Out of Pod Experience

Freedom and independence is great and all. Especially when 3/5 of Scottish nuclear power stations belong to the British government and the remaining two belong to France.

Hmmm... depends. How will this affect single malt production?

I think you guys would be better off seceding from the EU instead.

No troll, Brussels does not have your best interest at heart, at all.

If the Scots go independent, but then turn around and join the EU, that would be a huge blunder.

Tell me about it, the European Parliament, and MEPs, are amongst the most wasteful people on the planet, and corrupt to boot.

Much better idea

That's exactly the plan though. Join the EU, with 6 MEPs out of 750, so Scotland can have a Scottish foreign policy (as long as it doesn't conflict with the EU common foreign policy). The recent election of the EU Commissioner is significant in this respect - he was chosen by the EU Parliament, rather than what happened in the past, which was an agreement among representatives from the member states. When there are agreements between say, EU foreign ministers, then Scotland would be 1 voice out of ~30. When the decision is by the EU Parliament, then Scotland is 6 voices out of 750, or in practical terms, less than 6, because there are likely to only ever be 2 or 3 MEPs from whichever party is in power in Scotland. 2 out of 750 is... difficult to suggest changes to the Scotland-EU relationship - things like the common agricultural policy, common fisheries policy, and so on. There are rumours about eventual direct taxation by the EU Parliament, rather than the money going to national governments and then to the EU. It would not be surprising if the much talked about oil revenue of Scotland ends up being expended on reforming the economies of the problem areas in the EU.
But that's the policy that is being promoted by the pro-independence campaign.




Prices would probably go up. As it turns out, and this is something I myself didn't know until a few weeks ago when it was in the news, but a lot of Scottish distilleries import their grain from farms in England - these farms are specialist grain producers for distilleries and breweries across the UK and in some cases abroad. Throwing up a customs/tax border between the distilleries and their suppliers is only going to cause difficulties. Throw in such things as how trade missions by embassies work - one of the perpetual concerns from Scottish distilleries to the UK diplomatic service was how to get various foreign countries to lower import taxes on Scottish whisky - that would no longer be a UK diplomatic service concern.
So, I think it is likely whisky would become more expensive in many places in the world - it's also unlikely to become cheaper in Scotland, because of the minimum unit pricing on alcohol policy.

what's going to happen to that beautiful flag? all the blue will have to be taken out.

As a Yorkshireman - no thanks. I'd rather stick with England for now.

I do rather hate what the independence 'discussions' have become, from my point of view its mostly the SNP either coming out with overly optimistic plan and when anyone points out flaws it becomes 'anti-scottish'. Don't get me wrong the pro-union side have taken the wrong approach a number of times as well but the SNP approach to me sounds dodgy to say the least.

I hope Scotland chooses to stay it will be a loss if you guy go but its your choice - just don't act all surprised when Salmond doesn't get his way.

Wish we would also stop this rubbish about England / UK / the British Empire being evil and doing nothing but nasty deeds as we marched for global domination. It's utter rubbish - there were horrors committed but, and I know this is difficult to accept, the empire did a huge amount of good too.