Latest Poll shows Scottish Independence in the lead.

[scribz]

[HollywoodMole]

[Halo]

Hoozah for the triumph of idiocy.

[ActRaiserTheReturned]

Halo said
Hoozah for the triumph of idiocy.

I only wish the Scottish folk would band together to get rid of the radical Islamic zealotry that's running rampant in London.

[aza]

ActRaiserTheReturned said
I only wish the Scottish folk would band together to get rid of the radical Islamic zealotry that's running rampant in London.

I'll rampage in you bby

[Dervish]

I wouldn't get too excited. Poll results don't always represent the results of the vote. Case in point, in the last Alberta provincial election, the Wild Rose party constantly was ahead in polls and when the election rolled around, they were crushed by one of the biggest landslide Conservative victories in Alberta history.

Same deal with Quebec's sovereignty referendums. They keep making it sound like a sure thing with these polls, but as you may have noticed, they're still a part of Canada.

[ActRaiserTheReturned]

Azarthes said
I'll rampage in you bby

In your dreams

[aza]

ActRaiserTheReturned said
In your dreams

Im the change i want to see in the world

[HollywoodMole]

Dervish said
I wouldn't get too excited. Poll results don't always represent the results of the vote. Case in point, in the last Alberta provincial election, the Wild Rose party constantly was ahead in polls and when the election rolled around, they were crushed by one of the biggest landslide Conservative victories in Alberta history.Same deal with Quebec's sovereignty referendums. They keep making it sound like a sure thing with these polls, but as you may have noticed, they're still a part of Canada.

Except I'm pretty sure earlier polls in Scotland saw either 50/50 or a slight advantage to "NO" so... the polls are giving mixed results :S

[Dervish]

HollywoodMole said
Except I'm pretty sure earlier polls in Scotland saw either 50/50 or a slight advantage to "NO" so... the polls are giving mixed results :S

That's pretty much what I'm saying. It could change at a moment's notice.

[Sable]

Independent Scotland would be weird.

[The Nexerus]

Factoring in undecided voters, it looks like all of the recent polls are still forecasting a 'No' victory. Precedent tells us that undecided voters are overwhelmingly likely to vote in favour of the status quo on the day of the referendum. But, of course, a 'No' victory doesn't spell the end of independence movements in Scotland. Alex Salmond will say, "If I've understood you well, you're telling me 'until next time'.", and then after fifteen years of constant infighting in Scotland there'll be another referendum, and then even after that second vote of confidence in the UK, the argument will keep going and going and going.

[idlehands]

They just want their freedom.

[Vortex]

I support their independence and everything but how will the Scots survive economically? Last time i checked they weren't exactly a economic powerhouse.

[HollywoodMole]

Vortex said
I support their independence and everything but how will the Scots survive economically? Last time i checked they weren't exactly a economic powerhouse.

All their talking about is "50 years of oil" ... And they won't go into further detail.

[idlehands]

I think they have oil in the North Sea and kilt sales.

[Antarctic Termite]

They're surrounded by near-Arctic islands, I'm sure there are seals to club and seabird nests to raid or something.

[scribz]

Oh boy! This made more polarizing views than I expected.

Lemme just put a run down on things for y'all.

Dervish and Nex are right about the polls,although the most recent means avg of all polls this week suggest a 51% for yes, it could be a rogue. Either way it's becoming neck and neck.

As for the economy!

UK has around 63 million people in it, and is for the most part a "service" based job sector market. It used to be heavy on production of goods and so forth however that's slowly dying. What's bad about that is that the service based industry is one that directly competes with the like of the "less than humanely paid" Indian service based sector, so it's not a great start to begin with. The means in which companies are trying to tackle this is automation, which means less and less service wage jobs anyway, so even that job sector is dwindling.

Now, note that when it comes to job sectors, you could view it like a russian doll of venn diagrams, with size equating to the money involved in these areas - in all countries, it will go something like this...

Finance (Banks and such, lots of money, pouring into the things that should matter) -> Resource (Like mining, drilling, farming and agriculture, shit - any thing that's about bringing goods to the world) -> Engineering/Manufacturing (The processing of these goods) -> Management (Business shit! Office work!) -> (Service goods: People providing service to one another) -> (Public Spending) -> (Research)

Now, that's to do with the amount of money, and all i'm trying to show is that money flows from one job sector to another for a reason.

If you were to see what number of people were actually employed by these areas, you would see that service comes basically on top.

Why?

Because way back in the ye olden days, engineers needed other people to manually manufacture things. Now, engineers only need a few dozen machines to do it, at twice the speed, and a quarter of the price.

So, the question isn't so much Economics, but economics that provide a flow of capital to the majority of people, and service industry isn't very highly paid as it is.

And even that's going, due to things like self-check outs in Tesco. Basically, with the current rules of needing to have money for goods, technology is actually fucking with our jobs, and the UK, is a service industry dependant job market country, with any actual economic value being made by moving money from country to country in finance/trade, and a fraction of that only going to the dying bastion called the service industry.

Why does this have to do with scottish independance?

Scotland, is almost 5 million strong, or is 8.4% of the UK, we only represent 4.1% of the representatives in the house of commons however, which coupled with our vastly opposing political leanings and literal inability to actually produce an effective change in any general election (save one in the 1960's i think). So, as our own sovereign nation, this is pretty poor show. People find this a little disempowering.

In terms of tax, we produce about 21.7% of the UK's tax spendings, which shows we subsidies the rest of the UK, despite being returned with a zeitgeist view that we're all "subsidy junkies" (to quote Lord Monckton, former UKIP MP) and are getting subsidized by England, people find this a little insulting.

In terms of Economics, we often get told, less now, but definitely in the past that "Scotland would fail on it's own", that it's too small, too weak, not matured, not skilled, and having a sustainable economic foundation. I put this primarily to indirect bias being broadcasted from London based BBC, with well meaning ignorance being the case for it, but it's had it's effect and yes voters like me do all identify that this is an underlying tone we've been brought up with, and that it's only been recently as this country has started to get extremely involved with the referendum that we're identifying this as not true. A lot of us correlate this to explain why identifying as being "Scottish" has often connotated to rooting for the underdog. Because media in many ways has always portrayed us as that. A lot of the yes voters have felt they've been lied to.

And this is why.

With only being 8.4% of the UK population, we have...

32% of the land area.

61% of the sea area.

90% of surface fresh water.

65% of north sea natural gas.

96% of north sea crude oil.

47% of coal production.

81% of untapped coal reserves.

62% of timber production.

46% of total forest area.

60% of fish landings on scottish vessels.

55% of UK fish landings in scottish waters.

30% of beef agriculture.

20% of sheep agriculture.

10% of pig agriculture.

9% of the dairy production.

15% of cereal holdings.

and 20% of potatoes!

Not bad for 8.4% of the population!

So we're instantly better off than the rest of the UK in terms of resource economics (the job sector that brings money to other areas as I mentioned above), the second we become independant.

We get told often we're just stuck with Oil and it'll run out and we're stupid for relying on it (despite countres going to war for this stuff and places like america and russia HEAVILY going head to head for that exact kind of resource), we're still cutting off far more losses than actual gains if we go independent from that little tid bit alone.

And I didn't even have to mention that despite being only roughly 1% of the whole of the European Population, we have...

25% of Europe's Tidal Energy Production Potential.

25% of Europe's offshore Wind Energy Potential.

10% of Europes Wave Potential.

A big tourism industry

and an even bigger whisky industry (China is our biggest client, china is fucking huge).

So, to those who say that Yes voters are idiots, i'd like for them to come up with any valid point as to why. ;D

[idlehands]

England's sweating balls right now.

[Sable]

Concerning the production potential, are you concerned that foreign investors would be leery of investing the capital required to develop those potential energy sectors? If I were a Scot I think this would be a big concern for me. Independent Scotland isn't an emergent West African coastal state ravaged by war, not by a long shot, but any new government is ripe for mismanagement.