Yorkieabroad

Shhh, thats supposed to be a secret.....at least until the 19th....

Pulaski

Surely you mean the Basque Country?

nun

Nope Catalonia....Barcelona and Madrid haven't forgotten the Spanish Civil War and most people from around Barcelona would call themselves Catalan rather than Spanish. Just as with Scotland there is a strong independence movement and Catalonia has many devolved powers and thinks of itself as a nation separate from the rest of Spain...Spain recognizes Catalans as a nationality, but not a separate nation.

France might also block Scotland's entry because historically parts of Catalonia were in France.

nun

That gives the rUK cover. I get the feeling that rUK would oppose Scotland joining the EU out of spite.....that's the usual reaction when the powerful lose...that's if the UK stays in the EU. Ironic how the English can be so annoyed with the Scots when so many of them want to do exactly the same thing. Any Euro-skeptic that opposes Scottish independence is a major hypocrite.

Hotscot

You mean they'll only have to bend over on a day that ends with a 'y'?

Yorkieabroad

That quote isn't from me!

Curious about your generalisation about "the English can be so annoyed with the Scots". Do you mean annoyed in general, or annoyed because they want to leave? I'm not going to try to generalise for a whole country, but personally, I know more English that want the Yes vote to succeed, and more Scots that want No to triumph! I've not actually seen any opinion polls assessing English views on the matter - would be interesting to see.

As for England exercising a veto out of spite, assuming all the other hurdles are passed, I think that is highly unlikely. Politicians may be a bunch of twunts, but I suspect that most of the ones that matter have progressed beyond playground tantrums. From a purely practical point of view, wouldn't England prefer Scotland to be part of the EU?

Pulaski

OK, but I've heard the same arguments for the Basque country too.
You quoted a previously ****ed-up post with a quote embedded in it. It may be too late for you to go back and fix the bit that you quoted.

nun

Catalonia actually has a "treaty" document that formalizes it's autonomous status, but obviously the Basques want something similar.

Yorkieabroad

Ok - just saw that - been back and corrected, but not going to change anything lower down. Oh well, nothing to lose sleep over...

nun

Sorry, your extra "[/QUOTE]" messed my quote up....I've removed your name in my original post....sweet dreams.

dunroving

For those who are interested, I have set up a poll in the MBTTUK forum so you can indicate what you would vote if you had a vote.

Currently it is at 89% No and 11% Yes.

HumphreyC

Nate Silver a while back said that the Yes campaign had basically no chance of winning. The problem with this prediction seems to be that polling in the UK is not as frequent or as detailed as those used by Nate and the 538 team in the US elections. That makes it much harder to rely upon as a metric of what the public are thinking.

That said - as far as I know - we've had a total of one poll so far which shows yes winning. The other polls, including fairly extensive private polling of core voters conducted by the no campaign is showing the yes campaign losing. Analysis of previous referendums around the world show that the proportion yes vote tends to drop before the actual election. Will certainly be interesting to see what happens on the 18th !

rpjs

And part of the problem is that such a vote is a one-off event which means the weighting models the poll companies use in normal political polls to account for bias in their sampling don't apply and they pretty much have to make it up as they go along. For instance, YouGov only started polling 16 and 17 year-old Scots, who can vote in the referendum, from the middle of August. Which might account for "Yes" suddenly being ahead with them.

FWIW in the Quebec independence referendum in 1995 "Yes" was consistently up to 7 points ahead going into polling but lost by 0.5%.

If I was a betting man, I'd still be betting on "No" but I wouldn't be putting very much on it.

rpjs

Indeed, the Catalan regional government has scheduled an independence vote for November, but unlike the Scottish vote vis-a-vis the UK, the Spanish central government has denounced it as illegal and has stated it will refuse to recognise a "Yes" result. If Scotland does vote "Yes", the Spanish will fight tooth and nail to not allow any precedents favourable to Catalonia.

holly_1948

Let's see, who else in Western Europe is not in the EU?
Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Faeroes and a few odd bits and pieces such as Vatican and Kaliningrad.

That does not seem like too bad a club to join. Actually Scotland has quite a bit in common in some ways.