Scottish independence

As with us, the English tories have pinched everything not nailed down. People NEED thieves suddenly?

Ay, bring back serfdom - but let us out first, with reparations. A billion each should about do it.

It's a good thing for Scotland.....though  maybe not such a good thing for rUK which is going to lose pretty much 10% of their GDP, plus the Scottish Crown Estates and Scotland's trade surpluses to set against rUK's Trade deficits for the Balance of Payments figures....plus the cost of removal of Trident.......and, if they continue with their pre-negotiation attitude.....all the debt. As they are still adding annually to the structural debt, which is hitting £1.3 trillion without including the support for the failed financial institutions,  and are currently paying out about £48 billion annually on interest payments.....things are only liable to get worse South of the Border re austerity and cuts.  Why else do you think they don't want to let us go?

I think it would be silly to stay with the Union. 

Many companies may well leave......and good luck to them...but I suspect they will lose a lot of Scottish business...and many companies may well transfer their non-Scots business to a new company registered furth of Scotland, while keeping their head office here to maintain brand recognition....and good luck to them as well...but many will stay...and if businesses leave...that rather offers opportunities to new entrants, doesn't it?  Why would unemployment bring any more social issues in Scotland, if we pretty much balance our budget and do it to benefit all our citizens and not just the rich, than the unemployment which will occur in the rUK as they have to start cutting their spending to fit their income and try to meet their debt interest payments, renew Trident, pay unfunded pensions, keep London in the manner to which it has become accustomed etc? At least we are less likely to have to increase the state pension entitlement age so fast, given one benefit of the Union, according to Anas Sarwar, has been that people in Scotland, particularly in Glasgow  have lower life expectancies than those in the rest of the UK.

Nothing wrong with left or right wing politics, as long as they are not at the extremes. In the UK at present they are at the extreme right, and have been right wing at some level mostly over the last 45 or so years, whatever the colour of the political party......and the right don't do fairness and equality, they do dividing and conquering......and we don't like that.

What pension company? Standard Life? Kindly read their actual statement and not the statement as spun by the pro-Union UK media! It isn't all, it is part...and will depend on post-independence currency arrangements. Anyway, Standard and Poor thinks it might be more useful to Scotland to lose some part of our financial institutions, as they are the more risky part of our economic portfolio. (Unsurprisingly, on past performance).

The same social problems occur in the rUK as well, for much the same reasons, do they not? Or does the rUK not have areas of high unemployment and social problems as a result? And if not why not, if, as they claim, we are all supposed to "be all in this together". I do have to say, I'd have assumed some social problems in rUK after the London riots, which were not replicated in Scotland.

Look......when are all you Unionists going to learn to read and absorb? We vote on 18th September...if there is a YES vote.....we are STILL in UK until 24th March 2016, which would be Independence Day, to complete necessary negotiations/make essential arrangements. In May 2016 we elect our first Government in an Independent Scotland, which may or may not be the SNP..it will depend on the manifestos of the parties contesting the election, once they have some idea of where Scotland is re debts/assets. Personally, I am inclined to think there will be no overall majority for any one party, given the voting system in Scotland....and my idea of heaven would be real consensus politics.

Excuse me..but what do you mean "our likely Government"? Do you mean the SNP....if so, they have never either raised or reduced taxes. Do you mean Labour in Scotland.....the same goes for them.....they have never used the tax varying powers of the Scottish Parliament either. Or do you mean the same NuLabour as is lording it in Westminster, for which most Scots vote in General elections? Believe me..I would be very surprised if a lot of those porkers will be allowed to get their noses into a Scottish Parliament after their performance since Independence was mooted anyway.....and I feel a few of their Scottish colleagues from Holyrood will also be on the dole....not for supporting NO, but because of the rhetoric/manner of that supporting.

However, I, personally, would prefer to live under a left wing Government which, if it has to borrow, borrows to help the poorest members of society, provide real jobs and maintain the welfare state at an acceptable level..rather than a right wing one which borrows to ensure tax cuts for the wealthy; tax subsidies to employers to pay crap wages; ensuring bankers still have their highly paid jobs through direct and indirect subsidy of the banking system, without putting in place enough regulation to ensure the global crisis can't happen again; taking part in wars at the behest of the USA; maintaining a nuclear deterrent which is as useful as a chocolate teapot; maintaining 5000 UK embassies/consulates; ensuring 1500 self-important individuals can live high on our hog etc.....and at the same time, increases VAT which harms the poorest most; creates pretendy jobs to make employment stats look good; employs ten times fewer HMRC employees to chase companies using tax avoidance/evasion loopholes (which remove about £30+ billion annually from Treasury income) than are chasing up those they think are taking advantage of the benefit system (to the tune of just over £1 billion a year); employs a private company to remove people from Disablement/sickness benefits and gives the DWP targets on numbers to be sanctioned and lose Jobseekers Allowance..and thus produces the only growth industry in the UK currently......the food banks!

Right wing Governments tendency to reduce taxes for the better off and penalise the poorer members of society to pay for it is a lot nastier than taxing and spending to help the disadvantaged, imo. You are, I assume, aware that, when the Tories got in this time, they inherited less debt than NuLabour inherited from the Tories in 1997.so which IS the spend and tax party...really?

You may be right, iolo......though I hope not...but if that is the case, it will be tighter than the No campaign thinks it will.. and we will be doing this again in a few years..because nothing is going to change in the Westminster psyche.

There's still nearly 200 days to go, YES is creeping up.......and No doesn't appear to have realised that the more patronising , denigratiing and downright nasty about Scotland, the Scots, our elected Government, our First Minister......and the YES Campaign, they are, the more undecideds move to YES.  I have no illusions.....the kind of nasty, negative campaigns waged by NuLabour in Scotland against the SNP was what gave them the 2007 minority and the 2011 majority SNP Governments, not a conscious desire for Independence....but a conscious hankering after something different.......a Government by Scots for Scots with the desire to try to give us a society, within their limited budget, that more approached our needs and aspirations. If Scotland does vote for Independence, Westminster has only itself to blame.