This is my YouTube short video this morning:
The link is here.
This is the transcript:
There are three English parties in the general election on July the 4th. They are Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems.
They've all got representation in Scotland, and two of them have representation in Wales. The Lib Dems don't.
But they all have one thing in common. It seems that they are desperate to hang on to control of Scotland and Wales from London. And that's getting worse in the case of each of them.
Why is that? Why do they think they should control what happens in these other countries - because that is what they are - as if only opinion in England matters?
I don't share the view that that should be the case. I think that the case for Scottish and Welsh independence is made.
But what do you think? Are you desperate to colonise Scotland and Wales still? Or should they have their own voice, their own parliament, and be their own countries?
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The way your question is framed feels as if you are asking those in England only about their attitudes to our colony.
We know from your blog that you respect and believe in Scotland as an independent country.
Would you also frame another video to ask we Scots what we feel about being a colony, whose peoples are routinely patronised and whose lands and natural resources are being eyed up for further plunder, principally for the benefit of the country south of us?
I was addressing the majority of thsoe likely to view my video
I’d hope most people in Scotland know my views…I read theirs
Ah-ha! : “whose lands and natural resources are being eyed up for further plunder, principally for the benefit of the country south of us? ”
This begs the question – what else does bonny Scotland have to offer? After all – what-ho! there is only so many deer & grouse one can shoot eh what? Ditto salmon (no not the idiot in the Scottish parliment – the fish!)
Jokes aside, there are two resources which will never ever run out that Scotland has in abundance & England covets: wind and water.
We can argue the numbers tiill the cows come home – but Scotland has a a vast off-shore wind resouce, & vast as in power the whole of Europe vast, the Saudi Arabia of Europe. It has a huge amount of area that is less than 200 mtrs deep (both on the Norway facing side and the Atlantic facing side) and thus open to floating off-shore wind. Export as elec or H2 (which is where the water comes in – but even there – up-the-tower electrolysers are a reality, de-sal is not a biggie which means a quasi endless supply of low-carbon/zero carbon elec/H2 available to the sea-constrained Germans & Benelux etc – they might even sell to the erm…English. (and one could ditto Ireland).
Thus you have your answer.
“Neoliberal Colonisation” is your answer just as there is in the EU. The “right” conditions to make money and a lot of it are necessary.
Thank you, Richard.
I wonder if it’s partly psychological. Once the union is dissolved, the rump England becomes somewhat ordinary.
The legal issues around the successor state won’t be easy to resolve. That will include prestige items like the permanent seat at the UN Security Council. One can imagine emerging powers disputing that status for, I imagine, England.
I should have added that I have come across descendants of Scots and Welsh overseas. Their grandparents migrated. These descendants have no love for the English elite and say how their ancestors within the last 100 years spoke Gaelic and Welsh and were beaten at school for doing so. I wonder if English people realise just how different these societies are and not extensions of England.
They do not, is the answer to the last
Almost no one in England has ever been to Scotland, few to Wales and a tiny number to Northern Ireland.
I have been to every county in all of them.
As one of those descendants who has returned and who took the trouble to enquire and learn about the reasons for ancestors being pushed out of Scotland and Ireland, research the culture and history of both and empathetically try to comprehend the generational and health dysfunction it caused. Well they were forced and it was all about them keeping families actually alive and naught to do with being “aspirational” as it is often coyly framed to excuse what happened.
The deep psychological and health damage to even current generations of Scots, Irish, Welsh and if you want to think about it the Cornish and English ordinary folk as well, from centuries of centralised elite quasi hierarchical feudal wage slave repression of same folk in some form of Edwardian justified Darwinian model of grasping fear greed fuelled survival of fittest and “natural superiority” has been exposed to many and hopefully enough to see it end.
Scots and Welsh should be independent of Westminster as their own countries, still friends with England. It’s proven and common sense that all three can function and survive well independent of each other.
That’s the start then there is the matter of rebalancing the hierarchical economic and social model so that economic, environmental, and social factors are equitably distributed to care for all factors.
It’s frightening to anyone conditioned to only want what they are encouraged or educated about what they can want, instead of what future they equitably could want. That abject morbid fear from all levels of our society is probably the reason for it not happening presently. Wealthy elites rely on that to perpetuate it in their own abject fear of loss of privilege and prestige.
Colonel it wasn’t just Gaelic and Welsh that were proscribed: When I was school kid in the 1960s and late 1950s, Lallans (aka Lowland Scots) was forbidden in schools even though it was the everyday language of most Scots outside of the Gaidhealtachd. One day per year (25th January) Lallans could be heard in the school without fear of punishment or scolding when Rabbie Burns’ poetry was celebrated. Civic buildings flew the Union Flag all year except St Andrew’s Day (30th November) when the Saltire was permitted. I remember my mother having to explain to me why the Union Flag wasn’t flying from the Town Hall and having to explain what the Saltire represented. Colonial brainwashing was an everyday experience, but fortunately for me, my parents had worked abroad before I was born and had a more international outlook, so I was brought up to think of myself as Scottish first, European second, World Citizen third and British fourth (mainly for the passport).
You touched briefly on your colonial antecedents; I’m afraid colonialism is still active within the UK. If it weren’t, there would be a clause somewhere in Statute setting out how a signatory to the Treaties of Union 1707 could secede from the UK.
I live in a family not really English enough to be English, or Irish enough to be Irish and which does mot believe in the UK
European is a good term for us
And then I argue for Scotland, often….
It is the Scots themselves that made the Union possible, and keeps the Union together. When that changes, it is finished.
That was the opinion of RB Cunninghame Grahame (1852-1936), who was a founder member of both the Labour Party and the Scottish National Party; a close friend of Keir Hardie, and a Liberal MP. Cunninghame Grahame, who was a genuine radical and who believed in socialist ideas of the time, like the abolition of the House of Lords, an ‘eight hour day’, ‘home rule’ and independence; has of course now been carefully excised from the history of the Labour Party with Stalinist thoroughness; which would no doubt have astonished Keir Hardie, but presumably not Hardie’s erroneous namesake, Keir Starmer.
Of course some clan leaders did conspire with the English land owning elite during the period when the union emerged as a political objective. But there was no consensus.
The context of the ill fated Darien scheme certainly put huge financial pressure on the Scots to join England.
That English mercantilists had deliberately sought to sabotage Darien is a part of that rich tapestry, but it is worth remembering that there were riots in the Edinburgh streets when the Act of Union was finally pushed through, so many Scots were dragged kicking and screaming into that Union, despite their financial straits.
The next 50 years were pretty instrumental in establishing total English dominance in Scotland, especially after Culloden, with a level of brutal cultural oppression in the Highlands that was matched in Wales with the Treason of the Blue Books, a century later, and Ireland throughout the 19thC – though Edward 1st had previously established a pattern of brutality that was unmatched until Cromwell acceded to power.
We still have some 450 landowners who hold over 50% of Scottish land, so the hegemony continues, though some large recent acquisitions have been more by Scandi millionaires., like Povlsen with 220,000 acres. That is a new form of settler colonialism, but that mindset still prevails.
Add in the GERS fiction that is used to justify English financial control, and we are still ‘too wee, too poor and too stupid’ and uniquely unable to be permitted autonomy.
Food for thought now, is that Indy has a broadly 50% base of support, prior to any future Indy campaign, regardless of the status of its party adviocates in the SNP and Scottish Greens.
Where we go from here has to be severed from their party political antics to make progress.
tony,
I have covered the issue of the Union and Darien before. Darien was an accident that was central to the Union project; historians of the Union have not sufficiently understood this, because they have not appeared carefully enough to examine the Treaty paragraphs on the Equivalent, which is crucial (most historians of Union are not economic historians). Darien was intended to be directed to the Far East, not America; as a challenge to the East India Company’s (EIC) monopoly; backed by the London market, by opponents in London of the EIC. The King prevented the intended ‘IPO’ in London. Two things followed. Scotland had to dund the project itself, which was beyond it in the context of the EIC. It was determined nevertheless not to miss the imperial project, and settled on the madcap Darien venture, with its own money (and ruin). Second, the Scots realised that their own Monarch (that they did so much to place on the throne) would not support the Scottish Parliament against the interests of England or Holland. The Navigation Acts closed them off from access from the English Empire. Ruin and the betrayal of King William meant ‘the game was up’ for Scotland’s Parliamentary independence. The Scots Presbyterians, who were committed to William, had nowhere else to go. The Equivalent in the Treaty, served two purposes; the formal justification of a payment to Scotland as compensation for Scotland taking a share of England’s vast National Debt (the genius of William Paterson was the recognition that England’s National Debt was its strength, not a weakness) – Scotland was broke, but had virtually no debt (Scotland’s weakness). The key element, however was that around 50% of the Equivalent was to be paid as compensation for the ruinous losses to shareholders of Darine, effectively for King William’s betrayal (he was safely dead by 1707) . If you examine the list of Darien shareholders, in volume and money terms it is principally, but not exclusively (many Scots backed it where they could – it was a genuinely national effort); made up of the elite, and is closely co-terminus with the Representatives in the Scottish Parliament, and in effect the small and exclusive electorate, almost in its entirety: hence the accusations then and since, about “bribery”.
Much of the history of Union needs some re-writing.
Not many in the SNP support ken him either. Such a pity.
As well as political ideas his life was very interesting in many other ways. Anyone who could ride through Hyde Park dressed as Gaucho whilst an MP is worth investigating.
The biography by his descendant Jamie Jauncey is a good read. “Don Roberto,the Adventure of Being Cunninghame Graham”.
figures over the years show quite clearly that when uk westminister economy is running a surplus scotands contribution (excluding oil) is way beyond our grant.When in deficit our contribution is more likely to be less.But on balance we contribute more.The fact that scotland ,after the indy ref were promised devo max and the tories ran a mile from that shows that they are well aware of scotlands contribution and keep saying we are too poor and small to go it alone.They tell us we are in a partnership of equals but insist that we cannot even ask our people if they want to leave and join european union.The tories are all about money and if they thought scotland was always having to bailed out they would be more than happy to get rid of us.Our green potential is enormous and they will hold us to the bitter end.We await the arrival of a new labour westminster gov.and hope that more at least more powers will be forthcoming.
“hope…at least more powers will be forthcoming.” There’ll be fewer powers from Labour.
If Scotland is daft enough to vote in a majority of Labour MPs, Labour will take it that the Scottish people are happy to be locked into the cursed union for the foreseeable future. It’s a chilling thought.
In Scotland’s case the reason is quite simple. An English Government want to retain most of our country’s natural resources. Without the wealth that they generate, and all of the unionist parties know this, England would be in a much worse state than it is at present. But of course the media keep fueling the myth that the opposite is true, and that Scotland is subsidised by the largesse of Westminster, and unfortunately this obviously has an effect on the opinions of the English people. As an S.N.P member, and a supporter of Independence, of course I want Scotland to be an Independent nation once again, but it is going to be very difficult to prise ourselves from Westminster’s grip.
Not part of the target demographic for this question, since I am Scottish, live in Scotland, and campaign for independence. But the question is one that I give a lot of attention to, and have done for years. As is my wont, I look for the simplest possible solution. My answer is what I call Post Imperial Stress Disorder (PISD) – a condition of fading nation states, desperate to hang on to past glories. Without Scotland, Less Britain has nowhere to put its nuclear weapons, should lose its seat on the security council, and out of the EU will not have any best friends. Letting go of the last Imperial Project, Scotland, is the ‘cure’ for an England struggling for relevance in the 21st century. English people are much better than the British Nationalist rubbish that rules them, and without Scotland will have to choose a new identity. I trust them to pick compassion over conflict, not a choice of any Westminster regime I have lived under for the last 70 years.
For reasons mostly of soft power, I would prefer an alternative to Scottish and Welsh independence. Divide England into regions with population similar to Scotland or Wales, each with powerful regional government, and relegate Westminster to a Federal government role. It won’t happen, of course, because Westminster politicians hate to relinquish even a scintilla of their control. As a result, over time Britain will continue to decline in power and influence.
Your preference is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the Union. It was always a political fudge to fix an unfixable problem. Your idea that you can fix this by ‘regionalising’ the UK will not work. Notice you wish to redraw England to fit Scotland. That will never happen. At the same time Scotland is not a region: regions do not have their own legal systems. They do not print their own banknotes. They do not have separate education systems and examination systems. They do not have their own professional institutions (for example in accountancy), or Royal Colleges (medicine). That is not a comprehensive list.
The Union fudge was explicitly spatchcocked to create an Empire. Without an Empire, the Union works badly, and deteriorates into incoherence; because it was never more than a fudge. Centralisation of Government has made it worse. Devolution itself was a fudge with no substantive purpose, beyond political smoke and mirrors, to save Westminster from its inherent, outdated incompetence. Brexit is illustrative. There is a fundamental dissonance between the real interests and perceptions of Scotland and England over Europe. It is not fixable.
Thanks, John
All good points, thank you. I perhaps misspoke when I used the word ‘regions’. Maybe ‘states’ would have been better? I would like to see all regions, states, countries, whatever you call them, having at least as much autonomy as Scotland now enjoys (preferably rather more), in a federal model similar to the USA. I believe that one of the reasons Scotland works so much better than England is its smaller size. As a result, it’s easier to get things done. Cornwall and Yorkshire would work much better if they weren’t being squeezed into the same straight-jacket as London or Kent.
But Scotland is a country….
Kim sj,
Respectfully, none of the proud English regions have either the level of motivation, the infrastructure or indeed the long established cultural/institutional framework to replicate Scotland or maintain and protect what Scotland has to work very hard to hang on to, as far as I can see. Westminster has no appetite for it, and I suspect you have no idea how tough it is to maintain the level of independence Scotland possesses, when Westminster is essentially, and quite ruthlessly a machine intent on maintaining power centrally, in its own hands. Westminster gives, only when it has run out of alternatives; and then will slowly claw back. Within four years of Union in 1707, Westminster began insidiously extending its power in Scotland by legislation.
I will give an example
East Anglia is usually seen as Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire
There is absolutely no regional identity
Even counties fail – there was good reason why there was once and East Suffolk
Norfolk has almost no lateral relationship
The Cambridge and Peterborough mayoralty is total nonsense….
Of course there should be self determination for Scotland. I hope there won’t be because of family and cultural ties over the centuries. But it should be up to the Scots.
But, asper discussion, what about English region? Sure East Anglia might not have a strong identity (some would dispute that). But what about other regions? Yorkshire has a similar population to Scotland. It probably wouldn’t be wise to suggest it doesn’t have it’s own culture to a proud Yorkshireman (person). So what’s good for Scotland should be good for Yorkshire too. And don’t try telling a proud Cornishman they don’t have a distinct culture either.
The problem is that England has a disproportionate population and is seen to dominate (even though English regions would say it is not their domination). London has too large a sway. I’m not sure democracy works very well in these circumstances. Certainly not FPTP.
So I think idea of a federal structure makes sense. Perhaps then Scotland would feel less need to separate.
Sorry, but Yorkshire is not a country
Nor is Cornwall
Read what John Warren and others have said here
You really do need to appreciate why Wales and Scotland are different. It defeats me why people in England don’t try to do that, and so few do
My advantage is my sense of Irishness – and, yes I am very obviously a republican
By all means create devolved regions. But that in no way is akin to independence
Richard,
You specifically asked “What do you think?”
I told you in a polite way.
It’s rather dispiriting to be bluntly told you’re wrong, when you specifically asked for opinion. 🙁
Sorry, but I really do believe you have to think about why your opinions might offend others – and on this issue I think that particularly important. I only said what I say to friends on this issue.
Mr Kent,
Allow me to repeat some reasons here, for your convenience, Scotland is not a region: regions do not have their own legal systems. They do not print their own banknotes. They do not have separate education systems and examination systems. They do not have their own professional institutions (for example in accountancy), or Royal Colleges (medicine). That is not close to being a comprehensive list.
Yorkshire is not a close comparator for Scotland; no disrespect to Yorkshire, I am not claiming Scotland is ‘better’; but it is different. There is a problem here. After three hundred years of Union most Scots have great familiarity with England, its functional operations, and its norms (in very many cases, they have to); but in England, after three hundred years hardly anyone in England understands anything at all about how Scotland actually functions; as this thread demonstrates.
May I add, Mr Kent that I am not in the least offended by your observations (they aren’t offensive – and I have no idea what prompted your discussion with Richard on the matter; it comes as a surprise to me).
But I think you are plain wrong on ‘regions’, and to me the issue is whether your argument stands up or not. It doesn’t, and I have given my reasons. That is both the beginning and end of the matter. Debate, test, reach a conclusion. Move on. That is my method, and the dispassionate extent of my examination of the issue; even about Scotland!
@ Richard and John.
Thank you both for your courteous replies 🙂
Federalism, no thanks. Scotland is a country not an English county.
Scotland’s population is about 8% or so of England’s. Scotland would always come off worse – decisions would still be made for us rather than by us.
I have to agree
What you’re proposing is similar to post-WW2 Germany settlement. Break Prussia which was consigned to history never to be mentioned again. Because of a number of reasons (not only that this settlement was partly or even majorly forced onto Germans by the then occupying powers) it wouldn’t work with the UK.
There’s a number of answers to the questions in the headline (also discussed here), but I think it also comes to that hat whoever were a PM at the time when Scotland (or Wales or NI) left, they’d go into the history as the person who’d broken the UK (together with the ruling party at the time). They’d also have to resign as PM.
But – we’ve never had a GE that would’ve been as anglocentric as this one. All three main party leaders are extremely anglocentric (although they all claim to be unionists) and the media is leading an anglocentric debate. A small, but very illuminating detail – yesterday they were all going about them supporting England at the football Euros – no-one even realised that Scotland’s there as well.
I live in Wales, but have a partner in Scotland and spend a lot of time there, and there’s this feeling that these elections are taking part in a foreign country.
I published this post back in January: https://dearscotland.substack.com/p/what-the-uk-doesnt-want-scots-to
UK government figures reveal that from 1900-1921, Scotland got back just 27% of the revenue it sent to the UK Treasury.
“The sleekit Michael Gove was caught with his pants down at the Covid Enquiry in Edinburgh. After charging the Scottish Government with political opportunism, KC Jamie Dawson brandished Gove’s Cabinet paper, delivered just before Johnson parachuted into Scotland, where he said the UK’s primary concern during the pandemic was the risk of Scottish independence. Gove’s recommendation to the English cabinet? Wait for it – to politicise its response in Scotland by strengthening its case for the union.
The supine BBC Scotland omitted any mention of Gove’s paper. Scotland’s secession from the failing UK is England’s worst nightmare. It will do anything – lie, steal, obfuscate and even politicise!! – to prevent an independent Scotland.
Without Scotland’s wealth and resources, this sham of a union is toast. Scotland has buttressed the UK economy not only since the discovery of North Sea oil, but for well over 120 years.
From 1900-1921, the UK government produced a set of accounts, Revenue and Expenditure for England (including Wales), Scotland and Ireland (the reports are available at the National Library of Scotland – see below). During this period, Scotland provided the UK Treasury with £762.3mn and received back just £211mn, or 27.7%. Converted from 1911 prices, this is equivalent to £2.5bn a year, more than the £1.5bn oil-rich Scotland sent to Westminster between 1979-97.
The UK government ceased publication when Ireland became independent, not wanting Scotland to get any ideas.
Gove and the UK establishment including Starmer’s Labour in Name Only (LINO) party are keen to keep Scots in the dark about their wealth and how it is keeping a sinking UK above the water line. It’s time we opened our eyes. We’re being robbed blind.
Here’s how to access the data: If you have a National Library of Scotland membership (it’s free), go online (NLS.uk), login and and click on Eresources. Under ‘Browse by resource title’, go to the letter U and type in UK Parliamentary Papers. Scroll down and click on the hyperlink to access the papers (https://auth.nls.uk/eresources/goto/36). Then in the search bar type, “Revenue and Expenditure (England, Scotland and Ireland) 1901” or any year up to 1921, and you will get a link to the parliamentary papers. From here you can download the pdf of that year’s report. There’s no composite set of accounts for all 21 years, so you need to go year by year. I’ve included some screenshots below for the 1910 report, showing total revenue collected and the contribution by each nation to ‘Imperial Services’.”
Many thanks
May I refer to your work in my National column, maybe this week?
Yes, of course
Leah
Thanks
Your point about Gove, the Cabinet Paper and the BBC, the BBC Scotland report of Gove’s witness statement omitted the critical Cabinet paper, but focused on criticism of the SNP. I wrote to the BBC and objected, on grounds of breaching impartiality in reporting. This went on for months. Each time the BBC denied they had failed impartiality rules, but marked its own homework. I was left with the option of following up with an appeal process independent of the BBC. I have yet not found the time to do so; and you have reminded me, and I feel some guilt for failing to do so. The case that the BBC failed in its obligations I believe is beyond challenge. It is obvious.
A better suggestion might be that if English Politicians want to keep the Union then they need to find ways to make it work and understand that Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are different.
Are they capable of or willing to do that?
Oh and what exactly is the potential economic impact of the break up of the Union to the Rump UK?
Can I just slip this in? Monday the tv was on and a Conservative party political broadcast came on. At one it showed the Union flag blowing in the wind. The ‘Patriotic party’ love to wrap themselves in the flag -As Doctor Johnson put it ‘the last refuge of a scoundrel.’ But it was UPSIDE-DOWN. A signal of distress.
I am shocked I tell you. Shocked. Needed to have a drink .
Richard, this has got me thinking!
Since I was a Scottish child, I’ve too often come across a lot of nasty comments about Scotland along the lines of “ha! ha! we won’t let you go” “too wee, too poor!!, too stupid” etc., I’ve often wondered about English people’s attitude to the following scenario:
If England owned all the various resources which Scotland owns (but, for the moment, England controls) such as gas, oil, onshore/offshore wind production, fishing, whisky, high quality food, clean water – not the literal shitey stuff currently produced by private companies down south – would English people be happy if those resources were pinched by, say, France or Germany without so much as a by your leave or even payment for them? I doubt many people would answer “Yes” but I’m just checking.
Why would anyone in England be surprised that many Scottish people don’t accept our country being run by the country next door and can’t wait for the rest of the Scottish population to catch up with us and stop it once and for all.
You didn’t need to be a child to hear that kind of abuse. A local army unit of mainly English soldiers deliberately referred to the locals as ‘trogs’. And were allowed to.
Three reasons, in the following order:
1. If either and/or both Wales & Scotland became independent, then “Great Britain”, “United Kingdom” and the “British Isles” would all become irrelevant misnomers. The Colonial mindset, plus overweening English arrogance, cannot contemplate such a state of affairs. The only way Wales and Scotland will ever get their freedom is to take it.
2. Water
3. Wind
4. Trident
the ‘United Kingdom’ is already a misnomer isn’t it?
Shouldn’t it be the ‘Kingdoms of Scotland and England’.
If memory serves correctly, the original title was “The United Kingdoms of….”.
The slow normalisation of the singular was followed by then erasing reference to the countries under the umbrella term “Great Britain” – That remains the case today with “Northern Ireland” being the last remaining territory specifically named on your passport….
I’d second all of Leah’s post and also David’s PISD diagnosis. I would also broaden the issue of the general incomprehension of Scotland and its culture which Richard’s query raises. We are fundamentally different cultures. Scotland is a European country and culture in a way in which England and its establishment is not and has never been. Our legal system and our ways of thinking share the outlooks of post Renaissance Europe as England does not. As was famously said by Lord Cooper, when faced with a new situation or problem the common lawyer asks “What did we do last time?” whereas the civil lawyer asks “What should we do this time?”. The heritage of our law is a readiness to appeal to principle not precedent – a mindset we share with European traditions. The difference bubbles up in all kinds of ways and situations and is also at odds with the hierarchical, class and establishment habits of mind and even of heart, which we find so constricting and, frankly, shocking in English and pseudo-British culture, social and political. I am always more at home in European countries than in England… let alone the Brexitania it has become.
So… the Britnat/Unioinists can’t let us go because they think of us as a cosy possession of which they have zero understanding… but a guilty awareness that they cannot afford their pretensions without maintaining their possession of us.
I’m married to a Scot, admittedly the deed was done in my mid 40’s but before that I was active in historic ships, to wit a Scottish Paddle Steamer so am well aware that Scotland is culturally different to England.
Why it is beyond the wit of so many English Politicians to realise this is beyond me.
I think perhaps all the above comments can be summarised as ‘ don’t free the golden goose’.
Why are English political parties so desperate to hang on to Scotland? Or put another way, why are the English ‘elite’ so afraid of England becoming independent?
Because they know that independence for Scotland effectively means independence for England (NI & Wales will or would likely follow) and they know the economic consequences of that. To a huge extent, England built and relied on it’s wealth from overseas colonies for hundreds of years. For good reason, India was called the jewel in the crown. The empire largely started with acts of piracy in the new world and developed from that. As George Orwell said – ‘An empire is primarily a money making concern’. Taking from others to the benefit of the pirate, as it still is with the UK union. As always, follow the money.
https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1576/the-sea-dogs—queen-elizabeths-privateers/
https://fortune.com/2014/09/17/scotland-uk-independence/
> acts of piracy in the new world
Tell me you know nothing about Irish history without telling me you know nothing about Irish history.
Thanks to all who have contributed so thoughtfully to this thread. You have changed my mind. Reluctantly, I no longer believe that there is any way the UK could be ‘fixed’ to provide a fair deal for Scotland. The sad reality is that it is thus inevitable that Britain (as England) will lose the last vestiges of its soft power — its role in the UN, its ‘special relationship’ with USA, its influence in the G7 and G20, etc. Perhaps this is a good thing, and will finally stop our population resting on its fantasy laurels.
Correct
A very gracious comment. There, Richard is proof of the possibility that social media can hold a discussion, debate the issues and change minds in civilised conversation; but it requires an arbiter who will deal with the trolls and endure all the misery that brings in its wake. Congratulate yourself, Richard.
Thanks
Thanks Ian. Your piece should be read in conjunction with Leah Gunn Barrett’s piece above. Both pieces reminded me that it’ll soon be time for yet another pointless and misleading piece of anti-Scottish propaganda – GERS. We all know it’s misleading at best and grossly inaccurate, and there is no Statutary requirement for ScotGov to produce it, so, please John Swinney, dump it. By publishing it you are peddling myths and strengthening the Unionists’ cause.
I will be referring to this in my next National column…