As well as tuition fees, prescriptions are also free in Scotland. But I don't get how this is "milking the English taxpayer".

There have been tradeoffs for both. Over 100,000 college places have been dropped to continue funding free tuition fees. Scotland get a set pot for Education, they just choose how that pot is spent. They have had to make compromises to keep free tuition, and personally I think they should have started charging fees rather than remove the chance of further education from like 130,000 school leavers next year.

We don't have free prescriptions, but that £8? people in England pay for their prescriptions goes back into the English NHS's health budget, that is then reinvested in funding cancer treatment. This is why England has better a Cancer treatment track record than Scotland has. Scotland choose to keep prescriptions free so they don't get that extra NHS funding.

It's all trade offs. It's just the SNP did a much better job of promoting the benefits of their stance.

The Welsh have a devolved NHS too, Labour have managed to run that into the ground with equivalent funding to the English NHS. More power doesn't mean your politicians will do a better job no matter how much Scottish independence was sold as just that.

...whose party was elected into Holyrood in 2007 with a landslide victory. Who spent his entire political career pushing for an agenda for those who supported him, which he delivered to them on Thursday. Job done, he did what he promised. Gave Scotland the choice.

Far too left to you but common sense to the vast majority who voted for him and even those who couldn't vote for him. 

Whats wrong with a bit of social justice? 

Pfft. We (US) fought and won our independence hundreds of years ago with nothing but untrained civilians, a few rusty muskets and guts. What a bunch of sissies! lol

I fail to see how this is a "Woo hoo!" moment.

It also wasn't a huge margin. 45% (mostly the young people) voting in favor of Independence, is pretty damn significant, and you can be sure this will come up again in the future. There is certainly an argument to be made that Scotland could potentially be better off on it's own, and there are benefits to "building your own country". But regardless, I would hardly say it was any kind of landslide defeat, and there is nothing whatsoever wrong with people wanting to have an independent, not dependent country.

When the older, more conservative generations die off, and the more educated, more open minded youth grow up and take over, I am almost certain you will eventually see things like an independent Scotland and a unified Ireland, etc.

Even so it would be unwise for westminister to ignore at least 1.6 million people. They won't get independence obviously but they want further autonomy and devolution. The same with alot of no voters (very few people want things to stay exactly the same as now). Few Scots, yet alone Brits are satisified with the balance of power in British politics  

We'll see but i agree there. I think 45% was pretty decent amount for independence given the odds stacked against it. The whole mainstream media scaremongered, the vast majority of the political elite grew very deseparate and stuff like that. Independence wasn't really taken seriously in Scotland till it got a parliament in 1997. The whole thing would of been impossible without the SNP.  

Either way, it would have been a huge gamble. There were a few big questions left unanswered and i guess most people weren't really to risk it (especially if they already had a stake in society) Probably why working class areas like Glasgow supported independence so much 

Not likely as much as parliament wants it to be. But there are talks of devolution and federalisation for scotland (and maybe other areas of Britain) from next year but apart from having control on raising tax. I'm not sure how far they will go. 

Parliament promised devolution to get people to vote no and it seemingly worked but they seem to be going back on their promises already from the looks of it but we'll see. As i said business as usual isn't likely, the result wasn't deceisive at all 

They've spent decades ignoring far more people in the North of England. Yorkshire and Lancashire alone accounting for 10m people...

Distance, lol. Do you know who the English are? We're not Mongols or Romans. The seas have always been more favourable to us than the landed folk. Our ports are the most successful nations in the known Universe.

I don't want france out of the EU. I want flance to lose it's seat on the security council. I couldn't care less about flence. It has no business being considered equal to the UK. They're responsible for half of 'the West's' problems today, from Versaille to Vietnam.

Let Germany rule Europe and freedom lovers the world outside.