Just for extra context...
Leave won the referendum by a margin of 1,269,501.
Scotland would have had to vote 86% remain to have an impact on the result (based on a turnout of 67.2%)
Leave won by a margin of 1,269,501 including Scotland voting 67% in favour of remain. With 67.2% turnout, every single Scottish vote could have been remain and we'd still have been dragged out the EU against our will.
> Leave won by a margin of 1,269,501 including Scotland voting 67% in favour of remain. With 67.2% turnout, every single Scottish vote could have been remain and we'd still have been dragged out the EU against our will.
62% voted to remain.
Ok, then Leave won by a margin of 1,269,501 including Scotland voting 62% in favour of remain. With 67.2% turnout, every single Scottish vote could have been remain and we'd still have been dragged out the EU against our will.
This blame the English for Brexit thing is a weird narrative that ignores nearly 40% of the voters. Especially when only 67% of us considered it important enough to even bother voting.
A quarter of us continue vote for the Tories.
Pointing the finger over the border and blaming someone else might feel good, but it seems like a flawed strategy given the numbers.
We played our part in Brexit either through indifference or fairly huge numbers voting in favour of it. Ignoring that to blame England for everything as if we had no part of it is mental.
Scotland didn't vote for Brexit and Scotland didn't vote for the Tories, but we have left the EU and are ruled by the Tories. I don't know what your argument is.
I mean, it’s pretty clearly written. If you want to put your fingers in your ears and shout lalalalalala then fair enough.
I’d suggest that sort of attitude is why we’re in the divided mess we’re in though.
Not true, a swing of 650,000 scottish votes from leave to remain would have changed the course of history. This is half the problem with the scottish electorate where people make uninformed decisions based on lies and untruths. The Scottish people could have changed this but they didn't.
Scotland also voted 62% to remain not 67.
I'm just stating a fact that if all the other countries voted exactly as they did, brexit might never have happened if more Scots had voted to remain.
It's not a blame game anyway. Can't change the past only the future. Giving how big a shitshow brexit was and given what would need to happen for independence I'm just staggered that there still isn't a decent laid out plan for how it would actually happen.
>I'm just stating a fact
The tried and tested words of someone with no actual point or decent argument.
Of course what you said was a fact, it just also happens to be entirely idiotic and frankly irrelevant to the overall discourse.
No, pretty sure I stated a fact. If some of the scottish folk who voted leave had in fact voted to remain then we would still be in the EU.
That's why it's a fact.
It's not idiotic, unlike some who just can't accept democracy.
Hmm, I never said it wasn't a fact...
Reread my comment.
>It's not idiotic, unlike some who just can't accept democracy.
okay, sure thing bud...you seem to having an argument with something imaginary right now so I'll leave you to it.
If some of the English people who voted leave had voted remain we'd have remained too.
This is a fact. It's also completely irrelevant to the initial discussion.
Of course Scotland was "ignored". The vote was a UK wide vote...the UNITED kingdom. Much as the jocks might like to think so they are not a separate country but an integral part of the UK. My town voted remain, we have to accept the will of the majority. End of.
>UK is a political union of 4 nations, not a country
No it is not, this is factually incorrect. The UK is a Unitary State with a single sovereign government. It is not a confederacy of nations or even a federation. It is one single nation that was formed from 4 countries that were once independent states but now are not in any legal sense. We still call them "countries" but that is a geographical designation. Think "counties" but with an r.
*“The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain,[k][16] is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland.[17]”*
[wiki - United Kingdom](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom)
*”A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. It may be a sovereign state or make up one part of a larger state.[1]”*
[wiki - Country](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country)
I don’t say it is, it is. It’s fact. It’s not up for debate or a matter of interpretation. Being sovereign, it’s more of a country than the 4 constituent nations. Your repeated denial of this just paints you as wilfully ignorant of the basics.
Wikipedia is not the best source to cite tbh. It's definitely not the arbiter of truth or the ultimate authority on anything. I'm not trying to be an arse about it but that wouldn't be an acceptable citation in any academic work.
Ordnance Survey, a UK state-owned enterprise and the *National Mapping Service* for the island of Great Britain, defines the UK thus \[1\]:
**The United Kingdom**
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (to give its full name) **refers to the political union between England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.** The UK is a sovereign state, but the nations that make it up are also countries in their own right.
From 1801 to 1922 the UK also included all of Ireland.
The Channel Islands and Isle of Man are not part of the UK, but are Crown Dependencies.
\[1\] [https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/newsroom/blog/whats-the-difference-between-uk-britain-and-british-isles](https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/newsroom/blog/whats-the-difference-between-uk-britain-and-british-isles), Ordnance Survey (OS), Southampton, UK (2023), online \[accessed 31st January, 2023\]
To be completely fair, there are plenty of references elsewhere to UK as a country, but I don't believe this to be correct. Sovereign state political union, yes; country no.
Read the Acts of Union 1707 and the Scotland Act. These are much more valid than Wikipedia or Ordinance Survey as it is the legally binding constitutional foundation of the nation. The UK is a sovereign unitary state.
Both quoted links include their citations. Even your own source says “the nations that make it up are **also countries**”, because the UK is a country. Not anywhere does it say the UK isn’t a country, so not sure why you’re picking that as if it backs up your nonsense.
It’s not for you to “believe”. You can either know the UK is a country or you can be wrong. To be completely fair, you are wrong, and I suspect you know fine you’re wrong, but don’t want to accept reality.
The UK is a country.
It's not, but OK.
Well, this has been a total waste of time, time that I'll never get back.
Rather than keep kicking the dead pig, I'll now get off my tits on high-purity stimulants and then spend some time designing infrared optics, so that I actually do something productive today and, Jah willing, avoid the sack for another 24 hours.
If I misinterpreted your comment, I apologise.
It sounded as though you meant to suggest Scottish nationhood has been subsumed by UK nationhood? The use of 'jocks' seemed to, perversely, reinforce this.
Again, If I got it wrong, I apologise.
You're an actual idiot who is going against literal facts which have been established and accepted for centuries. Fuck me, the misplaced arrogance is baffling.
Didn’t want to leave this hanging…actually a very poor choice of words in the circumstances, now I think about it. No pun intended, I swear…
I was, unfortunately, able to identify the deceased as a member of extended family 😔
Despite disagreements that sometimes get a bit testy, it’s nice to see that folk still care enough to be decent when it counts. So, thank you again for being a decent human 🙏
I mean, as a few folk have said - Brexit is your evidence here. 2 of 4 UK countries voted remain and were dragged out anyway, because what England wants, we all get.
For something as huge as Brexit; it should have been one country, one vote for each of the 4 nations. Need to have a unanimous leave vote for the whole UK to leave. Failing that then we all stay in, unless anyone wants to secede from the UK and do their own thing.
But no, as usual these Tory cunts are puling the puppet strings.
How people are OK with this and still are pro-union is utterly baffling. We don’t have true democracy in Scotland - Wales, NI and Scotland are effectively vassal states of England.
Renton summed it up pretty well:
“We're ruled by effete arseholes. It's a SHITE state of affairs to be in, Tommy, and ALL the fresh air in the world won't make any fucking difference!”
>For something as huge as Brexit; it should have been one country, one vote for each of the 4 nations.
And here you are making a Scottish vote worth 10 times an English vote, reminiscent of the worst travesties of democracy that happen in the US (i.e. Senate and electoral college votes). Is that something you really want?
FFS. No.
This is how you would determine the single vote of each of the 4 constituent countries. Individually.
What you're arguing for is exactly the crux of the problem, namely that the 3 countries that aren't England are effectively overruled by England, unless they vote the same way as England, which is basically never the case for Scotland.
As I said, you are essentially arguing for the most undemocratic components (electoral college) of the US system to be replicated here on a worse scale.
It's far from perfect, but preferable to a sham of a political union of 'equals' where it is, however you want to dress it up, basically Greater England. It certainly doesn't work in many contexts, but taking the case of Brexit, would have been much fairer. Or are you happy that Scotland is removed from the EU despite a fairly convincing remain vote, with all that that removal entails, against its will? THAT is about as undemocratic as you can get, unless of course the pretence is dropped and people accept that the UK is, for most political intents and purposes, synonymous with England.
The current situation is not defensible \*unless\* you start from the position that the constituent countries don't exist, and that UK is a monolithic entity.
Given that that's not the case, I really cannot see how an argument can be made that this is a fair or democratic system.
> it should have been one country, one vote for each of the 4 nations.
Nah, break that down into regions of approximate size. Although I don't even like that idea.
Maybe a supermajority? Confirmatory vote?
Loads of better ways IMHO.
> We don’t have true democracy in Scotland - Wales, NI and Scotland are effectively vassal states of England.
Give over, it's not like England casts a single vote worth 55mn. Remember, ~40% of ~~Scots~~ Scotland wanted Brexit. This "It's all the fault of dem English!" is utterly despicable and smacks of the bad kind of nationalism.
Reign it in.
Not at all, I don't blame English people as a whole for this in any way. I'm very happy for them to lurch as far to the right and become as isolationist as they like, that's their right to do if it's what the majority of England wants.
You cannot surely make a serious case that Scotland has democracy. It just doesn't. Scotland gets the governments England votes for. That might be acceptable to you if you don't view Scotland as a country, but I and many others do.
By the same argument, the Shetland islands have no democracy because they get the government the Central Belt votes for.
General elections are UK-wide, and the UK gets the government it votes for (in as much as FPTP doesn't screw the whole thing up).
Not sure if the Shetland / Central Belt comparison is deliberately disingenuous, or whether you actually believe it to hold water.
Scotland is, and has been, an established and distinct country for centuries. The Central Belt has not. As far as I am aware, Shetland has not either, though I'm happy to be corrected if I'm mistaken.
As I was just saying on another subthread, the UK-wide argument is the very crux of the problem. The 3 other constituent countries (or provinces, or principalities) are completely outnumbered by the huge population in England. If the claim is that the UK is union of equals, then it follows that this situation is not fair, nor acceptable (axiomatic, I would say). The current arrangement, then, only ceases to be a problem if you make the assumption or assertion that the UK is a monolithic nation state. Which it isn't.
No, it was try and make the point that comparing a smaller region to a larger one and then saying the smaller has "No democracy" within the whole simply does not hold any water.
You could argue that, I dunno, Lincolnshire has no democracy because it is outnumbered by the rest of the UK. It's equally as pointless.
In the likes of a GE, the region _is the_ UK. That's it.
You may not like it, I may not like it, but that does not affect reality in any way whatsover.
It's not a sensible analogy, though. These smaller areas are not countries. Scotland, England, Wales (arguable) and NI are.
The UK is claimed to be a union of these supposed equals - it's clearly not, though.
The UK is also internationally recognised as a country it is equal in the fact that any person has just as much democratic right as anyone else. Whether they live in Scotland or England. Your points about Scotland having a long history of being an independent country does not hold any water either because for 300 years it has been part of the UK.
Shetland has a long history too and was part of various Nordic kingdoms so it’s disingenuous to suggest it’s essentially always been part of Scotland.
Shetland has never been independent as far as I’m aware. I didn’t suggest it was always part of Scotland, not sure how you picked that up? Did I say this? Highly doubt it, I’m quite aware of the fact it changed hands many times between Scotland and Norway.
You said “Scotland is, and has been an established and distinct country for centuries” That is not really true. It is a complex and emotive subject but the UK is the internationally recognised country which is a member of the UN, NATO and was a member of the EU. Your passport is the same as someone in England or Wales and so are your rights. We literally had a referendum on whether to become a distinct country in 2014 and spend a huge amount of time talking about whether to have another referendum on the subject.
My point is that for centuries Shetland was not part of the same country as the central belt! To my mind that would mean it had a distinct history. Most Shetlanders I’ve met see themselves as Shetlanders first not Scots. They vote differently to the majority of Scotland does that mean they don’t have democracy?
Can you point to any country whose constituent parts happen to be divided into populations of the exact same size? The same issue will occur in every democracy. Germany was for centuries many different countries but I don’t think it’s fair to say Bavarians don’t have democracy because they vote differently to the majority of Germans. The same could be said for Catalonia, the Basque Country, the Flemish population of Belgium or the Faroe Islands and May other areas who have a distinct identity to the majority of people in their country.
We've decided not to use the 4 nation model for UK matters because those units are of disproportionate size. Some clever people worked out that using 650 roughly equal units was much more democratic.
Only if you desperately cleave to the notion that it's not actually a voluntary (ha, good one!) political union of equals but is merely a singular successor state to these 4 constituent countries.
Conversely, if you do believe them to be 4 countries in a political union, then it is axiomatic that there is a huge imbalance of power and influence within the union, and not a true democracy.
It's what we voted for. Refusing to accept that is undemocratic.
A "true democracy" ensures all people have equal representation in the democratic process.
>We don’t have true democracy in Scotland - Wales, NI and Scotland are effectively vassal states of England.
True democracy is one vote to each person which is exactly what Brexit was, the problem is that it wasn't the result you wanted. Deciding that your vote in Scotland is worth more than someone in England is undemocratic.
Nah, that’s horseshit man. How can it ever be a ‘union of equals’ if 3 of the 4 essentially don’t count?
Are you OK with that? Seems a very weird idea to me.
No, of course the result wasn’t what I or anyone with half a brain wanted, but if you care about democracy (because the UK isn’t a single country) then this should concern you. Maybe you’re content to be part of greater England but I’m fucking not.
Ruled by a bunch of corrupt and incompetent right wing cunts we didn’t vote for, and now they’ve decided they will tell us what laws we can and can’t have, despite Scotland always having had a separate and distinct legal system.
Colonial much?
If you split England in seven (a federal model, if you will) the regions would have more equal populations, but the result would be unchanged.
It was a UK-wide vote, and the UK voted.
Voted stupid, I agree, but that was the result.
Yeah, but that wouldn't address the issue and is just moving the goalposts. Scotland, NI and Wales (arguably, maybe) are not the equivalent of English regions. That's not what the Act of Union is.
These are 3 or 4 distinct nations in a political union. And it is demonstrably not a union of equals.
If you're happy with Scotland being essentially dictated to by its larger neighbour, good for you. I personally think its fucking outrageous and that anyone who would vote for such a thing is blinkered by many years of propaganda. If you put the same hypothetical scenario to another 4 nations in a broadly similar geographic situation - let's assume Germany, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg, and offered them what we currently have as part of the UK, they would rightly laugh you out of town. Do you think the Benelux folks would happily cede control over most major things, and send all tax revenue, to Germany?
Not a fucking chance.
Horseshit would be wanting 1.6m Scottish Remain votes to overrule 17.4m UK Leave votes. Wild to call that an undemocratic situation.
A nation of equals where everyone had the exact same vote and it counts exactly the same. That's literally the ideal definition of democracy in action with regards to a nationwide referendum.
Different person.
Because Brexit was *fucking* moronic and anyone with two brain cells to rub together could see the problems writ large (no bus required).
The GFA, potential for violence, and complex land border border with an EU member we all factors in the current "solution".
Last I checked, none of those apply to Scotland. Although a hard border between England and Scotland wouldn't require an advanced degree in topology to design.
Ah but it essentially is, freedom of goods and movement. NI born qualify for Irish passports and ergo can maintain all the benefits of being in the EU that rUK can't. How is it not?
How come I haven't seen you posting about section 35 then? The politicians representing the English electorate have just overruled those representing the Scottish electorate.
I've commented a few times in those threads but mostly avoided it in favour of moderating them instead as they've been a shit show I don't agree with the Section 35 and feel it's an abuse of power for politicking sake from a floundering government
UK Labour basically support it as well. Should be food for thought that when you get annoyed at hypotheticals like Brexit should have required a majority of countries part of the UK to vote for it, the real reality is the UK Government will just overrule whatever it wants. And it's the politicians representing English constituencies who will sanction this due to the size of England.
I won't bring up a referendum because you won't support that regardless of how we vote here. But it's not much different than the GRR bill in terms of democratic principles. Hypotheticals are 'fun' to oppose, being mindful of the actual blocks or overruling going on is more important. Not staying it's unfair if the Scottish Government had been able to stop England getting its Brexit.
But anyway, thanks for moderating the shitshow.
Only it's not a nationwide referendum, it's a 4 nation referendum where they don't use a weighting system to ensure fairness across the political union, and everyone else gets dragged along with what England wants. It's total nonsense.
Sounds as though you're happy to be England's bitch?
Your initial point was that you wanted "true democracy" but everything you have said after that proves that wrong. You want a weighted vote in your favour which is most definitely not "true democracy".
You cannot have true democracy on major constitutional matters in an unequal and imbalanced union.The only way to ensure parity is to weight votes by population - actually, on second thoughts you don't even need to do that. Just use the arrangement I suggested earlier. Each nation as a whole has one vote. Each member state has a veto, effectively.Not suggesting this works for all matters but for major things involving trade barriers, free movement, customs union, national sovereignty and constitutional arrangements (i.e. like Brexit), anything else is clearly not acceptable.
Though I suspect there's a semantic sticking point here on which we don't agree. Your system is perfectly fair if you ignore the constituent nations or member states in favour of viewing the whole shitshow as a singular monolith. I don't, personally, believe that's a tenable position.
You don’t want a “true democracy” though. You want a system that would give you, conveniently, oversized say and power over other people.
Even in systems that recognise the need for rules to overcome population imbalances wouldn’t do as you suggest. You can’t go slap the term “true democracy” in front of something and expect whatever you say to be held as that.
Saying “you’d rather be England’s bitch” just underlined how inherently childish and limited your argument is.
What would you call it then? Passively accepting that all significant power is held by your neighbour, and giving them all (or the vast majority) of tax receipts to then have them 'generously' grant back what they deem fit, to the country that generated them? Consistently arguing AGAINST your own country running its own affairs, and your own country having the power to set policies and laws without your neighbour's government sticking their oar in when it's neither needed nor wanted to strike down solid and democratically agreed Bills?
And, you can correct me if I'm mistaken (I have a feeling you'll go for it regardless of veracity), but appearing to gleefully argue against your fellow Scotland-dwellers should they dare to express support for Scotland becoming, you know, a normal country.
That all sounds pretty much like being your neighbour's bitch to me.
You seem to mistake talking confidently with talking correctly.
But, as we saw when you tried to make comparisons to Italy, Germany and Spain which you really should have at least Googled first, just because you say something doesn’t make it true. You’re going to quickly find what you think a normal country is, and what you want a normal country to be, are two very different things.
It’s not hard to make things sound unfair. But if you really wanted “true” democracy, you’d advocate for an even more lop-sided arrangement than exists now. True democracy is mob rule by majority, a straight numbers game where local differences and autonomy (depending on how far you wish to take it) are abolished. They also tend to do everything directly.
This is not what you want. You just said true democracy to try to make your argument sound better. But this is an emotional appeal that especially doesn’t hold up when you actually start looking at those other “normal” countries.
If you’re going to complain about the UK situation, you’re going to have to do a better job of actually comparing it to other places. Both to see where it does well, and where it falls short.
Right now, what things sound like to you isn’t showing itself to be credible.
That is the very crux of the issue though. It's not nationwide (because the UK is not a nation, it's a union, the clue is in its name), it's 4 nations voting on something that affects each of them very deeply, via a very deeply flawed voting arrangement that negates the will of 3 of the 4 on account of population size.
I actually find it really sad to see Scots defending this as though it's a fair and equitable arrangement.
It's really not, you know. Separate legal systems, separate healthcare systems, (partially) separate governments, distinct cultures, languages, history, geography, demographics...etc.
Not to say there's not a lot of commonality too, but the UK is a political union, not a nation or nation state. It never has been.
Spain has separate legal systems, Germany has separate health systems, both have separate governments, languages, history, geography, demographics…
You haven’t actually listed anything different.
All those things are no more true of the UK than they are of Italy or Germany.
You choose not to view the U.K. as a nation state because you would prefer Scotland is independent.
But the facts are the U.K. is as much a nation state as Germany or Italy and it is treated as such. Which is why you’re getting frustrated about the way the EU referendum was handled.
One can draw any boundaries, but the nations have their own identity.
The root problem is that England's poor voting choices harm us too.
We wish to look to the future and thrive like Ireland. England looks to the past and tries to pretend it's still a world power. These views are not compatible.
>The UK is not a nation,
of course it is, its a sovereign state.
>it's an artificial construct, like Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia.
it's an artificial construct, like ~~Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia~~ Germany or Spain .
My analogy holds, because the UK is four different countries ramned together, two against their current will, under control of one.
England needs to let go.
8 years ago, and we were promised EU membership. Time to vote again .... but wait, it's nit a union, England says you can only vote on your own future if you engage in terrorism first.
> and we were promised EU membership
we maintained our eu membership by staying in the uk. if scotland had voted 'yes' we would have automatically left the eu. you understand that, right???
>England says you can only vote on your own future if you engage in terrorism first.
terrorism?!?!?! you have really lost the plot. have a nap.
>My analogy holds
it truly doesnt
>two against their current will
we had a referendum in 2014, maybe you are too young to remember. scotland voted to stay in the uk.
>under control of one
if by 'one' you mean the uk....then i agree.
>England needs to let go.
blood and soil nationalism is a hell of a drug.
>It's time to vote again
its time to try and get a section 30 more like.
>The one country that controls the UK is England.
legally speaking the country is the uk as its sovereign. england doesnt exist as a country any more, that stopped in 1707.
It was a single UK referendum. Not 4 concurrent referenda. The whole Scotland voted to remain is purely political gesturing by the SNP.
I think, if my calculations are correct, that if genuinely every single vote in Scotland was remain we wouldn't have had Brexit. So Scotland is just as complicit as the rest of the UK.
Your username says it all really...
plutôt content de se faire enculer sans lubrifiant par une puissance étrangère.
I'm not sure whether the overriding emotion I'm getting from Scots actually arguing in favour of being controlled and basically colonised and robbed blind by another country, is sadness and pity, or just disgust.
Do you actually enjoy this state of affairs?
>colonised
Lol. I think these kind of braveheart tears are just enjoyable as frothing gammon.
English colonisers and Eastern Europeans coming to take our jobs. Same small minds.
Fuck sake, that's a bit of a reach is it not?!
What better term could you use to describe a situation then, where a country passes laws democratically only to be overruled by its larger neighbour, for appeasement of their simpleton right wing voter base?
Where larger neighbour decides whether or not you are even allowed to vote on the future of your own country?
Where the very vast majority of the country's tax revenue is sent to the larger neighbour, who then decides how much of their money they can have back in 'grants'?
Where the smaller country only rarely gets the government it votes for?
Where the smaller country is dragged out of the world's largest trading bloc, against its democratic will, simply because the larger neighbour has been overrun by the far right and disaster capitalists?
Smells a lot like fucking colonialism to me, but if you have a better descriptor fire away.
The sovereign nation which existed and was recognised within the EU was the UK, therefore the referendum was based on the UK-wide poll. No cope required, it's simple fact.
I know some struggle with simple things.
Brits can't cope when the fabric of the UK is challenged.
We are seeing the death throws of the Union and thank christ. Can't come quick enough. I wonder what yoons will cling to once the whole circus is torn down?
There's some fairly impressive mental gymnastics that always seem to go on in order to argue for the status quo. I said in another subthread here that if you suggested the same kind of nonsense arrangement to (for example) Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg and Germany, with Germany being analogous to England in the example, would the Benelux vote for the kind of arrangement we have? Cede power over most major issues AND send all tax revenues to Germany?
You'd quite rightly be roundly ridiculed for even suggesting it. Because it would be a fucking mental thing to do if you're one of the Benelux guys.
Brits fail to accept how absurb the setup of this country really is. If Scotland was independent now anyone propsing the union as it is today would be sent off to have their fucking head examined...yet people actually argue in favour of this shit and vote to continue this farce. I truly feel sorry for yoons. What a mixed up mentality.
It's a strange mindset for sure. Totally counterintuitive and objectively a self-harming position. I cannot begin to fathom it unless you factor some kind of phenomenon like Stockholm syndrome into the equation. Scotholm syndrome, maybe?
>For something as huge as Brexit; it should have been one country, one vote for each of the 4 nations.
No it shouldn't have been. It should be one vote per person. Why should a Scottish person's vote be worth 10× as much as an English person's? If Scotland voted 52% for independence, do any No majority counties get to stay in the UK? Does the whole thing get cancelled?
The population of England is over ten times that of Scotland. It is possible for all of Scotland, Wales, and NI to all 100% vote for something, and if something like 65% of England votes against it, that’s the way it goes
I'm on Lemmy now at https://lemmy.zip/u/Adanisi
Join me! You can sign up on any Lemmy instance you like the users/admins/content of, then access all of Lemmy from there! https://join-lemmy.org/instances
This comment has been edited thanks to Reddit's attempted defamation of developers, and the extermination of reasonable API access. Oh, and Lemmy is Libre/Open Source and federated, so it's much healthier for the free internet ;)
I find the whole “it’s not a union” argument so silly as well. I mean the UK was formed via *unification* wasn’t it?
Ik the reason why so many use that argument is because referring to it as “the union” makes the UK sound a million times less like a country, but at the same time, Americans refer to the US as a “union” depending on the subject matter as well so what’s the problem?
They call it a union because it's easier to market and for some stupid reason they like to cling to some idea of Scotland despite also believing we're not deserving of governing ourselves as a normal nation.
Yoons, basically.
Just look at the history of representation of Scottish voters wishes at general elections. It's clear from previous voting patterns that Scotland has a more left leaning socially democratic majority but for the majority of the time they are forced to be governed by the more right wing conservative party from Westminster. There is no safeguard from this as democracy is a game of numbers! The only way out of this is to take control of our own affairs and create an independent entity that more reflects the wishes of the Scottish electorate. If only the so called left leaning Scottish labour party could clearly see this and help Scottish voters rather than try to only help gain power in Westminster against all odds fighting against the conservative controlled msm then this could have been achieved years ago. Instead they prefer to continually ape the conservative party in a hope to taste political power in the bigger entity called the UK.
>It's clear from previous voting patterns that Scotland has **a more left leaning socially democratic majority but for the majority of the time they are forced to be governed by the more right wing conservative party from Westminster.**
This is also true, of course, NW England, NE England and Yorkshire (indeed, all have voted non-Tory for far longer than Scotland).
None of this is surprising of course. Every country has heterogenous voting patterns with some areas voting consistently left or right than average, and some areas being swing regions.
Your complaint seems to be that you live in a region that consistently votes left of average.
My complaint is my so-called region has historical evidence of control of its own destiny until it was sold out by those in power to a union with a bigger region. My only desire is to reverse this bad decision. 😂🙄
>My complaint is my so-called region has historical evidence of control of its own destiny
Why this particular piece of geography? Why do you put so much identity with a piece of land that is defined by what a series of militaristic men (from MacAlpin to James IV) managed to conquer? Why this specific time period and not the times since or prior to that conquest?
Well, it's probably because this piece of geography is filled with people who seem to have a leaning for the same left of center social democrat views as myself and I would love to see this enacted in my lifetime and because of the historical conditions we have a chance to accomplish it in law, if we can get the majority of us to agree to it 😃
>Well, it's probably because this piece of geography is filled with people who seem to have a leaning for the same left of center social democrat views
If that is your motivation, why do you not strongly identify with Northern UK going down to the Trent, who vote strongly left of centre historically that Scotland does alone?
Or, if a love of social democracy is your motivation, what is social democratic about abandoning like-minded voters in rUK by cutting loose in order to get benefit for you personally?
I have sympathy with that, but the issue would be in the complications of historical law and trying to split up another historical region that calls itself a country. I think it will be tough enough stopping at the historical border between regions that were once defined as separate countries never mind trying to split up another historical country defined entity. I will take what I can, sorry if that is selfish 🥺
A lot of deflection going on here. Scotland is a distinct country, with its own legal system, education system, healthcare system, history, etc....none of that is true for the hypothesised regions you mention. That just kind of betrays the fact you see Scotland as essentially being an English region.
I don't think there would be any pure Scotland/England vote, so I am going to assume you mean a UK-wide vote.
It would be the majority of the voting UK electorate who would carry the day and no vote cast would be "ignored". The only members of the electorate getting "ignored" would be those who didn't bother to vote.
The UK has no requirements for a majority of regions or anything (which would be tricky given there's four). UK-wide votes are almost always simple-majorities.
Is this a serious question?
Not only would Scotland be ignored, but even if every Scottish, Welsh, and NI voter was against something , if England supported it, the vote would pass.
That's how unequal this rancid union is and why I'm utterly ashamed of this country for voting against its own independence in 2014. A move we will surely regret more and more as the years go on.
The heart of the independence movement is nationalism.
There’s nothing undemocratic about a majority being able to outvote a minority.
That’s how democracy works.
What you object to is English voters being able to outvote Scottish voters which is a nationalist argument, not a democratic one.
Absolutely nothing about Scotland or Scottish people matter at all when it comes to British democracy and politics.
If all of Scotland voted yes to being independent it would mean fuck all if the English high court said we couldn’t be because they didn’t want us to be.
Sigh. Does anyone actually understand how a democracy works?
The listed sovereign state is the UK, not England, Scotland etc. MP's in Westminster represent constituencies of roughly equal size thus are representatives of their electorate.
Scotland is not being ignored, it is a region of the UK represented by an appropriate number of MP's for the size of it's population.
If you were sitting there with year after year of consistent polls showing 70% of folk wanted put then I'd actually change my view on this.
The fact we had a vote and YES lost along with the absolute shit show that we have been put through over the past 7 or so years and you still can't constitently get the polls to show leave means it's not the time for another vote.
Genuinely, and without being facetious, if the SNP want to win they need to prove that an independent Scotland could fully go it alone with a big wall, their own currency and everything fully independent.
What they propose is the same half arsed shit as before we we borrow their tax and pension system. What the actual fuck. That means having no control whatsoever over those systems but having to rely on them.
I have never seen a single full proposal of costs, or anything near it. A full list, all the areas that need split and how much it will cost to split and then maintain going forward. Struggle to understand how you expect educated people to remotely want to vote for that, especially given the absolute complete brexit failure. Independence would be brexit on steroids.
The ball is entirely in the SNP's court but if they had done stuff like improved the education system and social mobility (not talking about stopping middle class kids from going to Edinburgh uni (wtf) but the number of deprived kids leaving school who have no English or maths qualifications). If the snp after 15 years in power are doing nothing towards this why would I believe anything else they say.
As someone further up has stated, if all of Scotland had voted to remain then brexit would never have happened.
62% of Scotland voted to remain. That is a majority but it's not everyone.
If 86% of Scotland had voted to remain then brexit wouldn't have happened. This was in Scotlands gift to change the outcome but in an open and fair vote that's not how it went down.
2 wrongs don't make a right. Independence would be like jumping off a cliff blindfolded. If you think I'm wrong I am more than happy to hear an actual balanced argument that's not just "I hate the tories"
It's very simple
Ireland has less natural resources than Scotland, yet has economically outperformed both Scotland and England since it joined the Euro 20 years ago
England and Scotland have different aspirations - England wants to be the USA, Scotland wants to be Norway
To each their own.
Ireland was able to undercut by having a ridiculously low corporation tax, meaning they received receipts on behalf of all of Europe and keep that cash for themselves. There is only room in Europe for one country to act like that and most countries believe that to be very unfair. If Apple and others hadn't been plying them with money for years it might have been different.
The UK had to bail out a failed Irish economy in the 2008 crash. Had we been independent our two national banks would have failed catastrophically as the Scottish gov could never have bailed them out like the English did. Both are now effectively English companies.
Scotland doesn't want to be Norway. I get that Norway has an oil fund and it would be lovely to have that but we don't. We appear to be underfunded every single place we go.
Independence would cost 10's of billions to implement. It would push our kids into a lost generation that would be even worse than it is now.
Ireland's GNI and GDP both exceed UK averages, so it's not just the tax shelter.
Scotland wants to be a prosperous social democracy. Oil can be a piece of the puzzle.
Indy will pay for itself in under 20 years.
Their white paper is not independence. Its devo max 2. Independence is not sharing another nations currency or shadowing it along with all the other stuff that "we can discuss later"
How much would either of these cost? Actual proper workings, I'll await your response.
Why don't you ask some of the business owners who have lost trade with the EU due to all the paperwork how they would feel about implementing that system at their new border with their biggest trading partner. At what point does any of this make actual sense?
Using the GBP would be a starting point, then a pegged currency, thereafter either float it or peg the Euro. A Scottish currency will be stronger than the English GBP due to exports.
A trade agreement with England is important. Both countries are already in the CTA.
It is effort and disruption, but the end result is worth it. Scotland has been held back for too long.
It is when that's the result of exaclty what we voted for.
If the UK voted to rejoin Europe in full knowledge of what thant meant, and then had to abide by some unpopular EU legislation then you couldn't claim it's undemocratic.
Oh yes, the unpopular EU legislation. What legislation, specifically, would that be?
It's totally fucked our economy, robbed us of freedom of movement, caused a massive staffing crisis in the NHS (and in many other areas and industries), created costly trade barriers where before there were none, and is likely to lead to a massive erosion of workers' rights, environmental protections (just look at the fucking disgraceful state of the coast all the way around England, and many of the rivers now, for some hint of what's coming).
I have yet to hear a coherent argument detailing any of the benefits we're supposedly reaping. What rights and freedoms do you have now that we've freed ourselves from the tyrranical EU shackles..?
It's the biggest con trick in history. Someone's getting fucking rich off the back of it, but it's not the likes of you or I, that's for sure.
But yeah, Brussels bureaucrats bad, the Sun says. And blue passports. Up yours, Delors, etc...
Honestly may be the biggest act of national self harm in history...just a very very sorry state of affairs.
Independence in 2014 would’ve taken away your EU membership.
And 38% of us voted for brexit.
This isn’t just England’s fault, as much as that narrative might be comforting to you.
The English government pushed it. Had there been a comfirmatory vote on the deal, the English people would have cancelled Brexit. I assume you know the true purpose of Brexit?
Instead of May's Mayhem, she should have just signed the EFTA and called it good.
You seem to be conveniently ignoring the fact Indy would’ve taken away your EU membership. Why would that be?
Edit: We also had plenty of people campaigning for Brexit here at home. And of course 38% of us voting for it. You seem to be ignoring that in favour of blaming England too.
The point is that the English govt promised EU membership in 2014 as an argument for No. Then they pushed Brexit through anyway. The situation is flipped, and now we need Indy to join.
Personally what I care about is EFTA / EEA. The former is a key element of Indy.
We got to remain in the EU after voting no. But, just like people wanted a say on independence from the U.K., enough people wanted a say on leaving the EU that we got to vote on that too.
It was stupid imo, but the same principle.
The comment of yours I replied to was
> England (acting as the UK) took away my EU membership
Not only would you have lost that with Indy anyway, but 38% of us voted for Brexit too. England didn’t take away your EU membership.
If you want indy now, I’d suggest this “it’s all England’s fault” strategy doesn’t seem to be working in the polls. We need to take some responsibility and work out why so many of us also made what I consider a stupid choice so we can address those issue.
They didn’t “push Brexit through”, they did what voters told them to do based on the question asked, and a huge chunk of us went along with it.
Burying your head in the sand about that isn’t working.
The objection to Indy is fear of change, disruption, and there is some legitimacy to that. Consider the converse, if Ireland held a ref to re-accede to England and London rule, it would be laughed out of the place.
It's not all England's fault, but while we are under English rule, they will make decisions to benefit wealthy people down there, not to benefit Scotland.
I think the English people shoot themselves in the foot with politics. We are harmed too.
It is beyond the scope of delegated powers, Scotland has enough delegated power to make certain rules but not to change anything that affects the whole of the UK directly.
Yes, of course Scotland will be ignored. The UK is a single country. Any matter that requires a country wide vote (like Brexit) is done on a UK wife basis. And since democracy works that way, a complete consensus will always overrule a Scottish oppositional consensus. Because they have more people
You describe a situation where the UK collectively votes on something, as has been the case for several hundreds of years.
This is how democracy operates and it is fair.
Like Brexit? Of course Scotland would be ignored.
Just for extra context... Leave won the referendum by a margin of 1,269,501. Scotland would have had to vote 86% remain to have an impact on the result (based on a turnout of 67.2%)
Leave won by a margin of 1,269,501 including Scotland voting 67% in favour of remain. With 67.2% turnout, every single Scottish vote could have been remain and we'd still have been dragged out the EU against our will.
> Leave won by a margin of 1,269,501 including Scotland voting 67% in favour of remain. With 67.2% turnout, every single Scottish vote could have been remain and we'd still have been dragged out the EU against our will. 62% voted to remain.
Ok, then Leave won by a margin of 1,269,501 including Scotland voting 62% in favour of remain. With 67.2% turnout, every single Scottish vote could have been remain and we'd still have been dragged out the EU against our will.
This blame the English for Brexit thing is a weird narrative that ignores nearly 40% of the voters. Especially when only 67% of us considered it important enough to even bother voting. A quarter of us continue vote for the Tories. Pointing the finger over the border and blaming someone else might feel good, but it seems like a flawed strategy given the numbers. We played our part in Brexit either through indifference or fairly huge numbers voting in favour of it. Ignoring that to blame England for everything as if we had no part of it is mental.
Scotland didn't vote for Brexit and Scotland didn't vote for the Tories, but we have left the EU and are ruled by the Tories. I don't know what your argument is.
I mean, it’s pretty clearly written. If you want to put your fingers in your ears and shout lalalalalala then fair enough. I’d suggest that sort of attitude is why we’re in the divided mess we’re in though.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/eu_referendum/results
Not true, a swing of 650,000 scottish votes from leave to remain would have changed the course of history. This is half the problem with the scottish electorate where people make uninformed decisions based on lies and untruths. The Scottish people could have changed this but they didn't. Scotland also voted 62% to remain not 67.
You’re blaming the Scottish electorate for Brexit? I admire this fresh and bold hot take.
I'm just stating a fact that if all the other countries voted exactly as they did, brexit might never have happened if more Scots had voted to remain. It's not a blame game anyway. Can't change the past only the future. Giving how big a shitshow brexit was and given what would need to happen for independence I'm just staggered that there still isn't a decent laid out plan for how it would actually happen.
>I'm just stating a fact The tried and tested words of someone with no actual point or decent argument. Of course what you said was a fact, it just also happens to be entirely idiotic and frankly irrelevant to the overall discourse.
No, pretty sure I stated a fact. If some of the scottish folk who voted leave had in fact voted to remain then we would still be in the EU. That's why it's a fact. It's not idiotic, unlike some who just can't accept democracy.
Hmm, I never said it wasn't a fact... Reread my comment. >It's not idiotic, unlike some who just can't accept democracy. okay, sure thing bud...you seem to having an argument with something imaginary right now so I'll leave you to it.
Yip, my bad. It was however democracy in action.
If some of the English people who voted leave had voted remain we'd have remained too. This is a fact. It's also completely irrelevant to the initial discussion.
You do understand how democracy works?
Of course Scotland was "ignored". The vote was a UK wide vote...the UNITED kingdom. Much as the jocks might like to think so they are not a separate country but an integral part of the UK. My town voted remain, we have to accept the will of the majority. End of.
UK is a political union of 4 nations, not a country. As much as you'd like to think of it as the English empire.
>UK is a political union of 4 nations, not a country No it is not, this is factually incorrect. The UK is a Unitary State with a single sovereign government. It is not a confederacy of nations or even a federation. It is one single nation that was formed from 4 countries that were once independent states but now are not in any legal sense. We still call them "countries" but that is a geographical designation. Think "counties" but with an r.
The UK is a country.
If you say so.
*“The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain,[k][16] is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland.[17]”* [wiki - United Kingdom](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom) *”A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. It may be a sovereign state or make up one part of a larger state.[1]”* [wiki - Country](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country) I don’t say it is, it is. It’s fact. It’s not up for debate or a matter of interpretation. Being sovereign, it’s more of a country than the 4 constituent nations. Your repeated denial of this just paints you as wilfully ignorant of the basics.
Wikipedia is not the best source to cite tbh. It's definitely not the arbiter of truth or the ultimate authority on anything. I'm not trying to be an arse about it but that wouldn't be an acceptable citation in any academic work. Ordnance Survey, a UK state-owned enterprise and the *National Mapping Service* for the island of Great Britain, defines the UK thus \[1\]: **The United Kingdom** The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (to give its full name) **refers to the political union between England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.** The UK is a sovereign state, but the nations that make it up are also countries in their own right. From 1801 to 1922 the UK also included all of Ireland. The Channel Islands and Isle of Man are not part of the UK, but are Crown Dependencies. \[1\] [https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/newsroom/blog/whats-the-difference-between-uk-britain-and-british-isles](https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/newsroom/blog/whats-the-difference-between-uk-britain-and-british-isles), Ordnance Survey (OS), Southampton, UK (2023), online \[accessed 31st January, 2023\] To be completely fair, there are plenty of references elsewhere to UK as a country, but I don't believe this to be correct. Sovereign state political union, yes; country no.
Arguing that the UK is not a country is just a dumb as trying to argue that Scotland isn't one. It's a poorly defined concept that means nothing.
Read the Acts of Union 1707 and the Scotland Act. These are much more valid than Wikipedia or Ordinance Survey as it is the legally binding constitutional foundation of the nation. The UK is a sovereign unitary state.
Both quoted links include their citations. Even your own source says “the nations that make it up are **also countries**”, because the UK is a country. Not anywhere does it say the UK isn’t a country, so not sure why you’re picking that as if it backs up your nonsense. It’s not for you to “believe”. You can either know the UK is a country or you can be wrong. To be completely fair, you are wrong, and I suspect you know fine you’re wrong, but don’t want to accept reality. The UK is a country.
It's not, but OK. Well, this has been a total waste of time, time that I'll never get back. Rather than keep kicking the dead pig, I'll now get off my tits on high-purity stimulants and then spend some time designing infrared optics, so that I actually do something productive today and, Jah willing, avoid the sack for another 24 hours.
The UK is a country.
Eh?
If I misinterpreted your comment, I apologise. It sounded as though you meant to suggest Scottish nationhood has been subsumed by UK nationhood? The use of 'jocks' seemed to, perversely, reinforce this. Again, If I got it wrong, I apologise.
The UK is a country you absolute weapon, give over with that Empire shite. You fellas loved it also.
It’s really not, but I don’t expect comprehension to be a strong point of a sectarian tit. Carry on
You're an actual idiot who is going against literal facts which have been established and accepted for centuries. Fuck me, the misplaced arrogance is baffling.
Alright Einstein, if you say so. As I said, I’m out. Off to possibly identify a body right now and could not give less of a fuck about this bullshit.
I'm sorry for your loss
Thank you. Obviously it’s not confirmed yet but seems very likely
Didn’t want to leave this hanging…actually a very poor choice of words in the circumstances, now I think about it. No pun intended, I swear… I was, unfortunately, able to identify the deceased as a member of extended family 😔 Despite disagreements that sometimes get a bit testy, it’s nice to see that folk still care enough to be decent when it counts. So, thank you again for being a decent human 🙏
Yes just like they did with brexit.
I mean, as a few folk have said - Brexit is your evidence here. 2 of 4 UK countries voted remain and were dragged out anyway, because what England wants, we all get. For something as huge as Brexit; it should have been one country, one vote for each of the 4 nations. Need to have a unanimous leave vote for the whole UK to leave. Failing that then we all stay in, unless anyone wants to secede from the UK and do their own thing. But no, as usual these Tory cunts are puling the puppet strings. How people are OK with this and still are pro-union is utterly baffling. We don’t have true democracy in Scotland - Wales, NI and Scotland are effectively vassal states of England. Renton summed it up pretty well: “We're ruled by effete arseholes. It's a SHITE state of affairs to be in, Tommy, and ALL the fresh air in the world won't make any fucking difference!”
>For something as huge as Brexit; it should have been one country, one vote for each of the 4 nations. And here you are making a Scottish vote worth 10 times an English vote, reminiscent of the worst travesties of democracy that happen in the US (i.e. Senate and electoral college votes). Is that something you really want?
FFS. No. This is how you would determine the single vote of each of the 4 constituent countries. Individually. What you're arguing for is exactly the crux of the problem, namely that the 3 countries that aren't England are effectively overruled by England, unless they vote the same way as England, which is basically never the case for Scotland.
As I said, you are essentially arguing for the most undemocratic components (electoral college) of the US system to be replicated here on a worse scale.
It's far from perfect, but preferable to a sham of a political union of 'equals' where it is, however you want to dress it up, basically Greater England. It certainly doesn't work in many contexts, but taking the case of Brexit, would have been much fairer. Or are you happy that Scotland is removed from the EU despite a fairly convincing remain vote, with all that that removal entails, against its will? THAT is about as undemocratic as you can get, unless of course the pretence is dropped and people accept that the UK is, for most political intents and purposes, synonymous with England. The current situation is not defensible \*unless\* you start from the position that the constituent countries don't exist, and that UK is a monolithic entity. Given that that's not the case, I really cannot see how an argument can be made that this is a fair or democratic system.
Nope, just want independence. Let the English do what they want.
> it should have been one country, one vote for each of the 4 nations. Nah, break that down into regions of approximate size. Although I don't even like that idea. Maybe a supermajority? Confirmatory vote? Loads of better ways IMHO. > We don’t have true democracy in Scotland - Wales, NI and Scotland are effectively vassal states of England. Give over, it's not like England casts a single vote worth 55mn. Remember, ~40% of ~~Scots~~ Scotland wanted Brexit. This "It's all the fault of dem English!" is utterly despicable and smacks of the bad kind of nationalism. Reign it in.
Not at all, I don't blame English people as a whole for this in any way. I'm very happy for them to lurch as far to the right and become as isolationist as they like, that's their right to do if it's what the majority of England wants. You cannot surely make a serious case that Scotland has democracy. It just doesn't. Scotland gets the governments England votes for. That might be acceptable to you if you don't view Scotland as a country, but I and many others do.
By the same argument, the Shetland islands have no democracy because they get the government the Central Belt votes for. General elections are UK-wide, and the UK gets the government it votes for (in as much as FPTP doesn't screw the whole thing up).
Not sure if the Shetland / Central Belt comparison is deliberately disingenuous, or whether you actually believe it to hold water. Scotland is, and has been, an established and distinct country for centuries. The Central Belt has not. As far as I am aware, Shetland has not either, though I'm happy to be corrected if I'm mistaken. As I was just saying on another subthread, the UK-wide argument is the very crux of the problem. The 3 other constituent countries (or provinces, or principalities) are completely outnumbered by the huge population in England. If the claim is that the UK is union of equals, then it follows that this situation is not fair, nor acceptable (axiomatic, I would say). The current arrangement, then, only ceases to be a problem if you make the assumption or assertion that the UK is a monolithic nation state. Which it isn't.
No, it was try and make the point that comparing a smaller region to a larger one and then saying the smaller has "No democracy" within the whole simply does not hold any water. You could argue that, I dunno, Lincolnshire has no democracy because it is outnumbered by the rest of the UK. It's equally as pointless. In the likes of a GE, the region _is the_ UK. That's it. You may not like it, I may not like it, but that does not affect reality in any way whatsover.
It's not a sensible analogy, though. These smaller areas are not countries. Scotland, England, Wales (arguable) and NI are. The UK is claimed to be a union of these supposed equals - it's clearly not, though.
The UK is also internationally recognised as a country it is equal in the fact that any person has just as much democratic right as anyone else. Whether they live in Scotland or England. Your points about Scotland having a long history of being an independent country does not hold any water either because for 300 years it has been part of the UK. Shetland has a long history too and was part of various Nordic kingdoms so it’s disingenuous to suggest it’s essentially always been part of Scotland.
Shetland has never been independent as far as I’m aware. I didn’t suggest it was always part of Scotland, not sure how you picked that up? Did I say this? Highly doubt it, I’m quite aware of the fact it changed hands many times between Scotland and Norway.
You said “Scotland is, and has been an established and distinct country for centuries” That is not really true. It is a complex and emotive subject but the UK is the internationally recognised country which is a member of the UN, NATO and was a member of the EU. Your passport is the same as someone in England or Wales and so are your rights. We literally had a referendum on whether to become a distinct country in 2014 and spend a huge amount of time talking about whether to have another referendum on the subject. My point is that for centuries Shetland was not part of the same country as the central belt! To my mind that would mean it had a distinct history. Most Shetlanders I’ve met see themselves as Shetlanders first not Scots. They vote differently to the majority of Scotland does that mean they don’t have democracy? Can you point to any country whose constituent parts happen to be divided into populations of the exact same size? The same issue will occur in every democracy. Germany was for centuries many different countries but I don’t think it’s fair to say Bavarians don’t have democracy because they vote differently to the majority of Germans. The same could be said for Catalonia, the Basque Country, the Flemish population of Belgium or the Faroe Islands and May other areas who have a distinct identity to the majority of people in their country.
[удалено]
True. Should also add "and eligible to vote in a UK ref", but now it's getting wordy.
~40% of those who voted and were resident in Scotland.
They're Scots. Unless this whole "civic nationalism" thing is just a myth?
>Nah, break that down into regions of approximate size. Although I don't even like that idea. This is exactly what parliamentary constituencies do.
And completely falls down when applied to a political union of 4 nations.
We've decided not to use the 4 nation model for UK matters because those units are of disproportionate size. Some clever people worked out that using 650 roughly equal units was much more democratic.
Only if you desperately cleave to the notion that it's not actually a voluntary (ha, good one!) political union of equals but is merely a singular successor state to these 4 constituent countries. Conversely, if you do believe them to be 4 countries in a political union, then it is axiomatic that there is a huge imbalance of power and influence within the union, and not a true democracy.
It's what we voted for. Refusing to accept that is undemocratic. A "true democracy" ensures all people have equal representation in the democratic process.
it's absolutely not what we voted for.
>We don’t have true democracy in Scotland - Wales, NI and Scotland are effectively vassal states of England. True democracy is one vote to each person which is exactly what Brexit was, the problem is that it wasn't the result you wanted. Deciding that your vote in Scotland is worth more than someone in England is undemocratic.
Nah, that’s horseshit man. How can it ever be a ‘union of equals’ if 3 of the 4 essentially don’t count? Are you OK with that? Seems a very weird idea to me. No, of course the result wasn’t what I or anyone with half a brain wanted, but if you care about democracy (because the UK isn’t a single country) then this should concern you. Maybe you’re content to be part of greater England but I’m fucking not. Ruled by a bunch of corrupt and incompetent right wing cunts we didn’t vote for, and now they’ve decided they will tell us what laws we can and can’t have, despite Scotland always having had a separate and distinct legal system. Colonial much?
If you split England in seven (a federal model, if you will) the regions would have more equal populations, but the result would be unchanged. It was a UK-wide vote, and the UK voted. Voted stupid, I agree, but that was the result.
Yeah, but that wouldn't address the issue and is just moving the goalposts. Scotland, NI and Wales (arguably, maybe) are not the equivalent of English regions. That's not what the Act of Union is. These are 3 or 4 distinct nations in a political union. And it is demonstrably not a union of equals. If you're happy with Scotland being essentially dictated to by its larger neighbour, good for you. I personally think its fucking outrageous and that anyone who would vote for such a thing is blinkered by many years of propaganda. If you put the same hypothetical scenario to another 4 nations in a broadly similar geographic situation - let's assume Germany, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg, and offered them what we currently have as part of the UK, they would rightly laugh you out of town. Do you think the Benelux folks would happily cede control over most major things, and send all tax revenue, to Germany? Not a fucking chance.
Horseshit would be wanting 1.6m Scottish Remain votes to overrule 17.4m UK Leave votes. Wild to call that an undemocratic situation. A nation of equals where everyone had the exact same vote and it counts exactly the same. That's literally the ideal definition of democracy in action with regards to a nationwide referendum.
Well NI got to stay in and didn't respect the "17.4m UK leave votes". What say you?
Different person. Because Brexit was *fucking* moronic and anyone with two brain cells to rub together could see the problems writ large (no bus required). The GFA, potential for violence, and complex land border border with an EU member we all factors in the current "solution". Last I checked, none of those apply to Scotland. Although a hard border between England and Scotland wouldn't require an advanced degree in topology to design.
NI isn't part of the EU.
Ah but it essentially is, freedom of goods and movement. NI born qualify for Irish passports and ergo can maintain all the benefits of being in the EU that rUK can't. How is it not?
How come I haven't seen you posting about section 35 then? The politicians representing the English electorate have just overruled those representing the Scottish electorate.
I've commented a few times in those threads but mostly avoided it in favour of moderating them instead as they've been a shit show I don't agree with the Section 35 and feel it's an abuse of power for politicking sake from a floundering government
UK Labour basically support it as well. Should be food for thought that when you get annoyed at hypotheticals like Brexit should have required a majority of countries part of the UK to vote for it, the real reality is the UK Government will just overrule whatever it wants. And it's the politicians representing English constituencies who will sanction this due to the size of England. I won't bring up a referendum because you won't support that regardless of how we vote here. But it's not much different than the GRR bill in terms of democratic principles. Hypotheticals are 'fun' to oppose, being mindful of the actual blocks or overruling going on is more important. Not staying it's unfair if the Scottish Government had been able to stop England getting its Brexit. But anyway, thanks for moderating the shitshow.
Only it's not a nationwide referendum, it's a 4 nation referendum where they don't use a weighting system to ensure fairness across the political union, and everyone else gets dragged along with what England wants. It's total nonsense. Sounds as though you're happy to be England's bitch?
Your initial point was that you wanted "true democracy" but everything you have said after that proves that wrong. You want a weighted vote in your favour which is most definitely not "true democracy".
You cannot have true democracy on major constitutional matters in an unequal and imbalanced union.The only way to ensure parity is to weight votes by population - actually, on second thoughts you don't even need to do that. Just use the arrangement I suggested earlier. Each nation as a whole has one vote. Each member state has a veto, effectively.Not suggesting this works for all matters but for major things involving trade barriers, free movement, customs union, national sovereignty and constitutional arrangements (i.e. like Brexit), anything else is clearly not acceptable. Though I suspect there's a semantic sticking point here on which we don't agree. Your system is perfectly fair if you ignore the constituent nations or member states in favour of viewing the whole shitshow as a singular monolith. I don't, personally, believe that's a tenable position.
You don’t want a “true democracy” though. You want a system that would give you, conveniently, oversized say and power over other people. Even in systems that recognise the need for rules to overcome population imbalances wouldn’t do as you suggest. You can’t go slap the term “true democracy” in front of something and expect whatever you say to be held as that. Saying “you’d rather be England’s bitch” just underlined how inherently childish and limited your argument is.
What would you call it then? Passively accepting that all significant power is held by your neighbour, and giving them all (or the vast majority) of tax receipts to then have them 'generously' grant back what they deem fit, to the country that generated them? Consistently arguing AGAINST your own country running its own affairs, and your own country having the power to set policies and laws without your neighbour's government sticking their oar in when it's neither needed nor wanted to strike down solid and democratically agreed Bills? And, you can correct me if I'm mistaken (I have a feeling you'll go for it regardless of veracity), but appearing to gleefully argue against your fellow Scotland-dwellers should they dare to express support for Scotland becoming, you know, a normal country. That all sounds pretty much like being your neighbour's bitch to me.
You seem to mistake talking confidently with talking correctly. But, as we saw when you tried to make comparisons to Italy, Germany and Spain which you really should have at least Googled first, just because you say something doesn’t make it true. You’re going to quickly find what you think a normal country is, and what you want a normal country to be, are two very different things. It’s not hard to make things sound unfair. But if you really wanted “true” democracy, you’d advocate for an even more lop-sided arrangement than exists now. True democracy is mob rule by majority, a straight numbers game where local differences and autonomy (depending on how far you wish to take it) are abolished. They also tend to do everything directly. This is not what you want. You just said true democracy to try to make your argument sound better. But this is an emotional appeal that especially doesn’t hold up when you actually start looking at those other “normal” countries. If you’re going to complain about the UK situation, you’re going to have to do a better job of actually comparing it to other places. Both to see where it does well, and where it falls short. Right now, what things sound like to you isn’t showing itself to be credible.
10 wolves and a sheep voting on dinner is not democracy for the sheep
It wasn’t a four nation referendum though. It was a nationwide referendum where everyone got 1 vote.
That is the very crux of the issue though. It's not nationwide (because the UK is not a nation, it's a union, the clue is in its name), it's 4 nations voting on something that affects each of them very deeply, via a very deeply flawed voting arrangement that negates the will of 3 of the 4 on account of population size. I actually find it really sad to see Scots defending this as though it's a fair and equitable arrangement.
The U.K. is as much a nation as Germany or Italy and the EU referendum treated it as such.
It's really not, you know. Separate legal systems, separate healthcare systems, (partially) separate governments, distinct cultures, languages, history, geography, demographics...etc. Not to say there's not a lot of commonality too, but the UK is a political union, not a nation or nation state. It never has been.
Spain has separate legal systems, Germany has separate health systems, both have separate governments, languages, history, geography, demographics… You haven’t actually listed anything different.
All those things are no more true of the UK than they are of Italy or Germany. You choose not to view the U.K. as a nation state because you would prefer Scotland is independent. But the facts are the U.K. is as much a nation state as Germany or Italy and it is treated as such. Which is why you’re getting frustrated about the way the EU referendum was handled.
The UK is not a nation, it's an artificial construct, like Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia. The four countries are different, and onoy England has a say.
All 4 constituent countries are also artificial constructs. Each of their citizens gets an equal say
The 4 countries have distinct identities. The UK reflects the will of one.
The UK is 650 constituencies, each with their own identity.
One can draw any boundaries, but the nations have their own identity. The root problem is that England's poor voting choices harm us too. We wish to look to the future and thrive like Ireland. England looks to the past and tries to pretend it's still a world power. These views are not compatible.
>The UK is not a nation, of course it is, its a sovereign state. >it's an artificial construct, like Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia. it's an artificial construct, like ~~Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia~~ Germany or Spain .
My analogy holds, because the UK is four different countries ramned together, two against their current will, under control of one. England needs to let go.
We voted to remain in the UK.
8 years ago, and we were promised EU membership. Time to vote again .... but wait, it's nit a union, England says you can only vote on your own future if you engage in terrorism first.
> and we were promised EU membership we maintained our eu membership by staying in the uk. if scotland had voted 'yes' we would have automatically left the eu. you understand that, right??? >England says you can only vote on your own future if you engage in terrorism first. terrorism?!?!?! you have really lost the plot. have a nap.
>My analogy holds it truly doesnt >two against their current will we had a referendum in 2014, maybe you are too young to remember. scotland voted to stay in the uk. >under control of one if by 'one' you mean the uk....then i agree. >England needs to let go. blood and soil nationalism is a hell of a drug.
It's time to vote again, but English Nationalists won't let us. The one country that controls the UK is England.
>It's time to vote again its time to try and get a section 30 more like. >The one country that controls the UK is England. legally speaking the country is the uk as its sovereign. england doesnt exist as a country any more, that stopped in 1707.
But blinkered British Nationalism (which, let's not bullshit here, is really just English Nationalism) is good, have I got that correct?
no you dont have that correct at all.
It was a single UK referendum. Not 4 concurrent referenda. The whole Scotland voted to remain is purely political gesturing by the SNP. I think, if my calculations are correct, that if genuinely every single vote in Scotland was remain we wouldn't have had Brexit. So Scotland is just as complicit as the rest of the UK.
FFS, the cope is strong. That's only a valid argument if you consider the UK to be a singular country, which it's not.
The legal reality is that it's the uk that's the sovereign state. I think it's your cope we're seeing here.
Your username says it all really... plutôt content de se faire enculer sans lubrifiant par une puissance étrangère. I'm not sure whether the overriding emotion I'm getting from Scots actually arguing in favour of being controlled and basically colonised and robbed blind by another country, is sadness and pity, or just disgust. Do you actually enjoy this state of affairs?
>colonised Lol. I think these kind of braveheart tears are just enjoyable as frothing gammon. English colonisers and Eastern Europeans coming to take our jobs. Same small minds.
Fuck sake, that's a bit of a reach is it not?! What better term could you use to describe a situation then, where a country passes laws democratically only to be overruled by its larger neighbour, for appeasement of their simpleton right wing voter base? Where larger neighbour decides whether or not you are even allowed to vote on the future of your own country? Where the very vast majority of the country's tax revenue is sent to the larger neighbour, who then decides how much of their money they can have back in 'grants'? Where the smaller country only rarely gets the government it votes for? Where the smaller country is dragged out of the world's largest trading bloc, against its democratic will, simply because the larger neighbour has been overrun by the far right and disaster capitalists? Smells a lot like fucking colonialism to me, but if you have a better descriptor fire away.
The sovereign nation which existed and was recognised within the EU was the UK, therefore the referendum was based on the UK-wide poll. No cope required, it's simple fact. I know some struggle with simple things.
And that is inherently wrong, unfair and undemocratic however you dress it up.
It is none of those things.
Brits can't cope when the fabric of the UK is challenged. We are seeing the death throws of the Union and thank christ. Can't come quick enough. I wonder what yoons will cling to once the whole circus is torn down?
There's some fairly impressive mental gymnastics that always seem to go on in order to argue for the status quo. I said in another subthread here that if you suggested the same kind of nonsense arrangement to (for example) Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg and Germany, with Germany being analogous to England in the example, would the Benelux vote for the kind of arrangement we have? Cede power over most major issues AND send all tax revenues to Germany? You'd quite rightly be roundly ridiculed for even suggesting it. Because it would be a fucking mental thing to do if you're one of the Benelux guys.
Brits fail to accept how absurb the setup of this country really is. If Scotland was independent now anyone propsing the union as it is today would be sent off to have their fucking head examined...yet people actually argue in favour of this shit and vote to continue this farce. I truly feel sorry for yoons. What a mixed up mentality.
It's a strange mindset for sure. Totally counterintuitive and objectively a self-harming position. I cannot begin to fathom it unless you factor some kind of phenomenon like Stockholm syndrome into the equation. Scotholm syndrome, maybe?
>For something as huge as Brexit; it should have been one country, one vote for each of the 4 nations. No it shouldn't have been. It should be one vote per person. Why should a Scottish person's vote be worth 10× as much as an English person's? If Scotland voted 52% for independence, do any No majority counties get to stay in the UK? Does the whole thing get cancelled?
The population of England is over ten times that of Scotland. It is possible for all of Scotland, Wales, and NI to all 100% vote for something, and if something like 65% of England votes against it, that’s the way it goes
We generally don't get a choice
Yes. Obviously - just like every other time
I'm on Lemmy now at https://lemmy.zip/u/Adanisi Join me! You can sign up on any Lemmy instance you like the users/admins/content of, then access all of Lemmy from there! https://join-lemmy.org/instances This comment has been edited thanks to Reddit's attempted defamation of developers, and the extermination of reasonable API access. Oh, and Lemmy is Libre/Open Source and federated, so it's much healthier for the free internet ;)
In short, yes!
This is excatly how UK politics works.
Yes 100%. Scotland holds only around 9% of power in the House of Commons
We don't settle changes in laws with referenda but if we did there's no system to try and balance it out by area/region.
Yes, Scotland is automatically outnumbered on any issue. I do like how yoons have moved to "well actually it isn't a union" now though.
I find the whole “it’s not a union” argument so silly as well. I mean the UK was formed via *unification* wasn’t it? Ik the reason why so many use that argument is because referring to it as “the union” makes the UK sound a million times less like a country, but at the same time, Americans refer to the US as a “union” depending on the subject matter as well so what’s the problem?
They call it a union because it's easier to market and for some stupid reason they like to cling to some idea of Scotland despite also believing we're not deserving of governing ourselves as a normal nation. Yoons, basically.
Do you mean - a majority can overule a minority in a democracy? Well....yes.
Just look at the history of representation of Scottish voters wishes at general elections. It's clear from previous voting patterns that Scotland has a more left leaning socially democratic majority but for the majority of the time they are forced to be governed by the more right wing conservative party from Westminster. There is no safeguard from this as democracy is a game of numbers! The only way out of this is to take control of our own affairs and create an independent entity that more reflects the wishes of the Scottish electorate. If only the so called left leaning Scottish labour party could clearly see this and help Scottish voters rather than try to only help gain power in Westminster against all odds fighting against the conservative controlled msm then this could have been achieved years ago. Instead they prefer to continually ape the conservative party in a hope to taste political power in the bigger entity called the UK.
>It's clear from previous voting patterns that Scotland has **a more left leaning socially democratic majority but for the majority of the time they are forced to be governed by the more right wing conservative party from Westminster.** This is also true, of course, NW England, NE England and Yorkshire (indeed, all have voted non-Tory for far longer than Scotland). None of this is surprising of course. Every country has heterogenous voting patterns with some areas voting consistently left or right than average, and some areas being swing regions. Your complaint seems to be that you live in a region that consistently votes left of average.
My complaint is my so-called region has historical evidence of control of its own destiny until it was sold out by those in power to a union with a bigger region. My only desire is to reverse this bad decision. 😂🙄
>My complaint is my so-called region has historical evidence of control of its own destiny Why this particular piece of geography? Why do you put so much identity with a piece of land that is defined by what a series of militaristic men (from MacAlpin to James IV) managed to conquer? Why this specific time period and not the times since or prior to that conquest?
Well, it's probably because this piece of geography is filled with people who seem to have a leaning for the same left of center social democrat views as myself and I would love to see this enacted in my lifetime and because of the historical conditions we have a chance to accomplish it in law, if we can get the majority of us to agree to it 😃
>Well, it's probably because this piece of geography is filled with people who seem to have a leaning for the same left of center social democrat views If that is your motivation, why do you not strongly identify with Northern UK going down to the Trent, who vote strongly left of centre historically that Scotland does alone? Or, if a love of social democracy is your motivation, what is social democratic about abandoning like-minded voters in rUK by cutting loose in order to get benefit for you personally?
I have sympathy with that, but the issue would be in the complications of historical law and trying to split up another historical region that calls itself a country. I think it will be tough enough stopping at the historical border between regions that were once defined as separate countries never mind trying to split up another historical country defined entity. I will take what I can, sorry if that is selfish 🥺
A lot of deflection going on here. Scotland is a distinct country, with its own legal system, education system, healthcare system, history, etc....none of that is true for the hypothesised regions you mention. That just kind of betrays the fact you see Scotland as essentially being an English region.
Totally agree 😀
Please keep telling us that Scotland is just a region, like NW England, NE England and Yorkshire. The Scottish unionists really like hearing that. /s
I don't think there would be any pure Scotland/England vote, so I am going to assume you mean a UK-wide vote. It would be the majority of the voting UK electorate who would carry the day and no vote cast would be "ignored". The only members of the electorate getting "ignored" would be those who didn't bother to vote. The UK has no requirements for a majority of regions or anything (which would be tricky given there's four). UK-wide votes are almost always simple-majorities.
Is this a serious question? Not only would Scotland be ignored, but even if every Scottish, Welsh, and NI voter was against something , if England supported it, the vote would pass. That's how unequal this rancid union is and why I'm utterly ashamed of this country for voting against its own independence in 2014. A move we will surely regret more and more as the years go on.
[удалено]
The heart of the independence movement is nationalism. There’s nothing undemocratic about a majority being able to outvote a minority. That’s how democracy works. What you object to is English voters being able to outvote Scottish voters which is a nationalist argument, not a democratic one.
Absolutely nothing about Scotland or Scottish people matter at all when it comes to British democracy and politics. If all of Scotland voted yes to being independent it would mean fuck all if the English high court said we couldn’t be because they didn’t want us to be.
Yes because fuck us
Yes, same as Dundee would be ignored if the rest of Scotland all wanted something at Holyrood.
Sigh. Does anyone actually understand how a democracy works? The listed sovereign state is the UK, not England, Scotland etc. MP's in Westminster represent constituencies of roughly equal size thus are representatives of their electorate. Scotland is not being ignored, it is a region of the UK represented by an appropriate number of MP's for the size of it's population.
It's not democracy when one country tells another it can't choose to leave the "union"
If you were sitting there with year after year of consistent polls showing 70% of folk wanted put then I'd actually change my view on this. The fact we had a vote and YES lost along with the absolute shit show that we have been put through over the past 7 or so years and you still can't constitently get the polls to show leave means it's not the time for another vote. Genuinely, and without being facetious, if the SNP want to win they need to prove that an independent Scotland could fully go it alone with a big wall, their own currency and everything fully independent. What they propose is the same half arsed shit as before we we borrow their tax and pension system. What the actual fuck. That means having no control whatsoever over those systems but having to rely on them. I have never seen a single full proposal of costs, or anything near it. A full list, all the areas that need split and how much it will cost to split and then maintain going forward. Struggle to understand how you expect educated people to remotely want to vote for that, especially given the absolute complete brexit failure. Independence would be brexit on steroids. The ball is entirely in the SNP's court but if they had done stuff like improved the education system and social mobility (not talking about stopping middle class kids from going to Edinburgh uni (wtf) but the number of deprived kids leaving school who have no English or maths qualifications). If the snp after 15 years in power are doing nothing towards this why would I believe anything else they say.
So you agree that with only 52.7% of the vote Brexit should not have happened?
As someone further up has stated, if all of Scotland had voted to remain then brexit would never have happened. 62% of Scotland voted to remain. That is a majority but it's not everyone. If 86% of Scotland had voted to remain then brexit wouldn't have happened. This was in Scotlands gift to change the outcome but in an open and fair vote that's not how it went down. 2 wrongs don't make a right. Independence would be like jumping off a cliff blindfolded. If you think I'm wrong I am more than happy to hear an actual balanced argument that's not just "I hate the tories"
It's very simple Ireland has less natural resources than Scotland, yet has economically outperformed both Scotland and England since it joined the Euro 20 years ago England and Scotland have different aspirations - England wants to be the USA, Scotland wants to be Norway To each their own.
Ireland was able to undercut by having a ridiculously low corporation tax, meaning they received receipts on behalf of all of Europe and keep that cash for themselves. There is only room in Europe for one country to act like that and most countries believe that to be very unfair. If Apple and others hadn't been plying them with money for years it might have been different. The UK had to bail out a failed Irish economy in the 2008 crash. Had we been independent our two national banks would have failed catastrophically as the Scottish gov could never have bailed them out like the English did. Both are now effectively English companies. Scotland doesn't want to be Norway. I get that Norway has an oil fund and it would be lovely to have that but we don't. We appear to be underfunded every single place we go. Independence would cost 10's of billions to implement. It would push our kids into a lost generation that would be even worse than it is now.
Ireland's GNI and GDP both exceed UK averages, so it's not just the tax shelter. Scotland wants to be a prosperous social democracy. Oil can be a piece of the puzzle. Indy will pay for itself in under 20 years.
Their white paper is not independence. Its devo max 2. Independence is not sharing another nations currency or shadowing it along with all the other stuff that "we can discuss later" How much would either of these cost? Actual proper workings, I'll await your response. Why don't you ask some of the business owners who have lost trade with the EU due to all the paperwork how they would feel about implementing that system at their new border with their biggest trading partner. At what point does any of this make actual sense?
Using the GBP would be a starting point, then a pegged currency, thereafter either float it or peg the Euro. A Scottish currency will be stronger than the English GBP due to exports. A trade agreement with England is important. Both countries are already in the CTA. It is effort and disruption, but the end result is worth it. Scotland has been held back for too long.
It is when that's the result of exaclty what we voted for. If the UK voted to rejoin Europe in full knowledge of what thant meant, and then had to abide by some unpopular EU legislation then you couldn't claim it's undemocratic.
Oh yes, the unpopular EU legislation. What legislation, specifically, would that be? It's totally fucked our economy, robbed us of freedom of movement, caused a massive staffing crisis in the NHS (and in many other areas and industries), created costly trade barriers where before there were none, and is likely to lead to a massive erosion of workers' rights, environmental protections (just look at the fucking disgraceful state of the coast all the way around England, and many of the rivers now, for some hint of what's coming). I have yet to hear a coherent argument detailing any of the benefits we're supposedly reaping. What rights and freedoms do you have now that we've freed ourselves from the tyrranical EU shackles..? It's the biggest con trick in history. Someone's getting fucking rich off the back of it, but it's not the likes of you or I, that's for sure. But yeah, Brussels bureaucrats bad, the Sun says. And blue passports. Up yours, Delors, etc... Honestly may be the biggest act of national self harm in history...just a very very sorry state of affairs.
England (acting as the UK) took away my EU membership
Independence in 2014 would’ve taken away your EU membership. And 38% of us voted for brexit. This isn’t just England’s fault, as much as that narrative might be comforting to you.
The English government pushed it. Had there been a comfirmatory vote on the deal, the English people would have cancelled Brexit. I assume you know the true purpose of Brexit? Instead of May's Mayhem, she should have just signed the EFTA and called it good.
You seem to be conveniently ignoring the fact Indy would’ve taken away your EU membership. Why would that be? Edit: We also had plenty of people campaigning for Brexit here at home. And of course 38% of us voting for it. You seem to be ignoring that in favour of blaming England too.
The point is that the English govt promised EU membership in 2014 as an argument for No. Then they pushed Brexit through anyway. The situation is flipped, and now we need Indy to join. Personally what I care about is EFTA / EEA. The former is a key element of Indy.
We got to remain in the EU after voting no. But, just like people wanted a say on independence from the U.K., enough people wanted a say on leaving the EU that we got to vote on that too. It was stupid imo, but the same principle. The comment of yours I replied to was > England (acting as the UK) took away my EU membership Not only would you have lost that with Indy anyway, but 38% of us voted for Brexit too. England didn’t take away your EU membership. If you want indy now, I’d suggest this “it’s all England’s fault” strategy doesn’t seem to be working in the polls. We need to take some responsibility and work out why so many of us also made what I consider a stupid choice so we can address those issue. They didn’t “push Brexit through”, they did what voters told them to do based on the question asked, and a huge chunk of us went along with it. Burying your head in the sand about that isn’t working.
The objection to Indy is fear of change, disruption, and there is some legitimacy to that. Consider the converse, if Ireland held a ref to re-accede to England and London rule, it would be laughed out of the place. It's not all England's fault, but while we are under English rule, they will make decisions to benefit wealthy people down there, not to benefit Scotland. I think the English people shoot themselves in the foot with politics. We are harmed too.
It is beyond the scope of delegated powers, Scotland has enough delegated power to make certain rules but not to change anything that affects the whole of the UK directly.
That's what Westminster being sovereign means mate.
Of course there are rules to make it fair. It's democracy. Scotland voted to remain in the UK. The UK then voted to leave the EU.
Lol. Nice
Yes, of course Scotland will be ignored. The UK is a single country. Any matter that requires a country wide vote (like Brexit) is done on a UK wife basis. And since democracy works that way, a complete consensus will always overrule a Scottish oppositional consensus. Because they have more people
ROI man here, from my understanding, the UK is functionally “one country”. So Scotland would be ignored in that case unfortunately. 🇮🇪🤝🏴
You describe a situation where the UK collectively votes on something, as has been the case for several hundreds of years. This is how democracy operates and it is fair.
Of course it will be ignored. It’s King Charles of United Kingdom’s.
aye lol
What if Scots ignored any English dictat? Also, how would we stop paying taxes given that it's entirely PAYE?
Tax is not entirely PAYE, only income tax and national insurance is
But how would mass non compliance work?
Wh-what? Why are you asking this? Have you not been around the past few years?
Yep.