really dropped a bollock in recent weeks, what with Darling's pisspoor performance in the second debate, as well as letting that hopeless buffoon Gordon Brown appearing on TV to defend the union, despite the well-known existence of his 'curse' on anything he goes near. It was, however, noted in the 2012 US election that polling agencies were desperate to get the tightest poll possible when all other analysis pointed to an Obama landslide. Generally it was noted that polls displaying a tight race or even a shock win for Romney got better coverage and made the headlines, whereas the more accurate polls that indicated a decisive Obama win were ignored. I have a feeling that's what has happened here. The bookies appear to still be confident of a No vote, with a bet for No having a very poor payout.
I feel the next 2 weeks will be very interesting. It should be a tight result and whatever happens afterwards won't be straightforward; in the event of a tight No, Salmond might even call for another referendum or devo-max, whereas a tight Yes might lead to Westminster dragging their feet, claiming the mandate for ending the Union wasn't large enough to merit such a drastic outcome.
But the fact that the better together campaign is failing to communicate why Scotland is better together is fairly damning on the head names and the strategists and publicists.
Let's hope not too many shocks and that the don't knows see sense else our United Kingdom starts coming apart. In retrospect, I fail to see why only Scotland gets a vote as it mirrors the Crimea situation as well as sending shock waves through Spain, Belgium and any other European country that has history in terms of different people's being merged... Which is practically everyone?
Silly old politician!
Looks like you need at least 60/40 one way or another for this affair to be resolved.
Problem is if everything goes wrong for them it would end up being US to fix it and they will end up joining the UK again.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area
;-)
All sorts of consititional issues and connotations.
Would this mean the end of GB as an entity?
This has enourmous consequences, and I'm not sure a lot of people are getting that, particularly the Scots.