The odds on independence

Lance Grundy

“Scotland’s economic performance since devolution has ranked amongst the worst in Europe”

And do those poor figures include the ‘stellar’ contribution made by the Scottish banking fraternity during the boom?

Craig Strachan

What odds would you give on an end to the devolution experiment and a return to the Union as it was?

oldtimer

Salmond says that Scottish independence is only a matter for the people of Scotland. Why should it also not be a matter for the people of the rest of the UK. Why cannot the rest of us have a vote on whether or not we wish to keep Scotland inside the Union? That would be an interesting referendum.

SUSAN HILL

If they are really offering 20s I`m having a tenner. That's a value bet.

David Lindsay

There is a majority on the floor of Holyrood against an independence referendum, so it won't pass. The SNP did not win the Election outright, and should remember that.

Never mind at Westminster, where, unless there are now a few hardened English separatists on the Tory benches, the only votes in favour would be the SNP, Plaid Cymru, and the SDLP if they fancied losing the Labour Whip. Plus a few Labour or Lib Dem MPs from English seats who never again wanted to be able to look their Scottish or Welsh colleagues in the eye.

The same applies at Westminster where further devolution is concerned, whether to Scotland or to Wales.

Enoch was Right

Salmond is asking the wrong people. He should ask the English people to vote on Scottish independence.
That would surely give him the answer he is looking for by a large majority.

Sir Graphus

20-1 by 2015 is pretty poor odds. But 2020, or 2025? I think you underestimate the Nats. I spent 3 years in Aberdeen in the dog days of the Major govt. Braveheart had just been released. There was nearly no detectable affection for the Union. Shame. We're stronger together.

Ron Wilson

What is this nonsense about making foreigners out of the English? Indeed, what is a 'foreigner'? Irish????
No surprise State spending is high - the Scottish government is totally dependent on Westminster's pocket money.
It is a strange thing when English journalists who otherwise rail against the EU are about turn on 'Britain'.
As a Scot, I feel insulted that the powers that London already possesses is somehow 'too much' for this country.
Damn hypocrites!

Ron Wilson

What is this nonsense about making foreigners out of the English? Indeed, what is a 'foreigner'? Irish????
No surprise State spending is high - the Scottish government is totally dependent on Westminster's pocket money.
It is a strange thing when English journalists who otherwise rail against the EU are about turn on 'Britain'.
As a Scot, I feel insulted that the powers that London already possesses is somehow 'too much' for this country.
Damn hypocrites!

Kittler

Per capita figures would be more meaningful Fraser. England's relative growth over the last twenty years only looks good because it has expanded the size of its economy by importing millions of economic migrants.

Andy Leeds

Well as an Englishman I want some equality in all this. So lets make a Scottish vote have the same value as an English vote; lets make spending more equal in Scotland as it is in England.

Jupiter

The most sensible thing to do would be to scrap that numpty filled parliament in Edinburgh. Unfortunately none of the parties support that.

charles hercock

Bring it on and less of the english guilt.Economic or true independence will save us 20 billion-see Boris in the Telegraph- to start to pay back some of the money Fred & Hornby and the scottish banks stole from us all

Wilhelm

''Scotlands economic performance has ranked among the worst in Europe.''

Pretty damning indictment on liebour westminster rule, isnt it ?

Wilhelm

'' Salmond has made a horlicks.''

Unlike Gordon Broon and Darling, what a triumph they are running the country.

Dirty Euro

Scottish devolution only started in 1999, before the biggest decline for Scotland on this chart. The stats on this chart show devolution has been good for us and how terrible John Major was for Scotland. No wonder he won no seats then he seemed to rip the economy apart.
This attitude of trolls here, shows the arrogant imperialistic attitude of the English.
One minute they blabber on about sovereignty, power from Brussels, the next when it comes to London and the south east having control they tell their victims to accept that they are pathetic people incapable of running their own affairs. Often backed up totally dodgy statistics that do not even prove their arrogant theories.
Look at the chart again and remember devolution started in 1999. Now explain your argument English trolls that devolution has been bad for us.
Why are tories unlike the republicans in the USA who support federal government in the theory that local regions are the best to plan their own affairs. Without some arrogant upstarts form outside telling them what to do. .

Ron Wilson

Jupiter, you would do better to scrap not just the numpties but the grasping, corrupt and criminal low life inhabiting Westminster.
Scotland is on the move politically & constitutionally and will not be held back by what, at its core, is the British State's essential English interests.
Time to go our own way politically, junking the English/Brit obsession with an out of date eighteenth century stitch up for a new constitutional settlement based on genuine equality & national respect.

Dirty Euro

Correction to my post
Scottish devolution only started in 1999, after (not before )the biggest decline for Scotland on this chart. The stats on this chart show devolution has been good for us and how terrible John Major was for Scotland. No wonder he won no seats then he seemed to rip the economy apart.
This attitude of trolls here, shows the arrogant imperialistic attitude of the English.
One minute they blabber on about sovereignty, power from Brussels, the next when it comes to London and the south east having control they tell their victims to accept that they are pathetic people incapable of running their own affairs. Often backed up totally dodgy statistics that do not even prove their arrogant theories.
Look at the chart again and remember devolution started in 1999. Now explain your argument English trolls that devolution has been bad for us.
Why are tories unlike the republicans in the USA who support federal government in the theory that local regions are the best to plan their own affairs. Without some arrogant upstarts form outside telling them what to do. .

Dirty Euro

The worst economic performance for scotland on this chart occurred before devolution started. So devolution has been a success Tories should support devolution. I thought they supported bringing power to the people.

Wilhelm

'' But what do you expect when state spending is up at East German levels.''

You mean like all those public sector jobs in westminster, civil servants shuffling paper clips from A to B in whitehall, Portcullis house, the Millieneum Dome, the Olymics, the cross London rail link, more appartchiks working in the the Ministry of Defence than soldiers in the british army ?

The south east just hates public sector jobs, dont they ?

Watt Tyler

DirtyEuro, do I detect a hatred of the English?

Did it occur to you that it isn't the English who are arrogant, but other nationalities who have an inferiority complex? In the old days, when this country was great, one certainly expected it of Johnny Foreigner. Indeed, even when I was a boy in the 70s, it was considered a damned shame for anyone who wasn't born in England. Collectively, I think that We were mostly proud - even little boys who couldn't make much sense of the world - of our Individual Liberty. As you know, these days the English aren't allowed to be that proud, and definitely not for their old values. What has happened, and you won't agree (but I don't care if you do or not), a succesful Marxist coup.

All that having now been said, it might suprise you to know that a growing number of English want independence for Scotland. This is not contrary to those old English values.

Geoff Miller

English indifference?

Being in a Union with Scotland is like being married to someone who is one minute tells you she loves you and the next is on the phone to her solicitor talking about divorce.

After so many years of this how can the English trust the Scots let alone care if they stay or go?

If they do vote to stay in the Union it will just be because they want our money and some security - no basis for a Union, or marriage, really is it?

Just go, and then we can all move on.

Keith D

The graph above highlights that Scotlands contribution to the UK economy has remained static save for the variance induced by Englands vast population increase sponsored by New Labour. Are we to expect that individual GDP must rise to compensate for lack of population growth. Hardly seems fair. England,Scotland,Wales and Northern Ireland are the United Kingdom. United we stand I feel

Naomi Muse

Andy Leeds - agree it should be more equal in spend per capita and then we, as English, could see it was fair.

Such a move might also make the Scottish authorities collect all that back council tax which it has been reluctant to do.

That said, the life expectancy in Scotland is so much lower than in England there is a lot to sort out up there too.

Mind you, I love Edinburgh and the Monroes, but porridge with salt !? Nah!

Keith (not Keith D)

Like a lot of Englishmen I am torn on this.

On one hand I think the Union is or ought to be good for all of Britain. I think of the amazing contribution made to Britain, to the Empire and to the world in general by Scots in times past and wish that more of the same could happen.

And then I look at modern Scotland, with its ridiculous chippy resentment of the English, its absurd inability to see itself for what it is, its helpless reliance on state spending from England and its intractable propensity to vote for the Marxist half-wits who run our country. And I think that a sharp dose of independence would do Scotland a power of good.

However, cutting across this picture is the EC position. No doubt most Scots nationalists who want independence think that the result of it will be the replacement of huge sums of money from English tax payors by huge sums of money from the EC's coffers. Nothing good wil happen in Scotland until the taps are turned off and the Scots have to generate their own prosperity.

Vulture

This is deeply depressing news. The thought of England carrying Scotland on its back like a sporran full of spikes and thistles into the foreseeable future is grim indeed.

The Union -never loved in the first place - is deeply resented now - not least by the English. We hear an awful lot abt why the Scots don't like it - but not much from the poor sods who pay the piper's ever escalating bill for the welfare-greedy; bankrupt; non-productive; state-dependent, scrounging Scots.

Since their admirable entrepeneurial spirit nosedived into Socialism around the time of the Great War, what have the Scots brought to this marriage? The Labour party, a bunch of very bad broadcasters - Naughty and Wark this means you - unfunny comedians (Billy Connolly check); and a barrel-ful of whinging resentment about the people who pay their bills that's what. I truly can't think of much else. (Fraser of course excepted).

You can't keep a marriage on the road when one partner is so sick of being insulted and spat upon that they have come to loathe their partner too. Face it guys: the Scots hate and resent the English. And now we hate them in return. Some 'Union'.

John Lea

Vulture - your profound thoughts on this subject - not to mention your objective and scholarly analysis - have simply overwhelmed me. If you're going to generalise about important and complex matters, such as Scottish independence, can you please be consistent and extend that train of 'thought' to other races, like Asians, blacks, women. (Would you dare make similar comments about Asians or blacks having brought nothing to this country? I doubt it.) You strike me as a Sun reader, so perhaps it would be best all round if you joined one of their threads.

Amadeus Plonquer

Hoots mon. Dae yae English no ken thit its we Scoats wha gee yeh awe yer ile? Ye get it awe fe oor watters. Jings. If we lee the Union then who ur ye gonna run yur motors corrs?

An if ye awe think oor Furst Meenister's a chookie then joost look at whit ye English are like whit way yer Broon and Darlin an awe.

Joost remember whit big Wullie Wallace said tae yer English King joost afore he wiz quarterd. Aye. Awa an bile yer heids.

(late result: St Mirren 2: Partick Thisle 0)

Nicholas

Let them go. Extend the English channel across the border, blow up the bridges and sink the ferries. And let them take Dirty Euro with them. Good riddance.

One proviso. Scottish politicians will be ineligible to be elected to an English parliament, to English local government and to work in the English public sector.

Me, I'm sick of in your face imagined grievances and alternate opinionated bullying from their disproportionate representation in English life. Putting up with Marr's lefty, anti-English posturing in his bad history is bad enough but having Dirty Euro's dribbling inanities on a supposed right wing blog takes the Garibaldi biscuit. If we have to have a token Lefty here to balance the books then at least let it be one who is compos mentis and not Compo's Mentor.

Keith D

The same people who are only too keen to regularly express their disdain for the Scots do their argument no credit by racially profiling people as wedded to the welfare teat. Furthermore an argument that the New Labour disaster was imposed by the Scots ignores the influence Northern English and Welsh constituencies had on the GE.If I was resident in Scotland I would certainly wish to be divorced from some of the views expressed here but thankfully, like most Scots ,the people of England are British and would wish to remain so

Dirty Euro

Watt Tyker says "Did it occur to you that it isn't the English who are arrogant, but other nationalities who have an inferiority complex?"
If that a joke, or are you being serious. Yeah right!
The stats on the chart show we have improved under devolution. England is arrogant. You lot continually think you subsidize the rest of the UK when you do not. You lot get the capital which gives you massive strategic advantage.

John Lea

Keith D: well said! Some of the comments made on this thread (usually by sad little men and women who hide behind idiotic pseudonyms) are shameful. I very much doubt whether the same people would make similar comments about Asian or black people, but they seem to have no reservations about making them about Scots. Pathetic, really.

Vulture

@ John Lea. Am not writing a book on this subject, so I have to generalise; but if you want a debate on the decline of the Scottish intelligentsia from the days of Hume and Stevenson to Brown and Salmond I'm very happy to have it.
(I've noticed that people like you use insults and abuse when they don't have a convincing argument).
No I don't read the Sun, and I've been on this thread a lot longer than you matey, so put that in your rolled-up copy of the Guardian and smoke it.

Rhoda Klapp

I'm generally pro-union, and English. But it seems mostly we hear from Scots who are against union, or rather for independence. Evidently the voices of those Scots who are pro-union because historically we have all done far better in a union than otherwise are not often heard. Let's hear it from those Scots!

Simon Stephenson

Kittler, Dirty Euro and Keith D are right. Scotland's rate of population increase has been far lower than that of the UK over the last 20 years, and this is a major explanatory factor of the decline in Scotland's proportion of contribution to UK GDP over that period.

But I forget. We're in the post-normal 21st Century now, where the impact of an argument is no longer constrained by any need for it to be accurate.

Mark, Edinburgh

Nicholas, 10.05am

Completely agree with your views concerning Mr. Marr nad Dirty Euro.

Wilhelm

Could you square the hypocrisy circle that you dont want to be run by the EU and Brussels but by the UK and whitehall ?

I think Im entitled to an answer to that question.

Peter From Maidstone

It would be interesting to know the proportion of expenditure used in Scotland over the same period. Certainly the Barnett formula appears to spread expenditure in the following proportions.

* England £7,121
* Scotland £8,623
* Wales £8,139
* Northern Ireland £9,385

This does not seem to have anything to do with changes in population but is a built in imbalance in spending national income.

Bob

That graph is damning to the so called Union. "Scotland is stronger as part of the Union" the Labour and Tory drones say, manured through every single newspaper. Clearly not.

John Lea

Vulture: You accuse me of being insulting, but I think you will find it was you who referred to North Britons as 'welfare-greedy; bankrupt; non-productive; state-dependent, scrounging Scots.'

I don't find that funny, and I reiterate, if you were to use such language in relation to any other racial minority you would be kicked off this site. Also, I strongly suspect that you would not say these words to a Scottish person if you were to meet them face-to-face.

Wilhelm

Independence for both countries would consign the liebour party to the dustbin of history ( thats what we all want, isnt it ?) thats why liebour is sooo antagonistic to the idea, liebour meeds Scotland to get power in England.

Alun Reynolds

The Scottish voters will never, in my opinion, vote to make foreigners our of our friends and family in England.

What a great great pity :o(

Pricky Gayes

I think you mean Glasgow North East.

Chuck Unsworth

@ John Lea

"I very much doubt whether the same people would make similar comments about Asian or black people, but they seem to have no reservations about making them about Scots."

So, report them to the cops.

Frankly this monotonous bellyache and whine from north of the Border is tedious. I'd be only too pleased to see complete separation and repatriation - both ways. I see no point in having a British Parliament, we're ruled by Brussels anyway. Let's have an English Assembly (Parliament, if you will) and no further involvement with the hibernian masses. And the same applies to the Welsh. Give them all full independence, institute strict border controls and place severe limits on immigration. England will be better off without them.

egh

In full agreement with Nicholas, yet again.

Anyway, what's all this piffle about independence? Today?

Lord, God - none of us are independent today. All of us are subject to the evil entity over the water: and - according to their view - we are all deprived of the right to Trial by Jury, and are guilty until proved innocent (in the opinion of one of their employees, doubtless).

Freedom? You jest.

2trueblue

Lets have our imdependance from the Scots. We have been ruled by the 'Scottish Raj', as Paxman referred to them, for far too long. What did we get? Regional assemblies that were foisted on us after one area voted 'No', we got them anyway, by stealth.
I would love to see the end of the union with the Scots whp have done little apart from support a rotten govenment.
I do not know why Cameron still favours the union.

Vulture

@ John Lea: 'I strongly suspect you would not say this to a Scot'- Oh,I forgot to add, in additon to the whining keen of their culture of complaint the Scots have a well-earned reputation for physical violence when their arguments fail. As you rightly suggest. Isn't it called 'the Glasgow kiss'?

Keith D

I would be dismayed if the suspension of common sense witnessed above was the norm. Fortunately it is not.Hibernian masses and glasgow kisses? Anyone would think we in the UK have a surplus of friends that we can treat our own with such disrespect.Its the EU and reclaiming our democracy I hope people care about.

hadrian

The odds on independence, I sense, rests to a large extent on the timing of any referendum. There is a hard core of Unionism across the political spectrum and of apolitical but gut-instinctual unionists. However there is also a very large element whose favouring nationalism lies in a milder, less political, even sentimental, Scottish patriotism. If caught in a favourable wind it will waft towards devolution and beyond but if caught in very adverse circumstances will lurch back to unionism and insticual 'safety in numbers'/huddle together.
No guesses where the wind listeth in the present straits!
Glasgow East was in exceptional circumstances and in a seat that, for all its reputation as hard-core Labour, actually is much less monochrome than Glasgow North. Our resultant SNP MP has turned out to an expetionally hard working individual, far more visible than his faceless predecessor. I hope we retain him next time round and buck any trend leaning back towards pointless Labour tribalism.

John Lea

Vulture - I was making the point that you are a sad little man who makes nasty remarks about mass groups of people behind the anonymous safety of your computer. The sort of person who talks tough on these types of threads, but would cower in their boots if they were actually given the platform to make such comments in public. In other words, you're a w*nker.

Dirty Euro

The Barnett formula is a myth. This is the same civil service who have admitted to lying to scotland in the 70s.
A recent radio 4 show showed civil servants admitting scotland was subsiding the rest of the UK in the 70s, but this was never said to the people publically. In fact the civil servants seemed to boast of how they lied to Scotland. With the oil price you ca\n be certain the same is true now.
You take these figures with a pinch of salt and look at the facts on the ground England gets far more civil service jobs. Scotland produces oil. FACT End of story. The biased lying civil service is why we need to leave the union.

Dougthedug

"The SNP’s rout in Glasgow North West a fortnight ago..."

It wasn't an SNP loss it was a Labour hold. The SNP share of the vote actually went up from a 17.7% share in 2005 to a 20.0% share in the by-election. Labour held what must be their safest seat in the UK. To describe it as a "rout" is just whistling in the wind.

"What's more, Salmond has made enough of a horlicks of Scotland to deter people from giving him greater powers."

Examples please. What have the SNP done that shows that they are running an incompetent government?

"Support for independence did, in a Braveheart-inspired peak, break 50 percent in the mid-1990s."

Braveheart, not again. I invoke Gibson's law defined by Guardian poster infrequentallele as:
"In the British media, any article about Scottish politics which mentions Braveheart is uninformed and ignorant drivel."

"P.S. Scotland’s economic performance since devolution has ranked amongst the worst in Europe"

Let's see. Scotland is still in the Union and its government survives on a block grant from Westminster. Therefore since its economic performance is abysmal that is a good argument for staying in the Union. A logic failure there as far as I can see.

Your year in Holyrood didn't do your powers of analysis much good.

Dougthedug

P.S It was Michael Martin's old Glasgow North East set where the by-election was held not Glasgow North West which is held by John Robertson (Labour).

Simon Rough, Manchester , England.

Its all a terrible pity but I can't see this old marriage going on much longer.
"Support for independence did, in a Braveheart-inspired peak, break 50 percent in the mid-1990s."

I suspect the wedded couple could have rubbed along for a good deal longer were it not for braveheart and all that but, though the English didn't say much, the Scottish exulting in what was really a spasm of racist and nationalist attack on the English and is still going on, has gone very deep south of the border.Most people just assume the union is going to end before too long.

Gone the old friendship and good natured joshing. In England nowadys its all guarded looks and "when can we be shot of them".

Salmond is asking the wrong lot. His best hope is the English.