Alex Salmond: A second Scottish referendum is inevitible

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lovelyhead said:
Show me the anti English posts I made or apologise for the slur.
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Come now, I'm sure we can be friends. I'm a big enough man to say perhaps your posts focused on the English oppressors and the continual exclusion of the Irish and Welsh, not to mention pro unionist Scots and nazis lead me to be a little hasty in my assumptions. I'm sure you're a perfect anglophile really and I humbly beg your forgiveness for the thought even crossing my mind and I've clearly misunderstood the embracing nature of your posts.

Besides, I quite like you, you're funny.
 
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Tefal said:
Because they want an indipendant Scotland to fail horribly as an example to their own secessionist areas.

Problem with being a trail blazer is for everyone who wants you to succeed there us one who wants you to fail to prevent their own doing the same.

And iirc the system for eu entry works on a unanimous vote so it only takes one.


Say Spain did veto it lovely what is the outcome of Scotland being independent and not being a member of the eu?

(The uks own member ship will impact this I know so feel free to give two results)
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It could be possible that Spain would veto us joining but I think there would be pressure coming from Germany and France telling the Spanish not to.
 
lovelyhead said:
It could be possible that Spain would veto us joining but I think there would be pressure coming from Germany and France telling the Spanish not to.
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OK but Germany are ****ing off a lot of people recently so their influence may fail.

What do you think would happen if Scotland wasn't a lowed to join after infipemdance
 
Tefal said:
OK but Germany are ****ing off a lot of people recently so their influence may fail.

What do you think would happen if Scotland wasn't a lowed to join after infipemdance
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We would probably try to set up some sort of trade agreement similar to what Norway has with the EU.
 
In the mean time on a good weekend the shopping centre has a quarter of a million people through. Highlights the scale of just how few people were interested
 
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lovelyhead said:
I have never said that Scotland would overrule the EU referendum result. If England vote to leave then that is what will happen regardless of how the other countries in the UK vote.

If Scotland voted NO to leaving the EU and England voted YES then another independence referendum at that point would be justified.
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It's implicit in the "tough luck"remark
lovelyhead said:
Hypothetical situation. 100% of the people of Scotland vote to stay in the EU. 100% of the population of England vote to leave the EU. In your view that would just be Scotland's tough luck and it would be forced out of the EU against it's will.
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In what way can 53m English voting to leave and it not happening because 5.3 Scots said no result in it not happening. So yes, simple numbers mandate that if those were the percentages, it'd be tough luck.

I do agree it'd justify another referendum, though. I said so earlier.

It's also why I'm in favour of Scottish independence, if that is the will of Scots. Given that we have a pseudo-Democratic system, sheer population numbers mean that if England votes heavily one way, the combined populations of all the other parts can't do anything about it.

However, the actual numbers are nothing remotely like 100%. It's far from clear that the "leave" camp can even get a simple majority among 53m English, never mind a substantial one. Even if "leave" do manage a majority, it's entirely plausible that it would be by a small enough marhin that a heavily "stay" oriented Scottish vote could swing the overall vote to remain.

Suppose, for example, and assuming all 53m English were of voting age and that everyone voted, that 26m voted "remain" and the other 27m voted "leave". Then, England wants to leave. Now suppose that of 5.3m Scots voting, 2m voted leave, but the remaining 3.3m voted "remain". The 1.3m Scots majority wanting to remain swings it against the 1m English majority wanting to quit, and the will of Scotland wins over the will of England.

Ultimately, though, the source of the Scottish (or rather, Scot Nat) complaint about "will of Scotland" and English domination seems to be that there's more of us than you. Well, true enough. Guilty as charged.

As a result, if Scotland wants to leave the union so it can determine it's own affairs, I entirely understand that, and don't have a problem with it. If that's what you, as in all Scots, decide you want, I wish you luck as an independent nation, and can we please get on with it?

What I don't understand is the rationale that says you want to leave the union with the UK to recover national sovereignty, and then immediately cede it to the EU by joining another sovereignty-sucking Union. Unless, of course, the sovereignty issue is actually a mask for some deep-rooted anti-English sentiment? And if that's the case, then again, please get on with independence.

I mean, if Scotland's voice is limited because 5.3m Scots cannot outvote 53m English, how the heck do you think 5.3m Scots will have any substantial say among 500m EU voters or 28-ish other European nations?

I get wanting independence from England. I don't get that, and yet still wanting EU membership. Either you (Scots) want sovereignty, or you don't.
 
lovelyhead said:
It could be possible that Spain would veto us joining but I think there would be pressure coming from Germany and France telling the Spanish not to.
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And what a glowing example of the operation of the true nature of EU "democracy" that would be. :rolleyes:

But I wonder, if France/Germany are prepared to bully Spain, how much attention do you think they'll pay to the "will of Scotland"? Not that they need to. After all, accession votes are one of a dwindling number of EU matters where any country has a veto. Most of the UKs right to veto, or to not participate, have gone. Good luck to Scotland even getting those few remaining exclusions ... like to Schengen.
 
The problem with the argument Lovelyhead puts forward in that example is it's built on the nationalists fallacy that all English vote and want one thing and all Scots vote and want other things so Scots get oppressed and can only have what they want if they rid them selves of the English (we seem to have forgotten the Welsh and Irish again although according to Lovelyhead they just do what the English tell them to).

It's a silly argument built on a false premise from the start designed to make a Scotland vs England argument.
 
To be fair, right now thank god England is doing most of the running for us in NI.
Its all going Pete Tong here at the moment.
 
Macro said:
The problem with the argument Lovelyhead puts forward in that example is it's built on the nationalists fallacy that all English vote and want one thing and all Scots vote and want other things so Scots get oppressed and can only have what they want if they rid them selves of the English (we seem to have forgotten the Welsh and Irish again although according to Lovelyhead they just do what the English tell them to).

It's a silly argument built on a false premise from the start designed to make a Scotland vs England argument.
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Yep, and fortunately those shouting the loudest like he is don't actually represent the majority viewpoint, as much as he'd have "the English" think otherwise. All the people I know who voted 'Yes' did so because they wanted Scotland to have its own go at doing things and not be ruled/overlooked by Westminster, there was really no anti-English rhetoric that I picked up on other than the odd crazy crap shared by an idiot on Facebook or whatever.

Even many of the people who voted 'Yes' are sick of still hearing about it now and can agree that it needs to be put to bed for a while.
 
TheVoice said:
Yep, and fortunately those shouting the loudest like he is don't actually represent the majority viewpoint, as much as he'd have "the English" think otherwise.
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To be fair he knows as well as we do the majority of Scots are either against leaving the Union or have major reservations about the idea. All he, and the nats in general, are doing is trying to make as much noise as possible saying whatever they can to keep the debate alive rather than not settled for a generation as was the intent of even Alex Salmond at the time. And we're walking straight into it.

Ultimately all that is going to happen outside of noisy debates like this is it will create uncertainty for business and investment into Scotland which will ironically end up harming the Scottish economy. I can't help but feel Scotland would have been better served by a strong devolved government and a declaration of "independence whilst still a long term aim for the SNP has been settled, we asked and heard the voice of the Scottish people. After years of uncertainty Scotland is on a firm economic footing with the certainty investment needs and is open for business as a powerhouse of the UK economy".

Instead we have petty political agendas undermining confidence in the Scottish economy in a hope to allow the relatively wealthy Edinburgh political elite the opportunity to shout "see, we're no better off, England lied!!!!" we need a President Salmond to save us!

Fortunately as can be seen by the rally painted here by Lovelyhead as a flagship example of dissatisfaction with the Union, more Scots go shopping in St Enochs at the weekend than this supposed compelling expression of national will.
 
TheVoice said:
Yep, and fortunately those shouting the loudest like he is don't actually represent the majority viewpoint, as much as he'd have "the English" think otherwise. All the people I know who voted 'Yes' did so because they wanted Scotland to have its own go at doing things and not be ruled/overlooked by Westminster, there was really no anti-English rhetoric that I picked up on other than the odd crazy crap shared by an idiot on Facebook or whatever.

Even many of the people who voted 'Yes' are sick of still hearing about it now and can agree that it needs to be put to bed for a while.
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There is a vein of disdain in some Scots for the English, just as there is a mutual disdain between English and French.

But my reading of it, inaccurate as it may be, is that at most, anti-English sentiment is a gloss put over some real, genuine concerns. Of course, it doesn't help when some twerp of a tennis player makes a remark like "Anyone but England", for all that he later said, and probably genuinely, he'd been joking. My guess is he learned a valuable PR lesson there - keep your yap shut on anything controversial, if you're a celeb.

But I suspect many Scots, and most ScotNats, see the "Union" much as I see the EU, that being sonething that they had no say in being signed up to, don't much like, and for all that it has benefits, they're outweighed by disadvantages, not least that they can't run their own country but are ruled from abroad by a bunch of foreigners who, however nice they may (or may not) be, aren't "us".

Though there's an element of anti-English in places, there's far more to Nationalism than that. But then, I'm English, what do I know?
 
Aldav said:
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But I suspect many Scots, and most ScotNats, see the "Union" much as I see the EU, that being sonething that they had no say in being signed up to,
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except of course they just got to have their say and decided they wanted it....
 
Tefal said:
except of course they just got to have their say and decided they wanted it....
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Well, yeah. Agreed.

The general election result was, or at least may have been, a bit of a game-changer, though. Even I wonder whether if a re-run was held now, the result would be the same?
 
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