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Imagine starting a country with no National Debt, a balanced budget and freedom from EU interference.
Imagine controlling the fishing areas of the North Seas together with two other similarly independent countries (Iceland and Norway).
It is not Scotland that faces imminent economic crisis, but the UK. Scots have been granted an opportunity to escape before disaster hits:
Extract from the above:
"Listen to it – the poor Scots are threatened with currency collapse, bankruptcy, irrelevance and isolation. There’ll even be a frontier, doubtless with barking dogs, searchlights and minefields planted with exploding haggises.
"Well, what do you think we’re all going to get if we stay in the EU? The real scare story is that 40 years of EU membership and wild overspending have brought the whole UK to ruin.
"The current strength of sterling is an absurdity and can’t last. George Osborne’s boom is the most irresponsible bubble since the 1970s, based entirely on ludicrously cheap housing credit.
"Roughly half the containers that leave our main port at Felixstowe contain nothing but air, and quite a few of the rest are crammed with rubbish for recycling, because our real export trade has collapsed, much of it throttled by EU membership.
"The incoming containers are full, of course, of cars, clothes, gadgets and food – but how are we to pay for them?
"As usual, the biggest story of the week was buried – the rise in our monthly trade deficit during July to £3.3 billion. That includes the famous ‘services’ which are supposed to make up for the fact that we don’t manufacture much any more.
"It is impossible to see how we can live so far beyond our means for much longer. Both Government and people are deeper in debt than ever.
"So forgive me if I point out that it’s quite scary enough staying in the UK."
"Listen to it – the poor Scots are threatened with currency collapse, bankruptcy, irrelevance and isolation. There’ll even be a frontier, doubtless with barking dogs, searchlights and minefields planted with exploding haggises.
"Well, what do you think we’re all going to get if we stay in the EU? The real scare story is that 40 years of EU membership and wild overspending have brought the whole UK to ruin.
"The current strength of sterling is an absurdity and can’t last. George Osborne’s boom is the most irresponsible bubble since the 1970s, based entirely on ludicrously cheap housing credit.
"Roughly half the containers that leave our main port at Felixstowe contain nothing but air, and quite a few of the rest are crammed with rubbish for recycling, because our real export trade has collapsed, much of it throttled by EU membership.
"The incoming containers are full, of course, of cars, clothes, gadgets and food – but how are we to pay for them?
"As usual, the biggest story of the week was buried – the rise in our monthly trade deficit during July to £3.3 billion. That includes the famous ‘services’ which are supposed to make up for the fact that we don’t manufacture much any more.
"It is impossible to see how we can live so far beyond our means for much longer. Both Government and people are deeper in debt than ever.
"So forgive me if I point out that it’s quite scary enough staying in the UK."
(And - if you dare - just Imagine having the opportunity to issue your own debt-free currency as a sovereign country. Fare well, banking families.)
__________
The only regret is that we could have done much of this together, the UK as a whole... forty years of wasted opportunity. Only the (oft-repeated) short-sighted electoral calculations of the Labour Party have ultimately led Scotland to this unbarred window and the chance to escape; don't blame them if they take it.
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I hope they do take it and show us how things should be done. Unfortunately I don't think their collective grasp of reality is any better than it is south of the border.
ReplyDeleteGreat opportunity though, and they don't come very often - especially in fake democracies.
Many commenting on the polls remark on how difficult it is to compare the Scottish referendum with any other polls and thus explain the sudden changes that are occurring in the polling returns.
ReplyDeleteI wondered if looking at other European secessions (not partitions) of previously independent entities from federated single states might help.
The USSR split into 15 sovereign states: 3 Baltics and 12 Commonwealth of Independent States (Giorgia didn't sign in the end, so 11).
Yugoslavia split first into 5, then 7 sovereign states.
Czechoslovakia split into 2 sovereign states.
Denmark and Greenland split ino 2.
Most of these were done by negotiation, then by vote, and fewest by force.
Tentatively it could be suggested that in modern times (ie post Second World War) where the opportunity to revert to smaller independent states within federated states has occurred, it has been taken. And that has happened no matter what the economic costs involved in all of them. The Soviet Union's costs have been likened to those of the Black Death. Of course, if Scotland remains an EU member its transition will be much less traumatic. I think it most unlikely the EU will attempt to exclude Scotland.
Experience of secessions from federated states by formerly sovereign entities suggests that secession is the usual result when opportunity offers.
Thank you for your considered comment, HG.
ReplyDelete