It could be argued that this thread was never going anywhere but downhill. Both sides have their own hackneyed arguments which don't really have much to do with the issue at hand. I'll make this my own last contribution.
The hostility shown towards the idea of an independent Scotland from most of the unionists on this thread seemed to be best summed up with Malcolm's speil about Scotland being generally, well, fucked. The neds, sink estates et al were an unsolvable problem - an independent Scotland would lead to the same old, same old. Obviously, that's where I disagree. It makes my blood boil every time I see a report from some government department, or the UN, saying that Scotland, and usually Glasgow, is the unhealthiest, most murderous and/or most depreived part of Western Europe, sometimes the Western world. These reports come out a few times a year, and the Labour executive trots out the same replies, about how they'll change this, it's their top priority etc.
What Scottish independence offers is a genuinely revolutionary (in the best sense) solution to this malaise. For people like me, Scotland will never be able to improve itself drastically under the present constitutional arangement. There was a time, when an colonies, trade barriers, and being part of the pre-eminent global economic and military power, allowed Scotland to prosper. This time has now finished. We now have a radically different situation, one for which we are not sufficiently prepared.
Nationalists have a theory to explain what is going wrong here - it's called Leaky Bucket. No matter how much money is poured into the country, and no matter how much money will continue to be put in to it, too much will go to waste. The holes in Scotland are many: There's the poverty, ill health and the shameful existance in our major cities of areas where the life expectancy is less than that of some third world countries. There's the graduates who, after being educated here, with public funds, either thorugh choice or necessity, have to go elsewhere to find gainful employment. There's a pitiful business start-up rate, because it often makes little sense to start your business here, when conditions are more favourable down south. There's an overly large public sector, and a private sector which is beginning to look something akin to a house of cards: branch operations, so easily closed at the mere mention of the word downturn, a still growning reliance on the service sector, with its call-centres, bars, shopping centres and bingo halls which offer no real career opportunities for those employed in them, and which are, of course, only going to be there as long as people are willing to spend money in them. You get the picture. As a result, economic growth, and a general amelioration in living standards just ain't going to happen, until we can address these problems at the root, and patch up the holes, as it were.
Maybe a federal Scotland would an answer, maybe we could just content ourselves with the status quo, and feel lucky we weren't born in Easterhouse or Craigmillar. I think an independent Scotland, freed from the status as a satellite kept in a London axis, able to take all the tough decisions to improve its woeful record card.
What we would lose from being part of the 5th biggest economy in the world, with a seat on the UN Security Council, would be offset by us being able to make our own way in the world, freed from the shackles of great power politics, capitalising on a brand which is known throughout the world. We would not only be able to continue our relationship with England and Wales, with no border guards, but improve our relations with our European neighbours, and those across the pond. Those who wish to see an end to the politics of greivance will see it - we could only have ourselves to blame, and will have removed the 'us' or 'them' equation that currently exists.
It is this international dimension which is the most important to underline. I've never been able to understand why I was being lablled as a parochial little-Scotlander, when the alternative was continuing to be part of what is actually the most inward looking nation in Europe. I want to see Scotland able to look at the world for the first time in 300 years, and go out and make the best of it, and in doing so, make the best of itself.
There, if you got ths far, you are a very saad person, and yes, my spelling is shite.
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http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~snpsoc/
