The Dirty Independence Question

[Comfy Bean]

21 minutes ago, LJS said:

I'm glad we've cleared that up.

I suspect I shall be using this quote quite a lot.

Also noted.

[eFestivals]

1 minute ago, comfortablynumb1910 said:

Also noted.

 

12 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

yep, where i can point out that the snp wanted to give a tax cut but couldn't, so settled for doing nothing instead.

Fancy that, the SNP doing nothing. That's never happened before.

 

[Comfy Bean]

12 hours ago, LJS said:

Here they are

there seem to be a few empty seats there.

Lots of previous talk of people being wrapped in a flag on this thread. Nice to finally put a face to the name.

Not forgetting the NF chaps who we had a pic of last week campaigning against Scottish Indy.

[Comfy Bean]

For clarity, are we all agreeing with Theresa that Scotland is a nation ?  

 

[lost]

51 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

And there's not really any logical arguments that can be made to stand up for Scotland in the EU either - cos if you say cutting off 15% is dreadful, then the cutting off of 60% is far worse. Plus Scotland couldn't 'stay' in the EU, it's waaaaay short of meeting the necessary criteria.

Agreed. there is a paper here from the Irish government regarding their reliance on trade with the uk:

http://igees.gov.ie/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/An-Exposure-Analysis-of-Sectors-of-the-Irish-Economy-final.pdf

I've been following the debate elsewhere and there are suggestions that if a decent trade deal isn't in place then Ireland will need to quit the EU to negotiate their own deal with UK to avoid a massive recession. Scotland as you say has an even greater reliance. 

[LJS]

16 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

so nothing about the indy campaign is about claimed differences in background to unnamed (lol) others,

Correct. It may be about differences in public opinion or political viewpoint or what sort of country we want to live in (with all our different backgrounds) 

16 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

which causes you to want to tread your own different path because of the differences which you say are much bigger/more important than all we share (else it wouldn't need the different path).

Of course that's not really what I have said is it? When it comes to values, or principles they can still be shared across borders.  

16 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

You're an amoeba and I claim my five pounds? I can't think what else it could be.

And this amoeba says you are a rat (could be worse)

 

[LJS]

13 minutes ago, lost said:

Agreed. there is a paper here from the Irish government regarding their reliance on trade with the uk:

http://igees.gov.ie/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/An-Exposure-Analysis-of-Sectors-of-the-Irish-Economy-final.pdf

I've been following the debate elsewhere and there are suggestions that if a decent trade deal isn't in place then Ireland will need to quit the EU to negotiate their own deal with UK to avoid a massive recession. Scotland as you say has an even greater reliance. 

But no one sane is suggesting that all trade will stop between Ireland and the UK or between Scotland and the rUK. Also the rUK sells more to Scotland that Scotland sells to the rUK. Whilst that is clearly a smaller proportion of their exports it still makes Scotland a massive market for the rUK and makes it massively in their interests to get a deal in place.

Its hard to get direct comparisons but these figures ...

Quote

 

 The rest of the UK sold £62.7bn in goods and services to Scotland.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-28916642

Below is a list showcasing 15 of United Kingdom’s top trading partners in terms of export sales. That is, these are countries that imported the most UK shipments by dollar value during 2016. Also shown is each import country’s percentage of total UK exports.

1. United States: US$60.4 billion (14.8% of total UK exports)
2. Germany: $43.6 billion (10.7%)
3. France: $25.9 billion (6.3%)

http://www.worldstopexports.com/united-kingdoms-top-import-partners/

 

would suggest that Scotland would be the rUk's largest single export market.

[lost]

18 minutes ago, LJS said:

But no one sane is suggesting that all trade will stop between Ireland and the UK or between Scotland and the rUK. Also the rUK sells more to Scotland that Scotland sells to the rUK. Whilst that is clearly a smaller proportion of their exports it still makes Scotland a massive market for the rUK and makes it massively in their interests to get a deal in place.

Its hard to get direct comparisons but these figures ...

would suggest that Scotland would be the rUk's largest single export market.

I don't think that anyone has suggested it would stop just that tarriffs maybe in place which would make alternatives more attractive, for example I don't think Brewdog will be the best selling craft beer in the UK anymore if its more expensive than say Camden Hells or Beaver town or a number of other breweries, there are also limited opportunities for a company like that in the EU with regards to things such as German beer purity laws or different tastes in places like Belgium. Culture and tastes change the further you get away. People in Britain are more likely to like Scottish products and vice versa

As the link shows the advantages of being in the EU are greatest around the German/Belgium/france area and then drop out the further out you get. Ireland's biggest markets are Britain and the US not central European countries. With the UK leaving and the Trump administration being opening pro-brexit and anti-EU, Ireland might be better concentrating on its two biggest trading partners and that's before the possibility of a hard border comes up. 

Edited March 4, 2017 by lost

[LJS]

This is a very good article by Kevin McKenna .Personally I think he is a tad harsh on the SNP but he hits the nail straight on the head about the Scottish Labour Party. I've posted it in full rather than posting a link as it is behinds a paywall.

Kevin McKenna: SNP is as left-wing as the gold fittings in Trump’s bathroom

THESE are strange and curious days for Scotland, this country that likes to eulogise its left-wing credentials and its radical soul. More than 100 years after the first tool was laid down in protest upon a factory floor the mainstream Left in this country has become an orphan.

Last week’s wretched capitulation by the Labour Party in Scotland to the forces of right-wing populism and the irresponsible narrative of race means the Left is now officially homeless – sleeping rough; lodging on its pal’s bed settee. Call it what you will.

It’s become clear that the only prescription issued by its leadership for the Labour Party’s recovery in Scotland is to wrap itself in the Union flag and take a lie down in the hope that everything will soon be alright again.

I first learned of this hopeless strategy before Christmas when it was suggested that some of us might go easy on it until the local council elections were safely out of the way. It signalled that there was no longer any stomach for the fight against social inequality and injustice.

The lights had finally gone out and all that remained was to get into a fight with the Tories in an attempt to reach out to working class Unionists.

The intervention by Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, in which he classed Scottish nationalism in the same category as racism was simply embarrassing, but not as much as watching Kezia Dugdale attempt to justify it.

This ought to have been a healthier time for Labour in Scotland. The party has had two and a half years to recover from the mess bequeathed to it by Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling and Jim Murphy following their catastrophic involvement with the Better Together campaign.

During that time the caution displayed by the SNP Government has presented Labour with several golden opportunities to rediscover its mojo; to retake the territory from which it had retreated in the last decade or so.

Instead it has become obsessed with preventing a second independence referendum and the struggle to save the Union. Rather than attacking Ruth Davidson and her support for a one-sided austerity programme; her anti-trade unionism and her support for anti-immigration policies, Scottish Labour has decided to join forces with her on territory that is more familiar to the Tories.

Refugees from Labour who think that the SNP offers an authentic left-wing alternative are deluding themselves.

This has never been a party of the Left and nothing about its record in government suggests that the current trustees are any different. The SNP is about as left-wing as the gold fittings in a Trump Tower bathroom.

During the independence referendum I encountered several older voters from a neighbourhood in the east end of Glasgow.

One theme that united them all was the failure of the UK Labour Party under Tony Blair to do anything truly radical despite being handed a three-term majority in 1997.

By “truly radical” they meant the abolition of Margaret Thatcher’s anti-trade union laws, reform of the financial sector, renationalisation of some national assets and a programme for building more social housing. They had waited all their lives for Labour to be handed such a huge electoral advantage and expected this to act as a safety net in the task of unstitching the pattern of embedded privilege, unearned wealth and tax avoidance on the grand scale that had characterised the Thatcher years. They regarded these failures as a betrayal and had thus been driven to support independence. This SNP Government was handed a potential four-term mandate when it took Scotland with a majority in 2011.

The scarring of health and educational inequality which previous Labour administrations had failed adequately to heal disfigured the country, especially Glasgow. Two Holyroodelections and six years later the inequalities have grown.

Children from poor neighbourhoods still can’t get access to our top universities while John Swinney has dithered and dallied so much over educational reform that he will have received his bus pass before he has published his review.

Meanwhile the country’s top fee-paying schools still get their taxes paid for them and we’ll be locking up men and women at a rate quicker than anywhere else in Europe, while making Scotland the go-to destination for overseas doctors looking for some lucrative overtime. The pattern of land ownership will remain more unequal and unfair than anywhere in mainland Europe and largely untouched by the Government’s paltry attempts at reform.

The SNP’s spring conference in Aberdeen in a fortnight will be a jolly opportunity for many of its former senior advisers now working for big business to have a reunion.

They will congratulate themselves for successfully helping the party sell the myth that they were left-wing and big on social equality. You’ll see them as you make your way into conference. They’ll be the ones soliciting their old ministerial bosses to speak at private dinners for the edification of the corporate clientele of shadowy Edinburgh lobbying firms.

On the conference floor attempts by the recently-acquired rank and file to take slightly more radical positions will be adroitly batted into the long grass by party managers. So let’s not kid ourselves that the SNP is a proper party of the Left.

Yet, even as we wonder at the apocalypse that has engulfed Scottish Labour, hope springs from the youth wing of the party.

A statement by Scottish Young Labour on the party conference is a howl of justified anger at what they had just witnessed in Perth.

It concludes with these two sentences: “We’re clear in our purpose to be an active and socialist youth wing in the struggles ongoing across Scotland. We will stand up, not stand by even if Scottish Labour is sadly choosing to do the latter with its ever increasing focus on constitutional politics, rather than on the real issues of class in Scotland.”

Might I suggest that they get behind the campaign for an independent Scotland and quietly ditch their support for their leader’s plan for a federal UK? Such a plan is immediately rendered obsolete by the presence of a country to the south that is more than ten times the size of any of the other countries in such an arrangement. Thus any new polity will continue to be dominated by a country which looks set to be governed for a generation by a privileged, corrupt and inward-looking elite.

Scottish independence offers the only chance for an authentic left-wing party to be politically meaningful once more.

Having fulfilled its purpose the SNP will collapse once more into factions of the Left and Right and fade away with our gratitude at a job well done. The leaders of Scottish Labour’s “socialist youth wing” should then be well-placed to shape a party that resembles once more what Keir Hardie intended it to be.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/15133335.Kevin_McKenna__SNP_is_as_left_wing_as_the_gold_fittings_in_Trump___s_bathroom/?ref=twtrec

[LJS]

1 minute ago, lost said:

I don't think that anyone has suggested it would stop just that tarriffs maybe in place which would make alternatives more attractive, for example I don't think Brewdog will be the best selling craft beer in the UK anymore if its more expensive than say Camden Hells or Beaver town or a number of other breweries, there are also limited opportunities for a company like that in the EU with regards to things such as German beer purity laws or different tastes in places like Belgium. Culture and tastes change the further you get away.

And equally Scots beer drinkers might drink less Fursty Ferret or Old speckled Hen & More Brewdog and Deuchars. We will be so busy celebrating that the Breweries & distilleries will be working at full capacity round the clock! Either that or we'll be drowning our sorrows.

1 minute ago, lost said:

As the link shows the advantages of being in the EU are greatest around the German/Belgium/france area and then drop out the further out you get. Ireland's biggest markets are Britain and the US not central European countries. With the UK leaving and the Trump administration being opening pro-brexit and anti-EU, Ireland might be better concentrating on its two biggest trading partners and that's before the possibility of a hard border comes up. 

Well, there certainly is a huge incentive on all sides to come up with some sort of deal. Ireland is currently the UK's 5th highest export market and one would assume, Northern Ireland's top market by a distance. In other words whichever side of the Irish Sea you look there is a huge incentive for the UK to do what it has to do to get a deal with the EU - 44% of our exports go to the EU. It is unthinkable that the government will agree a deal that doesn't safeguard these.

[lost]

2 minutes ago, LJS said:

And equally Scots beer drinkers might drink less Fursty Ferret or Old speckled Hen & More Brewdog and Deuchars. We will be so busy celebrating that the Breweries & distilleries will be working at full capacity round the clock! Either that or we'll be drowning our sorrows.

Well, there certainly is a huge incentive on all sides to come up with some sort of deal. Ireland is currently the UK's 5th highest export market and one would assume, Northern Ireland's top market by a distance. In other words whichever side of the Irish Sea you look there is a huge incentive for the UK to do what it has to do to get a deal with the EU - 44% of our exports go to the EU. It is unthinkable that the government will agree a deal that doesn't safeguard these.

That's alot for 5 million people to pick up the slack of 60 odd million, i'll guess you'll all be walking around pissed and baking hot from the 10 barbour coats your all wearing.

But back to the original point if a good deal is in place then it destroys Surgeons argument and if a bad deal is in place Scotland is still better in the UK hence its a very curious position to have taken.

[eFestivals]

1 hour ago, comfortablynumb1910 said:

For clarity, are we all agreeing with Theresa that Scotland is a nation ?  

 

when anywhere wants to suckered by outsiders, those outsiders tells anywhere what it wants to hear.

What I think is so very funny is that you care so very much about something that's utterly meaningless in all regards until such time as Scotland might be sovereign.

But if you want to go further and regard it as the whole world, you're welcome to.  The rest of us will keep on thinking how we think of it, with none of mattering to anyone apart from those driven solely by their sense of nation. You know, like a kipper.

[LJS]

8 minutes ago, lost said:

That's alot for 5 million people to pick up the slack of 60 odd million, i'll guess you'll all be walking around pissed

I'll be glad to do my share (hic)

8 minutes ago, lost said:

and baking hot from the 10 barbour coats your all wearing.

As far as I can see Barbour's main manufacturing facility is in South Shields. Are there plans for an independent Scotnad to annexe Tyneside? It would certainly fit with Neils "Blood & Soil" claims.

Quote

But back to the original point if a good deal is in place then it destroys Surgeons argument and if a bad deal is in place Scotland is still better in the UK hence its a very curious position to have taken.

There is much more to being in the EU than trade. Its also about being inclusive not divisive. Internationalist not Insular.

Edited March 4, 2017 by LJS

[eFestivals]

1 hour ago, comfortablynumb1910 said:

For clarity, are we all agreeing with Theresa that Scotland is a nation ?  

 

ps: it has only a small part of the national institutions that would normally be regarded as creating a nation.

[lost]

1 minute ago, LJS said:

There is much more to being in the EU than trade. Its also about being inclusive not divisive. Internationalist not Insular.

Her red line isn't staying in the EU, its single market access.

[eFestivals]

57 minutes ago, LJS said:

Correct. It may be about differences in public opinion or political viewpoint or what sort of country we want to live in (with all our different backgrounds) 

yes, it's about enhancing that sense of difference, a difference Scotland claims to have because of the wonderful tautology of Scotland being different.

It's about making a big deal of difference, of what divides us, as it seems to be passing you by.

A division based solely within where we live, our being, our background.

FFS.

[LJS]

7 minutes ago, lost said:

Her red line isn't staying in the EU, its single market access.

Yup, but an independent Scotland would want to be in the EU.

Although this is quite a coherent argument for a different approach

https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/10240/robin-mcalpine-why-joining-efta-instead-eu-could-be-answer-scotland

Edited March 4, 2017 by LJS

[LJS]

2 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

yes, it's about enhancing that sense of difference, a difference Scotland claims to have because of the wonderful tautology of Scotland being different.

It's about making a big deal of difference, of what divides us, as it seems to be passing you by.

A division based solely within where we live,

Correct

2 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

our being, our background.

Wrong. Where I live is different from my background.

2 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

FFS.

 

[lost]

5 minutes ago, LJS said:

Yup, but an independent Scotland would to be in the EU.

Although this is quite a coherent argument for a different approach

https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/10240/robin-mcalpine-why-joining-efta-instead-eu-could-be-answer-scotland

But from what she's said the whole argument for another referedum is based on the single market. As Neil originally said attacking 60% of your economy to save 15% She now can't go back and take the EU position if she gets that access.

Edited March 4, 2017 by lost

[eFestivals]

44 minutes ago, LJS said:

But no one sane is suggesting that all trade will stop between Ireland and the UK or between Scotland and the rUK.

so if the economics of the changes aren't so bad after all, there's no need for Scotland to keep the same trading terms with the EU, is there?

(and note, it's those trading terms, not the cultural ties - as made clear in what sturgeon published before xmas).

Whichever way the SNP goes at this, there's an equivalence that can be pointed at which undermines the SNP's point, because the SNP are recommending the worse of two trade options.

 

44 minutes ago, LJS said:

Also the rUK sells more to Scotland that Scotland sells to the rUK. Whilst that is clearly a smaller proportion of their exports it still makes Scotland a massive market for the rUK and makes it massively in their interests to get a deal in place.

Its hard to get direct comparisons but these figures ...would suggest that Scotland would be the rUk's largest single export market.

but still pretty tiny (15%-ish) compared to rUK being 65%-ish of Scotland's export market.

It gets to mean that whatever happens around a split, the proportional impact onto Scotland is four times worse than it is onto the UK. ... and i'll point out to use the usual argument to rebuff that is the same argument used by kippers against the EU.

Plus of course there's the fact that Scotland has already internalised its market to some degree, while rUK is not yet treating Scotland as another country, so there's an extra impact to come Scotland's way (tho how big that impact will be can only be guessed at).

 

[eFestivals]

5 minutes ago, LJS said:

Wrong. Where I live is different from my background.

where you live is the centre of your whole being. 

FFS

It can't be anything but your background.

[LJS]

Just now, lost said:

But from what she's said the whole argument for another referedum is based on the single market. As Neil originally said attacking 60% of your economy to save 15% She's now can't take the EU position if she gets that access.

Politically, she probably has to decide whether to call a referendum in the next few months. The fact is that we won't know in that timescale what arrangement will be agreed but all the noises coming from Theresa May have indicated that a so called "hard Brexit" is on the cards - which would presumably mean no free single market access. For the reasons given above, I don't believe that is where we will actually end up but that is the public position of the UK government. 

The Scottish government also made some proposals to try & maintain access to the single market for Scotland even if the UK as a whole didn't go down that route. Now the proposals have been pretty much ignored by the UK government.

Whilst Europe & Brexit will provide the trigger for the next Indyref (if we have one) i don't think it will be the main plank in the pro indy campaign. I think it will be much more about the sort of country we want to live in.

 

[eFestivals]

39 minutes ago, lost said:

As the link shows the advantages of being in the EU are greatest around the German/Belgium/france area and then drop out the further out you get. Ireland's biggest markets are Britain and the US not central European countries. With the UK leaving and the Trump administration being opening pro-brexit and anti-EU, Ireland might be better concentrating on its two biggest trading partners and that's before the possibility of a hard border comes up. 

yep - the periphery effect. Those who are getting the least benefit from the EU are those most on the geographical periphery.

There's a number of different reasons for that. Generally they're countries of low population and so of lesser marketplace importance, but also that the fact of their geographical locations give them fewer natural connections with as many other places.

It also adds an extra uncompetitive element to trade because of the greater transportation costs and timescales.

[LJS]

5 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

where you live is the centre of your whole being. 

No its not. 

5 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

FFS

It can't be anything but your background.

Let's go back to my friend Angela. She was born & brought up  in Palermo, Sicily but now lives in Edinburgh.

You are saying Edinburgh is her background?

[eFestivals]

2 minutes ago, LJS said:

Whilst Europe & Brexit will provide the trigger for the next Indyref (if we have one) i don't think it will be the main plank in the pro indy campaign. I think it will be much more about the sort of country we want to live in.

to which the immediate answer is: a poorer one.

Whichever way the arguments get taken, there's just not one that stands up to logical scrutiny - because you can't (for example) do better for the poor when the whole country is going to be significantly poorer. That loss of that £10-15Bn prop-up is gonna hurt, a lot.