Malky3

Not on the evidence of the Nationalists on this forum.......

Ach well, you wasted your vote. The SNP have failed to stop Boris, failed to stop Brexit, failed to land an Indy Ref 2, failed to build safe new hospitals, failed to manage the Scottish economy, failed to pay more in welfare, taxed Scots more than their English counterparts, failed to agree a design on some ferries with the net result of expensive rework at the cost to the Scottish taxpayer, and failed to maintain high standards in Scottish Education. And all this despite benefiting from a large contribution from the areas in the UK that are run in surplus through the Barnett Formula that has meant they have been able to spend considerably more than the country raises in tax revenues. If your vote wasn't an attempt to damage and destroy you fucked it up. You made the most empty headed choice you could possibly have made and you've backed a bunch of losers - and they aren't even good at that.

Another anti democracy Nationalist.

I have to agree with you here Kincardine over a number of your posts on this subject. The irony of the views of the likes of Sophia is that without the kind of wildlife management that is performed by estate owners and their game keepers we'd have less bio diversity with all sorts of species being driven to extinction with the uncontrolled, and even encouraged, growth in numbers of their natural predators.

You asked the question and didn't read the response. That's on you I'm afraid.

Of course it does. Same as I was a mild remainer.

Why are you driven to do "damage" with your vote? Personally I like to use my vote to elect or to vote for the option that I believe will create more opportunities and more wealth. Yet here you seem to be indicating that you like to use your vote to distroy opportunities and to hit us all in the pocket.

The steelworks was closed by the private company that owned them. British Steel had been sold off in 1988 and Ravenscraig was closed down in 1992. The mines were publicly owned. In 1983 the UK Government announced £3Bn worth of investment in the industry opening new collieries but in 1984 the NUM claimed that it had information that the NCB was going to close a number of collieries, a claim which led to the strike. The strike meant that previously viable mines were left unattended and unmaintained. Many of them flooded and the cost to re-establish them was too great to make then financially viable. However the point is that sentiment in Scotland at the time was very much that the UK Government should spend unlimited sums of money propping up those industries with subsidies and financial aid. Had an Independent Scottish government been hoarding vast sums of money - like the Norwegian government did - I am 100% certain that Scots would not have tolerated it.

The most sensible approach would be to stay in the UK, obviously, where we have enjoyed tremendous success as part of a hugely successful economy. I don't waste much time stressing over what economy Scotland should follow if a hypothetical Independence was ever to happen. What I do know however is whilst you use someone else's currency you do not have control of the fiscal levers that we are used to seeing the Bank Of England use to stimulate the UK economy. The fact that the SNP and the Nationalist movement can't verify with any certainty what currency they would use despite having 6 years to formulate a plan speaks volumes about just how stupid Scottish Independence would be.

So why are you still in England?

Ireland are not banning UK immigrants. There is no language barrier. It's not even far away. Indeed it's closer to parts of the Scottish west coast than the Scottish West Coast is to the East of Scotland. Infact even if one of your great great grandparents was a quarter Irish you'd be able to claim an Irish passport. If you fancy their economic prospects far more than you do those at home then why not do the obvious and go there to work and live? They would absolutely welcome you. Why spend all that time and energy trying to break up the UK, leaving Scots with the prospect of economic hardship for all of our lifetimes so we "might" be like Ireland?

I'd rather live in the UK than Ireland. If it was the other way round I'd happily move. You stay in the UK whilst wanting to break it up so we can be like a country you could easily move to. I wonder why that is?

So what? The UK is the worlds 5th largest economy. Ireland are 33rd on the list. The IMF forecasts stronger growth for the UK economy after Brexit than it does for Ireland who stay in the EU. The Irish Prime Minister says that the UK leaving the EU - particularly without a deal if it were to happen - would be catastrophic for the Irish economy. Yet nationalists, like you, want to put Scotland in EXACTLY that position. And the ONLY evidence you can point to is that Ireland pay in benefits to their middle class pensioners than the UK does.

Currency is not irrelevant. It's true we could use any currency we want, but whatever one we chose we'd be tied to following their economic policies. We would have no control of fiscal levers to stimulate growth with quantitative easing, or to adjust interest rates to suit our economy.

So how does that paint Scotlands future? You are looking at a past model that Norway adopted that meant not spending all of their wealth as soon as they got it. Do you HONESTLY think that the people of Scotland would have tolerated their government hoarding money whilst allowing the steelworks and coal mines to shut down? Do you honestly think Scots would have been happy to see large Scottish Government fiscal reserves whilst living in the slum housing that existed in the 70s? And even if the Scottish public were prepared to see massive unemployment and slum housing throughout the 70's whilst the government hoarded piles of cash, how is that relevant today where oil revenues are still low and the Scottish Government still relies on Barnett Formula hand outs to balance Scotlands books?

Ireland didn't flourish. Ireland had 80 years of economic strife after leaving the UK and it was ONLY when they finally joined the EU that they had a period of relative economic prosperity before going being bankrupted by the banking collapse in Ireland and economic stagnation yet again. If you think Ireland is a model we should follow you're barking mad.

That is utter conjecture. Not just because we have no idea what deals the UK will be able to get after Brexit, but also because we'll never get to find out what sort of terms a rather desperate Scottish Government would have to make to join the EU having told it's biggest customer base - the UK - to go and do one.

Not whilst you are committed to a period of Sterlingisation and not if you intend to join the Eurozone you won't! It is also absolutely clear that Scotland as an Independent country will have less money to spend than we do today. Sturgeon talks of many more years of following the same Tory spending policies she called "austerity" to cut the fiscal deficit. Only rabid Nationalists can't hear what they are being told.

Indeed it wasn't. What was at the top of most of the voters priorities was getting Brexit done and getting back to some semblance of political stability and economic certainty as quickly as possible. The Lib Dems and the Labour Party were decimated by their failure to see the growing impatience of the electorate at the way they were trying to frustrate the result of the referendum in 2016. I don't think the plight of the waspi women has much sympathy around the country other than with those who were directly affected. Labour Central Office was by that time just grasping around looking for issues that they thought might score them a pile of votes.

He doesn't care about those of us who live in Scotland. He lives in England.

The 2014 White Paper was not a view or a promise. It was the SNP's blueprint for an Independent Scotland. It was their political pledge to the nation. In it they told us that Scotland would achieve record levels of oil tax receipts. It stated that an Independent Scotland would be able to cut taxes and continue to deliver everything Scots were used to. It also told us that the Independence Referendum was a one in a generation vote. The SNP has been proven to be completely untrustworthy, totally dishonest, and it's fiscal ambitions been completely and utterly discredited. In 2015 they started to roll back on their previous pledges and in 2016 they spent less on campaigning for a remain vote in the EU referendum than they spent on the Glenrothes By Election. The fact that you continue to be a foghorn for their over used and discredited political tropes shows just how deeply brainwashed you are in the cult of nationalism. I bet your family wished you had chosen Scientology instead since that would be cheaper and less damaging.

I've answered this before. Scotland within the UK isn't a basket case. We perform just as well as 11 of the 14 regions the UK is divided into, in one of the richest economies in the world. And through the Barnett Formula, which is very generous to Scotland, we benefit from the surplus being generated by London, the South East and the East of England. Look, everyone on here regardless of political bias appears to accept the financial strength of London. As part of the Union we get to share in their prosperity. It's only the nationalists who appear to think we'd be better off financially if we cut off that supply of money. To try to give a simple analogy it's a bit like having a Great Aunt who has won Euromillions and has agreed to pay your mortgage for you every month. Telling her to stick her cash might make you feel better but it certainly isn't going to help you balance the books. The same is true in Scotland. The excess money we get and spend through the Barnett Formula is worth around about 90% of the entire Scottish NHS budget for a year. Splitting from the UK might give some in Scotland a bit more pride about ourselves, but it's not going to pay the bills to help continue to fund our current lifestyle - so the question you really should be asking is if Scotland was to become Independent what would you like to see the country give up to balance the books? Now just to be clear that analogy doesn't cover the pitfalls of separation either. Things like the economic viability of running a hard border between ourselves and England - as the EU would insist. Or the countries viability to continue to fund state pensions as our working population continues to get older and our citizens live longer. Or the economic damage that would be done by putting a trade barrier between us and our biggest customer base. Or the loss of investment that would occur due to the continued political instability in Scotland as our new - presumably socialist government - tries to set new tax levels and new business laws. The positive economic case for staying in the UK is that we continue to get our largest bills paid for us by sharing in the wealth and prosperity of one of the richest cities in the world, and being part of one of the richest economies in the world. The status quo might not sound like an exciting new dawn, but why piss away 300 years of tremendous success for a desperate whimsical and xenophobic punt with all our childrens financial futures? And why do so when the Nationalists can't give one positive economic argument for separation?

Still no Nationalists prepared to put forward a positive economic argument for Independence. Just more abuse, more red dots and more evidence their sub standard education failed them. I pity those stuck in the cult of Nationalism. Imagine being that idiot who voted for a Scottish Tax on the basis that it would be used to boost public services only to find its going to be wasted covering SNP incompitence in running ship builders, airports that no one uses and a hospital we cannot open. Imagine being that zealot who voted to stop democracy by stopping Brexit and Boris only to find the SNP could do neither. Imagine being that gullible you put money into an online fundraiser to help a millionaire ex politician fight 2 counts of attempted rape and 9 counts of sexual assault. Imagine still, despite everything, being so utterly brainwashed you still repost the propaganda being pumped out by the Nationalist machine no matter how far removed it is from reality. I salute the heroic 55% who saved Scotland from this zombie cult.

....and still there is no positive argument by the Nationalists to suggest that Scotland would ever be economically better off outside of the UK. You've got to wonder why these Nationalists are so keen to see Scotland as a separate country if they simply cannot make a positive economic argument for it. All we hear is that Westminster is shite, the Tories are shite, Scottish unionists should be killed, hunted, and terrorised and that anyone who voted Conservative, no matter their reasons why, is the devil incarnate so evil they don't deserve to live anymore. And then when you call them out on it they claim it's the Unionists who have lost their heads and who can't make a positive case for the Union. We should all celebrate the 55% Scottish heroes who kept our country out of the hands of these Nationalist extremists.

I wouldn't have murdered yes voters - just to make that perfectly clear. As for the rest of your post I have reported it to the moderators who I am sure will take issue in particular with your last sentence.