Scottish independence - as an Englishman, am I "wrong" not to give a crap?

[bubblesmcgrath]

not to mention that any conquest in great britain was completed centuries ago.

Great Britain?
Do you mean the place inhabited by modern humans during the upper paleolithic period, or the place where the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries lived?

 

[andysays]

What about Germany and the Low Countries? And Spain and Italy?

OK, my idea that countries which have a federal constitution have mostly been formed by agreement, whereas the others have mostly been formed by conquest is obvious nonsense, and I apologise to everyone* for mentioning it and beginning this derailing of the thread away from the prospects of a federal structure emerging in post-independant-Scotland UK.

*Everyone except Pickman's model, because he's still behaving like a boring pedantic cunt

 

[Pickman's model]

Great Britain?
Do you mean the place inhabited by modern humans during the upper paleolithic period, or the place where the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries lived?

it's the island we're on you ignorant twat

 

[Pickman's model]

I've accepted that my suggestion was ill-expressed and perhaps even ill-informed.

If calling you a boring, pedantic, destructive cunt is spree of abuse, behaving like a spoilt brat, then you're absolutely correct. But it isn't, and you're not, you're just being a boring, pedantic, destructive cunt. Again.

calling me a boring, pedantic, destructive cunt doesn't make it true. repeating it doesn't make it true. it just shows you to be a sad dull loser with a very limited vocabulary.

 

[bubblesmcgrath]

calling me a boring, pedantic, destructive cunt doesn't make it true. repeating it doesn't make it true. it just shows you to be a sad dull loser with a very limited vocabulary.

Now you know how I feel.

 

[Pickman's model]

Now you know how I feel.

i hope you feel worse than that.

 

[brogdale]

it's the island we're on you ignorant twat

Politically, though, (and that's what the thread is about), it also includes many others that we're not on.

 

[J Ed]

The Catalan-Spanish rhetoric is almost identical to the Scottish-British stuff. Some of the figures are even the same, including the unelected former totally not CIA agent 'Maoist' Barroso, threatening the Catalans with exclusion from the EU just as he did the Scots.

 

[andysays]

Now you know how I feel.

i hope you feel worse than that.

I hope she feels better realising that it's not just her that gets pulled up on stuff they've said, however deserving/not deserving she feels it's been.

It's just the normal rough and tumble of debate here, not anything to cry abuse or bullying over.

 

[redsquirrel]

Is there no subject that Quartz is not deeply wrong about?

What you mean Cameron isn't a socialist?

 

[tbtommyb]

calling me a boring, pedantic, destructive cunt doesn't make it true. repeating it doesn't make it true.

yeah, but only because you were all of those before he called you such.

 

[danny la rouge]

Matthew Norman in the Independent says:

In the entire global history of the political campaign, has any been more misconceived, wretchedly executed and potentially self-defeating than the one designed to keep Scotland within the United Kingdom?

This week’s attempt to spook the Scots into holding on to nurse - in succession to “you’ll lose the pound/ the BBC/ your embassies around the world”; “you’ll come under Brussels' iron yoke/ be blackballed from the EU”; “you’ll starve to death when the oil runs out”; “you’ll be crippled by mobile phone international roaming charges the second you cross the border” and all the others - concerns defence.

Not long ago, Lord (George) Robertson, the one-time Labour defence secretary and former Nato secretary-general, gravely warned his compatriots that “the loudest cheers for the break-up of Britain would be from our enemies”; and that Scottish independence “would be cataclysmic in geopolitical terms”. Well, wouldn’t it just? Without the Scots Dragoons under the Union banner, China would nuke Taiwan, the Americans would annexe Mexico, and the third battalion of the Swiss Army Knives might very well invade Guam.
[...]

Scotland, if it chooses independence and then resists all the maritime powers hell bent on capturing it, will be fine. It is a left-leaning country with a character that would not be changed by becoming a sovereign state. England, on the other hand, would be transformed, and in no way for the better.

[...]
Labour would have no choice but to reinvent itself as a party of the centre-right.​

I was with him, more or less, up to that point. But he seems to be under the illusion that Labour isn't currently a party of the centre right.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Yep last bit is bollocks, and a misunderstanding of the nature of England.

 

[andysays]

Matthew Norman in the Independent says:

I was with him, more or less, up to that point. But he seems to be under the illusion that Labour isn't currently a party of the centre right.

the inevitable release of latent English shrill intolerance

in smug and tone-deaf England, her hearing still distorted by the echo of Empire, rampant arrogance drowns out an obvious fact

So there we have the answer to the question. If Scotland goes her own way, we're all doomed to revert back to the inherent little-Englishness that steeplejack parodied for us recently.

Maybe Matthew Norman should stick to film reviews, because that is piss-poor stuff

 

[steeplejack]

he's always been an irritating, vain little squit Matthew Norman.

 

[bubblesmcgrath]

K

not to mention that any conquest in great britain was completed centuries ago.

Great Britain?
Do you mean the place inhabited by modern humans during the upper paleolithic period, or the place where the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries lived?

To which you reply.....

"Its the island we're on you ignorant twat"

You brought up the conquests hundreds of years ago. ..and I pointed out that great Britain didn't exist hundreds of years ago by referring to the older names used hundreds of years ago to describe the country now callled england.........as I'm pretty pedantic about these things.

Then you come back with the outburst "it's the island we're on you ignorant twat".....
I think you may have proven that you were the ignorant twat here...not me.

 

[andysays]

K

To which you reply.....

"Its the island we're on you ignorant twat"

You brought up the conquests hundreds of years ago. ..and I pointed out that great Britain didn't exist hundreds of years ago by referring to the older names used hundreds of years ago to describe the country now callled england.........as I'm pretty pedantic about these things.

Then you come back with the outburst "it's the island we're on you ignorant twat".....
I think you may have proven that you were the ignorant twat here...not me.

Anyway bubbles, rather than squabbling with pickmans (which TBH you can do on any thread) do you have any opinion on whether those of us left in the rest of the UK will be affected in any dramatic way should Scotland vote for independence?

 

[bubblesmcgrath]

Well Andysays...speaking as an Irish person, I doubt England and the English will be affected in any dramatic way......and I'm pretty sure that neither ye nor the Scots will have a civil war, like we did after our fight for independence.

 

[andysays]

Well Andysays...speaking as an Irish person, I doubt England and the English will be affected in any dramatic way......and I'm pretty sure that neither ye nor the Scots will have a civil war, like we did after our fight for independence.

Speaking as a British person, whose parents come from northern Britain but who has always lived in southern Britain, I think I'd probably agree with you.

Some apparently think the rest of the UK will never been the same again, but seem unable to come up with any real justfication for this belief.

 

[JTG]

Seems to me that there are certain types on the liberal left in England who have so little faith in the English working classes that they see Scotland as a crutch without which we shall revert to right wing barbarousness immediately they pack their bags and leave.

I think they're wrong

 

[andysays]

Seems to me that there are certain types on the liberal left in England who have so little faith in the English working classes that they see Scotland as a crutch without which we shall revert to right wing barbarousness immediately they pack their bags and leave.

I think they're wrong

And there are others who think that some sort of English radicalism will re-ignite and there'll be overwhelming demands for a federalised regional structure.

I think they're wrong too.

 

[bubblesmcgrath]

Seems to me that there are certain types on the liberal left in England who have so little faith in the English working classes that they see Scotland as a crutch without which we shall revert to right wing barbarousness immediately they pack their bags and leave.

I think they're wrong

Going on past history....when most of Ireland became independent there was very little impact on people in England, Scotland or Wales. The North of Ireland is a different matter as it was left with the UK. But I doubt the regular English Joe saw much of an impact on their lives.....at the time.

 

[DotCommunist]

And there are others who think that some sort of English radicalism will re-ignite and there'll be overwhelming demands for a federalised regional structure.

I think they're wrong too.

Anglia demands her historic separatism.

 

[JTG]

Anglia demands her historic separatism.

Anglia Ripon?

 

[andysays]

Anglia demands her historic separatism.

good luck with that

 

[Pickman's model]

K



To which you reply.....

"Its the island we're on you ignorant twat"

You brought up the conquests hundreds of years ago. ..and I pointed out that great Britain didn't exist hundreds of years ago by referring to the older names used hundreds of years ago to describe the country now callled england.........as I'm pretty pedantic about these things.

Then you come back with the outburst "it's the island we're on you ignorant twat".....
I think you may have proven that you were the ignorant twat here...not me.

let me take this in a couple of simple steps.

great britain is an island.

england is a country within the island of great britain. england is not the same as great britain.

is this clear? england, scotland and wales are all on the island of great britain. the island of great britain existed millennia before england wales or scotland were dreamt of by men and women, in the same way the falkland islands or ireland or diego garcia have been there for millennia before people found them.

can we move on now?

 

[Pickman's model]

Seems to me that there are certain types on the liberal left in England who have so little faith in the English working classes that they see Scotland as a crutch without which we shall revert to right wing barbarousness immediately they pack their bags and leave.

I think they're wrong

revert?

 

[bubblesmcgrath]

let me take this in a couple of simple steps.

great britain is an island.

england is a country within the island of great britain. england is not the same as great britain.

is this clear? england, scotland and wales are all on the island of great britain. the island of great britain existed millennia before england wales or scotland were dreamt of by men and women, in the same way the falkland islands or ireland or diego garcia have been there for millennia before people found them.

can we move on now?

Whooooosh......that's the sound of you totally missing my point as it flies over your head.... my point was that england, scotland and wales and indeed ireland, were not always called great britain... and just as hundreds of years ago england had a different name then the future may well bring differences of government and name

 

[bubblesmcgrath]

Ps ... Great Britain did not exist millenia ago .....even if pickmans model insists it did.

 

[spring-peeper]

let me take this in a couple of simple steps.

great britain is an island.

england is a country within the island of great britain. england is not the same as great britain.

is this clear? england, scotland and wales are all on the island of great britain. the island of great britain existed millennia before england wales or scotland were dreamt of by men and women, in the same way the falkland islands or ireland or diego garcia have been there for millennia before people found them.

can we move on now?

Great Britain is a collection of islands.


Carry on....