Category Archives: english independence

17 WEEKS TO 23RD JUNE – UK’S INDEPENDENCE DAY?


17 WEEKS TO 23RD JUNE – UK’S INDEPENDENCE DAY?


Some people have pointed out that the day after the EU Referendum vote on the 23rd June, when hopefully the result will be announced, is the day on which the blockbuster film sequel “Independence Day 2” is being launched. Let’s hope that is a prophetic coincidence!

Now that the referendum campaign has in effect started inevitably we have had the Remain camp talking up “Project Fear” to try and start frightening people to stay within the EU.

Their argument is that leaving the EU is a jump into the unknown by the country and that those in favour of Leave will be unable to say what exactly the deal will be. This is of course true and it is no use denying it, although arguments can be put forward to show that the risk is not really as serious as is being suggested.

Nevertheless since it is true that those in favour of Leave cannot be precise as to what the arrangements will be it is, in my view, necessary for those arguing for Leave to talk about the uncertainties of remaining within the EU

Whilst the BBC etc. have been keen to publicise the uncertainties of Leave what hasn’t been so well publicised is the uncertainties of Remain.

In particular do we want England broken up into the EU “Regions”? Do we want the UK to become twelve EU “Regions” within a Federal EU? Do we want an EU army? Do we want an EU police force? Do we want an EU judicial system? That is if the progress to “ever closer union” continues.

In the alternative there may be a messy breakdown as further problems with the Greek bailout becomes critical again and with the imminence of financial collapse in the Italian banks. Quite apart from those other parts of the EU which look more likely to want to leave, such as France if Marie Le Pen wins the Presidential election next year? What do you think?

I have also been thinking of what slogan would appeal to English nationalists that has people thinking about this kind of issue and I suggest:-

‘Stop the EU breaking up England. Vote to Leave

What do you think?

For English nationalists there is also the very interesting prospect that many of the likely scenarios in the EU Referendum will undermine the UK. Here is an extremely useful and interesting article by Professor Rose of Strathclyde University which sets this out and in which he has crunched the numbers for us:-

Will the EU referendum trigger the break-up of the United Kingdom?


If England drags Scotland out of the EU, there will be trouble. But if Scotland keeps England inside, it could be double.

On the night of the EU referendum, there will be three counts that matter. The first will show whether there is an overall British majority for staying in or leaving the EU. The second will show whether English voters are on the winning or the losing side. The third will show how likely it is that the United Kingdom will stay together.

That might sound drastic to some readers. But large differences in support for the EU among different nations of the UK mean that many potential results are bad for the Union. Unless England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all agree in their answers to the referendum question, factions in each will be able to reject the result as illegitimate.

England contributes five sixths of the British electorate. To produce a UK majority for leaving the EU, regardless of the preference of other Britons, would therefore require 61 percent of English voters to endorse Brexit.

Opinion polls, however, show English voters tend to be evenly divided, and often in favour of Brexit. Even if a British poll reported 51 per cent in favour of remaining in the EU, a majority of English respondents would be in favour of Brexit. This is because other UK nations are much more pro-European.

The National Centre for Social Research calculates that 55 per cent of Welsh, 64 per cent of Scots and 75 per cent of Ulster voters endorse the European Union on the basis of more than a dozen polls taken in the past year.

These numbers are also more stable than the equivalent figures in England.

So collectively, Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish voters will contribute about 11 per cent of the pro-EU vote. English voters would only have to add another 40 per cent to the UK total to create an absolute majority keeping the UK in Europe. But that would mean most English voters had endorsed leaving the European Union – only to have their wishes overriden by the other UK nations.

On the other hand, if 53 per cent of English voters voted to leave the EU, this would be enough to take the UK out of Europe against the preference of a majority of Scots, Welsh and Ulster voters.

The only result which would keep the UK united would be a narrow English majority in favour of remaining in the EU. In that scenario, all four parts of the United Kingdom were of one mind. For this to be true we would expect to see a UK-wide majority of more than 53 per cent.

On the basis of current polling, that is unlikely. Of 30 major British polls I have analysed, only ten reported a pro-EU majority so large that most English respondents agreed with their fellow Britons. An additional 13 polls showed majorities of up to 53 percent in favour of remaining in the EU, but such a narrow lead implies that most English people would be held in Europe against their will. And seven of the 30 polls actually showed enough English opposition to the EU to overpower the other nations’ leads.

A conflict between Britain’s nations on future relations with the EU would be a huge headache to the Prime Minister. Part of the argument for Scottish independence in 2014 was that England would no longer be able to “impose” decisions on Scotland. An English-led withdrawal of the UK from the European Union could trigger another referendum in Scotland on the linked issues of leaving the UK and joining Europe. That would confront the Westminster government with simultaneously negotiating the UK’s withdrawal from Europe and Scotland’s withdrawal from the UK.

Yet the opposite outcome – a UK majority to remain in the EU, and an English majority to leave – would also be a nightmare for Downing Street. Conservative Eurosceptics could denounce the result as illegitimate, but it would be politically impossible for the Eurosceptics to win a referendum on the issue of England withdrawing from the United Kingdom.

Even if a narrow English majority went along with other Britons and voted to stay in the EU, there could still be an absolute majority of Conservatives voting to leave. Determined Eurosceptics could then adopt Jeremy Corbyn’s doctrine that the party leader should represent his party’s members. This argument could be used as a weapon to extract promises of further anti-EU actions from Cabinet ministers wanting to succeed David Cameron as the next Conservative prime minister.

Whatever the feelings of English voters on the emotive issue of Europe, there is no escaping the fact that the outcome of the forthcoming EU referendum will be decided by the total vote of the United Kingdom. That is the price England pays for being British.

Richard Rose is a professor of public policy at University of Strathclyde Glasgow and a commissioning fund awardee of The UK in a Changing Europe

Click here for the original article>>> Will the EU referendum trigger the break-up of the United Kingdom? – Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/eureferendum/12114578/Will-the-EU-referendum-trigger-the-break-up-the-United-Kingdom.html

EVIL BE TO HIM WHO EVEL THINKS IT?


EVIL BE TO HIM WHO EVEL THINKS IT?


There is the famous story of how, in a fit of petulance, Edward III decided that his Order of Knighthood wasn’t going to be of the Arthurian Roundtable but rather of the Garter, when his courtiers sniggered at a garter falling off Edward’s mistress’s stocking and which he had bent down to pick up. He is said to have responded ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense’, the motto of the garter (meaning evil be to him who evil thinks it).

The Conservative’s House of Commons procedural EVEL tinkering which gives predominantly Conservative MPs a veto in the House of Commons over Bills which the Speaker of the House certifies as being English only has caused a flurry of comment. Some of it utterly hysterical, especially from the Scottish contingent, whether they be SNP or Labour; also, indeed, some Scots representing English seats for the Conservative Party and also the Northern Irish Unionists and Welsh MPs commentators. Generally English commentators tend to think that it is a fairly minor alteration which is merely a nod in the direction of English interests.

As English Democrats we of course say it is far too little to give a proper voice to our Nation’s interests. However one of the more interesting and thoughtful articles written about this has come from the Economist’s constitutional commentator, writing as Bagehot’s Notebook. I reproduce his article below but I think the importance of the article is that it highlights two significant issues.

One is that there is a fundamental choice facing English people in the fairly near future. This is whether the English Nation is happy to be broken up into some sort of bogus regions; whether they be the nine EU “Regions” or Osborne’s half baked “Northern Powerhouses”. What the article shows is that the only viable alternative to Regionalisation is Independence. That is very much the English Democrats’ analysis too and that is, of course, one of the reasons why, as English nationalists, we support English Independence.

The other point that he mentions, but has not yet fully thought through, is the new politicisation of the role of Speaker.

The current Speaker, John Bercow, with his background considering himself to be British not English, will be very likely to certify that any bill where there is any doubt is a British Bill and therefore all MPs have equal rights over it. But when John Bercow stands down or is replaced there will inevitably be a much more hotly contested election than before to be the next Speaker. English MPs, who are moving in the direction of English nationalism, will want to make sure that the next Speaker is much more concerned about English interests than John Bercow is.

On the other hand the Scottish contingent is certain to want a Scot, whether he represents a Scottish seat or an English seat, to try to make sure that there is never a veto on Scottish MPs having a full say on anything which they want to have a say on.

In the meanwhile here is the Bagehot article from the Economist :-

English-only votes set Britain on the path to federalisation—or break-up

Oct 22nd 2015, 17:54 by BAGEHOT

THE House of Commons has just voted in favour (by 312 MPs to 270) of English votes for English laws (EVEL). Superficially a piece of legislative housekeeping—it became law by standing order—this measure fundamentally changes the way the United Kingdom functions. The country should be an unwieldy, unstable beast: few multi-part polities in which one segment is much mightier than the other work out. But Britain’s union, 84% of which is England, has lasted for three centuries because the English have for centuries allowed their political identity to be blurred into that of the British state (as I argued more fully in a recent column, pasted below this post). Today’s vote draws a line under that; a faint one, perhaps, but a line nonetheless.

Its roots lie in the febrile final days of the campaign leading up to Scotland’s independence referendum last September. Polls suggesting that the Out side was narrowly ahead panicked unionists in London, who issued a “vow” promising extensive new powers for Edinburgh. On the morning after the In victory David Cameron, in a speech outside 10 Downing Street, argued that it was also time for England to gain some self-determination. The moment had come, he argued, for EVEL: a system giving MPs for seats in England precedence in parliamentary votes no longer relevant to the devolved parts of the United Kingdom that now control swathes of their own domestic policies (most notably Scotland). The Conservatives used this pledge to tar Labour, opposed to EVEL, as the vassal of the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) in the run up to the election in May. Duly elected with a majority, the Tories have now enacted it.

I struggle to find the measure particularly offensive. It is wrong that Scottish MPs get to rule on bills concerning, say, only English hospitals. Banning them from participating in such votes would create the risk of two separate governments; one English, one British (in the event of a Labour government reliant on its Scottish MPs, for example). So EVEL rightly gives English MPs a veto, but also requires all bills to pass the House of Commons as a whole. As compromises go, it could be worse.

Still, the risk of a “two-tier” Commons is real. In a chamber where all are notionally equal Scottish MPs will be less powerful than English ones. EVEL greatly inflates the role of the speaker, whose job it will be to decide whether a bill is English-only—and thus whether the English majority should wield a veto. In practice, he will generally rule on the side of Britishness. This, and the fact that further fiscal powers will soon travel north to Edinburgh (meaning that even budget votes could generate expectations of an English veto), will eventually render EVEL insufficient. It seems to me that this movie has two possible endings.

The first, happier one is federalisation. Giving England power over things that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland already control would clear the way to a Parliament and government in Downing Street responsible only for matters affecting all British citizens equally: foreign affairs, defence, monetary policy and so forth. An English Parliament risks exacerbating the problem that for centuries has been smothered in the mushy blur of Englishness and Britishness: the unworkable rivalry between any English government and a British one. But English devolution could yet take different forms. Sub-national authorities in England are already assuming powers unthinkable a few short years ago: Greater Manchester will soon run its own health service, for example. The long-term solution to Britain’s constitutional quandaries is probably a federal system in which Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Newcastle, Bristol, Cardiff, Southampton, Edinburgh and Belfast meet together, on equal terms, in London.

The second and more likely possible outcome is separation. English self-denial has been the glue holding the union together. It is melting. Both EVEL and the broader rise in an English sense of identity (comprehensively outlined in a 2012 paper by the IPPR, a think-tank) suggest that the United Kingdom is experiencing a great normalisation. Its constitutional imbalance is finally asserting itself. A ship that has sailed forth for many years despite a strong tilt is finally listing towards the waves. Last year’s Scottish referendum—and the strong appetite for a rerun evinced at the recent Scottish National Party conference—suggests that it is already taking on water. EVEL may prove the point at which it tips too far; at which England’s reemergence accelerates and at which the ship capsizes.

Bagehot

THE 50th ANNIVERSARY OF SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL’S STATE FUNERAL


THE 50th ANNIVERSARY OF SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL’S STATE FUNERAL


Peter Hitchens has written a superb nostalgic piece in the Mail on Sunday which I couldn’t better, so I have re-posted it below.

I can however add a personal element, which is that my Father, then a Captain, was one of the Officers of Churchill’s old regiment, the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars, who carried his medals, orders and decorations in the funeral procession. My Father is shown in the centre of the above picture above the coffin and immediately on the left of one of the heralds.

The one thing (but rather an important omission) that is missing from Peter Hitchens’ article is the conclusion to be drawn from his final comments. He is right that Britain isn’t that country now but he doesn’t mention that it now serves no useful purpose for the English Nation. It is high time to be rid of it and for England to re-emerge from its choking embrace!

Here is Peter Hitchen’s article:-

So uniquely British, but funeral tells a tale of a different country

What a strange thing it is to see my own memories harden into history, and what is, for me, a vivid and living experience, turn into a blurred and fading piece of film.

Half a century ago, at my strict-regime boarding school on the edge of Dartmoor, we were let off our normal Saturday morning lessons of Latin grammar, French vocabulary, rivers and capitals of South America, mostly taught by fierce, bristling gents with military or Naval ranks.

Instead, we were instructed to sit in rows on hard chairs as the school’s one small black-and-white TV was hoisted on to a high shelf. And for three utterly memorable hours we watched in silence as the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill passed slowly through London.

Outside (and no opportunity was normally missed to make us go outside) it was a freezing day of steely skies and pitiless winds, no small matter if you were forced to wear short trousers, as we all were.

Inside, in the comparative warmth, most of us were, I think, mesmerised, so that we forgot we were watching on a screen not much bigger than a breadboard. I certainly saw and remembered the event as a huge panorama.

Afterwards, we knew, quite simply, that something important had passed from the earth for ever, and that our small country was diminished and bereft.

Nobody who came afterwards would be as we had been before we watched it. By comparison, the assassination of President Kennedy is nothing in my recollections.

Last week, I managed to watch a rare, hard-to-find recording of Sir Winston’s funeral. It is the wrong shape for a modern TV screen, and sometimes the picture swims or blurs.

It is, of course, in black and white, but that only increases the feeling that you are watching something impossibly long ago.

The London of January 1965 is almost as distant from me now as the outbreak of the First World War was from us then. Most of the people who appear in the film are now dead, or impossibly old.

The actual procession looks, at many moments, like one of those jerky old films from the Austro-Hungarian empire that they show to illustrate how hopelessly old-fashioned the pre-1914 world is.

Bluejackets in the sort of uniforms they wore at Jutland pull the gun carriage on which the heavy coffin rests (a tradition in state funerals since the Army’s horses kicked over the traces at Queen Victoria’s obsequies, and sailors ran forward to take over the task).

The cortege moves at a mesmerisingly slow pace, swaying strangely to the music of a dozen military bands, thumping out dirges – occasionally interrupted by those uniquely British parade-ground yells, echoing for miles in the freezing air, as sergeant-majors keep their men in line.

The male members of the Churchill family walk behind the coffin, wearing what must surely be the last black silk top hats seen in London, like a Bolshevik caricature of greedy capitalists.

Lady Churchill, vastly veiled in black, rides in an enormous, sombre coach (lent by the Royal Family, but not from their better-known fleet of gilded carriages).

The coachman riding atop it is cloaked and muffled like something out of the Pickwick Papers, reaching back into a past that some of those present would still just have remembered.

From even further back come the Heralds of the College of Arms, most of them ancient men on sticks, looking a little like animated playing cards in their medieval tabards.

A huge drum horse, loaded with war-drums, leads the bands as its ancestor must have done at Blenheim and Waterloo.

The dead man’s orders and medals, borne on cushions, are carried behind him and arrayed by his coffin when it reaches St Paul’s Cathedral, where it is greeted by a man holding up the City of London’s mighty, ancient, black Sword of Mourning.

It is all so old that it was archaic in 1965, and I doubt it could be done now with a straight face. Yet it would have been as normal in Winston Churchill’s youth as it is outlandish now.

The sense of a last moment of something that is passing is emphasised by the figure of the Queen, not as she is now, but a woman coming to the end of her youth, worn by cares and powerfully moved by the heavy panoply and drapery of death on display.

Beside her, Prince Charles is still an awkward schoolboy.

But in one way the most moving faces are those in the crowds – of men and women then young, now pensioners, and above all, those of the soldiers in the bearer party who struggle, with increasing strain and tension, to lift, carry and lay down the weight of the lead-lined oaken coffin.

These are the days before pizza, milkshakes and sugary drinks fattened and blurred all our features into a bland and puffy sameness.

They look so British, in a hollow, hungry, wartime way, that it almost breaks the heart to see them.

The country they and I grew up in has entirely ceased to exist.


Here is a link to the original Article>>> PETER HITCHENS: So uniquely British, but funeral tells a tale of a different country | Daily Mail Online

English not voting for independence would be "an astonishing act of self-harm"! – George Monbiot’s logic?

All of what George Monbiot says in his Guardian article below would apply equally to England.

I must say that it is a great article and I would certainly have given him full marks if he had submitted it to me when I was teaching and he was he was a very academically bright pupil at Stowe Public School back in the early eighties, if only there wasn’t a slight confusion between the ideas of England and of Britain. Actually, of course, that confusion may be the Guardian editors’s deliberate interpolation in their subheading and not what Gorge wrote at all.

Here is George’s article:-

Scots voting no to independence would be an astonishing act of self-harm

England is dysfunctional, corrupt and vastly unequal. Who on earth would want to be tied to such a country?


Imagine the question posed the other way round. An independent nation is asked to decide whether to surrender its sovereignty to a larger union. It would be allowed a measure of autonomy, but key aspects of its governance would be handed to another nation. It would be used as a military base by the dominant power and yoked to an economy over which it had no control.

It would have to be bloody desperate. Only a nation in which the institutions of governance had collapsed, which had been ruined economically, which was threatened by invasion or civil war or famine might contemplate this drastic step. Most nations faced even with such catastrophes choose to retain their independence – in fact, will fight to preserve it – rather than surrender to a dominant foreign power.

So what would you say about a country that sacrificed its sovereignty without collapse or compulsion; that had no obvious enemies, a basically sound economy and a broadly functional democracy, yet chose to swap it for remote governance by the hereditary elite of another nation, beholden to a corrupt financial centre?

What would you say about a country that exchanged an economy based on enterprise and distribution for one based on speculation and rent? That chose obeisance to a government that spies on its own citizens, uses the planet as its dustbin, governs on behalf of a transnational elite that owes loyalty to no nation, cedes public services to corporations, forces terminally ill people to work and can’t be trusted with a box of fireworks, let alone a fleet of nuclear submarines? You would conclude that it had lost its senses.

So what’s the difference? How is the argument altered by the fact that Scotland is considering whether to gain independence rather than whether to lose it? It’s not. Those who would vote no – now, a new poll suggests, a rapidly diminishing majority – could be suffering from system justification. System justification is defined as the “process by which existing social arrangements are legitimised, even at the expense of personal and group interest”. It consists of a desire to defend the status quo, regardless of its impacts. It has been demonstrated in a large body of experimental work, which has produced the following surprising results.

System justification becomes stronger when social and economic inequality is more extreme. This is because people try to rationalise their disadvantage by seeking legitimate reasons for their position. In some cases disadvantaged people are more likely than the privileged to support the status quo. One study found that US citizens on low incomes were more likely than those on high incomes to believe that economic inequality is legitimate and necessary.

It explains why women in experimental studies pay themselves less than men, why people in low-status jobs believe their work is worth less than those in high-status jobs, even when they’re performing the same task, and why people accept domination by another group. It might help to explain why so many people in Scotland are inclined to vote no.

The fears the no campaigners have worked so hard to stoke are – by comparison with what the Scots are being asked to lose – mere shadows. As Adam Ramsay points out in his treatise Forty-Two Reasons to Support Scottish Independence, there are plenty of nations smaller than Scotland that possess their own currencies and thrive. Most of the world’s prosperous nations are small: there are no inherent disadvantages to downsizing.

Remaining in the UK carries as much risk and uncertainty as leaving. England’s housing bubble could blow at any time. We might leave the European Union. Some of the most determined no campaigners would take us out: witness Ukip’s intention to stage a “pro-union rally” in Glasgow on 12 September. The union in question, of course, is the UK, not Europe. This reminds us of a crashing contradiction in the politics of such groups: if our membership of the EU represents an appalling and intolerable loss of sovereignty, why is the far greater loss Scotland is being asked to accept deemed tolerable and necessary.

The Scots are told they will have no control over their own currency if they leave the UK. But they have none today. The monetary policy committee is based in London and bows to the banks. The pound’s strength, which damages the manufacturing Scotland seeks to promote, reflects the interests of the City.

To vote no is to choose to live under a political system that sustains one of the rich world’s highest levels of inequality and deprivation. This is a system in which all major parties are complicit, which offers no obvious exit from a model that privileges neoliberal economics over other aspirations. It treats the natural world, civic life, equality, public health and effective public services as dispensable luxuries, and the freedom of the rich to exploit the poor as non-negotiable.

Its lack of a codified constitution permits numberless abuses of power. It has failed to reform the House of Lords, royal prerogative, campaign finance and first-past-the-post voting (another triumph for the no brigade). It is dominated by media owned by tax exiles, who, instructing their editors from their distant chateaux, play the patriotism card at every opportunity. The concerns of swing voters in marginal constituencies outweigh those of the majority; the concerns of corporations with no lasting stake in the country outweigh everything. Broken, corrupt, dysfunctional, retentive: you want to be part of this?

Independence, as more Scots are beginning to see, offers people an opportunity to rewrite the political rules. To create a written constitution, the very process of which is engaging and transformative. To build an economy of benefit to everyone. To promote cohesion, social justice, the defence of the living planet and an end to wars of choice.

To deny this to yourself, to remain subject to the whims of a distant and uncaring elite, to succumb to the bleak, deferential negativity of the no campaign, to accept other people’s myths in place of your own story: that would be an astonishing act of self-repudiation and self-harm. Consider yourselves independent and work backwards from there; then ask why you would sacrifice that freedom.

Twitter: @georgemonbiot

Click here for the original >>> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/scots-independence-england-scotland

Disunited Kingdom The Dutch view. How united are the British? In two weeks time the Scots will vote on independence. Meanwhile, the Northern Irish feel ignored, the English feel unheard, and even the Welsh want more autonomy. A journey through a country that finds itself in a state of existential confusion.

The Dutch equivalent of the Guardian, NRC Handelsblad, Dutch national newspaper, has published an analysis of the disintegration of the UK. 

I think it is interesting so I am republishing it here. 

I don’t think that the author, Titia Ketelaar, is exactly on the money about England but at least she has thought about it unlike most of our British journalists!
 

And well done Eddie Bone of the CEP too!

Here is a translation of her article:-
 

Disunited Kingdom

How united are the British? In two weeks time the Scots will vote on independence. Meanwhile, the Northern Irish feel ignored, the English feel unheard, and even the Welsh want more autonomy. A journey through a country that finds itself in a state of existential confusion.


By Titia Ketelaar

,,I believe in the United Kingdom, head, heart and soul. We’ve achieved so much together, we can go on achieving great things together, so I hope that, when the time comes, Scots will vote to stay in our shared home.”

Those words were spoken by David Cameron, the British prime minister, when he was in Scotland. In two weeks time the Scots will have a referendum on whether they want to be independent.

But is there still a shared home? How united is the kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern-Ireland if one country in all earnestness debates independence? If the smallest country – Wales – asks openly for more autonomy? If some of those in the always troublesome Northern Ireland see this Scottish referendum as a new chance for a united Ireland? And if in England discontentment grows because the other three have their own parliaments and own budgets?

The Scots will, say the latest polls, vote in favour of the union with the others. But that won’t solve the existential confusion in which the United Kingdom finds itself. Because if the referendum debate in Scotland has shown anything, it is how much friction is emerging between the four countries that form one kingdom.

The United Kingdom was never a marriage between equals, socially nor economically. Wales was incorporated, Ireland occupied. Only England and Scotland were from 1707, equal partners. The result is a country that is neither a Unitarian state nor a federation. It has one monarch, two state religions, two official languages, three legal systems, four educational and health services. In its current form it is not even that old: it has existed since the Republic of Ireland became independent in the 1920s.

Travelling through all four countries, looking for what unites the British, it is striking how great the differences are. Of course: everywhere you’ll find a Marks & Spencer’s, a Costa Coffee, Boots, WH Smith. Millions watch Great British Bake Off and Eastenders, the nation’s favourite dish is chicken tikka massala. At a village fair in the middle of nowhere in Dorset, you can find Irish dancers, in the streets of Cardiff an English bagpipe player, in Scotland an English afternoon tea, in Northern-Ireland Scottish bagpipe players.

But it is surprising that Scotland, Wales and Northern-Ireland have not become more English. They are other countries, with a different sort of humour, different expectations, different politics.

There are no ethic contrasts, but the political ones are increasing. Fifteen years ago, ‘London’, the centre of power, transferred some competences to new parliaments in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. That so-called devolution has, without a doubt, enlarged the feeling of ‘otherness’. The countries are now responsible, for instance, for the NHS, the National Health Service. And it was precisely the right to free health care that bonded the British.

Moreover, they hardly know each other. ,,Try to find English news when you’re up in Scotland”, Fraser Nelson, editor of the English Conservative magazine The Spectator, himself a Scot, once said. In the Welsh’ Western Mail British (read: English) news can be found on page 8. Under the header ‘world news’.

Even the BBC News is no common denominator. ,,It doesn’t chime with my expectations. English education is as relevant to me as a story about Dutch education.”

,,There is no longer any emotional investment”, pointed out Jim Gallagher at the lecture earlier this year at the London School of Economics. He was the senior civil servant responsible for devolution: ,,I have to pinch myself. It is actually possible that the United Kingdom ceases to be.”

The Scots feel different


Devolution was the answer to the growth of Scottishness. The feeling of Britishness has diluted ever since the last common enemy was vanquished in the Second World War. In the last census more British called themselves Scottish (62 percent), English (60 percent), Welsh (58 percent) or Northern Irish (29 percent) than ever before.

But identity is only indirectly the reason for the current existential confusion. The Scots haven’t become more Scottish in the fifteen years since their own parliament was created. ,,This referendum is not about Scottishness, this is about sovereignty”, says Angus Robertson, the SNP party leader in the House of Commons. ,,A lot of ‘no’ voters feel as Scottish as ‘yes’ voters.”

That is true in Ceres, a village in Fife. It is the weekend after the anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn (1314), the last battle the Scots conquered the English, when traditionally Ceres holds its Highland Games. Seven hundred years ago, the men came back from combat, and showed their might on Bow Butt, the green in the centre of the village.

It’s hard to find anything more Scottish. Broad-shouldered men in kilts throw cabers, sheaf and stones. Bagpipe players from around the country are competing against each other, and little girls, with legs that seem to have been made from elastic, are dancing to the music.

On the edge of Bow Butts, and in the only pub the village has, an equal amount of nationalists and unionists can be found. Huw Bell, the Conservative candidate for the House of Commons says: ,,I feel British with shades of Scottishness.” John Mitchell, whose family has ,,as long as we can remember” lived in the grey house next to the green, says that independence is ,,ridiculous.” But bagpipe player Greg calls himself ,,a card carrying Yes-voter”. And PE-teacher Richard Gallagher says he is ,,a flag waving Braveheart”.

The difference is how they feel about ‘London’. Similarly, the referendum debate has divided all Scots in those who believe Scotland is better off with the English, and those who believe Scotland doesn’t need the English. Bell point to the advantages of a large union: ,,Together we are stronger in a globalised world.” Gallagher says: ,,If you see the poverty in this area, you can’t tell me the union works.”

A lot of Scots reason in the same way. They feel that London imposes measures: from Thatcher’s poll tax, to the closure of docks and steel factories, the privatization cult of New Labour, and the bedroom tax brought on by the current government. That sentiment is even stronger when the United Kingdom is governed by the Conservatives, like now, who represent only one Scottish constituency in the House of Commons.

,,Labour hoped devolution would kill nationalism – even the SNP thought that”, says former civil servant Jim Gallagher. ,,We were building on the fact that there already were separate institutions.”

But devolution increased the feeling of otherness. The Scottish government makes different choices in those areas it has powers – education, health care, transport, agriculture. It means the Scots have free higher education, free medication, free elderly care. The English don’t.

To add to that: the British government is cutting exactly that what binds the British: welfare. It is one of the reasons the Better Off Together campaigners, who have to prevent the Scottish voting for independence, is struggling to convey the message of one nation that shares the good and the bad.

And if anything has been achieved these last months, it is that the Scots have again realised how different they are. ,,This debate has done something to this country that I don’t fully understand yet, but feel. We have gone through an existential self-examination about who we are and how we want to be governed. Even if the answer to the question whether we want to be independent will be ‘no’, the union will feel less unconditional.”

Wales wants to be autonomous


In Wales they also say that less and less speaks for the union. Not that the Welsh want to be independent – only 10 percent is in favour. On its own, Wales couldn’t make it: there is no oil or gas in the ground, the coal mines have long shut or are no longer cost-effective, and the economy is based around the public sector, hard hit by austerity measures. And whereas Scotland has its own legislative system, Wales had not.

But even here, differences are growing. Especially in those areas the Welsh Assembly, Wales’ parliament, has a mandate. ,,Wales distinguishes itself by doing nothing”, says Lee Waters, director of the think-tank Institute for Welsh Affairs: ,,England is leaving us: the Conservatives in England are letting go of the welfare state, Wales isn’t. England chooses different final exams, Wales doesn’t. The same is happening with the NHS.” In England health care is increasingly privatised.

He sees another crisis on the horizon: Brexit. Some English want the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. But Wales, as a poor region, is dependent on European subsidies.

At first devolution had little appeal for the Welsh. It was forced upon them when the Scots got a parliament. In Scotland civil society, unions and churches where at the forefront of self-determination, in Wales only half of the population went out to vote. For the Welsh the United Kingdom had in some way been the saviour of Welshness. The inclusiveness of Britishness meant that Welshness was never swamped. A Welshman could be Welsh and British at the same time.

It is early August when Wales celebrates its Welshness. In Llanelli the annual Eisteddfod takes place, an enormous cultural festival. Since 1167 it keeps Welshness (or Cymreictod) alive: the Gorsedd, the circle of bards and druids chooses the best poet, musician, actor and dancer of the year. During an impressive ceremony, those who’ve devoted themselves to Wales, are included in the Gorsedd, this year for instance Stephen Jones, captain of the rugby team.

Everyone at Eisteddfod speaks Welsh: from the six-year old girl who concurs that tikka cyw iâr is indeed chicken tikka masala, to the elderly gentleman who jovially shouts: Hei, hei, ble’r aeth yr haul? (where did the sun go to). In Wales, like in the rest of the UK, the weather is a conversation starter.

The language distinguishes the Welsh. But it isn’t what makes a Welshman Welsh, says Leanne Wood. She doesn’t speak the language. It isn’t what you expect from the party leader of the nationalist Plaid Cymru, that fights for independence. ,,I am learning”, she says. ,,But my nine year old daughter has already caught up with me.”

Like Scottishness, Welshness had become a political identity. Public ownership of public services is important to the Welsh, ,,whether that is the best option or not, it is felt as a shared part of who we are.”

It makes Wales more left-wing than the rest of the country. The most powerful Labour politician in the UK is not party leader Ed Miliband, but Carwyn Jones, the Welsh prime minister. The last time the Conservatives had a majority of votes in Wales, was in 1859, some years before suffrage was introduced. And if the Conservatives are in power in Westminster – like today – it increases the Welsh’s bitterness.

By now a majority of Welsh thinks decisions about Wales should be made in Cardiff. Three quarters of them want more power in those areas the British parliament is now responsible for, like policing and energy policy. That demand will only grow if Scotland votes ‘yes’ to independence, or – as the polls are predicting – Scotland gets more devolved powers when it votes ‘no’.

,,The Welsh don’t want independence, they want to be independent”, is the subtle distinction Roger Scully, professor of political science at Cardiff University, makes. In English it is a difference of two letters.

Devolution created Northern Irishness


If there is one country where the United Kingdom is not in danger, it is remarkably enough Northern Ireland. Devolution has created a parliament here as well, and although the coalition between unionists and republicans is fragile, polls suggest that the majority of Northern Irish are satisfied with the British welfare state and economy. Almost 60 percent – more that there are unionists – hold a British passport (19 percent an Irish one).

And devolution has had another unforeseen consequence: the 2011 census showed for the first time that 29 percent of the people called themselves Northern Irish, not British or Irish. Especially among university educated.

,,It is a cultural identity, a way to say ‘I don’t hate the other, the status quo is acceptable”, explains political commentator Alex Kane, former spokesman of the moderate pro-union Ulster Unionist Party. When asked for five examples of what defines Northern Irishness, like kilts do Scottishness, and the language does the Welsh, he pauses. A couple of hours later he sends a text message: ,,My girlfriend can’t come up with anything either.” A week later: ,,I’ve asked several friends. We can’t think of anything.”

The question of identity remains a loaded one. Only a foreigner can – dares – to ask it. Among each other the Northern Irish guess: ,,There is always this instinctive urge to place someone: you ask for a surname, a school, listen how someone pronounces the h. If it is haitch, it’s catholic, aitch is protestant.”

Kane says: ,,We are mixing. But there are still conversations you don’t have at work, or if you don’t know someone well.”

It doesn’t all mean that those who feel distinctively British, are happy with their fellow countrymen on the British Isle. ,,They forget about us”, says factory worker Darren McPhillips. He points to Team GB, the name during the Olympics. ,,Where were we?” The country is indeed officially called: the United Kingdom of Great-Britain and Northern Ireland. ,,We all carry the same passport”, complains former police officer John McDowell. And real estate agent Graham Barton observes: ,,The only other ones that call themselves British are immigrants. The rest of the union sees us the same context.”

Columnist Kane agrees: ,,I have never heard a prime minister passionately defend Northern Ireland the way David Cameron did Scotland. The average Brit sees us as ‘those dangerous idiots across the Irish Sea.”

The politics of Northern Ireland are partially to blame. Whereas the secretary for Scotland, and his colleague for Wales represent their countries at cabinet, the secretary for Northern Ireland is a referee between nationalists and unionists.

Belfast is keeping a close eye on the Scottish referendum. David Trimble, former leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, has already warned that the question of Ireland should be reunited will ,, from a non-issue become an important issue” if Scotland votes ‘yes’. For Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams, who seeks a united Ireland, this episode signals a chance. He said that the unity of the kingdom ,,was hanging by a thread”.

Even the English grumble


But the elephant in the room is England. The English have never held a debate about identity, representation or sovereignty. ,,They don’t know what they want”, says a Scottish journalist. ,,The move to a slower beat than we do”, says a colleague in Wales.

It doesn’t mean the English are happy with the union. Immigration, the idea of being swallowed by Europe, and devolution has increased a feeling of Englishness. Forty percent call themselves English first, then British. It’s twice the proportion seen in 2007.

The English also feel discriminated against: 45 percent think devolution has created unevenness; there is no longer a sense of fair play. Because, why do Scottish students get free education, while those in Wales and Northern Ireland pay a third of the 9.000 ponds an English student pays in college fees? Why is there no secretary for England? Why do the English have to appeal to the British parliament in Westminster, and has the country that 85 percent of Brits call home no self-representation?

Nurse Eddie Bone has been campaigning for the latter for years. Somewhere in the middle of England – York for example – an English parliament should be established that, like the other three, will be responsible for education, health care and agriculture. ,,England was always indifferent. No longer”, he says. But it seems too soon for an ‘English revolution’. Not a lot of ordinary Englishmen know about the Campaign for an English Parliament, and politicians don’t take it very seriously.

To Bone’s frustration. ,,Who will represent England when we negotiate with Scotland?” Even if there would be representation, what do the English want? What is the common goal? The biggest problem is that Englishness is growing, but no one can define it.

It is difficult to find anything more English than Piddlehinton, hidden deep in the Dorset countryside: thatched cottages with climbing roses, a meandering stream, a school where Thomas Hardy’s sister taught, and a church from 1295. The village appeared in the Domesday Book of 1068.

In the garden of the Old Rectory a village fair is being held. The vicar greats his visitors: farmers in their wellies, children with blushing apple cheeks, young mothers in flowery dresses. The villagers sell home-made jams and cake, enter competitions for the biggest marrow. It feels like an episode of Midsomer Murders – without the murders. Fairs like this are held all over southern England. The announcements are pricked in the grass verges of roundabouts. But to the question if this is Englishness, people just don’t know an answer. Nor to the question if there should be an English parliament.

Equally hesitant are the people at Kirkgate Market, the largest covered market in England, in Leeds, a multicultural town in the north. This is where Michael Marks in 1884 started his penny bazaar, which has grown to the archetypical English Marks & Spencer. The stand is situated between a haberdashery, a fishmonger selling cockles in vinegar, a Persian with baklava, and an Asian greengrocer.

Very few immigrants call themselves English. Especially those generations that came from the British colonies, say they are British. Added to that, the most important symbol of Englishness – the St George’s flag – was used by football hooligans and the extreme right National Front and English Defence League. English nationalism leaves for some a bitter aftertaste.

Even those who now say they are exclusively English (and are partly anti-immigrant, anti-Europe, and might vote UKIP) don’t know what they want. Sunder Katwala, director of the thinktank British Future, says: ,,They expect politicians to come up with an answer.” The middle group, those who feel both British and English, has ,,soft grievances” and looks for ,,something cultural, not so much political”. ,,But no one knows what the forum is.”

That is the reason, says Katwala, that it is a mistake David Cameron is not talking about Englishness. ,,The idea is that the Scots might be offended, but they won’t.” He says: ,,Cameron should’ve appointed a secretary for England last year. At this moment England needs an institutional voice.”

Luckily the English have one big advantage. They are in the majority. No one can force them to do something, which the other way round is possible. The English could take the UK out of the EU, even though the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish are against. Just because they have more seats in the House of Commons.

Existential confusion


Even if the Scots vote against independence, it is hardly likely the UK can go on the way it has for the past 92 years. The Scottish will, like the Welsh, keep thinking that they are governed by politicians in London with whom they are not on the same wavelength. The Northern Irish feel ignored, the English not heard.

In 2008, then prime minister Gordon Brown feared the ,,balkanisation” of the UK. He felt after devolution the country needed nation building, and wanted a Museum of Britishness, or at least a Day of Britishness.

It didn’t strike a chord, because no one really knew what Britishness was. Maybe only Danny Boyle, with his opening ceremony at the Olympics of 2012, succeeded in showing what British unity meant: Queen Elizabeth, James Bond, green pastures and the Industrial Revolution, self-mockery and especially no over the top patriotism.

If fifteen years of devolution have shown anything, it is that separate identities can exist next to the British one. The first is a day to day identity, the second a civic one. The Welsh cheer on the Welsh rugby team, the Scots the Scottish. But on Remembrance Day, they feel British.

But the feeling that the Union is no longer working needs to be addressed. Westminster is slowly acknowledging that; all party leaders have made big promises in the last months. Among those is the promise that Scotland will get more devolved powers.

More is however needed, thinks Carwyn Jones, the Welsh prime minister. In a speech in Dublin, last year, he said: ,,We need to debate the constitution of this country.” He suggested reform of the House of Lords, so that the seats would be equally distributed among the four countries. The House of Commons would reflect the population, the House of Lord would the geography, like the American system. Others suggest more devolved tax powers, or federalisation, with more power to English regions and maybe London.

The United Kingdom is united by assent. The challenge is to find reasons for all four countries to stay, and that are fair to all four – even to the largest one.

If nothing happens, the fault lines that are now visible will become larger. Next year there are elections, and the Conservatives could again, without getting a majority of votes in Scotland and Wales, win. In 2017 – if David Cameron remains the prime minister – the real test case will follow: a referendum on membership of the European Union. The English could then – without agreement from the other three – take the UK out of Europe. And that, the Union won’t survive.

Here is a link to the original article >>> http://www.nrc.nl/handelsblad/van/2014/augustus/30/onverenigd-koninkrijk-1413044

Lie back and think of England? For many English people, the forthcoming referendum on Scottish independence is a reminder of England’s Cinderella status in the United Kingdom.

On the 28 August 2014, in “The Conversation“, Prof Eunice Goes, the Associate Professor of Communications at Richmond American International University (Surrey), published this article:-  

As Scotland decides its future, lie back and think of England

For many English people, the forthcoming referendum on Scottish independence is a reminder of England’s Cinderella status in the United Kingdom. While Scotland and Northern Ireland enjoy a large degree of self-government, Wales has significant administrative autonomy (and is in the process of gaining a wide range of new legislative powers), England is entirely governed by Westminster and Whitehall.

But this constitutional state of affairs is no longer considered acceptable by many English who feel overlooked by Westminster politicians and short-changed by asymmetrical devolution. In particular, English voters seem to resent the fact that Scottish MPs can vote on matters that affect England whilst Scottish issues are (mostly) decided by the Holyrood parliament.

An opinion poll commissioned by the universities of Edinburgh and Cardiff revealed that 62% of English voters agree that, following a no vote, “Scottish MPs should be prevented from voting on laws that apply only in England”. This hardening of attitudes towards Scotland is hardly shocking but what came as a surprise to many is that 54% of voters supported the idea of an English parliament.

Until now the Westminster elite assumed English voters were not interested in self-government. That was a comforting thought to those who believed that the best answer to the “West Lothian question” was not to ask it.

But in reality the English were never given the chance to taste genuine self-government. Proposals for an English Parliament were never contemplated and for good reasons too. As a representative body of the largest and richest nation of the United Kingdom, an English Parliament would dwarf the devolved bodies of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and would reduce Westminster to political and constitutional irrelevance.

The eight English regional assemblies proposed by the last Labour government in 2003 were an unsatisfactory solution too. Those regional assemblies had so few legislative powers that they were little more than talking shops. So it is not surprising that in 2004 voters from the Northeast of England voted no on the referendum that proposed to create what they saw as an extra layer of politicians and bureaucrats.

The 2004 referendum in the Northeast of England put an end to the debate on English devolution, but maybe it is time to revisit the idea of regional assemblies. The result of the Scottish referendum may make it a necessity. If, as the opinion polls suggest, Scottish voters reject independence, the train is already in place for Westminster to grant further fiscal powers to Holyrood. The three main parties have recently given assurances to Scotland about the scenario of “devo-max”.

And as MPs and peers return to Westminster in the coming weeks they will pen the final amendments to the Wales Bill which will grant more powers, including borrowing and taxation powers, to the Welsh Assembly. These two developments will emphasise the asymmetrical nature of devolution and will foment further English resentment towards the non-English MPs sitting in Westminster.

More importantly, the mood also changed in England. English devolution is no longer a cause defended only by fringe groups such as the English Democrats. This cause is gaining some momentum amongst English (and some Scottish) MPs. More importantly, English voters seem to be open to the idea. As Professor Professor Michael Kenny showed in his book The Politics of English Nationhood, Scottish, Northern Irish and Welsh devolution, rising mistrust towards the European Union, and the sense of economic and cultural insecurity brought by globalisation have contributed to the rise of an English national identity.

In Westminster, the three main political parties have been aware of the changing mood in England but for a variety of reasons – namely electoral considerations and a fear of stirring the wrong type of nationalism – do not know how to respond to it. The parties of the coalition seem to be in two minds about it. Having abolished the English regional development agencies in 2010 the coalition has recently promised a £6bn fund to boost development in the English regions.

The Labour Party seems less confused but it is equally timid. This spring, Labour leader Ed Miliband made proposals for devolution of fiscal powers to English cities. But they are too modest, too technocratic and do not seem to either recognise rising English national identity or to address the constitutional problems created by Scottish and Welsh devolution.

In fairness, these are not easy problems to solve. Having ruled out big bang solutions like an English parliament, piecemeal proposals such as regional representation in the House of Lords or those made by the McKay Commission leave the fundamental problem of the English question unanswered. But this does not mean that there are no other options.

As the Scottish secretary Alistair Carmichael recently suggested there is a “logical conclusion” to this constitutional conundrum. That logical solution is federalism and English regional assemblies. He may well be right.

Click here for the original >>> http://theconversation.com/as-scotland-decides-its-future-lie-back-and-think-of-england-30993

My response to her was:-

Dear Professor Goes,

Re: Your article “As Scotland decides its future, lie back and think of England”

I was interested to read your article and would thank you for your mention of the English Democrats.

The IPPR opinion polls suggest that all our hard work and expense in now distributing over 30 million leaflets and attendance on numerous television and radio interviews is beginning to pay off.

I do however very strongly disagree with your final remarks. Alistair Carmichael’s reported comments would be outrageous for any Scot to call for the dismemberment of England.

His neo-colonialist comments neatly show the very reason why the demand for English Independence is growing. Support for it now being greater than support for the status quo – 19% to 18%. That is a far greater proportion of the population of England than voted for his Party!

Yours sincerely

Robin Tilbrook

Chairman,
The English Democrats

Prof Goes seems to be an internationalist Far-Leftist, if this is to be believed >>> Beeb Bias Craig: WHO’S LEFT OUT? http://beebbiascraig.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/whos-left-out.html

…. the far-left Portuguese writer Dr Eunice Goes…..The lovely Eunice thought that “the public at large are not too bothered” about (immigration)….Eunice Goes …. wholeheartedly … sung the praises of mass immigration. Gavin Esler intervened at this point to back up Eunice, saying “I’ve conducted some public meetings and ordinary members of the public have said precisely that, our health service could not exist without people who are migrants.” When Saul raised the point that many people think immigration has been “excessive” and that the UK is a rare example of a country that doesn’t know how many immigrants it has, he was leaped on by all and sundry, including…. Eunice (who) had a few angry goes at him too. Ah, the old rallying cry of the Left against the Right: “Shut up!!”
*
Incidentally, for regular viewer of Dateline (if there are any, other than me and Martin at B-BBC!), the role usually provided by French lefty Marc Roche was this week taken by Eunice Goes, who said “most of the Conservative MPs who will come to parliament on May 6th, they are not urbane, metropolitian guys like David Cameron. They are, most..many of them, climate change deniers, homophobes, xenophobes and supporters of the death penalty.” Yasmin Alibhai Brown loved it and laughed uproariously. That’s the quality of commentator they have on Dateline!

Scotland ‘should not take on UK debt’ unless it can keep the pound says leading economist

Professor Sir James Mirrlees

Scotland ‘should not take on UK debt’ unless it can keep the pound

Yes campaign’s economist plots way ahead if Westminster refuses to share sterling

In this article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, in the Daily Telegraph today 25.0.14, the usual British line that the UK will continue as RUK if Scotland “leaves” is still being peddled. However if you ignore the blatant RUK nonsense then this article also illustrates why England would be bettter off independent from the near bankrupt UK too.

Here is the article:-

An independent Scotland should walk away from its share of the UK’s national debt if Westminster continues to refuse a sterling union, one of the Yes campaign’s leading economic gurus has advised.

“Britain inherits the debt,” said Sir James Mirrlees, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and a prestigious figure on Scotland’s Council of Economic Advisers.

“It is hard to see how Scotland can take on the debt unless there is a full currency union,” he told The Telegraph. “This is implied by the hard-line taken by Westminster. It is Scotland’s bargaining position.”

Crawford Beveridge, chairman of Scotland’s Fiscal Commission Working Group, warned last week that any such move would be “morally difficult” and likely deemed a “default” by credit ratings agencies.

Not even the Baltic states entirely repudiated Soviet-era debts in the early 1990s, even though the Soviet occupation of their countries was never recognised by the West. It would be hard for Scotland to invoke the “doctrine of odious debts” – where debts run up by despotic regimes can legitimately be reneged on – under international law. The Czech and Slovak republics divided the Czechoslovak debt on a pro-rata basis after their “velvet divorce”.

Sir James said Scotland could continue to use the pound as legal tender inside the country if necessary, whatever London decides. “No country has stopped its currency from being circulated in another state that I know of,” he said.

He suggested that Edinburgh could equally issue a Scottish pound that is pegged to sterling and backed by a currency board along the lines of Hong Kong’s model. But, in his opinion, neither option, if forced upon Scotland, would entail any obligation to take on UK debt.

Sir James said this clash can be avoided. He believes the common sense option for all involved is to agree on a co-operative union. The British themselves would enjoy a “non trivial” benefit from being able to use their own coin in Scotland. “The easiest transition would be to keep using sterling for five to 10 years,” he said.

All three parties in Westminster say they will oppose a currency union after independence, insisting that the eurozone crisis has revealed the perils of trying to share a currency with separate fiscal policies. Sir James played a central role in First Minister Alex Salmond’s Fiscal Commission earlier this year in drafting plans for a future currency. A former Cambridge professor, he is now professor-at-large at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

He said the eurozone currency experiment has gone badly wrong – and has previously called for the weaker Club Med countries to withdraw – but insists that a UK-Scottish currency union would be a different animal. “The risks have been greatly exaggerated,” he said, speaking at the Nobel laureates’ gathering in Lindau, Germany.

Sir James said the English and Scottish economies are closely interwoven, like Germany and The Netherlands. There is little danger of an “asymmetric shock” for Scotland alone, though he acknowledged that declining oil revenues are a “little worrying” and might force fiscal cuts. However, he appeared to suggest that this would be outweighed by the benefits of eliminating the entire public debt, freeing up interest payments.

The National Institute of Economic and Social Research estimates Scotland’s share of the debt to be £143bn. The UK authorities have announced that they would stand behind these liabilities in order to reassure markets – and will even stand behind RBS and Scottish-based banks temporarily – but this is intended to be a holding action, not a settlement.

Debt repudiation would cause the UK’s gross debt ratio to jump by seven points to 98pc of GDP on the Eurostat gauge. Critics say it would be an inglorious way for Scotland to begin its life as a sovereign nation, poisoning relations with its chief economic partner.

Use of sterling in the face of British opposition would leave Scotland without a lender-of-last resort in a crisis. Sir James said this is manageable if bank support is restricted to high street operations, excluding the global arm of banks such as RBS.

Sir James has equally radical views on taxation, though they are not specifically aimed at Scotland. He proposes “negative taxation” or subsidies for the West’s poorest workers to shield them from low-wage competition from Asia. He also endorses a top marginal tax rate of 100pc for “very high incomes” on the grounds that some people will continue to work regardless, specifically citing tennis players. This may come as a surprise to Scottish tennis star Andy Murray.
Click here for a link to the original article>>> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11054359/Scotland-should-not-take-on-UK-debt-unless-it-can-keep-the-pound.html

Below is what Wikipedia says about the Professor. Who do you believe – him or Ambrose from the Telegraph?

Sir James Alexander Mirrlees FRSE FBA (born 5 July 1936) is a Scottish economist and winner of the 1996 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He was knighted in 1998.

Born in Minnigaff, Kirkcudbrightshire, Mirrlees was educated at the University of Edinburgh (MA in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in 1957) and Trinity College, Cambridge (Mathematical Tripos and PhD in 1964 with thesis title Optimum planning for a dynamic economy), where he was a very active student debater. One contemporary, Quentin Skinner, has suggested that Mirrlees was a member of the Cambridge Apostles along with fellow Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen during this period. Between 1968 and 1976, Mirrlees was a visiting professor at MIT three times. He taught at both Oxford University (1969–1995) and University of Cambridge (1963– and 1995–).

During his time at Oxford, he published papers on economic models for which he would eventually be awarded his Nobel Prize. They centred on situations in which economic information is asymmetrical or incomplete, determining the extent to which they should affect the optimal rate of saving in an economy. Among other results, they demonstrated the principles of “moral hazard” and “optimal income taxation” discussed in the books of William Vickrey. The methodology has since become the standard in the field.

Mirrlees and Vickrey shared the 1996 Nobel Prize for Economics “for their fundamental contributions to the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information”.

Mirrlees is also co-creator, with MIT Professor Peter A. Diamond of the Diamond-Mirrlees Efficiency Theorem, developed in 1971.

Mirrlees is emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He spends several months a year at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is currently the Distinguished Professor-at-Large of The Chinese University of Hong Kong as well as University of Macau. In 2009, he was appointed Founding Master of the Morningside College of The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Mirrlees is a member of Scotland’s Council of Economic Advisers. He also led the The Mirrlees Review, a review of the UK tax system by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

His students have included eminent academics and policy makers Sir Partha Dasgupta, Professor Huw Dixon, Lord Nicholas Stern, Professor Anthony Venables, and Sir John Vickers.

We must choose our words carefully – Letter:- Western Daily Press (Bristol, England) – Friday, August 15, 2014

We must choose our words carefully

Letter:- Western Daily Press (Bristol, England) – Friday, August 15, 2014


I have just watched Andrew Neill’s programme on the BBC about the implications of Scottish independence for “the Rest of the UK” I am not a lawyer, but the constitutional legal position has been explained to me by a solicitor with expertise in constitutional law, and it seems fairly straightforward.

Wales and England were united in a 16th-century Act of Parliament under which, constitutionally, Wales became part of England.

The Kingdom of England (E) and the Kingdom of Scotland (S) were united by the Act of Union of 1707 as the United Kingdom of Great Britain, (G), with a single parliament, (the British Parliament) in Westminster.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland through a further Act of Union in 1801. With the partition of Ireland in 1922, we were left with the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland.

For Scotland to leave the UK, it would be necessary to repeal the 1707 Act of Union. From the moment of that legislation’s receipt of Royal Assent, there would be no more United Kingdom. (E+S=G ergo G-S=E.) The British Parliament would have no constitutional validity and the British Government would also cease to exist.

Since the union of Ireland, in 1801, was with Great Britain, once Great Britain ceases to exist, so does any union with it.

So, any talk of “the Rest of the UK” is codswallop.

Scottish independence (bring it on!) will mean the dissolution of the United Kingdom and any negotiation of the terms of exit will have to be undertaken by representatives of England, as the former British Government will have ceased to have any mandate.

Clive Lavelle

Weston-super-Mare English Democrats 

Here is a link to the original >>>
http://infoweb.newsbank.com/iw-search/we/InfoWeb?p_action=doc&p_topdoc=1&p_docnum=1&p_sort=YMD_date:D&p_product=UKNB&p_text_direct-0=document_id=(%2014FB8976864149B0%20)&p_docid=14FB8976864149B0&p_theme=aggdocs&p_queryname=14FB8976864149B0&f_openurl=yes&p_nbid=S6AR60NXMTQwODM2MzU2MS42MzE3OTI6MTo4OnJmLTE5MDcy&&p_multi=WDP1

Leading historian says – "Yes to Independence!"

Leading historian says – “Yes to Independence!”

Just consider these quotations:-

“The Union of England and Scotland was not a marriage based on love. It was a marriage of convenience. It was pragmatic.”

What about the present?

“From the 1750s down to the 1980s there was stability in the relationship. Now, all the primary foundations of that stability have gone or been massively diluted.”

The alternative?

“Devo-max” would merely prolong a running sore. “If more powers are granted, many English people will be unhappy; they’re already unhappy about the Barnett formula.”

The solution?

“Only through sovereignty can we develop a truly amicable and equal relationship with our great southern neighbour.”

All these remarks are just as pertinant from either side of the Border!

Here is the whole article:-
 

Scotland’s leading historian makes up his mind: it’s Yes to independence


The marriage with England was based on convenience, not love, says prizewinning author Sir Tom Devine. Now it is time to split
Scotland’s leading historian has delivered a major boost to the campaign for Scottish independence with the announcement that he will be voting yes in the forthcoming referendum.

The eagerly awaited announcement by Sir Tom Devine, made in an interview with the Observer, will provide much-needed support to the pro-independence campaign, which has seen support for a yes vote stall in recent weeks.

Neither side in the campaign has openly courted Devine, but each has been eager to receive the endorsement of a man who is considered to be Scotland’s foremost academic and intellectual.

The professor of Scottish history counts several senior figures on both sides among his friends, including Gordon Brown, the former Labour prime minister and now a driving force of the no campaign. Last week he also shared a platform at the Edinburgh book festival with the Scottish first minister, Alex Salmond. The latest news will be welcomed by Salmond, who was perceived to have performed below par in the recent televised head-to-head debate with Alistair Darling, leader of the no campaign.

In an exclusive interview, Devine said that at the outset of the campaign he had been a firm no supporter, though he had favoured a “devo-max” arrangement with extra powers devolved to Holyrood. He had been persuaded by what he believes has been a flowering of the Scottish economy in a more confident political and cultural landscape. “This has been quite a long journey for me and I’ve only come to a yes conclusion over the last fortnight,” he said.

“The Scottish parliament has demonstrated competent government and it represents a Scottish people who are wedded to a social democratic agenda and the kind of political values which sustained and were embedded in the welfare state of the late 1940s and 1950s.

“It is the Scots who have succeeded most in preserving the British idea of fairness and compassion in terms of state support and intervention. Ironically, it is England, since the 1980s, which has embarked on a separate journey.”

He also analysed the progress of the Union since its birth in 1707 and the reasons why it had worked for both countries, but why he believes it is coming to a natural end. “The union of England and Scotland was not a marriage based on love. It was a marriage of convenience. It was pragmatic. From the 1750s down to the 1980s there was stability in the relationship. Now, all the primary foundations of that stability have gone or been massively diluted.”

Devine received a knighthood in this year’s birthday honours list for “services to the study of Scottish history”. One newspaper wrote: “He is as close to a national bard as the nation has.”

Devine is the author of 34 books and holder of all three of Scotland’s most coveted prizes for Scottish historical research. His analysis of the issues at play in the independence campaign is forensic. “We now have a proper modern history of Scotland which we didn’t have until as late as the 1980s. We have a clear national narrative underpinned by objective and rigorous academic research. This wasn’t always the case.”

Devine also points to what he calls the “silent transformation of the Scottish economy”, based on the metamorphosis in manufacturing from heavy industry through de-industrialisation to a more diversified model. “Our economy is now based on some heavy industry, light manufacturing, electronics, tourism, financial services and a vibrant public sector which provides sustainable jobs.

“We have a resilient economic system and reserves of one of the most important things for an independent estate: power, power through the assets of oil and also through the potential of wind energy. In this, Scotland is disproportionately endowed compared to almost all other European countries.”

Devine, who is from a working-class family of Irish immigrants, is fiercely proud of his ethnicity. It is a theme that informs much of his research and figures prominently in his writing. He believes the emancipation of the Catholic Irish in Scotland has also contributed greatly to a more robust economic model. He is scathing about the views espoused by George Galloway and some others that Catholics in Scotland would become more vulnerable in a smaller country. “This is nonsense. George, as usual, is talking rhetoric. None of those assertions is based on any academic understanding or knowledge.”

He also cites the enhanced reputation of Scottish higher education and research, with four Scottish universities among the world’s top 200. “We get 16% of the UK’s competitive funding despite having only 10% of its population. If we can apply this research to industry and the economy, Scotland will have a head start in the future which will all be about brain-intensive industry. That adds to the potential resilience of the economy.”

He now says “devo-max” would merely prolong a running sore. “If more powers are granted, many English people will be unhappy; they’re already unhappy about the Barnett formula. Only through sovereignty can we develop a truly amicable and equal relationship with our great southern neighbour.”

Devine believes the union served an important purpose and has now simply run its course. He believed it united citizens on either side of the border from the Jacobite rebellion of 1745 until the dawn of Thatcherism and that the cornerstone of the union and its main pillars have either crumbled or become rotten.

He cited the loss of empire and the dilution of Protestantism as a unionist ideology and the primacy of European markets over English and imperial ones. The loss of 12 Scottish regiments since 1957 had loosened military ties,” he said.

“There’s also the weakening influence of the monarch and the absence of an external and potentially hostile force which once would have induced internal collective solidarity, such as fascism and the Soviet empire.

“When you put all of these together, there’s very little left in the union except sentiment, history and family.”

(Click here for the original >>> http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/aug/17/scottish-independence-tom-devine-yes-vote-referendum-alex-salmond)