I think my family name is just a coincidence
March, march, Eskdale and Liddesdale,
All the Blue Bonnets are bound for the Border.
It's only nonsensical because you're not thinking like a politician. It's not about "what's best for the country", it's about "what's best for me, sorry the Party".
They're swapping significant influence in Westminster for a tiny influence in Brussels and total power in Holyrood Muhahaha...
]]>" The Border Reivers way of life does bear remarkable similarities with both the early Celtic inhabitants of Britain and the Anglo-Saxon warriors who later settled here from their homelands in northern Germany and Denmark in the 6th century A.D. Perhaps the most striking similarity was the Border Reiver's capacity, despite his violent nature, to produce the famous border ballads which, like the old Anglo-Saxon warrior poems, tended to glorify a life of war, raiding and revenge. Sometimes however, the ballads could be of a rather sad and pitiful nature, like the `Border Widow's Lament', a tune best sung to the accompaniment of the Northumbrian Pipes;
My love he built me a bonny bower, And clad it all wi' lilly flower A brawer bower why ye ne'er did see Than my true love he built for me. There came a man by middle day He spied his sport and went away And browt the kin that very night, Who broke my bower and slew my knight. He slew my knight te me sae dear, He slew my Knight and stole his yield, My servants all for life did flee, And left me in extremity. I sewed his sheet marking my name I washed the corpse my self alane, I watched his body night and day, Nae living creature came that way. I took his body on my back, And whiles I pray and whiles I sat I digged a grave and I laid him in, And covered him with grass sae green. But think nae ye my heart was sair, When I laid the clay on his yellow hair Oh think nae ye my heart was wae, When I turned about and went away No living man I'll love again Since that my lovely knight was slain
George M Trevelyan the great British historian, (a Northumbrian) superbly summed up the nature of the Border Reivers and their ballads when he wrote;
"They were cruel,coarse savages, slaying each other like the beasts of the forest; and yet they were also poets who could express in the grand style the inexorable fate of the individual man and woman, the infinite pity for all cruel things which they none the less inflicted upon one another. It was not one ballad- maker alone but the whole cut throat population who felt this magnanimous sorrow, and the consoling charms of the highest poetry."
http://www.englandsnortheast.co.uk/BorderReivers.html
Folks from outside of the UK might care to consider that we of here don’t look upon Borders in quite the same way as they do if, say, they are citizens of the US of A.
Consider that, for instance, the main Railway line through Newcastle Upon Tyne to the city centre cuts through the grounds of a Norman Castle...the NEW Castle... and runs a alongside of a Victorian Railway Hotel in which several of the most notable British Sci- Fi Conventions have taken place and which is actually built over part of the Roman Wall.
Borders? We have Lots of Them and they have been overlaid over the course of thousands of years with yet newer and shinier Borders whose Fearsome Boundaries have been climbed by people who were willing to take low paid jobs in the Shipyards in the hope of rising to, say, the exalted rank of Riveter ..a bit of a waste of a Sword Arm I daresay but Times Change and my Grandfather was a Left Handed Riveter.
]]>"New Government cuts could see a million state jobs go George Osborne orders 'ambitious' new efficiency drive, to be detailed in the Autumn Statement, for savings and job cuts stretching deep into the next parliament”
As many Scots as possible should read that piece.
Oh, I should, and do, declare that I'm North East of England English and do have fits of The Horrors over what will happen in the North East of England under a near future, near permanent, Tory Government if Scotland does achieve Independence.
]]>Like this sort of miscalculation, perhaps?
Hundreds of thousands of civil servants and other government employees are facing the sack under sweeping Tory plans to cut back the state, The Telegraph can disclose. Ministers are drawing up radical measures, to be announced in George Osborne’s Autumn Statement, which will see widespread privatisations and at least one million public sector workers removed from the government payroll by the end of the decade.
Osborne's a moron, isn't he?
]]>Many tory voters have quite like a lot of the big government services - the NHS, state schools and so on. They're largely in favour of the council collecting the rubbish, repairing roads and the rest of it as well, and taxes paying for the police, jails and the like. But at a level above the actual core voters, at the level of the people who have the ear of the chancellor and so on, or the ministers themselves, they never consider going to an NHS doctor, they'd never consider a state school and they're not afraid to say that the NHS is terrible, that schools are terrible and so on. They have, repeatedly.
I'm not trying to say that either system is perfect. But, honestly, I have yet to see good evidence for education or healthcare that suggests that any system where taking a profit out of it improves the quality of the service where the focus should be on delivering education or healthcare. I'm not saying either that their shouldn't be a system like NICE. However unpopular NICE is, for reasons I completely understand, some level of financial restraint and judgement on the cost-efficiency of treatments is required if the tax payer is going to fund treatments. (If you're paying yourself, go for it, it's your money.) But they're doing different things than saying "here, have a profit."
]]>Borders? We have Lots of Them here in the U.K., and they have been overlaid over the course of thousands of years with yet newer and shinier Borders whose Fearsome Boundaries have been climbed by people who were willing to take low paid jobs in, suchlike, as the Shipyards and as labourers in the hope of rising to, say, the exalted rank of Riveter ..a bit of a waste of a Sword Arm I daresay but Times Change and my Grandfather was a Left Handed Riveter.
]]>I think you misunderstood my question. Let me rephrase it:
If Yes, there will be costs associated with the breakup. Since the breakup (if yes) will have been initiated by Scotland, would Scotland, as a matter of international law, have to bear the majority of the costs?
If there is no sensible ruling from international law presumably the respective domestic politics will take over. This would look very ugly: presumably the best option for both parties in the dispute would be to somewhow kick it into the long grass until the SNP lost their majority and a lot of the costs became moot.
]]>Essentially it's an internal matter. The UK is negotiating itself into being two countries. How it does that is up to itself. (How those two new countries negotiate themselves with their former allies and treaty partners and so on also needs to be negotiated of course and there's been lots of rude words about how that will go that I'm not going to add to because I really just don't know. Although I suspect some of the things about UN membership and the like are well established from this.)
But various countries have done this in the past, plus companies do it all the time and hive off parts to stand on their own. In the UK, Lloyds TSB has just split to become Lloyds and TSB once again, after merging a couple of decades ago for example. I don't know what happened with Sudan and South Sudan, Portugal and Sao Tome et Principe, Britain and all its former colonies... I suspect it's a case by case basis. Obviously Britain saying to India "here, be a country and a sovereign state again, instead of a colony" is rather different in many, many respects to devolving Scotland mind. There's a matter of about a billion population (at the time), a few thousand miles as the mole digs and so on.
]]>I addressed the specific examples that you cited.
]]>I am in favour of freedom of trade and freedom of movement, and against everything else about the EU.
But, like you said, it's a shame we don't get to vote for that.
]]>It seems to me that some of the breakup costs that the SNP have requested are potentially large (retain UKR pound without UKR control of economics and taxation, Faslane as a nuclear-free zone are 2 examples that spring to mind). This all sounds to me like a recipe for a very messy and bitter divorce with both sides arguing that its all the other sides fault and therefore the other side should pay, egged on by the respective domestic politics (the why should WE pay for what THEY want argument). Even if they manage to kick these sorts of issues into the long grass (Scotland shadows the UKR pound without any UKR lender of last support until the economies and/or capital flows diverge too much for that to be feasible, then switches to the Euro, FasLane nuclear becomes a 10-25 year rental deal with suitable crowd-pleasing promises etc), it will still be very hard for both UKR and Scotland to keep the lid on their respective public sentiments.
If yes, there has to be a real chance of the resumption of serious hostilities, initially by minority groups.
]]>For a long time both Ireland and Canada more or less struggled to break out and were pretty tightly tied to their more economically vigorous neighbours, although with the former Celtic Tiger joining the Euro that's no longer the case and with Canada being run by Godless Socialists and junkies (please remember I count myself as both Godless and Socialist so I am being more than a little ironic) it has ripped it's economy from the Land of the Free to shoot each other (by God's grace).
Sure there will be the cock-up with the economy thanks to being tied to someone else. But if you haven't noticed countries manage to cock their economies up just fine when they make their own rules and set their own policies. They probably do it in different ways though.
Moving Faslane is a different kettle of fish. But... meh. I'm really not convinced of the usefulness of the UK's nuclear deterrent. If Scotland votes yes and UKR-HMG is forced to consider moving Faslane (not by Christmas but by the next parliamentary term as a reasonable period to have at least started the building work) I wonder if they'll stop, look at the costs and stay "stuff it." It is a lot of money for the enemy of 3 decades and more ago. Scrap the lot, build a couple more aircraft carriers and keep them at sea, expand the regular army a bit, open a nice hospital or two in vote winning places. Sorry Mr. Osborne, what was that about austerity and making the hard choices? We're still saving money. Yes, we're losing a particular set of skills but are we losing a relevant set of skills for today's defence environment? And suddenly that's looking much more solvable.
]]>It looks the usual very dodgy deal, buy a tiny plot of land can call yourself a Laird (or Lady), but there might be something of value in it: it's a fundraiser for a nature reserve.
Still looks dodgy, and then you see where this wonderful special deal comes from.
It's Amazon. They sell you a voucher which can be exchanged for this incredible deal.
They'll charge you fifteen quid, but actually registering title to the land has a fee (if I'm reading right) of sixty quid. Though reports elsenet suggests the operation is using leased land.
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