FREEDOM!!!!

Friend sent me a link to this vid taken during the recent stormy period here- this is actually a couple of miles along the coast from town but this is the road my work is on- normally I walk there!! (And yes I probably was working that day)

Channel 4 news- which has a good reputation in the UK for fairness and balance as well for reporting things which mainstream news channels often don't has on its website something called factfile. They take claims made by a politician and then try to find out the truth and see if what is claimed holds up.
They did one on Salmonds claim that foreign business was not being put off by uncertainy over the countries future and that investment was rising not falling.

“The reality is, as the evidence shows, that some of the world’s biggest companies are voting with their feet by bringing jobs and investment to Scotland. The threat to jobs, investment and prosperity for Scotland comes, not from the promise of self-determination, but from Cameron, Osborne and Clegg’s disastrous economic policies.”- Alex Salmond

The background

Downing Street says that global corporates are sounding the alarm over the prospect of a referendum on Scottish Independence.
Businesses don’t like the uncertainty surrounding Scotland’s place in the Union, says Number 10, and have told the PM that foreign investment is under threat.

The analysis

It may not come as a surprise that London boasted the most foreign direct investment (FDI) projects across the whole of Europe in 2010 – the only entire countries to beat the London region were France, Germany and Russia in 2010, according to Ernst and Young.
But what might raise a few eyebrows is E&Y’s discovery that in 2010, the leading location within the UK when it comes to spinning jobs out of FDI – was Scotland.
They are decent jobs too, foreign investment in 2010-11 created 2,046 “high value” jobs. Almost three quarters of these were in IT, a further 400 in water transport and almost 350 in business services.
What’s more, bar a dip in 2007, Scotland’s success in securing FDI projects has been climbing steadily since 2002. London meanwhile has seen foreign investment level off since 2008.
Edinburgh came second after West London in generating growth for the UK economy in 2010, and Auld Reekie pushed East London into third place with its GVA of £32bn. Glasgow and Aberdeen also made it into the top ten.

So who’s investing and are they worried?

The Scottish Development International (SDI) lists some of the deals crunched in 2011 – naming companies such as Amazon, Sky, human resources firm Ceridian, wind energy giant Gamesa, Swiss financial software group Avaloq, IT services group Atos and the asset management group The Bank of New York Mellon.
Ceridian announced plans last year to create a new flagship office in Glasgow, which will create 300 jobs over 5 years and represents a £16m investment in Scotland.
Doug Sawers, Ceridian’s MD, told FactCheck that Glasgow wasn’t the cheapest option in the UK but was very competitive, and that when you balance that against the available resources, it was a “clear winner”.
According to DTI analysis, the main reasons for investing in Scotland are divided evenly between serving European markets, being close to customers and close to centres of research. In the last 10 years for example, Scotland has won 19 per cent of all research and development projects in the UK.
BNY Mellon, which manages assets of £733bn and has been operating in Scotland for 20 years, is increasing the number of staff in its Edinburgh offices by 10 per cent.
A spokesman for the asset manager told FactCheck that it was bulking up in Edinburgh because there are good transport links, high quality staff and skills on offer.
The question of Scotland’s independence isn’t an issue for these companies.
“Regarding a future Scottish referendum, at this stage, we are not worried,” Mr Sawers told FactCheck. “In the event that the country chooses independence, we have faith in the Scottish Government’s approach to making Scotland more, not less, competitive. Recent news and speculation has not damaged Scotland’s and Glasgow’s prospects.”
The Swiss software company Avaloq told FactCheck it chose Edinburgh primarily for its “large pool of highly qualified IT specialists”. A spokesman for the company also pointed out that competition with other employers was “much lower” and the “cost situation is very attractive”.
Avaloq plans to open shop in Edinburgh in February and said it will “ramp up in the next few years”. The spokesman told us: “We do not see any reason (to) and do not intend to adapt our model to any political evolution”.
BNY Mellon also brushed off concerns, telling us it “deals in multiple currencies, multiple jurisdictions and changes within these all the time”.
The IT group Atos said it was still very much committed to business in Scotland, with a spokesman for the group adding that the prospect of Scotland joining the EU was a decision “a long way off”.

The verdict

London may attract the lion’s share of foreign investment in the UK, but in the Capital and the South East investment has levelled off since 2008. In Scotland however, investment has largely been on the rise for 10 years and in 2010 Scotland’s deals attracted more jobs than anywhere else in the UK.
More than 4,000 jobs were created – with just over half of them deemed “high value” – compared with the creation of less than 3,500 jobs in London.
Alex Salmond then is right to claim Scotland is a bonnie investment. And according to the companies we spoke to, the matter of Scottish independence is of little concern."

Petty's Verdict!

This is where Cameron and co are making a huge mistake- this stuff might wash in England but it doesn't up here where people can see the improvements- thats why the SNP got a landslidfe majority in a system set up to supposedly make it impossible for any single party to get a majority. If Cameron is serious about keeping the Union together he is going to have to do better than scaremongering.

I'm beginning to wonder who Cameron thinks he is talking to. His rhetoric seems to be for the English, who don't look at the issues. Does he think if he stirs up enough trouble south of the border it is going to make a difference in a Scot referendum? Daft!

(The respect part of the video made me smile. How many apologies for off the cuff remarks is that Cameron has had to make now in the last few weeks. Seems he can't take part in PM's questions without being rude or ignorantly dismissive to someone!!)

If this goes through will you be able to have a Royal Highland Regiment again? I met those guys several times while they were on maneuvers in the Highlands and Western Islands 20-odd years ago. Impressive! Reminded me of Dunedain Rangers.

Well, if the Scots don't want the Queen, they shouldn't be allowed to have those Regiments neither. Just saying.

Agree Kafria- its a daft strategy-if Cameron keep son like this Salmond wont have to campaign Cameron will drive the votes to him.

David we lost the regiments several years ago when Westminister had a defence review- they merged them all into a single unit. Salmonds plan for Scotlands future defence is "one naval base, one aircraft base and a mobile armed brigade."
And just the other day UK Defence Secretary Phillip Hammond said on the matter of the nuclear weapons in Scotland (Scotland has a strong history of anti-nuclear weapons but for the better part of 50 years we have ben home to most of Britians nuclear fleet because the English dont want them on their doorstep. Thatcher in particular put everything up here out of sight-against huge protests from Scots), the defence secretary said an independent Scotland would have to bear a proportion of the costs for removing Britain's nuclear weapons from the Faslane naval base on the Clyde.
Hitting back, the first minister said: "Only somebody with the arrogance of a Westminster politician would say to the Scottish people, apparently in all sobriety, that you'd place and station weapons of mass destruction in Scotland over a period of half a century, impose substantial clean-up costs and then try to send Scotland the bill. I don't think that's a feasible position."

But the bigger problem for Salmond is that whilst no nukes on our patch is a popular vote winner it would be at the cost of a lot of jobs in the defence area, not to mention the jobs in the local communities around these bases which tend to be in otherwise low employment rural areas.

Orwell- th eplan is to keep the Queen so we would keep the Regiments- if we still had any- which we dont.

The Scots can simply import a princess or something and get their own royal family. That's what Norway did after the union with Sweden.

And you didn't hear it from me, but I think the Sweds would let you have their king for cheap. I think he would suit the Scots better than the Sweds.

Thank you Amarie but that will not be necessary- we will be taking our own Royals back from the English- they claim decent through the Scots line so we can just take em back- then we can rent them to England for special occasions!

Borrowed royals... well, in the end that will be cheaper. They do expect to be fed and have a nice place to live.

Oh they have Balmoral and its estate and in Edinburgh they have Holyrood Palace- so they've already got somehwhere nice to live Amarie and we can crown them in either Edinburgh Castle or Stirling which is historically more appropriate, or at Scone (although theyd have to rebuild it!) or my own favourite choice would be in Argyll, my own patch and all the way back to the first King of the Scots at the Dalreida stronghold Dunnad, where the Stone of Destiny was first used in Scotland to make a King (it was said to brought by the Dalreida from Ireland- and claimed to be the pillow Joseph rested his head on when he had his vision/dream of the ladder- although is almost certainly a much, much later addition by Christianity as the power, mystery and importance of stone -especially as a connection to the land of the dead and the ancestors- goes back to at least the Bronze Age and the Grooveware people- the connection between stone and the dead is why we have headstones on graves).

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Salmonds plan for Scotlands future defence is "one naval base, one aircraft base and a mobile armed brigade."

Who would want Scotland anyhow? Especially once it had no economy after the Queen withdrew her favour.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Orwell- th eplan is to keep the Queen so we would keep the Regiments- if we still had any- which we dont.

Makes perfect sense to me. But this "eplan"? What's that exactly?

Pettytyrant101 wrote:
David we lost the regiments several years ago when Westminister had a defence review- they merged them all into a single unit. Salmonds plan for Scotlands future defence is "one naval base, one aircraft base and a mobile armed brigade."

That's a shame, but I can see Westminster's thinking. "A well armed, independent Scotland on our northern border... ... need to down-size!" But this brings up the question: What happens to Scots currently in civil or military service? Do they have to choose citizenship? Does Commonwealth membership cover this? Loyalty oaths? Families divided?

This all reminds me of the lead-up to a good old-fashioned civil war like we've done a couple times. Good fun!

What happens to currently serving military is an interesting one- and yet to be worked out. Scots soldiers, whilst being a minority in the UK Army overall, have always been the backbone of the British Army. However the Ministry of Defence have never released the figures for what percent of the army is made up of Scots- so how big an effect or not it would have is hard to gauge.
Can't be a civil war though- we are two seperate countries, sort of....

Pettytyrant101 wrote:
Can't be a civil war though- we are two seperate countries, sort of....

Good point. I think we usually don't count the American Revolutionary War as a civil war by some sort of similar logic....I think....

If we're comparing Scotland to 18th century America then any incident would be a colonial rebellion, but I'm not sure that's how Salmond, Petty, or any other Scots wan to think of current events.

Scotland reminds me of 18th Century America, technologically and educationally speaking.

Watching Newsnight Scotland and apparently new polls show growing numbers of English want devolution for England.
This seems fair enough to me as the anomaly of Scottish Mp's voting in legislation that only effects England seems unfair. However it is also saying there is a strong growth in English Nationalism. Now whilst Scottish Nationlaism tends to manifest itself by getting drunk singing songs about 600 year old battles and dancing on a table wrapped in a saltire. English Nationalism tends to involve shaving your head and setting fire to anyone vaguely brown.
I am all for the English making their own decisions- they will have to make some big ones to patch the holes left when we take all the oil and gas with us!! But I do fear a rise of the sort of english nationalism which is extremely xenophobic. And according to this poll one of the defining characteristicts of this rise in Englishness is a strong dislike and suspicion of anything from mainland Europe and a sense that true Englishness is being swamped and choked by uncontrolled immigration.
I fear a future in which Scotland, Ireland and Wales have all found themselves and gone their own way in peace and England becomes like the pub bampot that wont talk to anyone and just wants to get in fights.

The new Balkans?

After all the bluster and wind of the previous weeks from the Coalition government that Scotland did not have the right to hold the referendum without Westminister say so this little snippet was slipped onto the end of a BBC Scotland news report;

'The Westminster government has accepted the SNP government has a democratic right to hold the referendum, but it would like to see it done "sooner rather than later".'

And this sort of comment isn't going to help the Unionist cause either;

Mr Darling said: "He (Salmond) would be far better concentrating on the things he runs today and making a job of that before he turns his attention to other things."

Do note he is talking about someone who has the highest approval rating of any Scottish First Minister ever and only equaled on a UK scale by Thatcher at the height of the Falklands. And someone who has just won a massive landslide victory. All it shows is that English based MP's are recklessly commenting and simply showing up their ignorance of the current Scottish political scene. Plus this is his job. An independence referendum was in the election campaign he got elected on.

Nice to see that the attempted bullying by Cameron et al didn't work and that Scotland will, it seems, be able to proceed in exercising its democratic rights.

Big announcement tomoorow with SNP publishing their plans and the schedule leading up to the referendum.
Salmond has rather cleverly been giving a big speech in London tonight pointing out what he sees as the benefits to England of no longer being inthe union.
Cunning plan, if he fails to win up here he might have convinced the english to kick us out the Union and he gets what he wants either way!

Interview from tonights BBC flagship news show- Newsnight- with its supposedly best and most dogged interviewer Jeremy Paxman. The opening statement is full of insults- 'what his country might be like if he get's his way and manages to bust up the United Kingdom. ..... But fear not: while Moses, sorry - Alex Salmond - didn't quite promise a land flowing with milk and honey, he did claim it would be a beacon of what he called progressiveness.

Worse than that, half way through the interview he tries to compare Salmond to Robert Mugabe! WTF!

Support Alex Salmond: Father of the Nation.

Well Salmond laid out his stall today, the main points were;

The question would be "Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?"
The electoral commission would oversee the referendum
People who are resident in Scotland will be eligible to vote, on the same basis as the Scottish Parliament elections
16 and 17 year olds should be allowed to vote
A second question on Devo Max has not been ruled out as a possibility.

The consultation now goes public and anyone can ask a question or make their points via letter, web, phone and carrier haggis.
Oddly Westminister have also decided to go ahead with a parallel but completely seperate consultation- the point of which is hard to see.