Freeeeedom! The Scottish Independence Thread

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Interesting article

Guess what side of the fence he's sitting on

 

[busby1971]

Reuters are quite neutral, normally, its very hard to find dissent in the wider Scottish press, which is surprising considering how they are running things north of the border.

 

[Defenestration]

The side that thinks they get less from the UK coffers than they put in. The side that thinks that National borrowing shouldn't be passed to Scotland if they were independent.

 

[TheRockApe1918]

Just hope england can have our independence without being carved up into a land that looks like a dominos pizza!

 

[Oldstacker]

I wonder if she wants to win a referendum anyway...

If she wins then she has to negotiate a way out of the UK and that will be infinitely harder than getting the UK out of the EU because Scotland is much more integrated into the whole economic, industrial and political fabric of the UK. She then has to start governing Scotland but call an early General Election - which could weaken her government straight away since her party's primary aim of independence would have been achieved. The EU wouldn't welcome her with open arms whatever she may think. I don't think she could look forward to an easy ride and she would soon become responsible for anything going wrong - you can only blame the previous government for so long (and, for many things, the previous government would have actually been, ooh err, the SNP....)

If she loses, however, especially by a narrow margin, then she can keep blaming the nasty English for Scotland's woes, keep subsidizing Scotland from the Barnett formula, demand more concessions & money from London whilst perpetually threatening another 'once in a generation' referendum and keep in Government thanks to a combination of harvesting the anti-English protest vote and promising things that she "would deliver if only Westminster would allow her" whilst knowing that she couldn't because Scotland's economy alone wouldn't support it.

For Nicola Sturgeon, losing the referendum would be a win-win situation...

 

[vim_fuego]

My [non-Scottish] chums who have [foolishly] chosen to continue living North of the Border once their time was served are telling me that despite seemingly strong support in the popular press, if you scratch the surface of services then things like refuse collection, social services etc are in a worse state than the rest of the UK.

 

[Fu Fu Valve]

North of the border individual Tax rates are also higher - and the lovely SNP passed a motion at their conference last weekend that said anyone earning under £21,000 shouldn't pay tax. They admitted it would mean adding another 10% to middle and high earners to cover the shortfall - thankfully it's not policy (yet) it's bad enough paying higher taxes to give free shite to feckless if that comes in even the wife has said we're moving to Northumberland.
The more they band the Independence Drum the more most people are convinced they're trying to drown out the noise from the Ferries scandal, Gupta and his smelter scandal, Salmonds touchy feely scandal, the Scottish Bank that never was (scrapped a year before Covid despite what Wee Nippy says), worst hospital waiting times for decades, failing schools, highest drug deaths in Europe and all the other useless failures they've presided over.

They've been in power for 14 years - there's only so much they can blame on Westmonster and the hated Torreeees

 

[Tin basher]

They've been in power for 14 years - there's only so much they can blame on Westmonster

It's true there is only so much they can blame on Westminster but they don't appear to have reached that particular blame threshold just yet. It's like a sponsored whinge-athon

 

[muttywhitedog]

North of the border individual Tax rates are also higher - and the lovely SNP passed a motion at their conference last weekend that said anyone earning under £21,000 shouldn't pay tax. They admitted it would mean adding another 10% to middle and high earners to cover the shortfall - thankfully it's not policy (yet) it's bad enough paying higher taxes to give free shite to feckless if that comes in even the wife has said we're moving to Northumberland.

Are you aware that someone earning the minimum wage on full time hours earns £18,300 a year? As the Govt have determined that there is a minimum wage, do you not find it strange that the same Govt then take £1700 in tax and NI off those workers, leaving them below the minimum wage level. I'd support anyone raising the tax thresholds to minimum wage level, with higher rates of tax further up the scale to fund it.

 

[busby1971]

I don’t think any UK party is arguing to move the tax free allowance to Minimum or Living Wage annualised equivalent, or the NI start level.

If you remove the relative poor out of the contribution pool, do they then lose access to NHS Treatment or Pensions?

For people to value the services they receive from the state, then some form of contribution gives them skin in the game.

Oh, and by the way your math is still pretty wrong, even looking at the half dozen or so statutory wage levels, here’s some relatively positive news about the minimum wage from a bland neutral source.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7735/

 

[Rocket_Ronster]

I don’t think any UK party is arguing to move the tax free allowance to Minimum or Living Wage annualised equivalent, or the NI start level.

If you remove the relative poor out of the contribution pool, do they then lose access to NHS Treatment or Pensions?

For people to value the services they receive from the state, then some form of contribution gives them skin in the game.

Oh, and by the way your math is still pretty wrong, even looking at the half dozen or so statutory wage levels, here’s some relatively positive news about the minimum wage from a bland neutral source.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7735/

Math ????
F'in math ???

Stone him.