Mrebo said:
Bingowings, I like the independence movements, the idea of preserving regional cultures and local governance. I had superficial exposure to the Irish issue but have forgotten why the UK held on so desperately (perhaps to not encourage you Scots?). I'm silently rooting for the Québécois, Kurds, Irish, et al. What is the downside of being British?
If the majority of a defined community want to be independent I think they should be.
The Northern Ireland situation is a complex one.
The act of partition (much like the situation when British India became two separate states) was probably sensible at the time because the people in that area are mostly staunch Protestant Unionists and the majority of people on the whole island of Ireland are mostly staunch Catholics Republicans.
The division was more to prevent the new state being plunged into bloody sectarian civil war.
It still happened to a degree but arguably less so than if the whole island was just abandoned by the UK.
It does serve Tory interests keeping the Unionist parties in their back pocket but to their credit it was the Conservatives that laid the groundwork for the more peaceful situation the region has now (that and 9/11 waking Americans who previously funded the IRA to the horrors being on the receiving end of terrorism).
The reason for my backing Scottish Independence has nothing to do with Nationalism (the customs most people associate with Scotland were invented by outsiders for outsiders and are perpetuated for the tourist industry).
Scotland has always had it's own legal identity and has favoured a European Socialist flavour of politics which is counter to what gets elected in Westminster.
We get accused of being a parasitical region and yet our natural resources have been abused to fund policies almost universally opposed up here.
We have been used as a policy lab by successive governments and frankly a large number of Scots have just had enough.
I dare say a lot of English people are equally fed up with the West Lothian Question.
There is a lot about the SNP I disagree with, I would prefer closer links with the Scandinavian countries we more closely resemble than drawing us closer into the EU.
Independence however is the best way to stop Scotland being drawn into wars Scots want to stay out of, away from Nuclear power and weapons and to get Scotland making things instead of being bound by Westminster's culture of the survival of the cheapest and protect our Welfare State from creeping towards the American model preferred by the Tories and New Labour.
