'Cybernat' and 'Yestapo'.
Naysayers may well be my most fucking hated term ever.
Realistic point based on facts? Naysayer!
'Cybernat' and 'Yestapo'.
Naysayers may well be my most fucking hated term ever.
Realistic point based on facts? Naysayer!
'Project FEAR' is another one.
Project Fear was defeated in the EU referendum by Project Lol, so they might need to think of a new one.
Project FEAR 2.0 is what I'm hearing.
If there is another one, can the PM set the terms in such a way that there won't be another one for 50 years if she wanted?
No. In our constitution, no Parliament can bind its successors (for me the fixed term parliaments act is a huge grey area for this reason).
This Alex Salmond quote about Scotland having a 'millennium-long history as a European nation' is some quality history. The Jacobite King was some old Bavarian last time, so if he is still alive it all slots into place nicely.
How has this bloke still got a job?
I was wondering about the religious divide in Scotland and what way that intersects with the independence thing and I was looking to see what religion Salmond and Sturgeon were. I ended up on the Religion in Scotland Wikipedia page and I was pretty shocked by the number responding 'no religion' in the 2011 census - 36.7%. By comparison, England is only 24.7%.
We're just less honest. Remember, Jim thinks he's religious despite not believing in God.
We've got more Muslims, Poles, and old people.
Franz, Duke of Bavaria. It might be worth restoring the Stuart line in Scotland. It would be interesting to see how the absolutist monarchy already in place would cope with the competition.Originally Posted by Lewis
What campaign promises were those?
Ultimately none of it matters. If it wasn't Brexit, it would be 'austerity'. If it wasn't 'austerity', it would be supposed failure to follow through on 'the Vow'. There are no circumstances in which the SNP are not going to agitate for independence. There is no question where the solution is not independence. That's fine if that's their view, but pretending this is somehow anybody else's fault is stretching it a bit. Nobody is stupid enough to think otherwise as well.
Surely it makes more sense to call a referendum when the effects of an EU exit are known? Judge the size of the shit when you're in it.
They will want to hold it beforehand because a) the UK government would be distracted and b) they could pretend that they'd somehow be able to stay in the EU without having to rejoin it as a third party.
If it's afterwards, neither situation applies. To be blunt, she just wants to as divisive and awkward as she possibly can because the UK government can't agree (they really can't during the Brexit negotiations) and it provides further material for maximum grievance.
They know full well the sky isn't going to fall in, so they need to harness the lingering possibility that it might while they still can.
There's also that. Anyone who buys the argument that they should abandon the UK single market for the EU single market deserves every day of the sadistic austerity it would bring about.
They would be abandoning both, and have been told as much.
The 'offer' will presumably be a choice between the two, however.
Plus they would have to join the Euro. Which is a point. If we fail to get a 'deal' out of Europe, the Scotch will have to simultaneously argue that it makes it more important for them to stay whilst claiming to be better placed to get a tailor-made agreement of their own upon re-entry. Good luck.
What kind of significant dates have we got to work with here? 25th May 2020? 25 years since the release of Braveheart. Too late for the SNP I would imagine.
Something to coincide with a significant date related to this?
This is the key reason why May should force the delay until after we've left. It's a straight choice between the Euro/EU market and Sterling/UK market. The argument that they wouldn't actually be able to join the EU with their lol-worthy budget deficit of 9.5% would no doubt be swiftly brushed over.
The lol you could have if they voted leave and we immediately suspended the Barnett formula to TAKE BACK CONTROL of our £9bn fiscal transfer would be great.
That would be interesting. Would the Europeans prioritise 1) their deficit rules; 2) expanding; or 3) adding a not completely worthless economy to the Euro. You could see them turning a blind eye to the deficit business in return for them taking the single currency on, because I find it hard to imagine that they would turn down the chance to add another country to the bonfire.
They wouldn't bend the rules. Ireland might accept it despite the shafting they took and Portugal is a non-country, but the Greeks would presumably go apeshit if Scotland was offered some sort of special economic deal and veto it. It requires unanimity after all, and you could see the Spanish establishing the most awkward position possible and vetoing any 'special' or 'accelerated' deal so as to avoid giving any sort of succour whatsoever to Catalonian separatists.
So assuming they have their 9.5% deficit, there's no way to square the circle beyond imposing huge spending cuts across the board. They'd be doing that whilst severing themselves from a '64% market' in pursuit of a '15% market' in a few years' time, with the 'big oil' that was previously plugging the gap evidently non-existent. Presuming they didn't get their currency union, they'd have to issue a new Scottish currency pegged to the pound whilst establishing a new central bank and trying to get financing on the international markets having just threatened (presumably) to default on their share of UK debt as revenge for not getting said union.
The economic argument is terribly one-sided, really, so they'll need to stick to emotive arguments like thinly-veiled anti-English RACISM and nationalistic jingoism.
Before anyone makes the comparison, the £9bn fiscal transfer is the equivalent of about £1,800 per person from Westminster to Edinburgh. If the UK was receiving similar subsidy from Brussels, the total would be £115bn. If we were getting a fiscal transfer of £115bn a year from Brussels, the Remain vote would have been about 80%. Whilst there are some similarities in the wider arguments, the core economic arguments are clearly very different.
Do you guys actually want Scotland to stay? Because you don't actually seem to like them very much.
The SNP aren't Scotland, much as you may be led to think otherwise by the coverage that mob get.
Yes, but for purely sentimental reasons. We would be better off without them on most actual measures.
Also this. There's an argument that if Sturgeon had her referendum on a UK-wide basis, she'd be more likely to actually win it.
That is a good way of putting it. We must be covering their health service in that case (cue the entire shit No campaign being based around that), so fair play to them for keeping life expectancy low.
We're certainly paying for their education system, where standards are sinking like a stone and we're subsidising rich Scots to go to university for free.
Sentimentality? If you really think they're a dead weight, you should be out there campaigning for them to leave.
You guys can't even bring yourselves to pretend to like them when you're saying they should stay. So why bother? It sounds like a toxic relationship.
I don't want them.
Most of the country is a drain on about three productive regions, so it's just a statement of fact rather than an argument either way.
I think we could have a very healthy union (you could kill all of this stone dead by devolving lots of powers to local government across the entire United Kingdom, removing the need for 'national' parliaments, but obviously the cretins who decide these things would recoil at ceding any sort of power), so the prospect of keeping the three century-long victory parade on the road appeals more than raking a bit of money back in which would only be spent on shite anyway.
Again, you're confusing finding the SNP contemptible and disliking Scotland as a place or as a country. You can be forgiven for this given the state of the coverage, but they're not synonymous nor should they be considered so.Sentimentality? If you really think they're a dead weight, you should be out there campaigning for them to leave.
You guys can't even bring yourselves to pretend to like them when you're saying they should stay. So why bother? It sounds like a toxic relationship.
My Facebook is utterly awash with propaganda now. I was quite satisfied to see occassional simmering, bitter seethe from the Nats.
Scottish nationalism itself having to pretend to be left wing is what costs it credibility. The SNP of the 1980s was basically a Scottish version of UKIP, they are only doing the lefty stuff more recently in order to gain ex-Labour voters, but nobody is fooled. The common denominator of the two is of course Alex Salmond, the slimiest man in the world, one minute inviting Trump for tea and those shit muffin things the Scots pass off as pancakes, the next refusing to have him in the country.
The reason they've got into this position is because Scottish Labour is/was one of the most corrupt political bodies in Europe.
Sorry from what I'm seeing nearly 50% of people are fooled.
Why don't you guys just cut the UK off at about Birmingham latitude (slightly below Birmingham probably) and be done with it?
If it was a Yorkshire referendum I'd be all for letting them drift off into the sea. Boring bastards.
You know, Jim, name something in this world that you do like.
Koreans.
I like cheese and I like Henrik Stenson. Surely that is enough to qualify as jovial.
Liking cheese is like saying you like air because it's nice to breathe it. Liking Stenson is a poor way to woo a Swede as all you have to really like in our books is Zlatan and unless you do, no other athlete will compensate.
Don't worry though, you won my heart back in Pompey way back when, by downing a Carlsberg with great panache.
Still, maybe you should cheer up a bit.
I'm not sure I buy Jimmy drinking lager, it must have been someone else.
He was quite peer pressured into it I think, but he took it on as a champ. Possibly for the first and last time.
I hope he was pressured into it by the Koreans and not some LADS.
I drink little else tbh (well, wine these days. And gin. Christ.)
What's wrong with gin?
Gin is what wine mums drink before they're wine mums.
Of course, the library assistant from Ballymena has his finger on the pulse.
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