eternumviti
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Ah, ET have you forgotten our one liner pact?
So mine is...
That the EU is less democratic than westminster is the usual discredited gammon jism you always come out with, and re Scotlands finances other less porky opinions are more convincing.https://www.businessforscotland.com/revealed-the-accounting-trick-that-hides-scotlands-wealth/
Interesting piece. It seems to me to be premised upon oil revenues raised in the 35 odd years prior to its publication, and upon a Scotland that was theoretically already independent. Now I have no dispute with the clear evidence that the UK's oil revenue was squandered, but the fact is that Scotland was, for all of that time, part of the UK, and thus the oil revenues were not hers, but the UK's. And there is no acknowledgment of the other fact, that the Scottish government is now ideologically opposed to the exploitation and use of oil and gas reserves. That particular horse has, sadly, bolted, and we are not talking about the past, but the future.
As you know, I am a great believer in self-determination. If Scotland really can go it alone, and that is what a majority of her people want, then she must go ahead and do it. My irritation with the narrative is that some of pfm's (and Scotland's) most vocal supporters of Scottish Nationalism appear to completely ignore the economic threat of placing a customs & regulatory border between itself and its biggest export customer, whilst exactly the same people are the most furiously vocal in criticising brexit on the sole basis of having done exactly the same thing. If you really believe that Scotland's potential and thus far wickedly suppressed wealth outweighs that not small consideration, then crack on.
On your other characteristically invective-splattered point, for all of its rackety faults and compromises, the UK Parliamentary system is infinitely more democratic than the EU system, and no amount of angrily shouting 'gammon jism' can change that awkward reality. Furthermore, it is a system that is alive and functioning, as we are witnessing right now. The PM is widely reviled, the party that he leads has completely lost credibility, and this is amongst its own core voters, let alone its opponents. So substantial is this shift that I am increasingly convinced that it is going to lead to a complete overhaul of our democracy and institutions of government. Something has, I think, fundamentally changed.
One of the most undeniably effective politicians of the last decade or so has been pfm's own public enemy No.1, the truly ghastly Nigel Farage. Strange times bring strange alliances. In yesterday's Daily Telegraph it was no less than he who authored a well-written piece arguing in favour of Proportional Representation, the replacement of the HoL with an elected Senate, and of a written Constitution.
As we know from bitter experience, we might ignore Nigel Farage at our peril, but it does seem odd that he is aligning with some of his fiercest critics, some of them people who find him so loathesome that they openly wished for a different outcome in that plane crash.
Democracy may have taken a battering in recent years, but some of us are so busy whingeing about its perceived iniquities that we can't even see that, outside of our ideological bunkers, it is quietly reconstituting itself.
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