Scottish Independence- Yes or No?

[McGran]

MikeRox said:

McGran said:

MikeRox said:

Well, Scotland only became part of the UK because they wanted England to bail them out when they bankrupted themselves trying to colonise the Americas.

If by that you mean that many Scots politicians (some of whom had lost money on the Darien expedition) accepted English bribes to vote for union against the wishes of the Scots people then you are correct.

From Wiki

[Scots poet] Robert Burns referred to this:

We're bought and sold for English Gold,Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation.

Some of the money was used to hire spies, such as Daniel Defoe; his first reports were of vivid descriptions of violent demonstrations against the Union. "A Scots rabble is the worst of its kind," he reported, "for every Scot in favour there is 99 against".

Ah such a wonderful conspiracy! I mean it's not as if Scottish residents get more spent per head than the rest of the UK in the oppressive English forced union.

Don't all the realistic projections show that the rest of the UK would actually be slightly better off without Scotland? Whereas Scotland would be significantly worse off? But that's just Westminster bribery. Thank Christ I live in Yorkshire! Safe from Westminster bile.

Sigh! Well that went off the rails quickly.

My point was not that the big bad English are responsible for all Scotland's woes - that would be ridiculous.  What I was saying was that Scotland was sold out by Scots politicians interested in their own wealth more than the interests and desires of its people.

To answer your point - generally speaking you are correct. Scots do get more per head of population.  However Scotland (including North Sea gas and oil) puts more into the UK economy than it takes out.  This will obviously change once those natural resources are gone.

As for the long term economic argument it seems that the evidence has been so tainted by politicising by both sides that it's impossible to really discern the truth one way or another.