Shooting yourself in the face

[andrewducker]

Apparently David Cameron is being advised to take control of the Scottish situation by preempting the Scottish government holding a referendum and announcing it themselves.

Right now I feel pretty much neutral about Scottish Independence. I can see positives and negatives.

But if a Westminster government starts trying to manipulate what happens because of the election up here, I'm going to be voting in favour of it, and so will an awful lot of other people. Because it's exactly that kind of behaviour which has a fair chunk of the population wanting independence in the first place.

Comments

[matgb]

Heh--I've started calling myself a Dumnonian Celt, that seems to annoy everyone, especially Mebyon types. I especially do this if they mention stannary rights--I used to live just outside the ancient stannary town of Ashburton...

I don't want to lose Scotland or stop being British, too much civilisation north of the border. But ultimately self determination is king.

And I hear it's a nice place to live, and expats get to vote...

[andrewducker]

You won't lose Scotland. It'll still be right where it always was :->

[matgb]

Yeah, but we'll lose Scottish MPs. One in particular is someone I really like seeing around. Plus, it'd mess up her personal life, she's marrying the MP for Cheltenham, they work together currently. That'd be one hell of a commute/long distance relationship...

Scotland/Britain gives a degree of culture that England alone lacks.

Besides, we used up the oil revenue bailing out your banks ;-)

Self determination

[0olong.livejournal.com]

I never really got this 'self determination' idea. I mean, I'm all for determining myself, but that doesn't seem to be what people mean at all. It's always 'self-determination for the Scottish people' or whatever, but Scotland doesn't have a self, and why would that be better in principle than 'self-determination for the British people'? And would it be better or worse than 'self-determination for the people of Marchmont'?

That said, I am broadly in favour of less centralised power in general.