Political Thread

[astral276]

Jamie Oliver says he will quit Britain if Boris Johnson becomes PM.

Sounds like a good enough reason to give the man the job.

[MPS16]

Jamie Oliver says he will quit Britain if Boris Johnson becomes PM.

Sounds like a good enough reason to give the man the job.

Jamie Who?

[sidthelamp]

i see oliver robins has been appointed by the uk government to oversee the negotiations of withdrawal from the eu, his new job starts july 4th

this is what hes doing at the moment

Oliver has responsibility for immigration and free movement policy, and oversight of the borders, immigration and citizenship system

[PetBazaar]

It doesn't sound as if Nicola Sturgeon (her of the wobbly head) got on too well in Brussels:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...shed-by-spani/

I'm not laughing. I promise you that I am not.

Attachment 53359

You may have missed something in your analysis there. And that's, that at the moment Sturgeon is in a win-win situation.

If she comes back full of good news then it's Woohoo, Go Nicola , trumpet fanfare, red carpets, etc. If she comes back with bad news then it's almost certainly IndyRef2, deary me, how sad, etc. It might all go pear shaped later but right now she can't really lose.

[sidthelamp]

You may have missed something in your analysis there. And that's, that at the moment Sturgeon is in a win-win situation.

If she comes back full of good news then it's Woohoo, Go Nicola , trumpet fanfare, red carpets, etc. If she comes back with bad news then it's almost certainly IndyRef2, deary me, how sad, etc. It might all go pear shaped later but right now she can't really lose.

your probably right in the short term,

what i really cant understand about recent political direction of scotland,is it seems hell bent on pimping itself out to the highest bidder, you know scotland has very little to offer anyone, its not a threat to anyone , i doubt it could afford a eu monthly subscription, what makes sturgeon think even if you got the vote to leave the union that the eu would have you, ? the strength of a few whispers in brussels ? a dangerous road do the separatists take, its time scotland started to look inward to rebuild its self , then people and countries might take you a bit more seriously, id like to say follow the uk lead after the bretex vote , but we have yet to find a leader with the decency to implement the will of the people.

[astral276]

Ooh! Wendy Padbury (Zoe); one of my adolescent goddesses.

To think Jamie gave that up to work amongst cow pats.

[astral276]

...then it's almost certainly IndyRef2,

If you go for independence now and the UK government recognises it you have more issues than you had before:

You would be out of both the UK and the EU.

You would be out of the Pound Sterling and would have to get a formal agreement to use the Euro (or go back to using pebbles as currency).

Your finances would be in a worse state than they were first time around.

A lot of your goods market would be gone or subject to tariffs.

Oil revenue has plummeted.

[PetBazaar]

your probably right in the short term,

what i really cant understand about recent political direction of scotland,is it seems hell bent on pimping itself out to the highest bidder, you know scotland has very little to offer anyone, its not a threat to anyone , i doubt it could afford a eu monthly subscription, what makes sturgeon think even if you got the vote to leave the union that the eu would have you, ? the strength of a few whispers in brussels ? a dangerous road do the separatists take, its time scotland started to look inward to rebuild its self , then people and countries might take you a bit more seriously, id like to say follow the uk lead after the bretex vote , but we have yet to find a leader with the decency to implement the will of the people.

Scotland's political position has been slowly shifting for years now. The independence vote has traditionally bounced around at something like 20-25% (or lower) for years, but there's definitely been a change since the beginning of devolution in 1999. Even then, for the first 10 years or so there was little movement. What there was though, was a growing recognition that Labour just wasn't quite doing it for us and that was the beginning of the current rise of the SNP. I guess the SNP in Scotland is our alternative, just like UKIP is in England. What you refer to as the recent political direction in reality probably started to change in 1999 and began to gather pace around 2007.

The argument that Scotland has nothing to offer is a bit like saying the Denmark or Belgium or Ireland has nothing to offer. Fair enough, we're a small country (or would be after a Yes vote) but to say we have nothing to offer is probably unfair. We might not have banking or heavy industry but there are plenty of other parts of our economy that have value. As for whether we would even get into the EU... The honest answer is that I don't know. I would also hazard that you don't know either. Given the completely unprecedented situation that we find ourselves in I think it's probably safe to say that no one knows. But no one knows where the UK is heading at the moment either so both roads ahead are a gamble. Another way to look at that is that it's not entirely outwith the realms of possibility that financial services may head north from London to Edinburgh in order to stay in the EU, so it could be swings and roundabouts.

Scotland is a weird place as far as being inward or outward looking goes. The Scottish Cringe is strong, for those unfamiliar with the term it's a sort of belief amongst certain parts of the population that still thinks that we're too wee or too rubbish to do things for ourselves. It's particularly evident in our media and some of our politicians. But it has noticeably reduced in recent years, and perhaps that's partly as a result of the rise of UKIP in the rest of the UK. There is a sense of dismay up here about the apparent gradual migration of England to the right wing of politics and in the main we really can't quite believe that folk in England actually vote for UKIP (presumably in the same way that folk in England can't believe that the SNP have support). That's not to say that we all love the EU, but like it or not, UKIP is slightly tarnished with a patina racism/xenophobia that doesn't really strike a chord here.

If you go for independence now and the UK government recognises it you have more issues than you had before:

You would be out of both the UK and the EU.

You would be out of the Pound Sterling and would have to get a formal agreement to use the Euro (or go back to using pebbles as currency).

Your finances would be in a worse state than they were first time around.

A lot of your goods market would be gone or subject to tariffs.

Oil revenue has plummeted.

Should I call this scaremongering?

Joking aside, yes we'd be out of the UK, who knows what the situation is with Europe. I guess the hope is that there would be sympathy in the EU for the possibility of something akin to continuing nation status if talks could be carried out in parallel. Even if not though, Brussels isn't know as "the Capital of Compromise" for nothing. We might not get fast tracked but, with the exception of Spain, I'm not sure that anyone would go out of their way to make EU membership particularly difficult. But as I said earlier, it's all totally uncharted territory.

Sterling was a big weak point in the argument last time. Hopefully this time there will be more realism in the arguments. The way I see it is that Yes, we probably could still use the pound, but it would be politically unacceptable to the rest of the UK and given the disparity in economies probably impractical. We wouldn't use the Euro, for two reasons: 1) We can't, we almost certainly wouldn't meet the criteria, and 2) You can't be forced to, you may have to commit to it but they can't actually force a country to join. ERM2 is the agreement of interest here - it's a pre-requisite to Euro currency membership, but is entirely voluntary. As long as we don't join ERM2, we can't join the Euro. So that only leaves [insert random currency name here] pegged 1:1 to the pound, much like the Gibraltar pound.

As for finances being in a worse state... Yes, probably. Almost certainly in fact. My view though is that, it might actually be a spur to the powers that be to actually get their fingers out and start spending money properly. And if I'm honest, an Independence vote would be entirely pointless if we weren't going to spend money differently. If were were just going to spend in exactly the same way we may as well just stick with the UK. If it requires cuts or tax rises in the short to medium term, then it's probably about time we did it. Our economy is ok, but our public spending is unsustainable. And even without another ref, we should probably be doing this even if we don't leave the UK.

Tariffs are obviously a problem oil, in my view, not so much. On the surface the oil figures are a disaster, but dig down into the figures and it seems that the loss of oil revenue has been almost offset by the resulting lower energy/transport costs. The economic numbers for last year did indeed show a dip, but no where near as bad as was expected under the circumstances. And to look on the bright side, oil figures can only really improve from here.

Although everything you've mentioned is a potential pitfall and something that would need to be overcome, what concerns me most about a possible Indy2 Yes vote is the possibility of a "hard" border from Carlisle to Berwick. And perhaps not so obviously, the reaction of a certain part of the Scottish population that identifies with the Ulster Loyalists.

That all said, going on the most recent post Brexit vote polls, I'm still not convinced that a new referendum would result in a Yes vote. Although I have to admit, The United Kingdom of London, Scotland, Gibraltar and Northern Ireland does have quite a nice ring to it

[sidthelamp]

Scotland's political position has been slowly shifting for years now. The independence vote has traditionally bounced around at something like 20-25% (or lower) for years, but there's definitely been a change since the beginning of devolution in 1999. Even then, for the first 10 years or so there was little movement. What there was though, was a growing recognition that Labour just wasn't quite doing it for us and that was the beginning of the current rise of the SNP. I guess the SNP in Scotland is our alternative, just like UKIP is in England. What you refer to as the recent political direction in reality probably started to change in 1999 and began to gather pace around 2007.

The argument that Scotland has nothing to offer is a bit like saying the Denmark or Belgium or Ireland has nothing to offer. Fair enough, we're a small country (or would be after a Yes vote) but to say we have nothing to offer is probably unfair. We might not have banking or heavy industry but there are plenty of other parts of our economy that have value. As for whether we would even get into the EU... The honest answer is that I don't know. I would also hazard that you don't know either. Given the completely unprecedented situation that we find ourselves in I think it's probably safe to say that no one knows. But no one knows where the UK is heading at the moment either so both roads ahead are a gamble. Another way to look at that is that it's not entirely outwith the realms of possibility that financial services may head north from London to Edinburgh in order to stay in the EU, so it could be swings and roundabouts.

Scotland is a weird place as far as being inward or outward looking goes. The Scottish Cringe is strong, for those unfamiliar with the term it's a sort of belief amongst certain parts of the population that still thinks that we're too wee or too rubbish to do things for ourselves. It's particularly evident in our media and some of our politicians. But it has noticeably reduced in recent years, and perhaps that's partly as a result of the rise of UKIP in the rest of the UK. There is a sense of dismay up here about the apparent gradual migration of England to the right wing of politics and in the main we really can't quite believe that folk in England actually vote for UKIP (presumably in the same way that folk in England can't believe that the SNP have support). That's not to say that we all love the EU, but like it or not, UKIP is slightly tarnished with a patina racism/xenophobia that doesn't really strike a chord here.




Should I call this scaremongering?

Joking aside, yes we'd be out of the UK, who knows what the situation is with Europe. I guess the hope is that there would be sympathy in the EU for the possibility of something akin to continuing nation status if talks could be carried out in parallel. Even if not though, Brussels isn't know as "the Capital of Compromise" for nothing. We might not get fast tracked but, with the exception of Spain, I'm not sure that anyone would go out of their way to make EU membership particularly difficult. But as I said earlier, it's all totally uncharted territory.

Sterling was a big weak point in the argument last time. Hopefully this time there will be more realism in the arguments. The way I see it is that Yes, we probably could still use the pound, but it would be politically unacceptable to the rest of the UK and given the disparity in economies probably impractical. We wouldn't use the Euro, for two reasons: 1) We can't, we almost certainly wouldn't meet the criteria, and 2) You can't be forced to, you may have to commit to it but they can't actually force a country to join. ERM2 is the agreement of interest here - it's a pre-requisite to Euro currency membership, but is entirely voluntary. As long as we don't join ERM2, we can't join the Euro. So that only leaves [insert random currency name here] pegged 1:1 to the pound, much like the Gibraltar pound.

As for finances being in a worse state... Yes, probably. Almost certainly in fact. My view though is that, it might actually be a spur to the powers that be to actually get their fingers out and start spending money properly. And if I'm honest, an Independence vote would be entirely pointless if we weren't going to spend money differently. If were were just going to spend in exactly the same way we may as well just stick with the UK. If it requires cuts or tax rises in the short to medium term, then it's probably about time we did it. Our economy is ok, but our public spending is unsustainable. And even without another ref, we should probably be doing this even if we don't leave the UK.

Tariffs are obviously a problem oil, in my view, not so much. On the surface the oil figures are a disaster, but dig down into the figures and it seems that the loss of oil revenue has been almost offset by the resulting lower energy/transport costs. The economic numbers for last year did indeed show a dip, but no where near as bad as was expected under the circumstances. And to look on the bright side, oil figures can only really improve from here.

Although everything you've mentioned is a potential pitfall and something that would need to be overcome, what concerns me most about a possible Indy2 Yes vote is the possibility of a "hard" border from Carlisle to Berwick. And perhaps not so obviously, the reaction of a certain part of the Scottish population that identifies with the Ulster Loyalists.

That all said, going on the most recent post Brexit vote polls, I'm still not convinced that a new referendum would result in a Yes vote. Although I have to admit, The United Kingdom of London, Scotland, Gibraltar and Northern Ireland does have quite a nice ring to it

scotlands land reform act in my opinion did a lot of damage, your government was clutching at straws to help build the economy through tourism, or increased tourism.

you have had heavy industry , you have minerals and aggregates , you have agricultura, i draw a parallel with england through successive governments including the eu, industry has been allowed to run down over generations , no inward investment, into your own economy,you can put the blame in various places but this is what has happened, thats why i say scotland as well as england need to look inward to rebuild themselves, scotland has a history of engineering, the arts, law makers, and exporting to the world, with all of the above, all within living memory,

its clear the separatists do not promote your recent past, its clear they have no intention of inward investment to do for yourselves, they have missed one of the greatest opportunities scotland has ever had, they are essentially no different to westminster, farming out your ability to do for yourselves to other nations , and relying on handouts from the eu to keep you just were they want you, the separatists are taking a very dangerous road.

[PetBazaar]

scotlands land reform act in my opinion did a lot of damage, your government was clutching at straws to help build the economy through tourism, or increased tourism.

you have had heavy industry , you have minerals and aggregates , you have agricultura, i draw a parallel with england through successive governments including the eu, industry has been allowed to run down over generations , no inward investment, into your own economy,you can put the blame in various places but this is what has happened, thats why i say scotland as well as england need to look inward to rebuild themselves, scotland has a history of engineering, the arts, law makers, and exporting to the world, with all of the above, all within living memory,

its clear the separatists do not promote your recent past, its clear they have no intention of inward investment to do for yourselves, they have missed one of the greatest opportunities scotland has ever had, they are essentially no different to westminster, farming out your ability to do for yourselves to other nations , and relying on handouts from the eu to keep you just were they want you, the separatists are taking a very dangerous road.

In fairness to your argument, we've got no one to blame but ourselves for our current situation.

The problem now is that in many areas the skills are gone, or we're no longer competitive. When the far east can make steel for peanuts no one is going to invest in a new state of the art steel mill. Our own environmental policies have probably killed off the coal industry too with a little bit of help from National Grid feed in tariffs.

It also doesn't help that folk who are meant to be talking the country up (or at the very least, not talking it down) regularly seem unable to do it. A prime example was during IndyRef 1 when there was discussion about warship building on the Clyde. Someone quite reasonably pointed out that there was no reason why the yards couldn't be used for commercial shipping given the will to do so. As a result there was a constant stream of media, politicians, and experts (who oddly, all seemed to have links to Labour/Tory/LibDem think tanks) going out of their way to explain why it couldn't be done. Anytime it was pointed out that Germany, Norway, and Italy had reasonably successful commercial shipbuilding they just sort of mumbled inaudibly and repeated the can't be done mantra.

Others are just too busy playing politics and shouting SNPBad at anyone who'll listen. A recent example of this being the new Queensferry Crossing over the Forth. Politicians and journalists were lining up to denounce the Scottish Government for the scandalous use of Chinese steel instead of Scottish Steel. It didn't occur to any of them that we don't make steel in Scotland any more. When this was pointed out it became a scandal that we weren't using Scottish companies for fabrication work. It seems that no one told them that not a single Scottish company had even bid.

As much as it pains me to say it, with folk like that making policy and setting the agenda, I can't see any hope for heavy industry in Scotland or the UK no matter who is in power.