Out of Pod Experience

Elections are actually very curious things when it comes to corporate control and corruption.

You may remember a lot of noise about bank bail outs, and people blaming conservatives or liberals for what happened. In reality banks just did what every industry has been doing for decades. When liberals were in power they took the benefits of a government that assumes regulation, and when conservatives are in power they take the benefits of a government that does not regulate. They can do all kinds of bad things that would make them fail, and then turn around and let the people prop them up anyway. They can take tax breaks for dealing with new regulations, and then not follow those regulations because they are given years to comply and by then the other side is back in power.

I'm simplifying of course. Please ignore the troll or two that will inevitably nitpick that paragraph. Point being the very people who claim they want to voice their opinions through election, give the opening for corporate control over their lives because the popular opinion changes over time, as people perceive an issue to change when really it's just cycling through the same phases over and over.

Few people really understand that, and it makes me lose faith in politics very quickly when I think about it.

NHS is not the devil, government is. The inevitable outcome of over regulation is nationalization. The cure is lassie fare liberalism in the classic sense, that is the principle upon with the United States was founded. It is the betrayal of that principle the so called right-wing doesn't like. Sadly most of the right wing neo-cons, which are really globalist left leaning Fascists with guns, have no problem with war and devalued currency being the primary exports.

Careful what you wish for. If that happens my girlfriend will show up and drink Scotland dry.

U dipstick, why do you think we have all the free education and prescriptions and other such perks and you don't.

It's because the English government is well aware of the fact that Scotland is one of the few areas of the UK that actually makes any money, and they will do ANYTHING to keep the Scots happy.

Closing our cheque book indeed, in such blissfull ignorance you live.

obviously someone who knows what he`s talking about unlike the other poster

I would really like to know where the source of this money is.

Oil and Gas? Straight to London - most of the companies involved are based in and around The Strand and it's been organised decades ago, that when the gas fields were discovered, that London would get the income and not Scotland. So, we can rule that out.

Tourism. Not a massive income stream. Yes, Edinburgh gets its share of visitors. There will be few going to the lowlands, even fewer to the highlands and islands. Not even the statue of Mel Gibson outside Stirling Castle is going to bring in the required millions of Americans.

Heavy Industry. The shipbuilding on the Clyde has gone. I can't think of much else.

Silicon Glen. Well, that didn't last long, did it?

Whisky exports. Yes, Scotch is a protected name but the trouble is that the Burberry capped yoof of today is going to develop a taste of other spirits. The biggest export market is Japan and I hope that holds up.

Fishing. Not a fat lot left of this. Our Iclandic and Norwegian friends outside of the EU have their waters. The Spanish and everyone else has the British waters' quota.

Farming. Apart from the low land belt there's not much arable farming other than around the Borders. Highland farming is going broke and the EU subsidies look like being reduced.


It makes me wonder when Scotland have self-appointed embassors to the world for the country such as Sean Connery who tells everyone who could be bothered to listen to him that he's proud to be Scottish and that Scotand shoudl be independent and then buggers off back to the tropics where he ives after he's received his appearance money.

The sad state of affairs is that if England bebuilt Offa's Dyke and moved Hadrian's Wall one county further North then Wales woudl last out longer, not much longer mind you, than Scotland. the harsh truth is that the Celtic countries really do need the Saxon 'Saes' of England. More than they need us.

Sadly, what we have read in yoru post is the usual Nationalistic nonsense trotted out, believed and re-hashed by the Scots. I am amazed at the number of times when an 'English Atrocity' is cited as blame for some part of the downfall of Scotland when more time times than not it's down to warring highland clans or the struggle betwen the highlands and lowlands. Unfortunately, too much of received Scottish history has been lifted from the pages of RL Stephenson's "Kidnapped" and "Catriona" and then taken for gospel. And then the myth continues about how great and self-supporting Scotland is.

The likes of Connery go on all misty-eyed about the land which gave us the bagpipe, golf and and the kilt. But neglect to mention that they came from Pakistan, the Netherlands and England respectively.

And another of these misty-eyed myths is that Scotland is a self-upporting economic powerhouse. Which it isn't.

But, I would wish that it were.