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Scottish Politics II

eternumviti said:
First sentence, I don't think I am at all. The absolutism seems to come from the ScotNats and the Greens, not me, but sure, they'll probably get the wake up call at some point. The moola's got to come from somewhere.

Your second sentence doesn't make sense.

It certainly is a shame that we haven't got a SWF, but that's where we are. Saying that we should have had one, or that other countries have them, isn't going to change that sad reality.



I don't see where I discussed whether all organisations have their plusses and minuses, so sure, you're bang on the money, it isn't what we were discussing.

I'm sure the EU will show flexibility. It has the knack of doing so (often to the point of contortion) when and where its suits its purposes, but where it doesn't, its rigidly 'rules-based'.

I don't believe that I've reverted to anything, I don't know what you mean by 'narrow and punitive' in regard of either the EU or Scotland.



I wasn't 'trumpeting' anything, I simply pointed out, repeatedly, that a border has always existed between NI and the RoI, that the two countries are distinct jurisdictions in regard of VAT, Duty and other taxes, and that every day hundreds of trucks pass seamlessly across it by the use of what is now vintage paperless tech, trusted trader schemes, NPR, source/destination checks etc, and that I cannot accept that such technology cannot be extended, particularly given the advances in information and tracking technology that have taken place in recent years. I have given my views on this many times, no radio silence. To adopt 21st century tech would certainly help the Scottish border issue, but then it would have to be applied to the NI and Calais (and indeed all other EU external) borders too, and the EU would lose its protectionist credibility, and the means not only of much of its manipulation of the whole brexit issue, but of a useful chunk of the means by which it ties the SM to its overriding political project. .

It's black ink, and certainly not pencils. Or quills, yet, though I wouldn't put anything past Brussels in their determination to make things awkward.

Your suggestion that I should 'join the rejoin campaign is'... just a bit cocky!



OK, so you've started again. You really should try a bit harder to hold it in. It isn't pretty, and it isn't clever, and it just makes you look a bit unpleasant.
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Seems you agree with most of my reply. Re: the 21st tech solutions, what are they exactly?

Re-joining the EU will resolve a lot of your issues with trade. It may even make you happier and a put a spring in your step.

PS Putting aside the obvious irony in your comment about Farage, any hope of you educating us Remainers/SNP voters on why you like him so much? Do you think he has a role to play in IndyRef2?
 
Kirk said:
Seems you agree with most of my reply. Re: the 21st tech solutions, what are they exactly?

Re-joining the EU will resolve a lot of your issues with trade. It may even make you happier and a put a spring in your step.

PS Putting aside the obvious irony in your comment about Farage, any hope of you educating us Remainers/SNP voters on why you like him so much? Do you think he has a role to play in IndyRef2?
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I’m going for EV’s previous Ireland/N.Ireland suggestions on how to have a border between Scotland and our friends to the south, making it appear there’s no border at all- blockchain and as yet undiscovered new technology. Checks can be carried out while you queue for for your McDonalds and loo break at Pudgley Services.
 
TheDecameron said:
I’m going for EV’s previous Ireland/N.Ireland suggestions on how to have a border between Scotland and our friends to the south, making it appear there’s no border at all- blockchain and as yet undiscovered new technology. Checks can be carried out while you queue for for your McDonalds and loo break at Pudgley Services.
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Sure, whatever form it takes, the Scottish Nationalists are going to need to take on board the lessons of Brexit, and get their thinking caps on.
 
Joe Hutch said:
The key point is this; what distinguishes ‘a country in its own right’ from some other territorial entity? I’d say that, amongst other things, a country in its own right would have the power to raise all of its own taxes, and not be subject to taxes imposed by a neighbouring country; it would have the power to make all of its own laws and, as importantly, not be subject to laws made by a neighbouring country. If it does not have those powers, it is not a country in its own right, but something less than that.

In a specific case relating to Scotland, its citizens voted overwhelmingly to stay in the EU. Had Scotland indeed been a country in its own right, it could not have been forced to leave the EU.

The schizophrenia, or double-think, lies in the assertion that Scotland is a country in its own right, whilst ignoring the many ways in which it is no such thing.
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From my undergraduate Social Science days, a country (nation-state) had five defining characteristics:

territoriality

autonomy

sovereignty

and two other big words probably ending in a 'y'

I agree Scotland's current constitutional arrangement do not meet this criteria and hence the desire for independence.
 
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eternumviti said:
Sure, whatever form it takes, the Scottish Nationalists are going to need to take on board the lessons of Brexit, and get their thinking caps on.
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Why have you gone all shy on Farage?- you introduced him into the thread. We already have something far closer to proportional representation in Scotland anyway. We didn’t have to wait for an article on it in the Telegraph from the frog faced fascist.

USArexc.jpg


Nigel is assured of a warm welcome any time he decides to visit.
 
TheDecameron said:
I’m going for EV’s previous Ireland/N.Ireland suggestions on how to have a border between Scotland and our friends to the south, making it appear there’s no border at all- blockchain and as yet undiscovered new technology. Checks can be carried out while you queue for for your McDonalds and loo break at Pudgley Services.
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Exactly, but I don't want to push requests for content too hard for fear of triggering an event.
 
wulbert said:
If he's right, and you are right about the unrealistic and impractical and reality-denying nature of the idea of Scotland running it's own affairs, then a referendum would be the fastest way to burst Sturgeon's bubble.

You see yourself as even-handed in this debate, and yet here you have stated that: The idea of Scottish people running their own country is impractical and unrealistic. Also that Scottish people who support self-governance are "the faithful" in some kind of religion, who "deny reality, even when it stares them in the face".

And you say this without any apparent awareness of how arrogant, insulting and self-important it sounds.
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My apologies, it was not meant to be arrogant, insulting or self-important. In any case, it is only an expression of my thoughts, which can be as wrong as anyone else's. Scottish independence just seems to me to be totally impractical, at the moment anyway. And it does seem to me that the SNP has a fair share of folk who are true believers, and who are prepared to cut off their noses to spite their faces. Is this not the case? I'd be amazed if it weren't so.

As an Irishman, my sympathies are with Scotland. We have in common the fact that Westminster couldn't give a fig about either of us, and neither could most English folk. (My brother was amazed when he recently ordered a part for his Morgan from the south of England and was told that it was too expensive to send it to Ireland. It came as a genuine surprise to this person to find that Belfast is in the UK.) In the case of Scotland, I suspect that the only reason Boris wants to hold on to it is because of his Churchillian pretensions - he doesn't want to go down in history as "the man who lost the union".

P.S. In today's Irish Times, there appeared this appropriate article:

View of Northern Ireland as a ‘bloody awful country’ persists in Westminster
For many ministers at the Northern Ireland Office it has been simply a task of maintaining order and keeping noise to a minimum

The quote came from Reginald Maudling, who actually visited the place and was famously heard to say:

For God’s sake, bring me a large Scotch. What a bloody awful country!

As the article continues

Politicians in Westminster have learned not to say this out loud, but suspicions persist that it remains unspoken.

The real problem is that Northern Ireland has for the past 50 years largely been consigned by most of Whitehall to a box marked “Too difficult”.

I suspect that Scotland is headed towards the same box, if not already there.
 
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Spraggons Den said:
From my undergraduate Social Science days, a country (nation-state) had five defining characteristics:

territoriality

autonomy

sovereignty

and two other big words ending in a 'y'

I agree Scotland's current constitutional arrangement do not meet this criteria and hence the desire for independence.
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Interesting.

Does this mean each ‘country’ that makes up the EU are not ‘countries’ at all, meaning Scotland can leave the UK to become a country, which is what nationalists claim they want, yet Scotland will once again cease to be a country as soon as possible by joining the EU?

Of course, none of this is actually the point given the context that brought about this tangent, which was a complaint by a nationalist who believes Scotland is regarded as a province of England by some unidentified group of people rather than as a country. Personally, I regard Scotland as a country and have no experience of anyone who does not, though I’m sure there are some such folk around.
 
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I think Scotland's position as a 'country' is unique; at least I can't think of any other 'country in its own right' which has so little freedom to make its own laws and levy its own taxes. Scotland's position is more akin to a US state than to, say, Belgium or Holland.
 
I don't see that as double think or schizophrenic, more a result of a nuanced understanding.

After all, it has it's own legal system and education system for example.
 

Seeker_UK said:
https://www.thoughtco.com/scotland-is-not-an-independent-country-1435433

TL/DR. Scotland is not an independent country.
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Here is the context on this diversion onto whether Scotland is a country or not...

Kirk said:
Brexit and SI aren't really equivalent.
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Seeker_UK said:
Both involve departure from long-established unions and both have had, or will have, economic 'pain' for the departing nation. I don't understand why the two are different in that regard.
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wulbert said:
<snip>

A lot of the differences hinge on whether you view Scotland as an actual nation, or just a northern province of the UK. If the latter, then it is probably difficult to understand the motivation for some of us seeking Scotland's independence. I see Scotland as a nation, a country with it's own borders, laws, history, courts, education system and parliament.

<snip>
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Brian said:
Scotland is a country that is a part of the UK, it is not a province of the UK.

<snip>
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All I said was that I view Scotland as a country. I’m not seeing what the problem is with that pov.

I don’t for a moment believe the trail above is about whether or not Scotland is considered a country by some textbook definition. This is about nationalist propaganda that Scotland is considered a province of the UK and not a country by the English.
 
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