Ye might natace tha’ Ive a Scottish name. Tha’s since ma grand dud was fra Edinbra. Nu ah kin tel ye, ma family ate the English. An the fact tha the Scots voted ter stay wi’ the Poms is a matta av tragidy te me.
Oh grief. My spell checker is overclocking. How could they? How could they? What is wrong with the proud Scottish nation? To stick with the Poms and not break up the 300-plus-year-old arrangement of servitude to the English is mind-numbingly stupid. It is like the film Train Spotting, where Renton says: ”It’s rubbish being Scottish. We’re the lowest of the low. The scum of the earth. The most wretched, miserable, servile, pathetic trash that was ever born into civilisation. Some hate the English. I do not. They are just fools. We, on the other hand, are colonised by fools. Cannot even find a decent culture to be colonised by. We are ruled by effete fools.” (I have changed the swear words – ask any KwaZulu-Natal graduate if you need to fill them in.)
Oh, how the English painted the dark picture that would emerge after Scottish independence, something like: •An early, transitional problem would be Scotland assuming its share, perhaps £93-billion, of the UK’s public-sector debt.
•North Sea oil decommissioning costs will be very substantial. The oil companies will want to offset them against future tax due, which would reduce an independent Scottish government’s revenues.
•It is difficult to see how the UK government could extend central banking services to an independent Scotland, since the UK government would lack control over the tax and spending policies of an independent Scotland.
If you buy this hogwash, I do not. The UK public-sector debt? This debt is £1 377-billion, or 88% of the UK’s gross domestic product (GDP). Scotland accounts for 0.1% of the GDP, so, pro rata, it is £156-billion the Scots must shoulder on this basis, but what is the point? How will the debt be a burden? The UK has a debt and Scotland will have one – de facto, each citizen is indebted, so nothing changes.
North Sea decommission costs? What they are talking about is the cost of dismantling the North Sea oil rigs, which the rig owners will want to offset against taxes. Well, buddy, it is like buying a second-hand car. Rig dismantling will go hand in hand with investment in building heavy-lift crane ships to do the job – built in Scotland.
Difficult to see how the UK could extend banking services to Scotland? Are you kidding? Or, to quote John McEnroe (three-time Wimbledon tennis winner), when an umpire called a ball ‘out’: “You can’t be %&$#@* serious!” A banker will do business in hell if there’s money to be made.
Oh, the English! This is the nation which had a Prime Minister, Tony Blair, stating, as a basis for invading Iraq: “[Sadam Hussein’s] military planning allows for some of the weapons of mass destruction to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them.”
This was rubbish, and Blair knew it. But even if the weapons were ready in 45 minutes, it would still take them (as missiles at twice the speed of sound) one hour and 45 minutes to get to England, during which time, one guesses, the UK would strum up some form of defence and accidentally (?) detonate the missiles over France, spraying radioactivity everywhere. Oh, man! Oh, man!
O flower of Scotland, When will we see your like again, That fought and died for Your wee bit hill and glen And stood against him Proud Edward’s army And sent him homeward Tae think again . . .
The song is about William Wallace, who repelled the first invasion of Scotland. What would he think? What would Scottish-born James Watt (steam engine), Alexander Graham Bell (telephone), Alexander Fleming (penicillin), Macintosh (the raincoat), Macleod (insulin) and hundreds of other brilliant Scots inventors think? O, well! I am going to go home and imbibe some of the only imported UK product I have in my house. Yes, Scotch.