6 ms·

Disclaimer: I'm a child of English parents who was born in Wales but grew up in Scotland. I have Scottish and English children, in-laws and cousins. I have a fa

by sambeau 10y ago

Disclaimer: I'm a child of English parents who was born in Wales but grew up in Scotland. I have Scottish and English children, in-laws and cousins. I have a family home in Scotland but I currently live in England. My children live in England and Scotland. Some of us live in Italy. What a fucking mess of a total fucking disaster. None of this needed to happen and it's a total nightmare for me and my family. If this goes through the UK is gone totally and both countries could sink. I have no idea whether I'd get Scottish Nationality without moving there. Similarly, I assume the same goes for my children. While the future back in the EU looks like it could be good (eventually) for Scotland there is no guarantee that Scotland will match the criteria in the short term and there may be no EU in the long term if Marine le Pen gets her way. Do I move to go with them? Do I stay here and wait until its too late? Presumably if I qualify to be Scottish so does half of England. What happens then? As for the economics—they are super-scary—worse than the economics of Brexit as Scotland not only proportionally trades more with rUK than UK does with the EU there is the little matter of £9bn subsidy UK gives Scotland plus other costs that Scotland will have to take on that look like being a £15bn a year shortfall. Imagine what devastation those kind of cuts will wreak on a small country of 5-6m people? I'm terrified that once the dust settles and Scotland is free of the UK and having to slash services to meet EU entry requirements the whole mood of jolly, liberal, civic nationalism could come crashing down to normal nasty nationalism and people like me and my family who are reasonably well-off with english-sounding accents could soon see bricks crashing through the windows. Similarly, once the IMF and European banks start to dictate spending policy, European immigrants my be less welcome there than they are now. These are fears not predictions but I think they are plausible scenarios—Hungary seems a case in point here. On the upside, weirdly, we may see a united Ireland come out of this fiasco.

rwmj 10y ago
Part of the hippocratic oath is "first do no harm". We could usefully extend that to politicians. The UK government has, in 7 or 2 years depending on how you count, set the UK on a path to destruction -- and it was all very predictable.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  >The UK government // That's short-hand of course for the "UK people's democratically expressed will". FWIW I don't vote conservative, nor support Brexit; but we can't solely blame the elite cabals - as this sort of phrasing tends to do - the demos are complicit.
  - rwmj 10y ago
    People were led on by millionaire politicians and billionaire newspaper owners who flat out lied during the referendum. Politicians have been blaming immigrants and "benefit scroungers" for problems which are really caused by austerity. It would be nice to have an informed demos who could look past all that, but we don't right now.
    - blibble 10y ago
      come on, essentially the entire Western political structure was on the side of remain they even shipped Obama over
  - ghaff 10y ago
    That's because people are comforted that when a majority of people disagree with them and vote for outcomes they don't like it's obviously either because they were misled or manipulated (or they're racists).
- RoboPlumber 10y ago
  Ah, brilliant idea! Politicians and voters just shouldn't be allowed to make bad choices. Why had no one thought of this yet?
pbhjpbhj 10y ago
>Disclaimer: I'm a child of English parents who was born in Wales but grew up in Scotland. I have Scottish and English children, in-laws and cousins. I have a family home in Scotland but I currently live in England. My children live in England and Scotland. Some of us live in Italy. // This may be an indication of the problem. To my view your opener should be "I'm a child of British parents, born in Britain and grew up in Britain. I have British children. I, and my children, live in Britain. Some of us live elsewhere in the EU." Somewhere we've hung on to the the idea that we're a [loose] amalgam of separate nations to which we really owe our loyalty [if any is owed]. Whilst that doesn't seem to be the case in other parts of the world [corrections?]. Which other sub-divisions of single countries compete internationally in sports for example?
- pizzetta 10y ago
  I think you may be reading too much into it. I think poster is using those labels to illustrate the issue rather than for the purpose of asserting nationalism.
- sambeau 10y ago
  I would have but that would have made things very confusing: I feel 100% British. My immediate family is scattered around the UK our forefathers were scattered throughout the British Isles—one half of the family was Irish. Even my English parents have Scottish blood somewhere down the line. Even worse for me, I'm an internationalist and I felt very proud to be part of the EU for many of the same reasons I felt proud to be part of the UK: civic nationalism. The UK was the worlds most successful civic nation built on mutualism between a number of ethnic countries. To break up on ethnic borders and return to tribalism is heartbreaking.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    > built on mutualism Was it? I mean, that's how it's taught in schools, but how well does that reflect the actual history? Certainly it doesn't represent the UK's history with Ireland, which really isn't taught in schools. That's how people like Melanie "wrong about everything all of the time" Phillips can write national newspaper articles in which Ireland has a "tenuous claim to nationhood". This is kind of the problem, we have all this national mythos that runs up to about 1966 and then stops. And it doesn't bear scrutiny in the modern age. The last attempt at building a national narrative that worked for everyone was the Blair era "cool Britannia", and half a million dead Iraqis took the shine off that a bit. Not to mention the inward focus of Unionism. Everyone looks towards London, but London doesn't look outwards. Occasionally it dispatches a foreign correspondent to Manchester to report on conditions. The average English person thinks of Scotland little and NI not at all.
daleharvey 10y ago
As a Scot I will be voting for independence in the spirit that you and your family will be welcome to live and work in Scotland, not certain what the claim to passports will be but if half of England qualifies then all the better (not really sure we if we wouldnt want the entire of England to qualify). As for the economics I am not too worried. A 15bn shortfall sounds exaggerated but hey given the worse case Trident is a 205bn cost that dissapears and it is not the only one. rUK doesnt fund Scotland out of some kind heartedness, Scotland has a solid industry and a government that has shown to use its income to prioritise social services and an independent Scotland within the EU immediately becomes an extremely attractive place for all those international companies looking for a nice place to base their EU trace (a lot of which may just need to drive up a few hours from England)
- sambeau 10y ago
  Scotland's contribution to Trident is ~£200m per year.
Gravityloss 10y ago
Doesn't Scotland get a lot of money from oil and gas?
- jcranmer 10y ago
  North Sea wells are declining.
  - smcl 10y ago
    True but that's been known for a while - and afaik there hasn't been a definitive "oil will run out in 20xx" answer. Main thing hurting right now is the global slump in oil price hammering the North East - to be fair all of this does suggest that Scotland needs to focus on diversifying into renewables and tech but that was always the plan. It's just kinda irritating that this has come up now as it's a convenient stick to beat the pro-EU left with.
    - Gravityloss 10y ago
      I'm just thinking if you count the subsidies as coming from Britain to Scotland but not the oil being pumped from Scotland and sent to Britain? How would the borders go in case of separation? Seems Scotland has only one refinery, and it's half owned by a Chinese company.
      - sambeau 10y ago
        All current economic statistics about Scotland are baed on origin. Anything made in Scotland is counted as part of Scottish economy, even if it travels to England to be exported—that is counted as a Scottish export even though it left via an English port. The difference after independence would be that the export would occur at Carlisle rather than Felixstowe. Most of the "Thatcherism effect" of the 19080s can be directly attributed to North Sea oil. If you remove that money from the economy Thatcherism was a contraction until the banks boomed (though that was mostly post-Thatcher).
- sambeau 10y ago
pjc50 10y ago
The economics are very disputable - the UK doesn't do regional apportionment of tax collection other than (just now) income tax, so not everyone believes the GERS number of £9bn. And now it's even more disputable with Brexit: what farm subsidies will Scotland recieve, for example? What's the future cuts scenario for the UK? What happens if the rUK starts mass deportation of EU nationals? Parts of England are a few Daily Mail stories away from burning down Polish or Pakistani corner shops. The UK had its opportunity to choose inclusivity and openness, and instead England voted for reactionary panic. I think it's hard to underestimate how much work the SNP have done in declaring ethno-nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment unacceptable, and pushing those sentiments to the margins in Scotland despite the media. (English-born Edinburgh resident SNP member here, btw)
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  I think that's nonsense. The GERS figures were accepted beforehand by the SNP themselves, and they're the best available. Even if they're out by 10% that's still a massive financial hole Scotland is looking at. Of course nationalists will now decide that the figures are inconvenient and so must be wrong, but their track record on economics isn't great - their prior plan involved building their fairer, kinder Scotland on the back of oil revenues which are now gone (and they ignored the decommissioning costs anyway). The UK is not "a few Daily Mail stories" away from burning down Pakistani corner shops, Pakistani immigration having nothing to do with Brexit whatsoever of course. That's the kind of ridiculously over the top drama that lost the referendum, and it boils down to a form of racism itself: a belief that white English people are just horrible and ignorant, in defiance of all the facts (the UK is one of the most racially diverse countries in Europe). Finally, I don't know what kind of independence campaign you remember, but the SNP I know practically defines itself through racist hatred of the English. Their entire argument for an independent Scotland seems to boil down to "we hate the awful Tory voting English".
  - pjc50 10y ago
    > the SNP I know practically defines itself through racist hatred of the English This is in direct contradiction of my experience of being English (RP accent and all) at Indyref events and the SNP conference itself. There's maybe one or two fringe old guys who are actually anti-English and everyone else finds it embarrasing and is genuinely friendly. Everyone does hate the Tories though.
agumonkey 10y ago
I see some negative news about brexit plan execution, so I still think it might be possible to revert or avoid a total crash (if it occurs, maybe the world has some cards up his sleeves and things will reorder nicely) ?

by sambeau 10y ago

rwmj 10y ago

Part of the hippocratic oath is "first do no harm". We could usefully extend that to politicians. The UK government has, in 7 or 2 years depending on how you count, set the UK on a path to destruction -- and it was all very predictable.

pbhjpbhj 10y ago
>The UK government // That's short-hand of course for the "UK people's democratically expressed will". FWIW I don't vote conservative, nor support Brexit; but we can't solely blame the elite cabals - as this sort of phrasing tends to do - the demos are complicit.
- rwmj 10y ago
  People were led on by millionaire politicians and billionaire newspaper owners who flat out lied during the referendum. Politicians have been blaming immigrants and "benefit scroungers" for problems which are really caused by austerity. It would be nice to have an informed demos who could look past all that, but we don't right now.
  - blibble 10y ago
    come on, essentially the entire Western political structure was on the side of remain they even shipped Obama over
- ghaff 10y ago
  That's because people are comforted that when a majority of people disagree with them and vote for outcomes they don't like it's obviously either because they were misled or manipulated (or they're racists).
RoboPlumber 10y ago
Ah, brilliant idea! Politicians and voters just shouldn't be allowed to make bad choices. Why had no one thought of this yet?

pbhjpbhj 10y ago

>Disclaimer: I'm a child of English parents who was born in Wales but grew up in Scotland. I have Scottish and English children, in-laws and cousins. I have a family home in Scotland but I currently live in England. My children live in England and Scotland. Some of us live in Italy. // This may be an indication of the problem. To my view your opener should be "I'm a child of British parents, born in Britain and grew up in Britain. I have British children. I, and my children, live in Britain. Some of us live elsewhere in the EU." Somewhere we've hung on to the the idea that we're a [loose] amalgam of separate nations to which we really owe our loyalty [if any is owed]. Whilst that doesn't seem to be the case in other parts of the world [corrections?]. Which other sub-divisions of single countries compete internationally in sports for example?

pizzetta 10y ago
I think you may be reading too much into it. I think poster is using those labels to illustrate the issue rather than for the purpose of asserting nationalism.
sambeau 10y ago
I would have but that would have made things very confusing: I feel 100% British. My immediate family is scattered around the UK our forefathers were scattered throughout the British Isles—one half of the family was Irish. Even my English parents have Scottish blood somewhere down the line. Even worse for me, I'm an internationalist and I felt very proud to be part of the EU for many of the same reasons I felt proud to be part of the UK: civic nationalism. The UK was the worlds most successful civic nation built on mutualism between a number of ethnic countries. To break up on ethnic borders and return to tribalism is heartbreaking.
- pjc50 10y ago
  > built on mutualism Was it? I mean, that's how it's taught in schools, but how well does that reflect the actual history? Certainly it doesn't represent the UK's history with Ireland, which really isn't taught in schools. That's how people like Melanie "wrong about everything all of the time" Phillips can write national newspaper articles in which Ireland has a "tenuous claim to nationhood". This is kind of the problem, we have all this national mythos that runs up to about 1966 and then stops. And it doesn't bear scrutiny in the modern age. The last attempt at building a national narrative that worked for everyone was the Blair era "cool Britannia", and half a million dead Iraqis took the shine off that a bit. Not to mention the inward focus of Unionism. Everyone looks towards London, but London doesn't look outwards. Occasionally it dispatches a foreign correspondent to Manchester to report on conditions. The average English person thinks of Scotland little and NI not at all.

daleharvey 10y ago

As a Scot I will be voting for independence in the spirit that you and your family will be welcome to live and work in Scotland, not certain what the claim to passports will be but if half of England qualifies then all the better (not really sure we if we wouldnt want the entire of England to qualify). As for the economics I am not too worried. A 15bn shortfall sounds exaggerated but hey given the worse case Trident is a 205bn cost that dissapears and it is not the only one. rUK doesnt fund Scotland out of some kind heartedness, Scotland has a solid industry and a government that has shown to use its income to prioritise social services and an independent Scotland within the EU immediately becomes an extremely attractive place for all those international companies looking for a nice place to base their EU trace (a lot of which may just need to drive up a few hours from England)

sambeau 10y ago
Scotland's contribution to Trident is ~£200m per year.

Gravityloss 10y ago

Doesn't Scotland get a lot of money from oil and gas?

jcranmer 10y ago
North Sea wells are declining.
- smcl 10y ago
  True but that's been known for a while - and afaik there hasn't been a definitive "oil will run out in 20xx" answer. Main thing hurting right now is the global slump in oil price hammering the North East - to be fair all of this does suggest that Scotland needs to focus on diversifying into renewables and tech but that was always the plan. It's just kinda irritating that this has come up now as it's a convenient stick to beat the pro-EU left with.
  - Gravityloss 10y ago
    I'm just thinking if you count the subsidies as coming from Britain to Scotland but not the oil being pumped from Scotland and sent to Britain? How would the borders go in case of separation? Seems Scotland has only one refinery, and it's half owned by a Chinese company.
    - sambeau 10y ago
      All current economic statistics about Scotland are baed on origin. Anything made in Scotland is counted as part of Scottish economy, even if it travels to England to be exported—that is counted as a Scottish export even though it left via an English port. The difference after independence would be that the export would occur at Carlisle rather than Felixstowe. Most of the "Thatcherism effect" of the 19080s can be directly attributed to North Sea oil. If you remove that money from the economy Thatcherism was a contraction until the banks boomed (though that was mostly post-Thatcher).
sambeau 10y ago

pjc50 10y ago

The economics are very disputable - the UK doesn't do regional apportionment of tax collection other than (just now) income tax, so not everyone believes the GERS number of £9bn. And now it's even more disputable with Brexit: what farm subsidies will Scotland recieve, for example? What's the future cuts scenario for the UK? What happens if the rUK starts mass deportation of EU nationals? Parts of England are a few Daily Mail stories away from burning down Polish or Pakistani corner shops. The UK had its opportunity to choose inclusivity and openness, and instead England voted for reactionary panic. I think it's hard to underestimate how much work the SNP have done in declaring ethno-nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment unacceptable, and pushing those sentiments to the margins in Scotland despite the media. (English-born Edinburgh resident SNP member here, btw)

zigzigzag 10y ago
I think that's nonsense. The GERS figures were accepted beforehand by the SNP themselves, and they're the best available. Even if they're out by 10% that's still a massive financial hole Scotland is looking at. Of course nationalists will now decide that the figures are inconvenient and so must be wrong, but their track record on economics isn't great - their prior plan involved building their fairer, kinder Scotland on the back of oil revenues which are now gone (and they ignored the decommissioning costs anyway). The UK is not "a few Daily Mail stories" away from burning down Pakistani corner shops, Pakistani immigration having nothing to do with Brexit whatsoever of course. That's the kind of ridiculously over the top drama that lost the referendum, and it boils down to a form of racism itself: a belief that white English people are just horrible and ignorant, in defiance of all the facts (the UK is one of the most racially diverse countries in Europe). Finally, I don't know what kind of independence campaign you remember, but the SNP I know practically defines itself through racist hatred of the English. Their entire argument for an independent Scotland seems to boil down to "we hate the awful Tory voting English".
- pjc50 10y ago
  > the SNP I know practically defines itself through racist hatred of the English This is in direct contradiction of my experience of being English (RP accent and all) at Indyref events and the SNP conference itself. There's maybe one or two fringe old guys who are actually anti-English and everyone else finds it embarrasing and is genuinely friendly. Everyone does hate the Tories though.

agumonkey 10y ago

I see some negative news about brexit plan execution, so I still think it might be possible to revert or avoid a total crash (if it occurs, maybe the world has some cards up his sleeves and things will reorder nicely) ?