UKH

I was just chatting to my kids about the UK s population . I knew the uk was 65 ish million but I was  very much out when guessing the populations of Scotland , Wales and Northern Ireland . In the case of Scotland , i was out by a factor of 1.6 . If you don’t know , Have a guess and then google it .  I m English and honestly have no axe to grind and don’t have an opinion other than if I was Scottish I d probably want independence for all manner of reasons .  I know a few people on here have very strong views either way . So after googling the populations of each country it made we ask the question of the OP ? 

I’m pro union but Iceland manage well with a far smaller and more geographically isolated population.

The real question is whether an independent Scotland could cut its large budget deficit and maintain its spending.

I like what you did there.

Puts kettle on and pulls up a chair.......

I'm not sure the actual population is what is important but more the proportion which is economically active. A policy encouraging immigration could address this.

Lots of small countries in the EU deal with smaller advantages than Scotland have and bigger problems and cope OK. It's a complete myth Scotland couldn't cope in my view as a liberal unionist.

Scotland would be viable of course but worse off.

Sub standard public services, under funded welfare services and education for decades before maybe getting back to where we are. Maybe.

The SNP's own growth commission report said just that but sugared the pill by saying that world beating economic growth would take Scotland out of austerity in ten years because small countries grow faster than big ones. They don't of course and there is no economic argument for Scexit that isn't based on heroic assumptions, half truths and made up numbers.

When you read the inevitable counter arguments, just try playing Brexit bingo and tick off the same assertions you read in this thread as you read in the Brexit threads.

You would have to say how you define a deficit, because the way a currency issuer (a monetarily sovereign government) deals with a deficit is fundamentally different to a user of currency.

Forgive me if this is all obvious already, but it's maybe worth an explaination for anyone else reading.

If a government is in control of its own currency then their deficit, their spending into the economy, is the country's surplus. The private sector, us, can only use that currency once it has been spent into the economy in the first place.

Governments who do not have control of their own currency must act like a household because (unlike the above) their supply of money is finite. This is the case with the EU countries and Scotland presently. They receive an amount, they must act like a household and a deficit is not necessarily desirable (Greece). 

Most of the time, currency-issuing governments will run a deficit and they must. Its perhaps no coincidence that every time the US has run a surplus it has been followed by a recession, or depression. (It may be argued it is a folly of the neoliberal age to offset spending by issuing debt)

Scotland would have a choice to make whether it uses the pound, euro, etc, or its own currency. With money being a tool of government to wield labour and resources, two of those options outsource that elsewhere.

In the latter case, Scotland would be able to spend into its economy as required, tax as required, operating as a self-supporting entity that it could, and presently cannot, do otherwise

Edit: spelling

I would be curious to know whether, in the event of independence, Sturgeon would apply for membership of the EU and STILL expect to retain the Barnett formula. No telling how her mind works.

Scotland spends 20% more per head on public services than England.

Here in Yorkshire...things look alot rosier in Scotland.

Sounds like a skin problem. I hope it isn't a little rash.

Yup, I grew up on the English side of the border and someone living a 15 minute drive away got free university education whereas I paid £3000 pa.

I personally think Scotland is sufficiently different to warrant independence but there has to be some acceptance from the SNP that either taxes go up massively and or public spending takes a big hit. Can't have it both ways.

The question of which currency would be used is, as you say, crucial - and was completely mishandled in 2014.

I agree. So the question is whether the sovereignty (I use the word advisedly) considerations outweigh the negative economic effects: the entire thing becomes a philosophical argument, not an economic one.

In that respect, it directly mirrors the Brexit debate.

Yes it has many similarities. Something that's been a chronic irritation for seven years. It was beginning to die down until Brexit caused it to flare up again.

I try to ignore it as it doesn't make my life (or any Scot's life)  better, quite the reverse, but sometimes you just can't help yourself and end up feeling worse as a result.

Anyway I'm going to take my own advice now and just ignore the irritation.

Brexit/Scots Independence.. I had my fill..If we are allowing this to happen,then there is no hope.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://ww...

I have no idea if Scotland would be much worse off, short or medium term. Have you seen any unbiased research on the subject you could link? All the problems people link would enable them to access EU support funds (like the highest per capita drug deaths in the world, as discussed on More or Less yesterday). I would agree some independence commentators do get over excited with the likely size of such support. Medium term I think liberal countries do best as they interfere less in normal regulated economic matters than ideology driven countries. Scotland is way more liberal than England right now.

It is a bit like brexit in that for every independence idiocy I see there is some unionist idiocy. Yet I think the economic damage is much less clear. Talk about punishing Scotland making a democratic decision by immediately stoping the Barnet formula is a good example here of a mad unionist idea.

England would (re)build a big wall and make Scotland pay for it.

First thing: Financial viability has nothing to do with population.

Second thing: My Scottish population estimate was out by less than 1%, go me!

Bad now to the question proper...

You are asking about financially, not politically. In this case it's true that I've yet to really hear arguments that are at all convincing about how an independent Scotland would prosper. There are a lot of problems

- sparse population density and very large per-capita infrastructure costs in very large remote areas are a big problem in economic terms.

- any way you spin the numbers it seems that the deficit is outsized for the population. I guess you could try and plug this with higher taxes (say 60% income tax or something) but I don't know enough about socioeconomic forces to say with any certainty what sort of unintended consequences a drastic move like that might have.

- I would worry about the additional financial costs of having and staffing a huge number of new government departments that are currently not devolved.

And the problem I can see is that I've not really heard any convincing solutions for these problems. Maybe I just haven't looked in the right places or listened to the right people yet. Overall, I can see excellent political arguments for independence but no economic ones. But, as everyone pointed out already, economic ignominy was no deterrent to brexit, so it shouldn't be expected to be an effective  deterrent to Scotland's secession if it does come to a second vote.

I love it when brits talk economics...it's like stepping into a time machine and getting transported back to 1980.

It could well be cheaper for England to pay for such a wall to be built pretty quickly - must be some Polish builders available - in order to be able to stop Scots from coming south when one group finds their giros are vastly reduced and another group finds their taxes shoot up.

Interesting points. In the event of Scottish independence, I assume Scotland would initially continue using the pound, which could give our noble and generous Tory overlords a god given opportunity to stick the boot in.

Medium term Scotland would want its own currency, how hard is it to set one up from 0?

I haven't got any links for you. But I can pose the question in reverse: are there any unbiased analyses which show that Scotland's economy would be better off (or at least, no worse than it currently is) were the country to become independent? If such analyses do exist, I expect that the SNP would have let us know about them by now.

Getting truly unbiased analyses on this is probably impossible. One thing we can say for sure is that the economic projections made in the SNP Government's 2013 White Paper (the key document on which it fought the 2014 referendum) turned out to ludicrously optimistic.

Why is that people repeat these oft touted tropes as "facts":

"any way you spin the numbers it seems that the deficit is outsized for the population. I guess you could try and plug this with higher taxes (say 60% income tax or something)"

"Scotland would be viable of course but worse off.

Sub standard public services, under funded welfare services and education for decades before maybe getting back to where we are. Maybe."

A bit like what Kev was saying - at present, Scotland "receives" it's national spending allocation from Westminster. There is no mechanism for boosting Scottish industry, healthcare or education (etc.) by "borrowing to invest". We are at a time of ALL-TIME historic low government borrowing rates. It's basically being given away for free just now (in fact, there are NEGATIVE yields on some UK Government bonds. Yes, rates may increase in future, but at present, there is a low chance of inflation.

So, an independent Scotland with higher public costs (as Henwardian says, we do have a spread population, with lots of low paid and workers - let's not forget, without banging too hard on the "blame Westminster drum" we're in the positon after 300+ years of our "union of equals"), we chose higher discretionary spending on public services. But why would we need to tax individuals harder for this? If we have our own currency, we can:

1. Borrow to invest in the economy, healthcare, education, green infrastructure, energy.

2. Monitor inflation and intrest rates. If inflation starts to ramp up, increase taxes. A government with it's own currency cannot ever run out of money. Yes, it can run into rampant inflation, but very few economies have suffered that in the last wee while, especially fully functioning, democratic mature economies. 

At this time in history, with looming geopolitical issues what is the point in worrying too much about a hypothetical situation where the government has to service too much interest on it's borrowing. We might all be living in caves, fighting for the last scrap of food in a desertified, baron wasteland. 

If ever, EVER there was a time to go wild with borrowing and spending it the achieve a resilient, sustainable, efficient, and liveable society then it's NOW. The is zero logic in letting the planet burn but having perfectly balanced books. Talk about fiddling while Rome is burning.

Alasdair, do you read the news? 

What do you think public spending is now if not wild? 

The problem you have is that you borrow in USD, Euro or GBP. So as you spend and can't pay back, the exchange rate moves against you as you currency becomes worth less. Then your debt is bigger so you have to print more money to pay the interest, which makes your currency worth less. 

Unless your super growth and resulting tax take allows you pay off your debt, your currency ends up being worth less and eventually worthless. A currency is only as valuable as what other people will offer you for it in exchange, and when it comes to borrowing money they expect it all back, and more.

You make the point that the UK can borrow at record low rates - correct.

However what makes you so sure that an independent Scotland would be able to do the same?

Scotland would have to take its share of the national debt to start with and even if it did have its own currency you’re probably looking at pretty hefty interest rates.

Borrowing to invest looks less attractive when the interest rate is 5-10%.

Of course they wouldn't be able to look after themselves. Without the wonderful benevolence and largess of the English they would be reduced to living in crofts and eating grass. Tiz a well known fact.

0% Sorted

But you still have to pay back what you borrow or when the debt matures issue more bonds to borrow it again. As even the UK struggles with the former outside covid times, then you're left with the latter. As you have no idea what interest rates will need to be 5, 10 or 30 years time you're setting up future generations for a nasty shock. So borrowing at low interest rates is far from risk free.

Yes, true that we have no idea what the world will be like in 30 years. We do have a good idea that it will fundamentally  different to today, and I suspect countries that invest heavily now will reap the rewards. 

One of the reasons I voted no in 2014 was that the economy would take a bit, albeit maybe only short term (it would depend really on who then got elected in and what they did). However, since we have now been dragged into the Brexit car crash and are dealing with the aftermath of a horrifically badly managed global pandemic, I now don't think the short term effect on the economy is that big a deal - we are screwed anyway. The question for me now is does independence allow us to move forward better than staying in the union. Given we can actually have our votes count if we go independent, I would say we have a better chance as we don't have to be stuck with the Tories against our will!

But look at what has happened historically to countries that can't meet their debt commitments. You really don't want that. Having said that, in a Scotland context, the remainder of the UK wouldn't want a failed state on their doorstep so they'd be bailed out -- but no winners there, we'd all be losers, so why go down that road in the first place? Scotland would be most prosperous if its politicians dropped the independence obsession and got on with life. Sturgeon must be costing them billions in investment, you'd want your head looking at moving a business there with the uncertainty they are creating.

I was a bit lazy in not looking up stats to support my claims but I'm just not motivated to do that right now because I'm spending so much time looking up stats for other purposes. So definitely a weakness in my argument.

I don't think having out own currency is very likely. Scotland would most likely want to rejoin the EU and that would lead to us adopting the euro.

The problem I see with this argument is that you are assuming the newly independent country of Scotland would, at the moment of its birth acquire the status of "fully functioning, democratic mature economy". Democratic, yes, mature economy, not so much, it's going to very much be a newly created economy with a very uncertain stability and viability because it has never been alone before.

Also a lot of the measures you would like to leverage cannot happen in the Euro or if we stick with the pound. If you do decide to go it alone with a totally new currency you are throwing up a huge amount of uncertainty 

Economies do badly with uncertainty. It's one of the biggest reasons that dictatorships and countries with war and refugee crises and so on do poorly economically - investment people value stability very highly. Multiply the uncertainty of a new economy by the uncertainty of a new currency and I would be very worried about the prospects for investment in Scotland.

Greece, Iceland (ironic seeing as it was mentioned above as an example to look to), Japan, Argentina, etc. etc. etc. Without even trying too hard I can think of many countries who have solid stable, well functioning democracies and advanced economies who have suffered horrendous financial problems and/or needed bailed out because of the swings of the global financial system. I think you  are a bit too optimistic in the degree of financial resilience you accord advanced democratic economies.

Right.... The problem here is object permanence: Just because there is currently a larger problem somewhere else doesn't mean that the consequences of you creating a smaller problem will not come home to roost just because people are not looking at it.

I think if you change "spending" to "investing in infrastructure and institutions" I can probably broadly agree with you here.

So you don't reckon any companies are eyeing up a move north for access to the single market if we head back into EFTA (my preference) or, maybe if people wanted, back to the EU.

Right now it looks like a pretty sensible rip-cord on the plane crash we're tied to just now.

In 2014 the UK offered stability, pragmatism and familiarity.

In 2021 the UK offers ideology such as "f*ck business" and delusion such as
“I just wish I was 21 again, frankly,  because my goodness what prospects lie ahead of us for young people now. To be out there buccaneering, trading, dominating the world again...” to quote a couple of prominent brexiteers.

Decreased income (loss of Barnet formula revenue; cannot rely on oil as they wouldn't get as much as they want and while jets will always fly, oil is set to be a busted bubble)

+

Debt payment (share of UK national debt)

+

Increased expenditure (cost of establishing all the organisations/institutions needed to become independent country)

+ 

Currency problem (cannot keep UK pound, can call its currency a pound if it wants but no validity in international market)

+

Harder to borrow (new economy, risky to invest in)

= financial suicide

SNP can say "we'll get xyz" as much as they want, but recent history shows the leaving nation can say that all they want, while the reality is not even getting "abc" so much as getting "@&£".

Hard Scexit. Worth the price to enjoy the thrill of re-enacting Mel Gibson? 

Scotland would be far better off as an independent state within the EU in the medium to long term and if it stays in the UK things will get progressively worse.

The single biggest cost to Scotland under the union is the centralisation of power and wealth in London.   There is insufficient access to capital in Scotland because the decision makers are in London.   Because government and private agencies/companies have decision making centralised in London ambitious people are forced to move from Scotland to England to make a career.

The Irish do not have this problem.  The financial industry in Dublin and government in Dublin support Irish industry and give contracts to Irish companies and advisers.

Look at some of the innovations that have come out of Scotland - cloning for example.  If that kind of breakthrough had happened in California, or Japan, or Germany or most other countries of the world there would have been a f*ckton of money going in and a huge biotech industry developing.  Scotland has biotech and biotech research but there are no billion dollar companies.

Same with the oil.  Look at any other country which has extracted that amount of oil and you will see conspicuously wealthy cities with a skyline to match.   They regulate their own industry and the oil executives, the bankers, the lawyers and all the other well paid service jobs are within their borders and getting taxed for their benefit.  Not Scotland.  BP employs more people in SE England than Scotland.   

Whatever the next innovation or industry that happens in Scotland if we stay in this poxy union the benefits are going to end up in England.  That is what happened to the wealth of the USA and India and every other country in the British Empire until they finally told London to f*ck off.

"Ambitious people are forced to move from Scotland to England to make a career".

You do a very considerable disservice to your fellow Scottish people by saying that. 

What a staggeringly insulting and blatantly false thing to say. 

It's not a binary question. 

In the big picture, the *only*  thing that really matters economically/financially is the handling of apportionment of the UK accumulated deficit.

If Scotland can leave with no share of this (write off their share), then leaving is merely ill-advised.  If they can't, and have to shoulder the burden of a pro-rated national debt with their ecenomy no longer supported by subsidy from Brussels/Westminster, then it's idiocy.

But the matter isn't going to be decided rationally.  It's going to be decided in the same way as Brexit - nationalism whipped up by lies from entirely self-interested people.

If only there were a large bank headquartered in Scotland. As a local of Edinburgh you might agree with me that close to Edinburgh Airport would be an ideal location for its HQ. Somewhere like Gogarburn - what a Royal idea! It would probably become so successful that it would become one of the world's largest banks. I'm sure the First Minister would pass on their best wishes when it inevitably began to launch takeover bids for other banks. It would be a Good win for Scotland!

This post got a lot of like votes, so it is a popular belief. However, it makes the critical mistake (and everybody makes it - understandable, as we are fed it), which is to assume that money is a finite commodity, and that taxation pays for spending. Neither of these are true.

Governments spend money into existence into economies, and taxation removes that money from circulation. That tax money is destroyed in this process - the government don't take it to use it because they don't need to. They issue the currency after all. Why would they need your pounds? 

As I stated earlier, if they were a government that did not issue currency, they absolutely would need to balance taxation and borrowing with their spending.

This also relates to my post at the top of this thread. It has profound implications for the creation of a new currency vs. using existing currency. 

Disagree...rationale coming

This is utter, utter rubbish.  Back when I was a CEO I spent 1/3rd of every results season in Scotland, split between Glasgow and Edinburgh.  There is plenty of capital and financial capabilty in Scotland, and plenty of highly capable people making careers there.

None of which is an argument for independence.  Work with what you have (which is lots).

Absolutely happens in Scotland

You're judging a whole sector on PPL?  Sadly, cloning per se isn't that amazing/enabling/useful.  Nobody in "California, or Japan, or Germany" has stolen the tech and made billions. Pharma and biotech research is completely 100% international.  You appear to have little idea of how invention is commercialised.  If it's good, it will get picked up.

My own experience (from VC in biotech) is that frequently inventors are parochial and unrealistic.  I wouldn't say Scotland was especially so, but it's certainly no less so.

Shetland seem to have done very nicely...but in any case I disagree. Look at Texas for exampel.  Plenty of modest towns pumping wealth to the overall US.

The funny thing is that we are aligned; or, at least, in part.  I'd be delighted for all the mouthy, entitled, whining, ignorant, ill-informed, 70/- drinking Scots to be hived off to stew in their own ill-conceived inadequacy.  However, the civic citizen part of me is strong and I don't want to let you inflict that on youself.  I'm sure you can wear me down given time, and enough posts with bollocks like that.

Um, Kevin.  This is like a Reddit thread relayed to you by a deaf auntie after a couple of schooners of sherry.

Your use of "tax money is destroyed" is a giveaway on this...and then, especially the line about being fed a conspiracy.

Actually you seem to have bought one.

If Scotland just tries to abandon its debt and issue new money; welcome to hyper-inflation Germany (or Argentina or Venezuela).

Missed this one earlier. Yes, it's an issue at present. But, it's short term thinking - even if independence was voted on this year, I doubt we'd follow the Brexit example of a pre-agreed timeline - seeing how baldy that went. So, yes, it's not an ideal time but it's also a great opportunity, as we're still very aligned with the EU and having access to the market would put Scotland at a competitive advantage right now - look at all the companies relocating to EU at present. How many are flocking to England?

Actually, it's pretty widely reported that Scotland has absolutely zero "requirement" to take any share of the debt. This has been debunked. 

"The UK government has said Scotland will not be liable for debts managed by London before independence. Instead anything owing is entirely down to negotiation. The idea that in that case Scotland has some fixed share of UK debt that it must assume can be dismissed: this claim has no legal or factual basis." 

https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2020/07/28/scotland-debt/#:~:text=The%2....

That said, as part of any exit negotiation, of course, Scotland would take an agreed amount. This is welcome, as the debt would be UK Bonds, which, on expiry could be replaced by Scottish issued bonds. The benefit of this is that 1) UK does not need to overnight pull in a load of bonds, 2) Scotland will begin with national debt of a known issuage, therefore the (locked in) borrowing rates will be low. As the bonds mature, and transfer over, the bond market will then have to judge Scotland on its merit. 

If Scotland had to borrow of the market day 1, then yes, rates could be high as it would be seen as a jump into the unknown.

We have been so drummed into us that 'we can't afford it'. How do the Scandinavians do it? All of them. Not just Norway (the oft-quoted..). If a country has the skilled people and the raw materials to construct roads, the government can incentivise that workforce to carry out these infrastructure projects. This is through money creation, this is govt injecting money into an economy to carry out the jobs it would like to be done. As long as there's the workforce to carry out this work, that injection of money can be absorbed without inflationary risk. Inflation is brought about by shortages, whether materials or labour.

At present, it comes down to political choice not to carry these tasks out and we have a roads in Scotland - and the UK, of course - that are simply crumbling.

The government happily release money for defense or Covid out of thin area but 'cannot find the money' to what they find politically objectionable - or seemingly sometimes, can't be bothered. In the case of transport links (crumbling roads all over the Highlands - away from the A roads!) its purely neglect. No less and no more.

To finish, about 85% of the Scottish population is urban, although I understand you were speaking about the miles of roads.

Once again as stated in my previous posts, taxation does not fund spending, and I can't stress this enough.

The cost to who? If its a government project, this creates employment. The government spends into the economy through money creation, as all monetarily sovereign govts do in funding education, defense, healthcare, etc. The state is wielding money as a tool to complete the jobs it wants completed. Again, they do not directly need your taxation to pay for this (taxation is crucially important in a number of ways and that's another post) - their spending incentivises the labour of that country to work. 

We have been fed as good as rubbish for decades concerning how economies work. The basic problem is we are all still talking as though we are not a fiat currency, politicians and media included. The above are answers to your questions but they represent a radical leap from conventional microeconomic thought. However they are based on the unassailable core principle, that the UK government (and its agents) and the monopoly issuer of the currency.

For these reasons I see that Scotland should become monetarily soverign in any event of independance. 

1. There's no reason at all we'd need to joint the Euro if we joined the EU. I don't think we should rejoin the EU right away, but I do think fitting in with EFTA would bring economic and social benefits.

None of these countries are in the Eurozone, or are planning to join any time soon:

Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Sweden,

2. See my point above about acquiring a portion of UK debt - that would allow a less bumpy transition and give the stability required.

Greece should not have joined the Euro, it wasn't ready and it's not worked out well for them. 

Iceland said "f*ck you" the bankers, put them in jail and rebalanced their economy. Crude measure that I despise...but anyway...GDP per capita of Iceland is 25% higher than the UK.

Yes, I'm being optimistic, Optimistic that we can work together with the other small nations in Europe and find a way of making it work. If we are so poor, so stupid, so small that we just need to meekly tag along and accept our had outs from the great benevolent south, what kind of union of equals is that??  Shut up wife, you'll get what yer given....

Aye, that's what I mean. It just seems a no-brainer at this point in history. Build it and they will come (it being a clean, green, modern nation with better education and health).

Because the (edit: Westminster) government issues the money, they do not need taxation to spend. Taxation creates space in the economy for further government spending, but it doesn't fund that spending.

One wonders why those fools in the governments of India, Bangladesh, Uganda and so on feel constrained by their low tax base. If only they knew what you know, they could give their people so much more. 

It’s actually macroeconomic thought; microeconomics is the study and theory of individual markets. I do appreciate that you were so busy imbibing all these ideas that you mislaid the little details like the name of the thing you were talking about. 
 

This is pure MMT. Strongly suspect you’d get a decent bout of inflation making Scots poorer if you followed it, which you absolutely don’t need to do if you would like to build some more roads in the Highlands.

Presumably, just like we'd have an independence referendum, we'd then have to have a referendum on whether or not we try to join the EU.  A fair proportion of the populace voted for brexit and I'm willing to bet that number might be boosted by hordes of disgruntled pro-union voters. 

So. Maybe if we become an independent country, we won't join the EU and we'll be totally f*cked.  Probably best to stay as we are. 

(for the record I voted to say in the union AND to stay in europe). 

That budget deficit thing is straight out of your local unicorn stable. The only way that Scotland had any responsibility for a deficit of the size normally quoted was when the UK budget deficit was £175bn in 2009. Proportionally, 8% of that is £14bn. More recently, in 2018, 8% of £32bn is about £2.5bn which is still completely unrealistic since half of it is probably our share of Crossrail cock-ups.

The UK Govt persists in obfuscation in relation to Scotland's financial health and these mythical deficits are based on their numbers for 'notional' spending which I think can easily attributed to 'made up numbers to suit policy'.

-------------------------------------------

In order to believe that an independent Scotland is not financially viable you have to also believe that most of northern Europe is also not viable, such as

Czechia
Denmark
Finland
Ireland
Norway
Slovakia
Sweden

because those countries of broadly similar population are all doing well but only Sweden and maybe Denmark come near Scotland in resources and broad-based economy. Some of those comparable countries are amongst the richest in the world. 

Balderdash.

MMT is not some theory waiting a century or two and a dozen recessions for the proof. It is an explanation of economic history. And the old inflation thing, well, do get with the programme. Several governments across the world have been struggling to CREATE a reasonable level of inflation during the last couple of decades, so perverse is the effect of the outdated economic theories that everyone is clinging to.

It's a blatantly true thing to say.

I've deliberately not moved away from Scotland to make a career and I have watched people I know who moved to Silicon Valley or England make a ton more money.   I spent years working for Venture Capitalists in the UK and it was completely clear that companies in Scotland with good technology were going after hundreds of thousands of pounds from Scottish Enterprise and 'Angel Investors' where companies with really sh*tty technology in SE England were getting offered millions in funding and companies in Ireland were getting good support from Irish VCs.

Nope, I am just being honest.   There is a ton more money around in London than in Scotland.

It's a blatantly true thing and it is not an insult.  It is a systemic problem.  We are losing good people all the time because they can't make their way in Scotland and we are under-utilising the skills of many more who choose to stay.  

Why would we do that?   As long as it is clear that returning to the EU is part of the plan for independence there is no need for another referendum.   The unionists want another Brexit referendum after we go back in they need to get elected in the Scottish Parliament with that in their manifesto.

Jesus.  We need to get on our own two feet and have a bit of self respect and self confidence.  

How's this for notional? From the Scottish governments own figures: 

"The Scottish Government estimates that total public spending in Scotland was £81 billion in 2019/20, equivalent to £14,830 per head"

"The Scottish Government estimates that around £65 billion-£66 billion of revenues were raised in Scotland in 2019/20, equivalent to approximately £11,940-£12,060 per head."

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06625/

Scotland has a budget deficit of 8.6%, second highest in the EU. Maximum budget deficit permitted for states wishing to join the EU...3%

That's the circle the SNP needs to square and Sturgeon is deploying a whole stable full of unicorns in her efforts to do so.

You might want to erase Ireland, it nearly crashed and was bailed out. 3 others have much higher taxes to fund public services, not sure Scotland is ready for that. 

I think it's OK to have goal examples, but Scotland would still need a plan to reach that point. 

Scotland already has devolved powers in all of this and much more, plus an snp majority for years. Shouldn't they be creeping ahead of the rest of Europe already if the plan is so great?  

I know of two family’s ( separately ) who have moved to Scotland . One who both adults work in Carlisle and moved over the border mostly for their kids educational prospects , the other moved to an island because they both work remotely and wanted a complete change .

How could we build a world class health service under the auspices of Austerity?

Admittedly, the SNP government are failing on education. You may be surprised to know that there are a growing number of people who are quite dissatisfied with the SNP current performance. They have absolutely no opposition and, it could be argued have enjoyed power a bit too long. The SNP will most likely have no more reason to exist after independence.

Scotland does not have the discretionary spending powers (well, that's not entirely true, there is a small mechanism whereby they can borrow in emergencies but since most taxes raised are not counted locally, it wouldn't have the necessary effect) that reminds I need to do a but more reading on that.

Here's an example of where Scotland is a bit hobbled by not having its own borrowing and spending powers - investment into offshore wind has been vastly lower than South of the border. The UK has an installed capacity of about 7. 9 GW, Scotland has 130 MW (as of end 2018). Contracts for Difference are issued centrally in the UK, and, we have been losing out. Not insinuating its a deliberate ploy, but we are at a disadvantage because there is no way up CfD that we can incentivise Scotland. Similar issue With Tidal power, which could be fostering a world leading technology - we've got 3 tidal energy companies. Atlantis have a license for about 380MW or so  in the pentland  firth, but didn't win a CfD as it had to compete with much cheaper wind. If purely the cheapest energy is what you want, that makes sense. If you want to support a new and developing industry with genuine high quality engineering and manufacturing jobs, supply chain etc. then it's short sighted. 

They do this because they have zero inflation and this isn’t particularly good either. This is all perfectly standard stuff. 

Isn't the uks tidal research site, with multiple models being tested in Scotland? What about onshore wind? Hydro?

Health, it's easy to blame London, but what measures are they directly preventing, that devolved health isn't enabling? 

Austerity, whilst the uk hasn't enjoyed the spending without care of the 00s, the last ten years have been austerity by name, not entirely by nature. Scotland and the uk have still ran massive annual deficits every single year and have a few trillion debt. The uk still needs to face the reality it has champagne taste, on beer taxes.

I am confident that Scotland outside the UK would be financially viable. 

I am confident that the UK outside the EU is financially viable.

Viable and desirable are two different things. 

Making it harder to trade with the nearest neighbour is unlikely in either case to bring increased prosperity.

Whether 'taking back control' or 'making decisions for ourselves' is worth the financial hit is open to question.

Whether the wasted energy of politicians, civil servants and others spent creating and managing borders could be better spent simply dealing with more pressing needs is a reasonable question.

Whatever the arguments are for or against independence, as in the brexit debate, whilst relative prosperity may be an issue I don't think financial viability is.

(I have no qualifications in economics whatsoever) 

Let them eat oatcakes!

https://fraserofallander.org/gers-guide/

I think this provides a fairly balanced and contextualised [in relation to the UK] discussion of the finances etc in Scotland.

The GERS figures are of course much contested. Here is Richard Murphy speaking to the Scottish parliament in 2017. Although I think the way GERS is calculated has 'improved' a bit since then. 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUUqwIOD02I&

Maybe you should. It would widen your horizons.

The question used to be "Is an independent Scotland financially viable?".

The question now is "Is a post-Brexit UK financially attractive compared to independence?".

I think it was Malcom Muggeridge that said 'Travel, of course, narrows the mind'.

So what? You know some ambitious people who moved away. Big deal. They can play the victim and claim they were forced to move if they really want.  There are plenty of ambitious talented people who stayed in Scotland and do very well here in careers and otherwise.

The statement that ambitious people are forced to move to England to make a career is a such a gross extrapolation to a generalisation that it is meaningless.

No it doesn't.

GERS numbers do not reflect the position of an independent Scotland they are unionist designed accounting of the position of Scotland as part of the UK.  Anyone who knows anything about Scotland knows the acronym GERS does not arrive by accident.  Only a Rangers supporter would thing GERS was a cool acronym.  The very name shows what side of the unionism/independence debate the people who created that statistic were on.  

 As an independent state we can cancel expenditure on sh*t the UK government buys that we do not want, we can force government functions to return to Scotland and be taxed in Scotland and the suppliers to and companies regulated by those government employees will be drawn back to Scotland because an office in London will do them no good at all.

We can also act in our own interest on economic policy and regulations rather than have people in London decide what is in the interest of the whole UK.    Trading fish quota from Scottish boats with Norway so an England based supertrawler can catch cod will not happen.   We won't trade off Scottish industries in trade deals for the benefit of larger English industries.  

Maybe I should have 25 years ago.  

And possibly narrow your beliefs. I became even more ‘Scottish’ after I moved to Surrey.

Hated the place.

Crikey! Don't bring the football in to this!

I understand what you are saying and I understand when you have a fiat currency, there are many levers you can pull to affect the county's economy. I'll also be the first to say that I don't know enough about macroeconomic theory to argue the opposite site effectively.

BUT

It simply cannot be as as simple as you have made it sound. The government doesn't have a bottomless ability to spend money, create work and thereby make the country prosperous without limit. When country A creates more money than country B, the value of country A's money falls vs country B which affects trade. The country has a limited workforce, the unemployment rate in Scotland was actually pretty low before covid, so there isn't a huge pool of people who could take up all the new government jobs. The country has limited resources, doesn't matter if you are talking about raw materials, machinery to process or manufacture or whatever, a lot of that stuff is going to be imported, so you run into your currency devaluation problem from a couple sentences ago. What you postulate also seems to suggest that if everyone was employed by the government and there was no private enterprise, that would be the optimum for growth and prosperity - time has shown that communism is not an effective system. I believe modern counter-cyclical economic policy is based on NOT spending when everything is going well but rather saving during those times, so that when things are going badly, you can afford to open the purse strings to inject some stimulus.

I do agree that the government can spend to create prosperity, I just don't think it is nearly as strong a force as you suggest and I think the situation is much, much more complex.

Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Sweden are all in various stages of joining the Euro. Several of them are in the exchange rate mechanism with the Euro which essentially obliges them to follow the economic lead of the Euro.

The only country on your list that isn't planning to join the Euro is Denmark. Negotiating an opt-out of one of the main things the EU is about when you are looking to join as a small new-member country in 2021 isn't, in my opinion, likely to be very easy.

True.

They managed to solve the problem, yes. And I think they are pretty fortunate to have managed to come out of the other side of that as strongly as they have.

Poor, yes, relatively speaking. Stupid, no, I don't think anyone said that. You make hand-outs sound like some sort of dirty thing, this is the basis of every advanced country on earth (even the USA!), you put into place mechanisms to move money from rich areas and people to poorer areas and people. Obviously there is a whole debate about how much and how it's done but if you don't try and do it at all then crunch point comes right quick, the poor eat the rich and anarchy reigns!

And higher taxes.

It might work I suppose. But I want to hear serious economists and think-tanks tell me it can work.

And what if you are wrong? I'm not sure that I think things are so bad right now that I want to take a punt with the country's future.

The Danish Krone is pegged to the Euro within a reasonably tight band, so in all normal circumstances (presumably in some sort of exceptional circumstance it could abandon the peg?) it might as well be using the Euro.

Sweden is further away from the Euro than Denmark is, I think, since it seems to have deliberately chosen to fail one of the Euro preconditions in order to not have to adopt it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_and_the_euro

Out of interest is it a given an independent Scotland  would definitely be able to join the EU? 

I was under the impression perhaps incorrectly that a country joining would need to show financial stability, not to mention any opposition from other countries concerned with their own independence issues. I thought I remember the EU suggesting that it certainly wouldn't be a given. 

One thing that always concerned me was the majority of the centrist to right leaning of my acquaintances , always told me that if England had been given a chance to vote on the referendum, Scotland would be independent. 

Highly probable, almost certain I would have thought. 

The time scale is a greater issue. It could be a decade or more it could be less. Some clarity on that, if that is possible, would help. 

The terms and their effect directly and indirectly, particularly when considering cross border trade and movement with rUK may make membership less desirable than it was when the UK was a member. It certainly wouldn't just be a return to as it was. While that may not strictly impact on being able to join the EU it might impact on the practicality of such a move. 

And herein lies the rub, possibly, of a lot of Scottish resentment of the English? Over the years I've encountered many folks from all over the UK and abroad. Often the ones I felt least affinity with were those from certain parts of SE England. My own origins were working class NW England so maybe I had a chip on my shoulder. Every part of this island has pockets of wealth, privilege and entitlement but when I started travelling south I could see that this was almost another country. Even the weather was better! Because of this I always felt Scotland was more like home and less alien than London and the SE. That's why I'd feel a sense of sadness if Scotland pulled out of the UK. Loss and sadness that people I relate to want to separate themselves from others they have so much in common with.

I could have written the above, almost word for word. The strange thing is, I like London. I get why people aren’t that open, patient and friendly. That’s the same in most big cities around the world.

It’s the bits surrounding it that I found intolerable. 

When you say bailed out, what you really mean is borrowed money on the international market and mainly from monetarily sovereign states. That raises a few issues that are being hidden from most observers for the sake of press sensationalism and ancient imperialism. Ireland has the Euro so is not in charge of creating more currency therefore it has to borrow instead. Ireland had and has immense growth potential so therefore borrowing is not as scary as for some other states since the growth easily outpaces the loan.

Not much of a plan is required. Just conduct independence in accordance with international law. Launch a new currency at an early stage. Issue currency in a manner that properly finances the austerity-stifled economy. 

Oops. "parliament.uk" so not Scottish Govt figures. And these 'GERS' figures are wholly discredited over and over again having been revealed as a system for deterring moves toward a Scottish Parliament [FAIL] and then deterring moves toward independence [ongoing FAIL]. Various versions of GERS use a model where between 30% and 50% of UK debt (which isn't actually debt in the first place) is attributed to Scotland for the purpose of creating a suitably scary deficit.

Of course, this also sidesteps the point that Government deficits are actually private sector surpluses and are a necessary component of economic growth. 

An already EU-aligned former member: not a hard sell.

Did you read the quote? “Scottish government estimates”.  

Great. Perhaps the EU will agree with you and decide not to bother with adherence to their entry requirements. After all, they weren’t too strict with Greece’s fiscal health check and that turned out fine.

They were bailed out because many of their financial institutions were on the brink of collapse and there was a risk it would take the euro down.

Yeah it's from institutions, just like Greece debt, or Italy... all hanging by an eu/euro thread. 

Stop posting this MMT nonsense. You’re not an economist - when anything like it before has been tried in the past it’s crippled the economy of the country in question - it’s highly controversial.

If you need to rely on MMT to justify that Scotland would be financial viable you’re as good as f*cked.

Of the Irish bailout money only €4.432bn came from monetarily sovereign states, the rest (€67.5bn) from the EU and IMF. And a good investment as well, 5,8% interest isn't to sneered at these days!

The Irish did in fact create money, so much that they couldn't sustain their economy because they couldn't service their bond commitments.

Not true. It is tried all the time. Every time somebody wants to start a war they wholeheartedly embrace exactly the same appraoch as MMT. Then when the war is finished they go back to the old habits of creating poverty just for spite. 

Are you an economist?

I'm book marking this to plagiarise it the next time a poster argues for a "let it rip" approach to the pandemic...

Indeed, an economic theory developed by a hedge-fund manager. What could possibly go wrong.........?

This didn't start with the current batch of book writers.

IIRC a british paper written in 1914 is credited by some with being the start of MMT. And of couse that makes some sense because we had just come off the gold standard in order to run a war!  

Are the Crankies still alive?

Putting the MMT / let's stick with neoliberal poverty promoting austerity battel for a minute.

As I alluded to before, is the threat of higher interest payments, or subsequent default on debt really such a big issue when we have THE F*CKING END OF THE PLANET as a habitable space of humans looming? 

Really?

Forget MMT for a while. I'm not a proponent, and I'm sure there are many unintended consequences. Economics is not a predictor of the future, just a poor way of explaining the past. (sorry economists).

Think of this a different way, and split this in two:

1. Borrow now, invest. Schools, universities, healthcare, sustainable energy, regenerative farming, environment. Money is fictitious bullshit anyway, so, make it up, spend it on good things. This might fail. We might overcommit and not be able to pay our interest on the borrowing. But we'll have a great country (this could apply to any country, not just Scotland), with domestic industry, energy security, balanced and diversified economy. 

Yes, it's idealistic an maybe not achieve, but its an aim. 

Summary: Borrow, invest, get good country, risk default sometime down the line.

2. Continue as is. Poor education, healthcare slowly sold off to make more profit, slow uptake of sustainable energy (nod to the government, finally some change there), fiscal "responsibility", ongoing poverty and.....where's the guarantee this will lead to lower deficits, and better economic performance?

What when crops fail due to having no bees. What when the planet becomes unliveable warm. What is the POINT in constraining now?

Can someone try to explain to me why inflation is a risk just now?  I can see that if we went out on a limb, and started printing 50% of GDP per year, foreign institutes and investors would start to devalue the pound and inflation would rise. But, if the whole bloody world is printing money, why not just print a bit more and invest?

I think a lot of people who believe we should loosen the purse strings in a time of exceptionally low borrowing costs (even before Covid), get unfairly tarnished by those who want to discredit "MMT". It can be a bit of a strawman argument.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06167/

If interest rates are so low, and government borrowing so cheap....why are we not investing?

No. 

Nation states with their own fiat currency (GBP, NOK, USD, DKK for instance) never default. They can just create as much currency as they need.

(It's not really debt.)

Real borrowing, in a currency that is not their own, is higher risk and can in some circumstances lead to difficulties. Things like IMF and AIIB loans are not necessarily a great idea. 

We are investing heavily in big houses for Tories and their mates.

True, *if* we go for a new currency. (which for me is an essential part of indy) 

Starting to sound like an snp club meeting.... evil tories....blah blah blah... invest in growth..... blah blah... what do we want? Freeeeeeedommmm! 

The best thing the snp could do is to get some non core supporters advice, those who are sceptical about their growth plans, currency etc.  In correlation with the other thread, some critical thinking. Motivation and happy thoughts help, but they don't directly change Scotlands economic or natural resources position. 

The only way Scotland can achieve the kind of public services it desires and in part has now (Barnet funding free this and that), is through increased taxation. It will need the vast majority of the population on side and feeling the benefits for this to work. 

Rubbish, the list of countries that have defaulted both internationally and internally is in the dozens, Russia and Argentina being the notable ones recently.

Not great examples. Russia has unbelievable natural resource wealth to fall back on and a leadership willing to enrich itself far above it's citizens.

Argentina has an endless series of economic calamities. When I went on holiday there you could only take ~£80 out of an ATM (with a charge on top) because they have such bad tax collecting. Having gone to Chile for 3 weeks before returning to Argentina the Arg pesos I had were worth 15% more. Imagine that volatility in your pay packet.

Scotland can be independent but has to be financially mature otherwise it either a) becomes a basket case like Greece or b) ends up rejoining the UK.

I think someone at the guardian is watching this thread...

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/03/independence-could-cost-sco...

This obviously adds fuel to the discussion. Independence looks financially viable, but is it financially desirable.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/03/independence-could-cost-sco...
 

Then you read the comments on the Express, and suddenly £3K PA sounds like a bargain. To be so hated.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1392564/scotland-news-nicola-sturge...

And you need to add " nearly defaulted" but saved by the system to that list--Iceland, Portugal, Eire and Greece spring to mind.

They still defaulted. I spent some time in the Ukraine shortly after they left the USSR/rouble and started their own sovereign currency. Watching the developments as they slid into eventual default was "interesting" though technically they were in domestic default from day one, like they didn't pay the state employees.

Actually Greece defaulted in 2012 and 2015 but they aren't a sovereign currency so got "restructured" using someone elses credit rating.

I'm very probably being completely dumb here, (call me thick, I'm a big boy, I can handle it ), are you saying, "£3K PA sounds like a bargain.", that you'd be perfectly happy to take a three grand hit for independence?

I don't know you from Adam, but I'll make a stab in the dark that you're some comfortably off middle class professional type and a 3k hit would mean you'd have to take one less foreign holiday or buy a slightly lower spec brand new BMW.

3k would plunge 100s of thousands, if not millions, of Scots into abject poverty.  I know for a fact , 3k would mean we'd have to sell up and find somewhere cheaper to live.  Not the end of the world I know but huge upheaval.  After 10 years of austerity, we are really struggling to find any more cuts in our outgoings.

It was an off hand comment based on the hate filled comments on the Express link. Did you read them?

If you knew me you’d know I’m as fully versed as you can be in the pros and cons of independence.  Both for myself and my family, and for the wider national context. Unfortunately an online forum doesn’t support the subtleties of normal communication.

Must be doing something right!

Hardly comparable though is it? 

Aside from the massively different stages of economic development between Ukraine and Scotland, for it to be comparable, the English would have to be as outrageously despicable as the Russians.

? 

OK.  I said we are investing heavily in big houses for Tories and their mates.  This is a fact.

Here is a picture of one of the Tories mates who got 276 million quid in PPE contracts and bought a £1.5 million house in the Cotswolds.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tory-steve-dechans-276m-in-ppe-contracts...

Are you saying Scotland doesn't have natural resources?  We have far more land and sea area than England per head of population.

Every single business plan has the exact same issue.  You are making a change because you see potential.   But the upside is not a fact because you have not made the change yet.  The costs of your existing business are facts (although in the case of GERS I would argue falsely accounted facts). 

If you refuse to accept any of the upside predictions because they are 'speculative' and mark them down as 0 'to be safe' and then take the costs of your existing business as 'facts' and assume there can be no cost savings, then every single time you will conclude you shouldn't take up the new opportunity.

And in the medium term your business will die as a result of that refusal to take on risk.   Because the world is changing around you and you need to address new opportunities to survive.  Especially, as is the case for Scotland, when your existing business model, union with the UK, is on a rapid downward trajectory.

The Brexit approach lives on...just believe it will be great really hard.

You wrote "Nation states with their own fiat currency (GBP, NOK, USD, DKK for instance) never default." Which is patently rubbish.  Which leads one to think the rest of your views are likely to be the same.

Like Ian Blackford? The multi millionaire ex-investment banker who lives in a big house.

Maybe we'll just not talk about him.

Land, but what natural resources etc..  that aren't already exploited? 

Risk = reward. But just saying Scotland will excel Isn't a substitue for a thought out plan. 

Scotland isn't a business, it's government is responsible for its citizens. Many businesses fail at first attempt, a country can't afford to fail. 

You need to take a course in elementary logic.

I said 'we are investing in big houses for Tories and their mates'.

I did not say 'only Tories have big houses'.

Talk about him if you want.  It's just not relevant as a reply to my post.  Ian Blackford is clearly not a Tory or one of the Tories mates and he clearly did not get rich off contracts from the Tories (or the SNP).

But there's no data to support that approach. They'd be rolling the dice...

I hear that subject was taught in Blackford's private school.

By data I presume you mean accounting data. By definition there is no data to support something you haven't done yet.  You have projections.

Dice are designed to be random.  Life isn't random, you can make reasonable projections, that is what intelligence is for.  And there is no choice about taking risk.   Even if you never do anything new there is risk because the conditions which made what you are doing now a reasonable strategy in the past may not persist.  You are just making a different bet i.e. betting things will stay the same.

In the context of the UK with Brexit there is zero chance of things staying the same.  With these Tories in charge the strong probability is that they will get worse for the UK as a whole and even worse for Scotland than the rest of the UK because they really do not give a sh*t about Scotland.  They care about London and South East England.

They taught it in the private school I went to too.  What's your point?

Indeed

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/03/independence-could-cost-sco...

"The authors stressed their analysis only covered the impacts of increasing trading costs, and excluded other economic or fiscal issues post-independence, such as cuts or increases in inward investment, changes in immigration, currency changes or tax changes."

In other words they looked at one specific factor - trade within the UK - and set all the other factors to be 0,   Then the unionist press presents it like it is a forecast for the overall outcome.  Incidentally the GERS statistics have a similar health warning that they are a model for Scotland within the UK, not an independent Scotland and that gets ignored too.

I'll also chuck in this comment from Adam Smith for a laugh.  

"The wool of Scotland fell very considerably in its price in consequence of the union with England, by which it was excluded from the great market of Europe, and confined to the narrow one of Great Britain." (Adam Smith, "Wealth of Nations")

So only forecasts you approve of, and cherry picked phrases from articles, count.  Yep, brexit Mk II.

Tom, you're missing a trick. The Orkneys, The Shetlands, Glasgow, Skye, and Edinburgh should ALL be separate and fully independent nations. It's blindingly obvious!

Pretending this is a forecast of what will actually happen after independence is bullsh*t.  It considers one potential downside and none of the potential upsides.

I put the quote in my original post.

"The authors stressed their analysis only covered the impacts of increasing trading costs, and excluded other economic or fiscal issues post-independence, "

The only similarity between Scottish Independence and Brexit is that it is about breaking away from a larger unit.  Sometimes that is a good thing, sometimes it isn't.   You need to look at the details.

You really  don't have a clue...do you? Ffs!!!

No, it was quoting things you said on another thread. I was pointing out that you were a cauldron of boiling piss about the lack of data and departure from tested protocol when we went to a 12 week gap on vaccines. But on Scottish independence you're cool with a whole country and everyone in it taking a dive into the unknown, and you're so into it that you're spouting all the same arguments the brexit arseholes did.

It's identical to Brexit, it's blaming all your problems on the larger grouping that you're a part of, choosing sovereignty at all costs, the delusion that adding trading barriers will lead to increased prosperity

There is a difference in that *politically* the UK is currently on a bad path whereas the EU never was. However, rather than acknowledging the economic effects, TiE and similar just believe a populist nationalist fantasy, which undermines the whole case. Political benefits with an economic hit might  arguable. Political populist nationalism with a Scottish flavour instead of an English one and an economic hit certainly doesn't.

I would agree with you, but EU events last week illustrated a valid counter argument. Part of that being that in effect the EU Commission screwed things up, especially for one of the EU countries, Ireland. Granted there was a rapid back track and rethink.But it does demonstrate  a view that the Commission is unaccountable.

It was unfortunatley a very public gift horse to the Brexit argument.( along the lines of Uk was nimbler etc)  It will be interesting to see what happens with the Commission as a result.

I would also suggest that it has dented the independence vote. You will have all those Scots  vaccinated deep down thinking to themselves...mmmmm I just wonder what would have happened if....my life is more important and so on.

TIE will not concede on this quite( naturally I would not expect him to do so, and I expect a barrage of commetns as a result). But its your 50/50 voter who counts in these things.

These things are complex but the EU perversely may have just swung it back against independence last week.

It’s not. Difference with EU is the perceived respect shown to member states. As opposed to the perceived derision and insult in UK by Westminster.

That will be a reference to triggering article 16 like Boris is threatening to do?

That's an interesting one. I voted remain in the Brexit Referendum and agree with you that the EU didn't deride and insult the UK or other member states but I bet if we asked a passionate leave voter they would say different. Might the perception of derision and insult say more about the person doing the perceiving than about the EU or UK parliment?

Added in edit:

Or even that those promoting Brexit / Scottish Independence have exaggerated and invented the derision and insults to promote resentment against the EU / rUK and persuade enough people to vote for their cause against their own objective best interests?

Quite probably.

Again probably. Buts it’s not difficult to find division when you have the current administration in Westminster repeatedly misnaming the most popular party in Holyrood.

So does this mean that you're really just a little rich boy just like Johnson and company ?

Is all this "Scottishness" really just a cover for your jealousy of not being in their club ?

Has that viewpoint been kicked into touch by the EU commission not consulting Ireland last week..........

Yep...both sides as bad as each other...its pretty pathetic. ..

Knowing a few people in the Commision I have the view that there is a lot  of stuffing Uks head into the dirt and grinding Uks faces in it.

At some stage I am expecting both sides to retreat from this considerable diplomatic animosity.

Dunno. Doubt it though.

Backtrack within hours - is that not closer highly accountable than it is to unaccountable?

What is going to happen is that a few months from now the Scottish vaccination program is going to look at least as good as the English one and the EU will have got its act together and be doing substantially better than England too.

The statistics people actually care about are deaths, and hospital admissions, especially when it happens to someone they know.  England is doing diabolically on those numbers and the Tories are about to make the same mistake they have made twice before and reopen before the infection levels are sufficiently low.

On deaths the JCVI projection is it takes 20 vaccinations of care home residents to prevent one death and 160 vaccinations of over 80 outside of care homes.   By the time you get to over 65 it takes 1,000 vaccinations.   Vaccinating care home residents is very labour intensive but Scotland followed the JCVI advice and has 98% vaccinated.  Not 'offered vaccine' but actually vaccinated.  That will reduce deaths more than the larger numbers of easier to reach groups that England has done.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1357045738199482368.html

Also, by doing the most difficult group first Scotland has accumulated a reserve of vaccine which will allow it to smooth out deliveries, run mass vaccination centres at steady full capacity and do second doses on schedule after 12 weeks.   This week the number of vaccinations relative to population is higher in Scotland than in England.  Scottish Twitter is full of people saying they've been called for their jag or their appointment has been moved up.   The Scottish Government is going to look good on this in a few months when the election happens.

I don't think so.  Brexit is costing jobs, whole industries which were once Tory supporters are being f*cked over and will very likely change sides.  Covid is still a huge Tory f*ck up.   People are angry and they are angry with the Tories, not the EU.  

No. My parents were teachers and they spent their money on education for their children rather than other things.

There is no catching up. The eu doesn't have sufficient vaccine to over take. Tension is building in Europe, old and vulnerable are still dying who could have been vaccinated. 

That's akin to letting your population whilst having a warehouse full of food, ready for hard times in the future. I think what you mean say is the devolved health agencies of Scotland aren't organised or lead sufficiently to vaccinate at the same rate they are supplied and that England is doing better (as are Wales and NI).

Didn't you know? Vaccine doses are much more effective on a shelf in a warehouse than when injected into people.

That's the thing, flowery words and pretty speeches don't count for nothing, when you can measure competency by how well they perform a devolved task. 

It absolutely isn't.  It is the strategy you get when you ask a professional to plan a vaccination campaign and follow their advice rather than doing whatever looks good to the Daily Mail that day.  You look at any supply chain and there is storage involved, it is necessary part of the system to keep the other resources operating smoothly and efficiently.

The crunch for the English strategy comes in 12 weeks when they don't have matching doses for the Pfizer vaccine from the large initial orders which they rushed straight into people's arms as first doses.

If I lived in London I would do the same thing.  But in Scotland our infection rate is 3 x lower than in London and we don't have to.   A vaccine dose in the arm of a care home resident is 8x more likely to prevent a death than a vaccine does in the arm of an 80 year old outside of a care home and 50x more likely to prevent a death than one in the arm of a 65 year old.   Scale the number of doses administered by the likelihood of each dose preventing a death and Scotland is miles ahead of England.   Whoever made the Scottish plan read the JCVI advice and looked at the vaccine delivery schedule and worked accordingly.  

I'm not sure that is their 'strategy', but if it is, let's list the countries that think that's the right strategy:

1) Scotland

Even if peak protection reduces after 12 weeks, you've still got some protection. How much protection do you have with zero vaccine? 

Every vaccine sat on a shelf is a person who could be immunised. It's been proven since small pox vaccination started. 

Sorry but you are wrong here. Whilst intuitively that would seem right the fact the SNP are keeping them in the warehouse shows it isnt correct.

Yeah, like Nigel McFarage said, Scotland are doing this better if you scale by some metric that makes Scotland look like it's doing it better.

Maybe sturgeon just needs to stop playing the independence game and focus on running the country. If they do this well they might actually get more support than they would from purely banging the evil English drum. 

Well, if Farage says it...... ! Although I agree that Tom is prone to wishful thinking on the subject of Scotland, nevertheless Scotland has objectively fewer Covid deaths than England, and after the first wave, aimed to chase the case rate down lower than England and succeeded. In the second wave peak Scotland had cases running at half the rate of England. It's not hard to find uncontrived measures that show Scotland doing better than England in regard to Covid. Neither country has exactly covered itself in glory.

Scotland's vaccine rate does look poor, but we are following a different strategy, which is not obviously a poor strategy and could be a good one (I don't have enough data to tell, but I respect Jason Leitch, and I doubt he's made a serious blunder). This strategy involves starting with care homes as the priority. People seem to agree that care homes involve a slower rate of vaccination - seems plausible. Jason Leitch reckons the pace across the four nations will end up about the same. The care homes are now dealt with here and the last three days have seen very rapid rises in vaccination rates in Scotland: it looks like this week may see 50% more vaccinations than last week. I wouldn't want to bet on who the 'winner' will be. 

Most of all, I just wish we would stop arguing like children about whose dad would win in a fight....  when both our dads are busy tackling a common enemy.

England  vaccinated care homes first (and has pretty much done them all).  They are number one on the priority list.  Scotland is simply slower, for whatever reason.

Amen to that.

‘Offered’ is not the same as ‘given’. I can’t find stats that show how many have actually been given?

Wouldn't that be the same in Scotland and therefore any comparison would still be relevant? 

No. Scotland is measuring ‘delivered’. Therefore difficult to draw comparisons. Hence the media making as much of it as they can.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/04/black-over-80s-in-england-hal...

And in that regard, this piece in the Guardian is relevant and depressing.

But the approach is the same. TiE cant claim it is because of the horrible English killing their care home residents that Scotland is slower. 

Also

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.carehome.co.uk/news/amp/article/id/1641654...

Yes, I was surprised to see the details for England's strategy after reading your previous post. Yet Scotland's chief medical officer thinks there's a difference - I must have mistaken what the difference was about. That's why I'd like to see, as Graeme G says, the data for vaccines delivered for England for various groups, to see where the difference might lie.

Yeah. I wouldn’t be trying to score political points off this. Just get it sorted. Whatever the strategy. 

Took offered to mean that all those had been given the choice of having the vaccine had done so.
Anyway, looks like (with the exception of Wales?) that the majority of care home occupants in the UK have been vaccinated and that attempts by some to politicise it is a bit misplaced...
In further vaccination news, have a look at the following report on the BBC and ask yourself how far Melania Trump has let herself go after leaving the Whitehouse:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/health-55932884

I am not going to die of CV-19

I am going to die of boredom

(PS for information, I'm a happy healthy male)

Thanks for listening

I hope that Europe improves its vaccination programme too. But because I want less people to die, less people to suffer the loss of a loved one, and because we're all human. Not so England looks relatively worse ahead of an election. Christ. 

Scotland, as part of the UK has massively benefitted from the UK's vaccination procurement programme and a Anglo-Swedish company willing to deliver a vaccine at cost. That's an unambiguously good thing and better for Scotland than waiting for the Sanofi/GSK vaccine like France did. 

Total and utter bollocks.  Storage is a necessary  part of the system for efficient operation whether you are designing a factory, a computer or a vaccination program.   When I did my CS degree many years ago they even made us do a module called 'Probability, statistics and queuing theory' which was all about how to design the queues (storage) and how large they needed to be.

Suppose you run a program with no storage and every day you put vaccine into arms as soon as it is delivered.   Suppose one day your delivery doesn't come.   Then you vaccinate nobody.  Everybody's appointment is cancelled.  The admin staff get driven crazy with 100,000 people trying to reschedule but there are no slots for ages because you've already booked other people into them.  Everybody in the vaccination centres stands around doing f*ck all that day.   Then when the vaccine arrives they need to catch up.  That's when you start getting queues of patients.

You run a program with a weeks supply in storage then when you make an appointment for a week ahead that patient's vaccine is already in stock. Every day your vaccination centre runs flat out.  Nobody gets rescheduled.  If a delivery is a couple of days late it doesn't matter because you have a 7 day buffer.

Then think about the second doses and the front loaded ordering and delivery of Pfizer and you need to hold back a little if you want to be able to do the second doses at 12 weeks.

What you can get with storage in the system is a smoothly running machine that vaccinates a lot of people every day.   No crises.  No armies of volunteers but a smaller number of better trained staff.

That's what professional people would design and I suspect what the NHS people designed in Scotland.  Right now it looks to me more like a plan which is being executed than 'falling behind'.

Then so what. You have vaccinated as many as possible, as early as possible, that is the absolute best outcome in terns of saving lives and slowing the spread. 

The goal isn't to keep staff busy every day. Besides deliveries are not quite daily like you say, it's a logistical chain with known lead in times. They've been doing it for 2 months now, they aren't winging it daily. That's why the uk in total is upto 10m doses. 

Vaccines appointments are booked about 6-7 days in advance. Therefore, in the event that there is an issue with delivery and run out your appointment would be put one week, no big deal in the grand scheme of things. Your strategy of always holding a week's worth of vaccine comes with a price tag of approx 7000 lives. Worth paying so you can moan about the Tories?

Because you've already done them.

What you've got is a system in chaos with a ton of semi-trained volunteers fire-fighting, lots of not particularly well kitted out vaccination centres and everybody wasting their time on the phone fire fighting.  Lot's of 'battle of britain spirit' and not much efficiency.   There's also the chance of queues of patients and Covid spreading in people waiting to be vaccinated or old people waiting outside in the cold.  Not a theoretical chance, there's pictures of a long queue of pensioners outside a vaccination centre in England.

If you look at the delivery numbers the largest one going to Scotland was 450k doses, it settled out to about 80k doses and there were a couple of weeks with 130k or hardly any,   That is a lot of lumpiness,  it would be stupid to build infrastructure to deal with 450k doses in a week, you want to build high quality infrastructure that deals with the average case and uses storage to smooth the deliveries out. 

Like I said, putting storage in a system is not controversial its basic practice and there is a whole body of theory about how much you should have.   We shouldn't even be debating it, we should let the people who are trained to design these things do their job.  They are actually pretty good at it.

The official delivery schedule is lumpy, it's a new process and there are problems with it getting reported.  It isn't totally random but equally its not completely predictable and the system needs to be capable of dealing with disruption.  The way you deal with disruption while keeping your processing running smoothly is to include storage in your system.

The comments about Scotland lagging England are not fair.  What you are seeing is a different approach which takes longer to 'spin up' but once it is running can potentially be far more efficient.   If you want a fair comparison you need to look in a few months, not just after the 'spin up' time.   Scotland's infection rate is half of that in England and 1/3 of that in London.  We don't need desperate measures, we can be calm and do it the way that was originally planned.

Last week Scotland put significantly more vaccine into arms per head of population than England.  The teams are out of care homes with 98% vaccinated and doing lower risk groups in vaccination centres and we are starting to see the capacity of the system they have built.   A system that doing care homes first also gave them more time to do properly,

I think you are doing the volunteers vaccinating a disservice. Many are skilled folk from other parts of the emergency services, nhs staff, military, qualified medics, St John's etc..  most are not random joes who have just had 5 mins training on how to stick a needle in an arm. There are many unskilled helpers too, marshaling etc.. 

Which are more doses than an independent Scotland would have had from the eu. I can sense your gratitude for the Westminster procurement team in your posts.  

Edit. On a per capita basis Scotland would have received 200,000 doses from the eu in total so far. 

I hope not, the dose is only 0.5 mils, that would just be wasteful

Correction: 5 mil would be truly wasteful!!!

I suspect not, given Scotlands increased drug problem over the last decade, I think they are likely quite efficient with their dosing. 

Took me 9 hours to complete the online modules. 

Have a like, you are hundreds like you are clearly making a difference.

Obviously the vaccinators need training but they are just one part of the whole system.  If you take a few more weeks to set it up, you use mostly NHS staff who are familiar with NHS systems you can get something which runs more efficiently than if you use volunteers.   That's what they did in Scotland, they've got a system using mainly full time NHS staff supplemented with nursing students, medical students and a small number of army people which is matched to the rate of vaccine supply smoothed out with some storage.

There was good reason to do the care homes first (i.e. 8x more effective in reducing deaths than the next group) and it has the side effect of creating a buffer of vaccine so they can keep the system running at a constant rate and giving a few more weeks to set up the larger vaccination centres.  You can argue about whether this is superior to England but it isn't a stupid plan and it doesn't deserve to be pre-judged.

Name a country that isn't vaccinating care homes, the old and the vulnerable first? There is nothing unique about Scotlands plan. 

How reckless! They'll run out of vaccines at that rate! All that careful stockpiling and smoothing of delivery must have gone out the window for Scotland and now they're panicking like the rest of the country throwing needles at anyone with a pulse.

Or... perhaps they could have jabbed more people than they did and just got off to a slightly slower start than elsewhere. Big deal.

The UK as a whole has done fantastically well with its vaccination programme (including Scotland) and as a whole did a piss poor job with the lockdown measures (including Scotland). 

Scotland as part of the UK has played a blinder by negotiating for these vaccines ahead of the EU, seemingly obtaining priority and getting far more than the 200,000 vaccine figure quote above. Well done Scotland. 

London naturally has been heavily hit, just as New York was with poor rates of compliance and a slow response to COVID measures. I'm sure there are places in the US with a 1/10th of the cases of New York but when you have a international hub and a crowded tube system that is to be expected when the approach has been equally poor. 

Germany, France and Sweden are currently reluctant to use the Astra Zeneca jab on over 65's. 

That doesn't mean they aren't vaccinating the oldies first with other vaccines. The AZ vaccine was only approved on the 29th Jan. 

Edit. They are waiting for more test data. Only 8% of the field were over 65 in the original trial. Luckily the uk is running a massive real time trial!! 

Really? Because that has been what you have been busy doing throughout this thread claiming how it is preparing for success whilst the English plan is doomed to be inferior.

I never said there was.  What I said was they were following JCVI advice and doing the small and difficult group first.  What England is doing is going straight to easier to reach and larger population groups.   There's also nothing particularly clever or unusual about running a system with some storage, it is standard practice.   It's England which is the outlier.

Scotland's vaccination program has now done 99% of care home residents, 90 % of over 80s and is running smoothly at slightly higher numbers relative to population than England.

https://twitter.com/NicolaSturgeon/status/1357665832336244738

Meanwhile in January there was a far larger spike in care home deaths in England than in Scotland.

As pointed out previously, that's cobblers.  The 1st priority in England was care homes and workers, as in Scotland.

I'm responding to the never ending bullsh*t from the Tories about Scotland 'falling behind' and England being 'world leading' which is parroted by the BBC and unionist press.

Yesterday that c*nt Jacob Rees Mogg was on about Scotland getting 'bailed out' by England because there's 100 soldiers helping with the vaccination program.

As if the UK army, which is paid for by taxes in Scotland just as much as England, is a gift.  And like 100 soldiers are making the difference when there are 170,000 NHS employees in Scotland and 1,500 nursing students and 500 medical students helping with vaccinations.   Not that you would notice there are 15 times as many nursing students as soldiers helping from the number of times they get their picture in the paper.  But nursing students don't have union jacks on their uniforms.

The first priority in England was getting a big number of jags in arms so the Tories have a positive number to talk about as well as the deaths and infections counts when they give their news conferences.

But it's the same in England, care homes first. Scotlands policy is the same, but that's sturgeons trick, she makes minor changes to sound like she's being a decisive leader. She adds a tier, changes the number of quarantine or isolation days, implements some measure 24hrs before England etc.. but in general she mirrors uk policy. It's a great PR con, if it works she claims credit as leader Nicola, if it fails she says she was broadly in line with evil Westminster policy! 

And whose arms, CARE HOME RESIDENTS.

You are talking bollocks. Care homes were completed ahead of Scotland and were always the first priority:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccination-care-home-a...

There are good reasons why Scotland may have taken longer - lower population density being an obvious one - but spouting conspiracy theories because of you nationalist obsession is ridiculous.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55881741

'Offered to all residents of eligible care homes' and 'a target of 15th February' in England is not ahead of 98% actually injected at the end of January (and 99% now).

You think it is a conspiracy theory that the Tories are mostly interested in getting numbers that sound good in press conferences when they have to read out the worst death statistics in the world.  I have a bridge to sell you....

I don't, so you will have to keep your  bridge.

No doubt between perfume farts, your beloved Nicola is entirely indifferent to the media.

It was done last week the Feb target is for all over 70s.

https://www.england.nhs.uk/2021/02/nhs-confirms-covid-jab-now-offered-at-ev...

To add, I'm happy to admit I got this wrong. You should too. The UK is doing excellently.with vaccinations.

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/vaccine_its_going_wrong_already...

11 million vaccinated doesn't just sound good, it is good, apart from one or two other countries it's world beating. It won't help the tories or specifically boris, he's going to carry the can for Cummings and all the other failings, but that shouldn't take the credit away from those who ordered the vaccine or started the vaccination programme. 

What I read in that document is "offered', "eligible", "except where there is a Covid outbreak" and "a team booked in to visit" which is not the same as done.  

OK, I, for one give in, you Scots are infinitely better than us.

We are not worthy.

She's far from perfect but she doesn't hand contracts to her mates, she is smart and works hard and she listens to advice.

The difference is not Scotland being exceptional but England installing complete cretins in power because the rational people in the Tory party did not support Brexit and were purged.

If Theresa May was still PM the UK would still be f*cked but nothing like as badly f*cked as it is now.

BTW: you didn't look best pleased when that little turd Francois took your seat.   That episode illustrates just how far the standards in the Tory party have fallen when someone like that makes a point of taking a female ex prime ministers seat on their return.

Cretins who led us into a situation where Road Haulage Association reporting UK exports to EU are down 68% mostly due to Brexit rather than Covid.

As you well know you can't vaccinate someone who already has the disease.

Care homes are no.1 on the list. There is no conspiracy by UK Government and tens of thousands of NHS staff to screw over care homes so they can inflate vaccination numbers.

You can just make numbers up if you want to contrive better figures. There is no machiavellian plot or sacrificing of lives required.

Also:

The moon landing was real

Elvis is dead

The Holocaust happened 

Biden won the 2020 election. 

You are spreading misinformation and you need to stop. 

There's a difference in focus.  Scotland put the vaccination workforce entirely on care homes until they were done.  England didn't.  They used substantial resources to start other groups earlier and did care homes slower.  

Two different strategies but the Tories, probably more in Scotland than you see in England, are banging on and on every day about how Scotland is falling behind and how f*cking brilliant England is because of the numbers it is vaccinating.

The way I see it:

1. England did more jabs in the first few weeks

2. Scotland got more of the care home residents done in the first few weeks and those jabs are 8x as effective at reducing deaths than jabs for the next group according to JCVI

3. Scotland built up some vaccine stocks as a result of putting all its initial effort into care homes.  The unionist press claim this is shocking and a disaster.  I think it is a useful side effect and will allow the rest of the program to run more smoothly.

4. England have a large number of vaccine centres and a huge army of volunteers.  Scotland has a smaller number of centres and is largely using NHS staff, and nursing/medical students.   Running from stock rather than trying to put everything in arms as soon as it arrives mean you can run a smaller organisation at higher utilisation and get better throughput.

5. Since the larger centres opened and the workforce switched from care homes the rate of vaccination in Scotland is somewhat higher than England.

What numbers are made up?  I provided links to all the figures.  Scotland is currently at 99% of care home residents actually vaccinated, a week ago it was 98%.  

It is a simple fact that 'offered' and 'booked in' are not the same as 'done' and it seems very likely the reason for using 'offered' and 'booked in' is so they can claim something a week or two before they achieve it. 

Like the contract which bought the vaccine that you are using? Clearly the vaccine procurement contract landed in the right hands, whilst the women took a hammering in the spring media,  she obviously pushed on and did an outstanding job. 

Haven't the snp been privatising some contracts within their hospitals, she been taking stick for it? The snp privatising health care? 

Besides sturgeon has no friends, they are just there to step on as she pushes for the top, ask Salmond! 

Really Tom, get a grip.

I don't know anyone in real life (and I know lots and lots of people in healthcare) who's viewing the vaccination program as you are, in terms of England V Scotland.

I don't know anyone outside Scots Nats hardcore who constantly precede "Press" with the word "Unionist". Honestly, the mainstream British press doesn't count pro unionism as their main defining feature anywhere outside of your head. They just aren't that arsed.

I don't know anyone bar you pushing the narrative that England's vaccine rollout has been shambolic, no doubt this is received wisdom in the Scots Nat social media echo chamber you seem to primarily inhabit, but we've had a couple of threads specifically documenting people's experience of the vaccination process and it's been overwhelmingly positive.

You seem to have this idea that the English get the troops involved at the drop of a hat and then over publicise it as part of a plot to get them and their Union Jack (The Horror!) emblazoned uniforms all over the "Unionist" press. In reality there's a lot of institutional push back against bringing in the army and if anything, publicising their role is underplayed.

I like your posting style. I like that you have your own view of things. I like that you'll argue your point of view. I just can't understand how someone who's obviously engaged and intelligent can have such an absurdly lopsided view of the World to the extent that you'll simply discount and ignore anything contra to your Nationalist narrative.

He's become a parody of himself....so far down a SNP rabbit hole he'll never see daylight again. 

Only briefly scanned thread but apologies for any repetition.

It seems almost inevitable that Scotland will become independent. It also seems likely that it will want to join the EU and be accepted. However I think it is now required that any new member joins the Euro and Schengen arrangement. 

Ironically now the UK has left the EU there may be increased difficulties for both Scotland and rUK when Scotland rejoins re trade etc.

An unknown is what the final settlement with rUK will be. That will have a big effect on Scotland's  future. In theory I suppose Scotland could just separate without taking a proportion of the UK national debt. I think Tom-in-Edinburgh has previously suggested that if Scotland took a portion of the debt it should also have a similar portion of the UK assets.

Any negotiated settlement would cover assets and debts. Neither side will agree to the other side taking assets but not debts.

Does there have to be a fully negotiated settlement? I don't know what the current agreement is between the members of the current union. It may be that the debt is owed by the UK and if a constituent country leaves then rUK is still responsible for the entire debt. TBH I don't know.

rUK as the successor state would be responsible for debt - a state does not become debt free when somewhere splits off.

There doesn't have to be a negotiated agreement but something amicable is obviously desirable.

Possibly not desirable for one party. For example if someone had a jointly owned business in severe debt and there was a hypothetical possibility of opting out, leaving the others with the problem, and starting again with a clean financial sheet, it might be very tempting.

As you say obviously one hopes that doesn't happen but Scotland might have quite a strong hand in any negotiations.

Of course not, but I think Tom does have a point. Most newspapers in Scotland seem seem keen to portray everything Sturgeon and the Scottish Government does in the worst possible light - they have an overtly anti-independence and anti-SNP agenda.

Like I said last night, I've given up, Scotland wins

We do hell of a lot of referring to our Tory/right wing press.

I've just got back from taking the Mrs for her first dose at the Etihad.
I think it's quite amazing, loads of industrial grade tents, loads of marshalls etc., ad 1000s of cones!
But it's clearly working like a £million Swiss watch, people ambling in on foot or car, wander in, get jabbed and go.  No queues, no hysterics, no panic.  And we've done over 11 million people no in, what is it, 5 or 6 weeks.

She's got her date for dose 2, so presumably product is in place.

Clear sign of a fanatic

Why is Scotland not a successor state too?  It has to be, otherwise any chunk of territory anywhere in the word could simply detach and claim to be debtless.

Regardless, if Scotland reneged on it's portion of national debt, I can't see anyone lending to it at an sensible rate subsequently, or, for example, the EU being open to it joining.  It would be a pariah.

Do you live in Scotland?  Because we are heading for an election in 3 months with the SNP forecast to get a majority (not easy in the PR system) which will allow them to call Indyref2 and they have said they'll do it with or without an s30.

The UK government has specific budget for promoting the union in Scotland (i.e. they are spending millions of taxpayers money to persuade Scottish voters to switch from the SNP to the Tories), and they are using vaccination as part of that campaign.  

If you live in England no doubt this all looks different because you don't have people like Ruth Davidson on your news every day asking why Scotland is falling behind on vaccination.

BTW: we aren't.

https://twitter.com/NicolaSturgeon/status/1358417106161795078

Sturgeon gets a sycophantic ride in the press.

I don't see why Scotland should accept a share of any debt racked up by England in the oil years.   Over the same time period Norway built up a trillion dollar wealth fund.  Scotland's surplus went to the 10x larger UK which because of Thatcher getting involved in wars and creating mass unemployment by shutting down whole industries didn't just spend the oil money it also borrowed more.

Also, if Scotland takes a proportional share of the debt there needs to be a calculation about dividing the assets in the same proportion.   When assets can't be moved or divided in the same way as debt there should be a balancing payment - which will quite likely wipe out all or most if the debt assigned to Scotland.

And, if Scotland did not accept the debt with good reason it would not be a pariah, independence is an obvious 'one time' event that says nothing about ongoing behaviour.  Banks look at numbers.  They'd see a country with no debt and think they were a good risk *because* they had no other debt to service and were therefore more able to afford the interest.

Well I live in Scotland and you are talking rubbish.  Only obsessives such as you see absolutely everything as for or against independence.  Overwhelmingly people just want vaccine done, and realize its going pretty well.  There are reasonable questions about why things are, or at least were, a little slower than England.  That's it.

Which newspapers are you thinking of?

Looks like I have it wrong. Scotland would be a successor state and rUK would be a continuing state.

It looks like there is precedent from Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Soviet Union on division of debts and assets.

She does not.  Glasgow Herald, Scotsman, Sun, Daily Record, Press and Journal are all overtly unionist.

The National is the only pro-Indy newspaper.

BBC Scotland is controlled by the Tories from London and is overtly unionist.

STV is a little better.

I am sure there would be all sorts of squabbles over details, but essentially it would be in proportion population or GDP or something of the two countries.  It strikes me as one of the easier issues to deal with.

I assume you are just taking the Mail, Express and Telegraph for granted.

Does The National actually count as a newspaper?

On that I don't think I do agree. I've been watching the vaccine thing quite carefully and it has given both sides of the argument.

Yes I am sure there will be squabbles! By population seems to be the way it's decided.

Have your glorious moment of triumph and bask in your glory of being ruled by the (2nd) most incompetent leader in the Western world 😄😄😄

I live closer to Scotland’s borders than most of the oil fields and quite frankly, I’m hurt at your determination to reject a fellow citizen in contrast to your evident attachment to a stinky old geological deposit. 

I remember Scotland from the late 60s early 70s, it was almost like a third world country, lovely and quaint though. Where do you think that the cash came from to bring it into the 21st century? And don't say the EU because the UK have + contributers for ... the last 40 years.

You can't speed up an outbreak of Covid in a care home preventing you from vaccinating the people inside. What do you suggest, have nurses queue up outside of the door and wait a few weeks whilst it settles down? 

Very much a similar strategy. 1 dose, 12 weeks, order of vaccinated and procurement. Obviously no one in England is talking about Scotland's vaccination rates. The UK as a whole is doing great and that's all people care about. 

And?

Yes... Which makes your accusation that the UK purposely slowed things down for carehomes a complete nonsense. 

Everywhere has a certain stock of vaccines. Scotland being initially slow wasn't a triumph of logistics, everywhere has warehouses with this stuff in and planning around volume. 

That might be good reason why Scotland was slower out the blocks i.e. didn't put as much effort into finding people to help. We were highly critical of the UK Government on here when we saw adverts for vaccinators in December. 

Well that's great, who actually cares about having ever so slightly higher numbers than England though apart from Scottish nationalists. The main thing to be proud of is that you're ahead of most of the world. 

You've got the wrong end of the stick here. Can you tell me how many 'extra' vaccines England will have been able to report as a result of their supposed strategy of not prioritising care homes and how this minor variation in the vaccination numbers would have had a meaningful impact on the public?

You literally said this: 

"You think it is a conspiracy theory that the Tories are mostly interested in getting numbers that sound good in press conferences when they have to read out the worst death statistics in the world.  I have a bridge to sell you...."

Yes it's a conspiracy theory and a pretty stupid one at that. Depioritising carehomes is never going to do any good for the death statistics so why would they do it. It's not the 'Tories' planning the minutiae of the vaccination programme, it's health care professionals so I suppose they're all in on it too. To get Boris re-elected in 4 years time when he's probably stepping down in the next year. 

It's a really, really stupid conspiracy theory. You're so blinded by your independence bent that you'll swallow any old nonsense as long as it paints England in a negative light. 

There are plenty of genuine reasons to want to leave the union, England purposely not vaccinating people in care homes is not one of them. 

So is there actually an international ruling, or treaty between UK countries, about  these things saying if it is in proportion to population or GDP or something?

Hopefully you're right. It took quite a time to agree EU-UK divorce details and there were comparatively recent agreements made by EU member states. Presumably both sides would be have to be mindful that after separation when Scotland joins the EU it might necessitate a change in border controls, tariffs etc with between it and rUK.

No.

It would be a nightmare and everyone would poorer and grumpy, which is a very good reason not to. Another is the risk that the TiE wing of the SNP would be in control, in a similar way to the ERG with brexit. A plus which wasnt present last time, is the populist turn UK politics has taken.

It's a category error to conflate the editorial stance of the paper with the objective treatment of the specific politician.

But I think you are too far gone to appreciate the difference.

I wouldn't dignify him with belonging to any 'wing.'

The more I read of his self-parodic and hyperbolic commentary, the more sure I am that he is a fifth-columnist whose purpose is to discredit the Scottish independence movement.

For the sake of intelligent debate, he probably ought to be banned.

You do realise there would be elections, which may result in a change in leadership, post independence? 

But these newspapers do seem to make their stance very personal towards Sturgeon; they treat her as a sort of bogeywoman.

Indeed. Many people seem to equate Scottish Independence with electing a perpetual SNP government. In fact the WHOLE point of independence is that Scotland would get to elect the fully independent government of its choice. Ironcally, the best way of ensuring a pretty much perpetual SNP Scottish government is to keep the status quo with the 50% or so independence supporters voting for one.

Which papers, Robert?

Note that 'The National' is owned by the same company as publishes 'The Herald.' Each is preaching to their particular choir - in that respect, it's just (a fairly pathetic) business.

In general though, Sturgeon gets a sycophantic press in the UK: she's a good media performer.

I am sure he is genuine, but certainly the sort of nationalist who tends to push independence-curious voters such as myself back towards the unionist side of the fence.

Certainly the Mail, Express and Telegraph (or at least the Scottish editions of them - I presume the English editions don't concern themselves so much with her).

I think it is grudgingly acknowledged even by her opponents that she is a very effective politician and exceptional communicator - and this probably helps explain why they resort to attacking her so much.

She gets a surprisingly easy ride in the overall UK media - both print media, and TV. Take a look.

It will be interesting to see if the imminent legal confrontations between her and Salmond change anything: but I am bracing myself for a spin-fest.

The funny - and actually, appalling - aspect of all that is how the important and interesting discussions about independence get completely derailed by discussions about here-today-and-gone-tomorrow politicians. I mean, who gives a shit about Sturgeon personally?

Definitely shades of Brexit there.

That's exactly the left's argument for Brexit, by the way. We're just going to have to see how that works out.

I guess it all depends on what you think the electorate _really_ wants. Personally I don't believe that the Scots believe in some kind of socialist nirvana: the capital, for example, is driven by a worship of money.

Probably a lot more people than you imagine. That’s one of her exceptional skills  she relates. Whether she really genuinely cares, or not, is irrelevant. I know numerous people who believe she does. They’ve met her and found her to be ‘genuine’.

Got to disagree. I love TiE’s posts. I find them to be insightful and thought provoking. Even if I don’t agree with his point of view. Just because he doesn’t see the world through our eyes, doesn’t mean he’s blind.

I have friends who talk very similarly to TiE, and whilst I would describe them as somewhat eccentric, they are very intelligent and worth listening to. 

Yep, spot on. Makes life on this forum thought provoking.

Glad someone agrees. There’s a few on here I’d find very little in common with, but their contributions regularly keep me on my toes and thinking.

It would be a poor thing if people were banned for expressing arguable opinions

There's an awful lot worse than TiE out there. TiE seems to simply believe that all of Scotland's problems are due to a Union politically dominated by England. There is a nationalist element which is downright xenophobic towards the English.

I think there is a broadly social democratic consensus in Scotland and, for me, the main attraction of independence would be to break away from the Westminster FPTP system which has delivered the mess the UK is in at the moment, and have a better, more cooperative form of politics.

I agree entirely. I like Sturgeon and think she is genuine, but I want the independence question to be decided by the issue of independence, not on personalities. So, in a way, it might be healthy if the Salmond/Sturgeon thing implodes messily.

As an Englishman in Scotland for almost thirty years I don't encounter that much. I must have encountered it but so rarely I can't remember when.   

Admittedly I am in a pretty comfortable bubble!

 I have really only seen it online.

Sadly true. Proving that in every society there are those who just hate ‘others’.

I believe it is inevitable Scotland will gain independence and clear out socialism with great success and a proper business-savvy government. 5 million Scots can't lose. 5 million Norwegians can’t be wrong.

With 20 major industries and another lesser ten, a labour force of 2½ million, open borders with England and Northern Ireland plus free ports, inward investment from global emigré Scots, there will be no unemployment, no fiscal deficit and greater national pride.

It would be win-win for both Scotland and England. Certain to happen in my view. Keep the Queen for Scotland too, use the dollar if necessary, free security by leasing an air-base to NATO. It would be physically impossible not to have full employment for a state with those metrics.

The state has to be rolled back for success. However, the caveat is that the British Establishment and Royalty are likely to try to stop this happening.

DC

Brilliant ideal.

The current FM is business friendly compared to the current PM for whom "commerce has lost out to nationalism".

https://www.ft.com/content/8075e68c-7857-11e8-8e67-1e1a0846c475

But that's just the incumbents.

As a neutral party in this debate, surely it all boils down to 'can Scotland produce enough product (oil, power, fish, tourism, manufacturing, mining, oats, services) to finance its government spend?' Is that possible? How much of things like oil and fish can be siphoned off with no benefit to the Scots?

On the vaccination thing, how are the two nations doing in terms of full vaccination i.e. second doses administered? We know there's been news this week stating that single doses are turning out to be the same or better than anticipated, but if that hadn't been the case were the non-Scottish countries at risk of their second doses being too late to be effective?

Scotland's implementing the same policy as is England - i.e. the second dose is being administered 12 weeks after the first.

Yup, only left out the beautiful maidens and boys, silk robes, jewels and milk that never spoils. The ever-running water is probably ok in Scotland.

On the subject of English nationalism, I can only relay my own experience - born to Scottish parents, spending the first few years of my life in England to arrive at a Glasgow primary school with a very English accent. I can't remember any animosity with the only issue being "Whit fitba' team d'ye support?"

I left Scotland in 1987 after graduating as opportunities were very limited and have recently moved back. What has struck me more is the sheer number of English people I encounter locally (Moray/Highlands) who live or have recently moved here. I haven't heard any mention of anti-English sentiment - the only stuff I see is from Unionists online attacking indy supporters for their "anti-English" agenda, complete with references to Nazis and suchlike.

What is very apparent is the pro-union/anti-indy narrative in the majority of mainstream media - particularly the BBC and even Radio Scotland. 

I moved to Scotland in 1978 and experienced little anti English sentiment until the referendum. The vitriol of that campaign was shocking. Perhaps because I was actively campaigning for the Union. The level of abuse changed my view of Scotland. That atmosphere resurfaced in the 2015 election but has quietened since. It does lead to a realisation that a significant minority of Scots will not accept someone born in England who does not support independence as properly Scottish. However embedded they might be.

It is unfortunate and I would not equate support for independence with being anti English but people are deluding themselves if they think that there is no issue. 

The difference in voting between the Central Region - particularly a large section of Glasgow - and the more distant and remote areas of Scotland was striking. One reason put forward was that people further away from the main conurbation felt no difference between being ruled by Westminster or Holyrood, as they regarded both as equally distant and out of touch with their views.

Is there a single Englishman (or woman) as an elected MP (or MSP) for a Scottish constituency ?

There are Scots elected for English constituencies. The difference does seem to indicate that one of the two nations is more inclined to xenophobia than the other.

Yes. 

I don't agree with that assertion. 

The above is straight out of the SNP's manual. 

It is also true.

Classic example: for a few weeks England were vaccinating significantly more people than Scotland.  BBC had Tories on all the time saying Scotland was falling behind and talking about the 'failings' of the Scottish program.

Previous week Scotland was vaccinating about 20% more than England proportional to population after the teams switched over to mass vaccination.  BBC says the rate is 'broadly comparable to the rest of UK'.

England ahead of Scotland, Scotland is failing.  Scotland ahead of England, it is broadly the same.

Amazed they don't take the same approach to rugby scores.