Re: Scottish Independence
 

Andrew Neil is not impressed by Sturgeon but if you don't want to watch the whole clip try it from about 12 minutes in ;)

Re: Scottish Independence
 

On immigration, the White Paper talks about "providing incentives to migrants who move to live and work in more remote geographical areas" of Scotland.
That should go down well in the glens.....

DB

Re: Scottish Independence
 

You'd be surprised how welcoming folk are in the remote areas. Depopulation has been an issue since the clearances and folk are now happy to see anyone coming into their communities let alone folks with family or historical ties. Everyone knows that the only future hope for these communities is new immigrants (both Scots and expats) as the local populations are now mostly below a sustainable level even if the kids don't go off to the cities for work.

Re: Scottish Independence
 

Two main reasons:

(i) It will strip out one layer of Government i.e. Westminster, and make the Scottish Government fully accountable to their electorate

(ii) The Scottish Government will bankrupt the country within five years, the IMF will be called in and the public sector gutted and made fit the 21st Century.

I will be voting yes for the above two reasons.

:amen:

Re: Scottish Independence
 

Em.....I'm from Torridon village in the Highlands at the end of a 10 mile single track road. It's 100% white Brits. I hear what you say, but still reckon I'm right on how small communities will react. Foreign tourists are one thing but I don't believe new (subsidised) residents of a completely different culture would receive the same welcome.

Re: Scottish Independence
 

fair enough, I have family on skye who were pretty pissed about an indian family arriving initially (granted they are old and make hitler look positively tame!), now though they have done a 180 and decided if thats what it takes to keep some life in the place then so be it.

personally I'd rather it was Scots moving back, ideally with historical family ties but that just aint going to happen. Hell the govt a few years ago offered crofts to anyone who could show a family history and tie with crofting and nobody including myself took them up on it.

I know what your saying and im not saying it wouldnt be without incident but surely its better that than more abandoned settlements everywhere

Re: Scottish Independence
 

Having just spent a very unproductive half an hour on the phone to the British Embassy (he was Scottish which got me thinking), what happens if Scotland votes yes...I assume they'll have to establish embassies/consulates which would be very costly?

On the plus side, the idiot I spoke to may be out of a job. He was Googling as we were on the phone 'type this into a search engine'. FFS, all I was asking about was attesting a marriage certificate, that should be their bread and butter.

Re: Scottish Independence
 

Of all the concerns to have this is the least of them. Lets face it, it would be extremely hard for any new set up to be any more useless than the current bunch of ****ing monkeys employed around the world

Re: Scottish Independence
 

You don't understand how the IMF works. Vote away. :rofl:

Re: Scottish Independence
 

Nobody I spoke to in Scotland could give a straight answer.

It was all random claims of X, Y or Z - probably procured from some shite paper. IE: similar to everything being spouted by everyone everywhere, including here and on the TV debate by the men meant to be repsonsible for this.

Re: Scottish Independence
 

How, just how, is it that you don't even have to be British to vote? If some figures I've seen are to be believed, up to 500,000 non-British Europeans will be eligible to vote--that's 10% of the population, FFS. That's mad, surely.

Re: Scottish Independence
 

the polling shows that people in those areas are less bothered about immigration than those outside them, compare the polling of White British Londoners for instance to White British residents of the South East outside London, huge difference.
Although the former tend to be younger and better educated as well which are usually drivers of less hostile attitudes to immigrants.

On Scottish rural areas it's a similar programme to the Australian regional policy where teachers,doctors,nurse etc get extra points for taking jobs in remote areas or places destroyed by emigration to the cities.
I doubt the Scots are more xenophobic than the Aussies of the interior.

Re: Scottish Independence
 

It's on residence criteria.
And the 500,000 figure is obviously nonsense, think about it

Re: Scottish Independence
 

I've no idea how many non-British Europeans live in Scotland...

Re: Scottish Independence
 

Hundreds of thousands of people from across Europe have made their homes here in Scotland. 7.6% of the total UK population is made up of EU nationals, which is 4.8 million people. With Scotland’s 8.4% population share we could reasonably extrapolate that something like 400,000 EU nationals are living in Scotland (not including the 413,924 from other UK nations living here), although the actual number will likely be a bit lower because immigration isn’t equally spread across the country.

120,000 EU citizens who live in Scotland can vote on future of the Union

They're from two different sources (obviously, I suppose, although the latter source has also said 500,000).

What perturbs me is a) that only Scots living in Scotland get to vote (although I don't know how you'd define Scottish, and b) other Brits don't get to vote. It's a union, and surely dissolution of it is something all Brits should have a say in. I think we should have had a referendum on how the referendum was going to be handled.