SNP to World: Help!

Wilhelm

Alex .
Why are you soooo ashamed and full of self loathing of your own country, Scotland ?

talorthane

Alex

Given that this excercise, hypothetical as it is, is a comparative one, perhaps you should have started by outlining how well the UK has coped with the situation.

It seems to me that the UK hasn't coped very well, at all, and that it m,ay have been difficult for an independent Scottish Government to have done much worse, if that would indeed be possible.

But HBOS and RBS are not Scottish banks, they are British banks with international ambitions.

They grew within the context of the union, and they were encouraged by light financial UK regulation, and they went bust within the union.

Hypothetical though it is, it is completely meaningless to measure Scottish independence by its imagined solution to a UK problem.

That's like measuring the viability of the UK by speculating on how it would have coped with the problems in the US.

Wilhelm

From Wikpedia

Self-hatred, self-loathing, also sometimes autophobia refers to an extreme dislike of oneself, or being angry at oneself. The term is also used to designate a dislike or hatred of a group to which one belongs. For instance, "ethnic self-hatred" is the extreme dislike of one's ethnic group. Accusations of self-hatred are often used as an ad hominem attack.
The term "self-hatred" is used infrequently by psychologists and psychiatrists, who would usually describe people who hate themselves as "persons with low self-esteem". Some people[who?] think that self-hatred and shame are important factors in some or many mental disorders, especially disorders that involve a perceived defect of oneself (e.g. body dysmorphic disorder). "Ethnic self-hatred" is considered by some people as being a cultural issue, to which psychological theories have limited relevance. Self-hatred is also a prime feature of many personality disorders.

Ruairidh

Wilhelm, what an odd reading of this post. It's a bit like asking; Wilhelm when did you stop beating your spouse?

Wilhelm

Alex .
Who's been running britain for the last 12 years and put us in this mess ?
i think it was your chums, the liebour party.

Chic Bung

I think you've answered it yourself Alex.

"Maybe London would have contributed given that RBS and HBS do much more business south of the border than they do north of it."

Are unionists seriously arguing that they would have let NatWest, Ulster bank and Halifax Bank collapse simply because their parent companies' headquarters were in Edinburgh? (And in the case of HBOS the operational HQ is in Halifax)

Maybe a question you might like to be the first to pose to them since they have taken up this line.

Example. Fortis. Belgian based but bailed out by the Belgian, Dutch and Luxembourg government. What notion of -ishness made them do that?

Or the Iceland bailout. The contribution from Nordic Council countries was more than that of the IMF.

It doesn't say much for the argument of "international co-operation" if unionism is arguing that it would be, well, narrow minded.

And even that Nat inhouse journal the Scotsman [cough!] has reported some interesting take on the argument:

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/latestnews/HBOS-takeover-Still-time-to.4591663.jp

Would an independent Scotland have been able to bail out RBS and HBOS?

Unionist politicians have claimed an independent Scotland could not have afforded the £37 billion the UK Treasury has found for the banks. That is more than the annual Scottish block grant and would have left Scotland with a huge debt – far greater in percentage terms than the debt the deal will be worth in UK terms.

But the UK government does not have the money either and will borrow it from the world money markets in the form of a gilt auction. An independent Scotland could, arguably, have done the same.

ndm

I'm never very impressed by the use of counterfactuals like this to prove a point. I suspect Scottish banks with global ambitions would have been under a different, perhaps less business-friendly, regulatory process which might perhaps have taken a different view of moral hazard given the limited ability of the Government to bail the banks out. Although that didn't seem to work too well in Iceland - but that is a country which takes a different approach to the EU than would an independent Scotland.

But reflecting back on a post from a few days ago I would have thought that the idea of an independent Scotland would have been joy to a true libertarian who really believed in the principal of subsidiarity.

Graeme McCormick

Since Scotland is not independent the issue of how Scotland would have dealt with the credit crunch is as hypothetical as what would have happened to Britain if Bonnie Prince Charlie hadn't stopped at Derby or would there have been an Iraq war if Tony Blair's father had worn a condom.

The Independence Settlement in all likelihood will be negotiated within the next two years. Part of that will be the division of assets and liabilities including Britain's national debt. Scottish Ministers are more than up to the challenge.

talorthane

It's the same old, bizarre outlook on the world that is shared by Scottish Unionists and Westminster careerists.

"We are not capable".

Somehow, Scots are incapable of running their own affairs.

Put them in London and strangely they are exhibit the skills of running the UK, makig decisions for Scotalnd, England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and even saving the world's economy or otherwise.

But put them back on their own soil and they lose all of these powers.

I would guess that Kryptonite must have been discovered here.

Rhoda Klapp

talorthane, please take them back. I assume that all ex-pat Scots involved in running Britain, saving the world etc will be returning to do the same things to an independent Scotland.