Because that is what will happen. I don't think he's thought it out properly. On a recent BBC programme on the Scottish election, old fishface Salmond said he'd retain the pound as the main currency of Scotland. Well pardon me Al old boy, but you're missing the point here. Scottish independence means you get your own currency, set your own foreign policy and trade with other nations alone. How ideal would that be for him? It seems he wants his own little domain without the unpopular drawbacks economic policy would bring to his door. Let London take the blame. Is it because even he realises Scotland would have the economic power of Latvia if he set his own currency up?
Scots, like the Irish and the Welsh, have continually gone in for some hard England-bashing. They seem to find it fun to mock those south of the border, preferably those in the south east corner, the ones with the wrong accent who subsidise their free university education while those in England pay thousands to send their offspring off to get degrees.
Of the £8680 of tax money most earners pay on middle-income salaries that was spent by UK central government in the year 2006, £1120 get put towards the health service (fair enough); £763 will go to local government (to help towards services such as police and education); £440 on education; £343 on defence; £135 on Northern Ireland; only £75 on international development and £4200 are left over for fluctuating expenditure like social security and infrastructure. But a massive £520 gets put aside on regional expenditure in Scotland and Wales. That means if the UK let Scotland go its own way, the English would all have a rebate which would certainly add to the Christmas present fund or a little extra pocketmoney for the summer holidays.
So this also means Alex Salmond wants English tax to carry on subsidising his little fiefdom up there, because if he did get full independence, Scottish income tax would make Belgium and Sweden look like Monaco. You've certainly done the maths, Al. After trying to negotiate independence his way, England would basically be paying for him and his little Scotlanders to carry on feeling sorry for themselves and congratulating each other on being able to continue ranting at the English at their expense.
I mean, what would an independent Scotland bring to the world? Let's look into it:
- Another Eurovision entry: whilst re-applying for membership of the EU, which when considering the queue in front of them (Croatia, Macedonia, etc.), might take a while, they can get fast-track membership of the EBU and possibly get just as badly blown away by voters' bias as the others. As long as they get more points than England, it doesn't matter, eh?
- Another EU Commissioner: what portfolio would they get? They were hard-pushed to find one for the Romanian Commissioner Leonard Orban - eventually, Multilingualism was scraped off the bottom of the barrel for him. So let's give the Scots control of a Complaints department. They'd be good at that.
- Exporting quality TV: once the BBC is broken up into the SBC, EBC and so on, they can try and raise enough money to put together some interesting shows and documentaries that other countries would want to buy. If not, there's always YouTube.
Excuse my chagrin in this matter, but I feel I'm losing my identity because some starry-eyed utopians want to turn the north of the UK into a huge kibbutz. I am British. My surname is Goslitski. My Polish grandfather was involved in the D-Day landings. My family's other side is mainly Irish, but the point is here that I am NOT happy being called English. For in order to feel English I would need Anglo-Saxon or Norman blood, which I have precious little of. The British Jamaicans, Nigerians, Australians, Zimbabweans, Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in the UK may also know what I mean. "British" is a universal word, an all-encompassing pair of syllables which give us that little bit of freedom to feel what we are. Why do some Scots feel so put out by it?
When I was younger, I remember the Scottish, Welsh and sometimes even the Northern Irish qualifying for the European Football Championships or the World Cup. The consensus in most of England was to share out the support for the "Home Nations". Yet up in Scotland, many made the opponents of England teams, whether cricket, rugby or football, honorary Scots for the day. It used to be meaningless banter, but recently it has become more personal, and many English people I know have withdrawn any support they would have offered them. Trivial example, I know, but it shows you the ill-feeling flowing through the land.
Do I detect a bit of historical retardedness? Some little Englanders still revel in Germany-bashing or Argentina-baiting, which I find quite petty, but at least the events related to their behaviour are not too far back. The Scots have been roasting the English since Bannockburn in 1314. Isn't it time to bury the past? Who do these people think they are? And why do they insist on hlding grudges over things their ancestors, now definitely dead, might have done to them through the ages? Are we going to write to the city council of Rome and ask them for compensation because they once ruled over England 1600 years ago? Or for that matter, do you think we should lobby the UN to bring sanctions on France for all the battles over the centuries? No. Because we're past that now. It has nothing to do with people alive today. In the same way I find it vulgar that many English until recently used to bang on about the Second World War, I find it even more repulsive that some Celts of whichever denomination keep pounding the English, laughable even, considering how far in the past it was. The Union works well NOW. Doesn't that count for anything?
The UK is not London-centric. In fact, it heavily favours the Scots and Welsh: their Members of Parliament can vote on English matters, which the English ones cannot. The Scots get free university education. They have their own newspapers, can print their own money and get preferential treatment in many other issues. Many of them still want more. For example, when London's candidature was put forward for the 2012 Olympic Games, many outside the capital, including some English, claimed London bias. Why not Glasgow, or Edinburgh? Because those cities are not anywhere near equipped enough to deal with such an enormous event. The UK applied before with Manchester and Birmingham. The French tried with Lille. The Germans with Leipzig. The Japanese with Osaka. But the IOC stated that only large cities with the correct infrastructure would have any chance. In Europe only Barcelona, Munich, St Petersburg and Milan would have any chance of defeating capital cities and two of them have had the Games already. London won and the other cities didn't.
I am not anti-Scottish, but I can't stand it when people stereotype a whole nation as evil bad guys. These people can't see a successful marriage: the United Kingdom has a lot going for it. Together, it punches above its weight in international affairs, it shares equality with France, Germany and Italy in the EU, it has greater credibility in this globalised world. "British" has long been a word to inspire, has been a symbol of a quality product, has for centuries turned "me" into "us". Why should this be different now?
But if the Scots want to go, let them. And in 10 years, when their foreign debts become too high, when their infrastructure needs repair and there isn't enough money, when their main source of income is wind energy (and we all know you need a lot of those expensive propellors to even charge up a phone battery), when their population ages but their pensions are minute, when their citizens are queuing at banks to withdraw their savings before the crash, let those of us who still believed in the Union say with one voice, "we told you so".
