Think your quotes are flawed - at least in terms of your intended argument is concerned, simmo.
What you've demonstrated is an exchange-rate link, rather than a currency union. No matter what the £ was tracking at the time, it was the prevaling 'strong currency' of its day.......but the Government was still free to drop/lift interests to track that master currency, at its own discretion.
The point of a Scottish/rUK currency union - even on Salmond's preferred terms - is that it delivers control over interest rates directly to the Bank of England i.e. that which is there to set rUK interest rates; which Scotland would of course be compelled to adopt. This means Scottish fiscal and monetary policy would be dictated (in an indirect way) at a macro-level, by whatever the BofE chose to do. And whilst they may be independent from rUk Government, there's little doubt that they act hand-in-glove on such matters.
In a currency union under Salmond's T&Cs, the Scottish economy would continue to be controlled by a Westminster/Threadneedle Street axis......rendering the notion that we'd be "independent" laughable.
It's true that we'd have all the benefits of setting our own tax rates, determing the distribution of the wealth etc, but we get 95% of that under Indie-Lite/Devo-Max anyway.........without the economy-ruining costs associated with the creation of an Independent State (which, as we have already established, would be 'independent' in name only).
The Fat Man is fu*cked if he does, and fu*cked if he doesn't. But he doesn't really care about the implciations anyway. It's not as if he's going to be worrying about it, as he's chauffeured to his next Lear, to attend another President's Club meeting in Bora-Bora.
