Para 3 et seq - Agreed, rather depressingly.
Biggest concern being that right now out my office indows I can see 4 wind turbines which are generating 0 of 7MW possible load.
]]>Scots Referendum.
EU Referendum (which might get pushed to before the General Election by a Tory faction)
General Election.
Cameron building up the fear of "migrants" and the EU, on some pretty flimsy evidence.
I've been reading too much history of the 1920s and 1930s in the last few years, and this all looks very familiar. And this time we have the questionable policy choice to build new ballistic missile subs (which are currently based in Scotland) when the sort of threat these weapons were devised to meet has been dead for some twenty years.
There are people in the Conservative Party who I can imagine having a fun conversation with, for as long as we avoid political subjects. But didn't one of those Mitford girls say that Hitler was a fun conversationalist (and one of her sisters preferred Elvis Presley)?
I see the necessity of politics, but the number of blatant lies which are passing for political debate is sickening. On the question of Independence, there are some sensible questions being asked by the anti-faction, but they are a rhetorical trick to let them insert their lies into the debate.
(As for Spain, there are also rumblings in Catalonia...)
The really scary thought is that Cameron wants Scottish Independence because he thinks it means he will never lose an Election. Well, he hasn't won one yet.
]]>"Secondly, on the subject of currency, what happens to the national debt if Scotland votes for independence? You might not have noticed this, but the SNP have asserted a defensive position to Tory threats of excluding Scotland from Sterling -- namely, if we don't stay in the currency, we don't accept any share of the Sterling zone's national debt, either. Just how this will play out is an interesting question ... "
That raises an interesting question. If Scotland votes for independence, Westminster accepts it in principal (and given the acceptance of a binding referendum that's a given), but the parties can't agree terms (say on retention of Sterling and/or accepting a share of the UK National debt) what happens?
UDI for Scotland with Scots issued passports not recognised in the UK and sanctions imposed by Westminster??
That would be an unholy mess which hopefully makes use of the (figurative) Nuclear option by either party unlikely...
]]>On the main subject ...
Charlie is in Dun-Ei-dinn / Edin's-Burgh, I'm in Londinium, & it shows - we are both "out of touch" - one reason I brought the subject up.
Yes, Cameron is horrible, if only because he is so incompetent, but Scots' independance would be worse, for us, in England, for reasons given above. Contrariwise, Charlie's comments on "the City" are so far off-base as to be laughable, except that a lot of people believe it.
Look, apart from a a brief period in the middle if the 19thC, Engl;and has been driven & prospered from London, it's certainly been that way since the days of EdwardIV, & it is merely a reversion to what we've always done.
Remember, too that "The Corporation" have deposed both a King & a republican dictator, when pushed far enough.
You also have to remember, that up until about 1900, Lonoon was also a major manufacturing centre. And even that seems to be reviving, in the hi-tech & software industries, both in London & the surrounding areas.
Yes, there are unpleasant distortions, which, thanks to modern comms & "openness" we can see more clearly than before, but there's nothing new here, either.
After all, why did my penniless Huguenot ancestors come to London, & most remained in Bethnal Green & Spitalfields until about 1905? Right.
That was where the money & jobs were.
"Migrants" The basic problem is, of course, we have too many people, total, in the UK, &, of also cheap immigration is encouraged by the very people Charlie & I both despise - the ultra-rich corporate exploiters of cheap labour. Yes, OF COURSE "the immigants work harder than the English" - & why might that be? Because they don't realise that we do have minimum-wage-laws & terms & conditions & "the rules" & are much easier to exploit ... the SS Empire WIndrush was not the first, nor the last case of this ... Their attitude seems to be: "Oh we can't get native (English) people to do the dirty, low-paid menial jobs for crap wages & shite conditions, so lets' import some gullible foreigners, (Skin-colour totally irrelevant, actually) who don't know any better." Thus fuelling the "race to the bottom". This really has got to stop, but how?
Charlie's last sentence: I think it's likely that by 2020, English politics will be dominated by parties with platforms that are barely distinguishable from the BNP in the 1990s -- Nazi-Lite, basically. And that's not a country I want to be part of. Well, I'm to Charlie's right, politically (even though I'm an ex-Lem-o-Crat), but I don't either. I think you have fallen for the "UKIP are right-wing-loonies" trope ... if that's so, why do so many "old Labour" voters seem to be toying with UKIP ideas? Possibly because the NuLiebour party has betrayed them, in the same way that the tories have abandoned the ideals of Butler & MacMillan, of my youth?
Possibly because all three main parties, as regards their organisation & leaderships (so-called) are rotten right through ( Which explains ScotsNats' popularity, too, in spite of their really unpleasnt nanny tendencies? ) There are honorable exceptions. Tom Watson, Stella Creasey (My MP) .. but when a tory right-winger like Douglas Carswell, writes, lamenting in the Torygraph, that something is amiss, bacause we have Swedish tax-&-spend levels & Texan-quality healthcare, & this "ain't right", you know something is amiss.
What is to be done?
]]>I was wondering--not too seriously*--if an independent Scotland would have a Law of Return, allowing people with Scottish ancestry to claim citizenship.
But thinking about it, I realized that would be a disaster for Scotland. You'd be flooded with Right-Wing American Highlander wannabes (aka rednecks, who think "Braveheart" is a documentary), and would drag the new nation down.
*though waiting for the next US presidential election...
]]>I'm not worried about that. They'd get here and receive a rude awakening, just like Jerry Falwell. (You know you're unpopular when you get the Church of Scotland and Stonewall UK lining up on the same side of the barricades against you.) They'll arrive, discover that everyone they meet is some kind of communist, take one look at the tax bill, shriek, and run away.
And you have to admire how Wee 'Eck, aka First Minister Alex Salmond, has played Donald Trump for a chump ...
]]>I don't see that an independent Scotland would need or have a 'right of return', because given their approach to demographics, the SNP would let anyone in anyway, so if Americans want to move to SCotland, that's fine. THen as CHarlie says, they'd find out that things have changed since 1745, and that they don't like it here.
]]>I'm guessing that's like the KKK protesting Westboro Baptist at Arlington Cemetery a few years ago?
I'm sure I haven't mentioned that my father grew up in Lynchburg Virginia, home of the late Falwell's church. My uncle, returned and lived there the rest of his life once told of going to the church. He said that everything was focused on the broadcast, and when it came time to pass the plate (and he thought it was a good time to go), the doors were locked--from the outside.
I seem to remember you once suggesting that The Clearances seemed to have removed some of the more violent/conservative elements from Scotland, sending them to the colonies. Which, at the time, reminded me of being in Scotland several years ago with my father, and he complaining about the liberals in America, while I and whoever he was chatting with tried not let him see our eyes rolling.
]]>My own perception of UKIP as the party of "I'm-not-a-racist-but-ism" is based on correspondence in my local newspaper from those purporting to speak for the party, conversations with people manning stalls on the street, and election material which has come through my door.
At the very least UKIP need to be more selective of and keep a tighter leash on their local activists. In the meantime people coming to them from from elewhere or getting involved with a political party for the first time need to take a long hard look at who they're getting into bed with on a local level because (locally to me anyway) there undoubtedly are a disturbing number of dubious people making themselves visible under the UKIP banner. If the party at large aren't willing to dissociate themselves from them and their views I can only assume that they tacitly endorse them...
]]>You seem to be buying into the SNP idea that they get to determine terms of any 'independence' - that they will or will not 'accept' debt.
The reality is this referendum only worth anything because Westminster says it does - and similarly with ANY terms of 'independence'. Therefore if Westminster says scotland has £100bn of debt, that's what it has. They could rant and rave, maybe take the UK to the EU courts (good luck if the EU referendum goes the expected way), but they would be stuck with that debt, and the repayments, for a minimum of 5 years. Repudiate it and kiss goodbye to ANY borrowing.
The unreality on the issue is staggering. It would be a divorce, and there's no chance it would be nice and pretty - you shouldn't expect it to be so.
The only winner out of this is Cameron. He can't lose the way things are - 'yes' or 'no'. You can bet that if things were to turn around the the vote were to go 'yes', he would dump so much manure onto the terms that scotland would have no chance to survive as an independent entity.
If you slag him off as a bastard now, why the hell would you expect him to be any less when he had no reason to be magnanimous?
]]>So remind me again how the Czech republic shafted Slovakia?
There are plenty of precedents for "no-fault" divorces between nations.
...
But what I'm actually hoping for is that a "yes" vote gives Salmond the ammo he needs to walk it back from full on independence to devo max.
Devo max was explicitly ruled off the ballot by Cameron -- possibly a good thing from his point of view, because before that happened it was going to win outright over the other two options (full independence, or status quo). Devo max is popular in Scotland. Meanwhile, Cameron recently said that in event of a "no" vote Scotland would receive no further devolved powers -- in other words, he's opposed to devo max under any circumstances.
Devo max in the wake of a "yes" vote that just scraped past the post would be a face saver for both sides. Cameron could spin it as saving the union, while Salmond could spin it as having his cake and eating it -- after all, who needs the headaches of running their own military and foreign policy?
And in a broader context, it's all about renegotiating the Barnett Formula and the East Lothian Question anyway ...
]]>I think he's generally right about power concentrated in the prime minister and the need for more parliamentary answers. But that would work best with changes in the parties themselves so that awkward bastards actually get elected rather than shoved aside by shiny people parachuted in from central office, which I understand all main parties do.
]]>If the independence vote is yes, Cameron will move to kick out scotland as fast as possible, and with terms imposed that makes a mess of any hope of success. The SNP won't have control of any of that.
Personally I think the only reason he agreed to convert the fake referendum into a real one was because he saw that the SNP was delusional, hadn't done the hard graft to get their ducks in a row (particularly with the EU), and thus were ready to be plucked.
To guess, I'd suggest he would rush an EU referendum prior to, or at, the election - and if he got an 'out' vote pull the UK out prior to any split. The SNP are already very very likely to have to reapply and accept the euro, oversight, etc. - if the UK leaves, and scotland with it, it's a certainty.
Look at the dates: Referendum : 18 Sept 2014 Next UK Election : 7 May 2015 SNP proposed independence date : 24 March 2016
So kick out any scottish MPs prior to May 2015, then call the EU referendum of the UK at, or about, the election, and leave prior to March 2016 (actually let's sync the date with the FY). The EU referendum and the election wouldn't have any scottish voting, of course, since they would have excluded themselves already.
When the SNP finally gets the keys - it's to a fait accompli of whatever terms Cameron wants to impose, and the really of no EU membership.
]]>