https://twitter.com/finansa...

Giving it 110%

Scotland should secede because the United Kingdom doesn't take the extraterrestrial threat seriously. Secretary of Defense Fay Fife isn't going to mess around when it comes to the alien menace.

Scotland should secede because the United Kingdom doesn't take the extraterrestrial threat seriously.

How soon they all forget Prime Minister Harriet Jones.

A couple more tributes to the Scots:

http://youtu.be/QEA28E30MP4

http://youtu.be/dSfy6UpAXKQ

Jeez, these Scots are fookin' slow at countin' votes. I guess they're too stingy to buy our fancy electric voting machines.

Diebold - We count the votes BEFORE they're cast!

Scottish author Ken MacLeod, old lefty internationalist that he is, is a No, and thinks that some of his peers on the left are indulging in a bushel of wishful thinking.

Paul Krugman is a "Scotland, WTF?!?", because he's been beating the drum for years about how awful the euro has been from a Keynesian point of view.

Oh, also, a joke:

Q: What do you call a country joining the race to the bottom for who can cut corporate taxes the most, and which has no control over its own monetary policy?

A: A social democratic utopia.

Scottish author Ken MacLeod, old lefty internationalist that he is, is a No

Well, HIS opinion, I respect.

Raining. Raining down. You only use the word "reign" if the subject of your sentence is a monarch of some sort.

Sorry. Pet peeve.

Can we please rein in the pedantry?!

Nope. If we could post videos I would put up that clip from Star Trek: First Contact where Picard shouts "THE LINE MUST BE DRAWN HERE!" and then goes bonkers and starts wrecking his office.

Wye?

I can't decide if I should call Smut on "ordinance" (Cast out thine "i", it offends me.) or if he was somehow making fun of "reigns."

I stole the 'i' from 'waives'.

I'd like to think that somewhere out there, there's an ammo dump with a sign on it that says, "God's holy ordnance."

Well, field artillery is known as the "king of battles". . .

bombs, mortars and shells would be reigning down on Glasgow.

Why waste the ordinance?

That is as may be, but who will notice the difference?

It wasn't waste because the right people made a fuckton of money off of all that ordnance.

Och, looks a wee bit rough ootside. Better get me mac.

"... Brockington does make the good point if Scotland leaves it will make the
rest of the UK totally nuts politically (or as Socialist Cubone puts
it, 'UKIP with nukes')."

This might well be true, but it's still an argument directed at Scotland to do what's in England's best interest, which seems to be the backdrop to every argument Cameron, et al, have been making, let alone every British imperialist for the last four hundred years.

While their situations are not precisely analogous, I doubt seriously that either American Indians or blacks in this country believed this "you don't know how good you have it" routine when they were presented with it any more than the Scots do.

I should specify that my point was that the consequences of a wing nutty England will probably extend far beyond its borders.

Understood. But, equally, is that good reason to sign up with them in their suicide pact? And the wingnut flavor has been around a lot longer in Britain than just since 2010.

Certainly, a truly right-wing government would have some effect here (an ever more incestuous "special relationship" appeals to some), but I doubt it would have big doings in Europe. The only people in Europe who still hear echoes of "Britannia Rules the Waves" are Britons.

I'll just leave this here:

That letter "i" just keeps jumping in and out...

Yeah, I am not really convinced that it's the responsibility of the Scots to stay in the union just to occasionally rescue the Brits from their own masochistic voting patterns.

I lived in Scotland 1975-79. I had good friends (and one roommate) deeply involved with the Scottish Nationalist Party. I don't know if this vote will win Scotland its independence, but this I am sure of: It's inevitable. If it doesn't happen this time, Cameron et al. will renege on their promises, and those who voted No will be very regretful. The next time around, Yes will carry in a landslide. This isn't going away.

Apparently, it did not happen this time. "No" gets ~ 55%. So, we now have to see if Cameron's gang renege on all their last-ditch promises in order to preserve the Island Union (the excuses will be creative, even if the policy isn't), and if there are regular assessments of British treachery, will the independence vote become an annual affair until it's successful, or will it become a ritual humiliation of the SNP?

If it's not a Scottish Yes! vote, it's crap!

https://www.youtube.com/wat...
~

The thing that really gets me about these promises from the heads of the three major UK parties, contingent of course on the Scots propping up the existing government, is that I can remember 2010.

In 2010, in order to form a government, the Conservatives needed the Liberal Democrats to enter a coalition. So: they promised the Lib Dems various things to secure their support. And, since coming to power, they have utterly betrayed everything the Lib Dems ever claimed to stand for, with the result that the Lib Dems are despised across the UK for their pusillanimity and for their betrayals (tuition fees most prominently, but also the Conservatives' undermining of the Lib Dems' hopes for electoral reform). The result has of course helped Cameron, but it's been an unmitigated disaster for those to whom he made promises.

And now, just four years later, we've got a close parallel: various goodies are being promised to Scotland if they'll just vote as needed to keep Cameron at Number Ten. All the Scots have to do is ignore recent history. And it's hilarious that the Lib Dem leader is alongside Cameron for this offer - surely he knows that history better than anyone!

For whatever it's worth as a distant foreigner far from the people whose lives will be intimately affected I happen to support a continued and reformed UK, because whatever it means for Scotland I think England would be greatly the worse without them (and once it loses Wales too the world will be stuck with a permanently Wingnut rump UK). But the best argument for Independence has always been the wankers running the UK, and this last appeal shows that more than clearly.

PS have I mentioned lately how much I loathe and despise Disqus?

have I mentioned lately how much I loathe and despise Disqus?

Disqus ain't good, but it's a damn sight (site?) better that FYWP.

Fuck js-kit!

That seems so weird now.

And yet it was so common back then!

Wait a minute! Are you saying the Lib-Dems ever stood for something?

I did say "claimed to stand for", not "stood for". It's pretty clear from their subsequent actions that the only thing they truly insisted upon was ministerial appointments - with none of the power or responsibility supposedly associated with those jobs.

But that means that Cameron made the right calculus - he bet that the LibDem pols were a bunch of empty suits who would sell out their grandmother for a mess o' pottage and he was right. It isn't like the LibDems did anything to push back when it became obvious that Cameron was going to screw them.

Scotland's quite a bit different, in that the vote turned out so close and the voters aren't going to be bought off like LibDem pols were. The Scots aren't the LibDems and if Cameron reneges the separatists will use that as a reason to demand a new vote on a "see we told you the English were going to screw us" platform and try to sway that last 6% to their side.

1) The Scots have limited ability to punish Cameron. They can't vote against the Tories more thoroughly than they already do (well, there is I think a single Scottish Tory MP). This referendum was couched by the SNP (let alone anyone else) as being a once-in-a-generation thing; it would be difficult to hold another in Cameron's political lifetime. Clegg by contrast could have punished Cameron, if he'd any self-respect.
2) It's not really clear Cameron wants to keep Scotland. Sure, he doesn't want to be "the PM who lost Scotland", but in a whole bunch of ways he's better off without them, if he can avoid being blamed for the loss. He's certainly better off being yelled at by them.

Are they basically a bunch of British Thomas Friedmans or something?

British or no, multiple Thomas Friedmans is a terrifying thing to contemplate.

a vote in favor of Scottish independence would hurt Americans

Well gorsh, I hope he got his article to them in time so they'd know.

Och, 'oo gives a shite?

When they weep bitter tears and wipe their eyes with their kilts you will. Oh yes.

Oh, yuck it up. But you KNOW South Carolina is now going to want to do this, too - and they aren't going to be letting us vote even though just the prospect of cutting off Sen. Jowl Wobble's federal salary would guarantee a win.

Senator Who?
http://youtu.be/oY6GsCw7LFg

And I waited through that whole thing for Peter Capaldi. Jah Wobble!

Secession Central is welcome to try again. We won't need a civil war. We can just stand on their border and laugh at them.

Hey, wait 'til I move back up north, willya?

I don't want to be trapped down here!

Just slide into the slip stream of the convoys rolling away from Beaufort, Parris Island, Fort Jackson, Shaw, and Joint Base Charleston…