How the Union benefits Scotland and the Scots.

Discussion in 'Western Europe' started by Oddquine, Feb 25, 2012.

  1. Oddquine

    Oddquine Well-Known Member

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    Thought I'd start a thread to give the pro-Unionists somewhere to post their reasons as to why Scotland would be better to stay in the Union, given they are not giving any reasons anywhere else on the internet.

    I don't expect it to be very busy, though...as I DO mean reasons as to why Scotland would be better to stay in the Union as opposed to reasons the UK Government doesn't want to lose Scotland.

    As far as I can see, there are no positive benefits for Scotland from the Union.....which is why the Unionists tend to put forward a case against independence...which is not the same thing at all as a case for the "Union"

    I don't want to see lots of the following kind of thing.....because that is Scotland's benefit to the Union.....not the benefit Scotland receives from the Union.

    In Ed Miliband makes case for Union (or the influence of Nulabour in the Union with Scottish Labour votes as opposed to without them)

    In Scotland and the UK are stronger together Cameron says that Inside the United Kingdom, Scotland – just as much as England, Wales and Northern Ireland – is stronger, safer, richer and fairer. I have spent hours and I mean hours trying to confirm that from a purely Scottish POV..and so far failed miserably. Maybe Unionists can do better? I hardly think so, given The Prime Minister said the Scots could have further devolution if they vote No to a breakaway.
    His surprise concession angered Tory MPs who insisted that Nationalist leader Alex Salmond should get no further powers without a referendum in England, Wales and Northern Ireland too.


    It surprises me any Scot alive since Margaret Thatcher would ever believe one syllable emanating from the facial orifice of any Unionist politician, particularly a Tory one....or any Nulabour one come to that.

    We have long learned that a promise of jam tomorrow, (maybe if we get round to it and our English back bench MPs agree) gives the status quo or something very little different. Just check out the Scotland Act going through Parliament right now to see the arrogance of Unionist MPs and their determination to keep control of most of what Scotland could do for itself...to ensure they always stay in charge of anything which might make a difference to Scots.

    Any Unionist really think devo-max is anything more than a promise waiting to be dumped if Scotland votes no? Honestly? Truly?

    Could link to lots of other places which talk about stuff like the problems the UK would face if they had to move Trident, lose oil revenues etc.....but I'll just give you the best and most encouraging argument for Independence yet...but the problem is it is NOT an argument for the Union. Salmond utterly insane destruction of Britain

    I, and I'm sure others, can argue against the first six anti-independence propositions on there as Scots.....but I kinda think that Unionists will find it more difficult to convince the Scots to give a toss about the effects on the rump UK as delineated in the last four.
     
    Viv and (deleted member) like this.
  2. Paris

    Paris Well-Known Member

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    OK. I can't think of anything relevant to say for Scotland to support the Union; nevertheless, I will try my best...

    If given enough time, the gentlemen from Westminster might convince their Scottish counterparts to shave legs:mrgreen:
     
  3. three_lions

    three_lions New Member

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    I have had enough just go on and get it over with at this point. England has never has any practical use for Scotland.
     
  4. diamond lil

    diamond lil Well-Known Member

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    I loathe and detest Cameron, but even a toe rag can be right sometimes and he's right about that.
    We're stronger together than apart.

    Quite apart from that, the referendum is more than two years away.

    There's nothing to debate until Alex Salmond starts putting some meat on the bones, so to speak. So far it's all very vague.
     
  5. alexa

    alexa Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    But the question was simply what are the benefits to Scotland and the Scottish people of remaining in the UK. It ought to be possible to answer this now. Where does Scotland benefit from being a part of the UK?
     
  6. fredc

    fredc New Member

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    Well it does mean that when their leading bank acquires toxic assets of over a hundred billion pounds because their corrupt and greedy First Minister, an ex and no doubt future RBOS employee, backed a corrupt and greedy Fred Goodwin in a corrupt and greedy takeover of ABN Amro the whole country doesn't go bankrupt.
     
  7. Viv

    Viv Banned by Request

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    David Cameron is apparently the only one with an (obscure) answer. Perhaps the details are bound by the official secrets act...:constipated:
     
  8. alexa

    alexa Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    That bank jibe is an old one and a lame duck. It has been answered too many times to need it yet again.



    Now an advantage for Scotland?? just one?
     
  9. Viv

    Viv Banned by Request

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    And what is that benefit to staying in the UK?

    RBS apparently may still go either way, but work has been done and hopefully he will pull it off. If he does, it has potential to be a fair asset.
     
  10. Oddquine

    Oddquine Well-Known Member

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    There is plenty to debate. For example, you could quantify how "stronger together than apart" benefits Scotland, and not simply the prestige of the UK politicians in Westminster?

    This thread is not intended to be about the benefits of independence to Scotland, that debate will last for the next couple of years but is to delineate the benefits of being in the Union to Scotland..so your last sentence is moot.

    As Alexa has said It ought to be possible to answer this now. What might, could or will happen in 2014 is not the issue here...the issue is why it shouldn't it happen as far as Unionists are concerned.

    The Union has lasted 305 years. There is surely something which has been introduced over the last 305 years which, in 2012 is a definite and obvious benefit to Scotland and the Scots and one that we cannot possibly accomplish for ourselves without continuing to be a junior partner in UK plc.
     
  11. fredc

    fredc New Member

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    I just told you.

    If Scotland had been independent when Salmond and Goodwin screwed up they'd be making Greece look like Utopia right now.
     
  12. alexa

    alexa Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You are not presenting the picture as it was. In an independent Scotland this situation would not have happened. A vast amount of the losses were made in England by investment bankers in London, not Scotland. The UK did not bail out the vast majority of US subsidiaries that needed it, it left the US to do that.

    England gained from and failed the RBS and as it enjoyed the good times, must endure the bad.

    As you can see this was a British operation not a Scotland only one.

    Now lessons hopefully will be learned from the past. With RSB anyway as Viv says we are getting optimistic claims on it's recovery....but Scotland not in the UK and not in the Euro, might even have tried an Iceland - and told the banks, tough luck. They I hear are now making a nice little recovery to the recession.

    The RSB was a UK wide operation and hence a UK wide responsibility and hence cannot be taken as a benefit to Scotland.
     
  13. fredc

    fredc New Member

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    Yes it was a British operation not a Scottish one.

    But if Scotland had been independent it would have been a Scottish operation not a British one.
     
  14. alexa

    alexa Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yes, and it would have been different and just like the UK didn't bail out most US subsidiaries, if it had been operating as it was with an Independent Scotland, as most of the losses were made in London, England would have been picking up the ticket not Scotland.


    Now a genuine benefit Scotland gets from the Union?
     
  15. fredc

    fredc New Member

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    No, England would not pick up the ticket any more than Scotland would pick up the ticket for English banks, Scotland would be up the creek without a paddle.

    You know saying that England will bail Scotland out every time they screw up is not a very good argument for independence.
     
  16. Oddquine

    Oddquine Well-Known Member

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    fredc, if you are going to drag your biased and irrational crap into every thread on Scottish Independence on this forum....then I despair for the future of this forum, given it appears to be being over-run with haters and has fewer and fewer debaters.

    Now, kindly explain to me, in words of one syllable, why you would expect Scotland to do any more than bail out the banks who operate in Scotland to the level of the percentage of those operations in Scotland? (which in the case of RBS has been quoted as variously being between 5% and 10% of the bank's world-wide activity....given that it was regulated and paid all its taxes into the UK coffers?

    After all, The Federal Reserve stepped in to bail out US operations linked to RBS and HBOS. In Europe the governments of France, Belgium The Netherlands and Luxembourg joined forces to help the Fortis and Dexia Banks operating across their borders.

    “This decision was not taken to protect either RBS or HBOS, nor specifically the Scottish markets, but to protect the financial stability of the UK financial system as a whole.”

    HBOS’s operational head quarters were in Halifax, Yorkshire, so there was even less reason to assume Scots would be responsible for its rescue. But the indisputably Scottish RBS ran up most of its losses in the City of London where it was regulated: “It would be inconceivable that Edinburgh or Scotland as a whole could be held liable for that full bill.”

    Scotland and the banking bailout time for the truth

    If Scotland had been independent at the time of the bank bailout, and was the regulatory home country of the bank, then if they had been so lax as to allow the banks the freedom to be ********s handed to them by the Tories in the 1980s, they would still have no obligation to meet deficits sustained by the operations of their subsidiaries in other countries just because those countries had been just as lax in their regulations as we had..and that would apply to subsidiaries in England as well as to subsidiaries anywhere else.

    Those operations furth of Scotland could have been allowed to fail...but as we saw in the current crisis, many foreign countries chose to bail out some failing foreign banks at their own cost. So the UK did not have to bail out the RBS subsidiaries in the USA, for example....the USA did that....because it didn't want Citizen's Financial Group failing.

    Despite the oft repeated levels of debt....the toxic debt was predominantly in the USA. It cost the UK £66bn in shares and loans to bailout both RBS and HBOS.

    Given that Scottish GDP at the time was £145 billion and our remaining oil reserves, using the American Energy Departments cost calculations, are valued at a trillion pounds, we’d have been well placed to negotiate a good deal on the international money markets – which was how the UK, and other national governments, financed the banking rescue. Indeed given our valuable natural resources, we might have negotiated a better deal. if we had been independent.

    Now, fredc.....you have facts and figures there. Do try and not simply respond with another opinion cobbled together from the media but address the facts and figures.

    You may, and probably will not, agree with any of it...but debate requires that you address the points made, and give the requisite facts and figures to prove that they are wrong...and not continually limit yourself to spewing irrationality and bile.
     
  17. fredc

    fredc New Member

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    Given that Scottish GDP at the time was £145 bn and the most Britain ever made from oil revenue in a year was £13 bn Scotland would have had to go into debt up to it's eyeballs to bail out the Royal Bank of Scotland. There could well be a trillion dollars worth of oil in the North Sea but all the Scottish government would get is license fee and tax.

    The bank went bankrupt as a direct result of it's takeover of ABN Amro, a takeover backed by Alex Salmond and the Scottish government. Not something likely to instil confidence in foreign investors.
     
  18. Viv

    Viv Banned by Request

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    Totally hypothetic. I said totally hypothetic, not totally hyper and pathetic.

    That bank is global. It owns assets everywhere., personal, business, private banking, insurance, corporate finance in Europe, US, Asia, ROI. Citizens Financial Group is the 8th largest bank in US and it does business in the Bank of China. If you are saying global corp will be confined only to Scotland after the UK dissolves, you'll have to evidence that.

    What about Northern Rock, btw? Not that I'm hugely great on economic issues, but is that a Scottish bank? What about Lloyds TSB? Bradford & Bingley? But then it's hard to know what's going on. Are HBOS, Halifax, RBS, Lloyds.... interchangeable now in a lot of cases ..all international anyway.

    If you're going to rule out the ownership of one of the world's largest financial institutions because of a temporary crisis, nobody will ever make any money be it UK or Scotland. I would say getting rid of UK will improve the profit margin, but it remains to be seen how RBS will end up. 84% public owned. What is the end game for that? It might be sold off to private investors who are not UK based and only pay taxes wherever it ends up trading.
     
  19. Viv

    Viv Banned by Request

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    How much RBS revenue did UK take in the pre-crisis years, Fred?
     
  20. fredc

    fredc New Member

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    I wouldn't know, why don't you look it up and tell us?
     
  21. Viv

    Viv Banned by Request

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    I'm too lazy, but from memory I think I heard it was the biggest contributor to UK when Labour was in power. Why don't you look that up and prove me wrong.:laughing:

    If I'm right and if it does get back on its feet and recommence contributing gazillions of pounds to the national economy, and if assets are split and it is attributed to Scotland, it might be a great asset. Think how much more a small independent country can do with all that profit.
     
  22. fredc

    fredc New Member

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    Well than I'll tell you the answer to your question, the answer is not enough.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/mar/13/rbs-tax-avoidance
     
  23. Viv

    Viv Banned by Request

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    MMmmmm not the right answer as usual, Fred. Every global corp avoids tax where possible. Was it evasion or alleged avoidance?

    The question was, how much did RBS contribute in tax to UK economy before the economic crisis affected it and companies across the world? So if RBS allegedly "invested" £25m as a by product, the tax they actually paid must be really substantial.
     
  24. alexa

    alexa Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So nobody has been able to present any genuine advantages to Scotland yet I notice. Hmmmmm
     
  25. fredc

    fredc New Member

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    Yes, the advantage that if their main bank makes a stupid investment with the backing of their government the entire country doesn't go belly up.

    It's just that when ever anyone talks about reality it's drowned out by strains of Flower of Scotland wafting about in your head.

    You must be deeper in denial than an Egyptian skin diver.
     

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