Why I fear Scottish independence
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Union ‘has cost Scotland £64bn over 30 years’ | The Sunday Times.
Let me be clear. Since I overheard a ned pour vile anti-English hatred into the ear of his toddler son at the Wallace Memorial some years ago, I have been in favour of Scottish Independence. I realised that poor, innocent little boy was going to grow up hating me and my own innocent children no matter what we do. I love Scotland and my Scottish friends but for so long as the Scottish masses can ignorantly blame England for everything, it is a country that will never grow up. The Scottish Nation needs to stand alone and realise that life is difficult, requires unsavoury amounts of work and that nothing comes for free in the end.
I fear independence only because of the incompetence of the people who will negotiate it from the English side. The linked article in the Sunday Times for example almost blew my stack before I even got out of bed this morning. It suggests that an independent Scotland would be better off because it would walk away from the UK's national debt, dumping it on the taxpayers of England and Wales. This is outrageous, immoral and thus in every way typical of Scotland's rapacious attitude to the English.
Scotland applied on its knees to join the United Kingdom. It was bankrupt following the failure of the Darien Venture (itself a folly driven by envy of England). England did not conquer Scotland. We bailed it out. We paid off its own national debt at the time and never a word of thanks have we had for it.
At the time of the Acts of Union, we English had no national debt to speak of. The current debt is that of the United Kingdom. If Scotland chooses independence it must be divided between the two new nations on some fair and equitable basis. As we have been funding public expenditure largely (and madly) from debt since the creation of the Welfare State and since a disproportionate part of that expenditure is in Soviet Scotland, I suggest the Barnett Formula should play some part in that calculation. As Wikipedia explains it;
"...if a UK-wide per capita average were a notional 100%, identifiable per capita expenditure on services in England would be 97% and the Scottish amount 117%..."
That's how the debt was run up. That is how it should be allocated. As the new Scotland would have nothing like the credit rating of the current United Kingdom, it would cost rather more per capita to service its smaller share too. Properly negotiated, independence will welcome Scottish taxpayers back from economic la-la land. Not before time.