We were in Scotland for the independence vote. I am not going to claim that we were entirely responsible for the swing back to “no”. But as we all know, correlation does imply causation…
To do this any kind of justice I would have to spend a lot of time planning my thoughts and writing them out. However, having just got back from a week’s holiday and straight into conference season, I don’t have time for that. So here are some briefer thoughts.
On the whole, I was behind the no vote. From a rational perspective, I am not sure that was the right path. Scotland enjoys a large amount of public spending, free prescriptions, free university, etc. If the no campaign is to be believed, it is £1,200 per person. That is a huge subsidy from the English tax payer. Though how reliable those figures are will no doubt be much disputed.
However, from an emotional point of view, it was a shock to see that almost half the people in Scotland dislike me so much, just for being English. It felt like a divorce. I didn’t want our family to be torn apart. Of course the yes campaign would say it is not like that. But it felt like that.
I am also not sure there is much of a difference between the results. We are devolving further powers anyway, so the countries will go their separate ways somewhat, despite being the same country on paper. Of course, there are benefits to this. But also disadvantages. It makes law and business far more complex for example. To give an example that has actually touched my life, charity laws different between England and Scotland for example (and it’s annoying).
There is the possibility that politicians will just go back on the word though. It does not look like they will from the posturing that has happened since the vote. However, it wouldn’t be altogether surprisingly – every politician campaign is full of promises the elected party does not deliver on.
It was interesting that Royal Bank of Scotland said they would move their headquarters to London. However, it probably wouldn’t be that embarrassing for Scotland – Westminster already owns most of it anyway.
One of the biggest advantages of having Scotland remain part of the union is that we have also escaped a decade for Tory governments that would have probably resulted from losing the Scottish labour vote.
Anyway, ramble over.
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Tags: independence, scotland, scottish independence
This entry was posted on Saturday, September 27th, 2014 at 10:54 am and is filed under Religion & Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.