Drop Scotland?

There's a lot of truth in that Warbler. As I said earlier, around that time a good weather forecast for the south of England was enough to piss me off. Don't get me wrong, it would never have led to me being ignorant to any English person as they, individually, weren't "the English".
 
Originally posted by clivex@Nov 29 2006, 05:56 PM
Interesting you say that E

Ive always found Glasgow and Edinburgh very friendly. Great cities

But i know people who have worked in aberdeen and spit bile about the place...
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Yep Glasgow and Edinburgh are fine, but i lived in Carnoustie for five years back in the eighties and a lot of the people were vile. The whole area was and probably still is a hotbed for the SNP.
 
Despite all of it's faults, I believe that the UK is greater than the sum of it's individual parts - that goes for both England and Scotland.

I'm a Scot (or chillie-Jocko, if you prefer), and will have no truck with the shortbread-tin-rattling antics of the SNP, who seem to think that the country can successfully exist on the back of oil, whisky and the occassional bung from Sean Connery. I find their position ludicrous, and their numbers entirely fail to add-up.

However, the 'English', if this poll is accurate, best be careful about what they wish for. The suggestion that Scotland is somehow now holding England back, is just as naive as the SNP's argument.

Whae's like us? The English - in almost every single respect - so let's get over it and move on.

To irreversibly break-up the UK on the back of the fantasy that we are somehow different from each other, would be an avoidable and entirely unnecessary calamity for both Scotland and England, imo.
 
Slovakia has done rather better than expected since breaking up with the Czechs, Ireland is doing well enough too, along with the Baltic republics. An independent Scotland would be bigger than all of these and through the British Empire has been present in more export markets for far longer than any of them.

Scotland has a strong brand image abroad and has world famous food, drink and clothing products and a respected tradition in engineering, medicine and other branches of knowledge. Its universities have a high reputation. It also does well from tourism.

Size used to be vital in an era when access to foreign markets was problematic and the domestic market was the main outlet available, but in a single-market EU that is no longer such a big consideration. Perhaps being smaller can even be an advantage, because everybody knows from the start that the domestic market won't be enough to sustain them?

What matters more is whether an independent Scotland would work as a political and social entity. Do Scots want independence enough to make a success of it?
 
Scotland has a strong brand image abroad and has world famous food, drink
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Deep fried mars bars
Irn bru
Buckfast Wine (although thats made in england)
Deep fried pizza
chips
Smack
 
Warbler

That was 20-25 years ago, of course

It could equally be argued that much of scotland was way too heavily propped up by goverment spending and useless nationlised industries at that time (if i recall rightly the development of Ravenscraig was considered by many on many sides of then political spectrum as a political and economic scandal)

Thatcher's approach was brutal, but do you believe that britain would be where it is today if action hadnt been taken?

if the Scots are really voting for the SNP now because of plicies from 25 years ago, then i think they ought to start thinking again, dont you? . Personally i very much doubt that they are. I also wonder how many seriously believe that the region would be better off with heavily subsidised crap industries (especially if they were an independent nation) supposedly propping up the economy

And if they accept that other regions were as badly affected during that time, are they serious thinking that an exception should have been made for them?
 
Do you believe that Britain would not have been bankrupt had Thatcher not had North Sea Oil revenues to waste rather than invest .

Erm and some might say Scottish oil at that whilst she used Scotland like a lab rat for things like the poll tax .
 
I think you ahve to think back to what a total mess this country was in in the late seventies

Heavily subsidised, useless, uncompetitive, union dominated industries was not the way forward

There is no doubt that there had to be a change of tack. I am not thatcherite but the situation at that time was absolutely dire

North sea revenues might have alleviated some of the pain (i think that the actual value of them could have been exaggerated) but either way, the country required not just an economic rethink but also a cultural change.

Think where we would be now if nothing had changed?

Labour's alternative was the "nationlisation of the top 100 industries i recall"

So there was no alternative...

Couldnt care less about the Scots whinging about being experimented upon. The poll tax (a dismal idea) was being about to be imposed upon the rest of the country anyway.
 
A country cannot technically go bankrupt, although the 1970's "cap in hand" to the IMF was a close as we came
 
The state of the country in the late 70s is an urban myth it was no way as bad as portrayed and the Winter of Discontent is allowed to skew the facts - unemployment and inflation were falling and Healey and Callaghan were getting the public finances under control. The Thatcher shock treatment was unncessary and socially devastating- we are still feeling the effects of her destruction of many working class communities.
 
unemployment and inflation were falling and Healey and Callaghan were getting the public finances under control
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Thats true, but that was (and always is) a temporary position. The underlying problems were horrendous. Come on now. Barely anyone denies that....

Who refers to the "british disease" these days?

we are still feeling the effects of her destruction of many working class communities
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Sure. Many communities were devastated, but do you keep polluting uneconomic pits open just to keep a mining village in place? Do you keep crappy British leyland going (how could they compete now?) just to keep a part of Birmingham prosperous?

And we now have...

The best performing major economy in europe for some time now. Low unemployment and higher than ever prosperity.

Even Gordon Brown fully acknowledges that the changes made in the 80's have contributed to this
 
Originally posted by clivex@Nov 30 2006, 04:54 PM
The best performing major economy in europe for some time now. Low unemployment and higher than ever prosperity.

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Add the longest running period of low inflation in modern times.

But some of our members on here believe that the economy is in a mess and want to pay no tax.
 
Originally posted by BrianH@Nov 30 2006, 06:06 PM


But some of our members on here believe that the economy is in a mess and want to pay no tax.
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I have no objection to paying tax, i`d be willing to pay 30p basic rate in fact. But i strongly object to bullshit NI deductions. I should be able to opt out and forego my state pension.
 
Ah yes, the NI contribution - not that I had much of an issue paying it whilst I was in the UK but I do object to being sent several letters telling me that as I am not paying UK NI contributions I might like to voluntarily pay them to ensure that I will be entitled to a state pension. For starters, by the time I retire there's not likely to be a state pension worth writing home about and secondly I checked into all that before I left and was categorically told that whilst I am paying NI contributions in Europe [not least in Gibraltar, a GB protectorate!!!] I am still entitled to everything I would be were I still resident in the UK.
 
Originally posted by Euronymous@Nov 30 2006, 06:18 PM
I should be able to opt out and forego my state pension.
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It is not your state pension you are paying for - people who are your age now will be paying for yours when the time comes.
 
Originally posted by Shadow Leader@Nov 30 2006, 06:31 PM
and was categorically told that whilst I am paying NI contributions in Europe
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Are you sure that they didn't say the EU, of which Gibraltar is not a part?
 
After living here for 4 years I'm well aware that Gibraltar is not part of the EU! Actually yes, I believe they did say in the EU but I was also told that Gibraltar is a different case and that yes, paying NI in Gibraltar was the same as paying it in the EU [for this purpose] - I did double check before I left!
 
I don't know much of 18 Century British politics, which is odd because I know most of whatever else happened anywhere, any time. But I watched 'Monarchy' on C4 last week and Starkey had it that the Scots agreed to the Act of Union because basically, there was a few bob in it.

Surely not the behavior of a proud Nation?
 
Ardross I don't know where you were living in the Callaghan / Healey years [Planet Zog maybe?] - but they WERE horrendous and the country WAS on its knees.

I'd fairly recently gone freelance and suddenly most of my possible clients were bankrupted. A great many of my own friends, running small businesses in all kinds of sectors inc publishers, graphic design studios, building and decorating, you name it - were bankrupted, along with a lots of creative people [writers, artists etc]. Lots of people lost their homes.

If you went abroad, you had to stuff money down your boots - it was so bad you weren't allowed to take more than a derisory sum out. Inflation was so bad - 33% anyone? - if you were lucky enough to get a commission for work, by the time you'd got half way through the job your fee was worthless. Income tax at c.90% anyone? London was a total nightmare - rats in the streets and nursing staff on strike, and friends falling out seriously over all of it.

It was utterly horrible, deeply traumatic, is seared into my memory - and I've never voted Labour since, and never will. The country was ungovernable - utterly in the grip of the unions, which were run by a small cabal of politically motivated demgogues who certainly didn't have their members' nor the country's interests at heart. Thatcher was repellent in many ways, but a 'necessary evil', and don't forget she made as many working class people quite rich, as she made poor. I've never btw understood the romanticising of mining - would you want your son to go down a mine?

Btw it's not true we have low unemployment. There may be 'only' around 1 million registered unemployed, but there are a few more MILLIONS claiming various incapacity benefits etc. The largest EVER percentage of the country of working age is not working, and claiming benefits of one sort or another - the figures are heavily massaged. And I'm not even counting the millions in 'further education' of dubious kinds, who would in previous years have likely also been on the unemployment register. Nor the 88,000 in jail... the highest ever figure - another fine record!
 
Headstrong what a pile of bollocks .

1 There were far more company and individual bankruptcies in the early 1980s under Thatcher

2 Exchange controls existed under Tory and Labour Govts as did credit controls. Meanwhile remember that the only thing that enabled Thatcher to survive was North Sea Oil which she pissed away on mass unemployment benefit

3 The 98% tax rate only applied to the very highest slice of income

4 As for massaging the unemployment figures I have only just stopped laughing - Thatcher massaged millions off the total and indeed it was her government that happily pushed people on to invalidity benefit , it did everything it could to keep people off the headline figures
 
Originally posted by Ardross@Dec 1 2006, 08:59 AM
As for massaging the unemployment figures I have only just stopped laughing - Thatcher massaged millions off the total and indeed it was her government that happily pushed people on to invalidity benefit , it did everything it could to keep people off the headline figures
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Very true Ardross but, it's to Labour's shame that they chose to continue the lie.
 
Its not what happened in the early 80's under Thatcher that is really the issue. There was bound to be pain before the economy and the culture of the country had been turned around

Its the longer term results that matter, that was the objective of the exercise

For all the carping about how this thatcher carried out her policies, what would have been your alternative?

Carry on the way we were?

I agree with headstrong. I think some here are not accuratly recalling the late seventies. Callaghan had turned things around to an extent but te country was sick and tired of the power of the unions, high inflation, boom bust (which admittedly continued under thatcher) and the hopeless general malaise. The country was a serious mess

I disagreed with many many factors of Thatcherism but i am amazed that anyone now could defend the economic status quo as it was in 1979 comapred with the economic legacy she left. It simply doesnt add up

Crushing the unions was her greatest acheivement IMO. Have alot of respect for certain union leaders and the way they handled things but odious pea brained demogues like Scargill were intent on practically dictating to the country.

and it was a weird economy where longbridge workers were earning more than doctors
 
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