Scottish independence might be a fact whitin a few years, the Welsh are on the same track. Even Cornwall wants more autonomy. What do you think? Is this the end of the UK?
Cornish independence is never likely to be anything more than a pipedream for delusional Cornish Nationalists, there was a similar movement seeking Independence for Yorkshire a few years ago but I believe that fizzled out and seems to have died a death. Cornish independence at least has a degree of longevity on it's side and the notion of Cornish independence is partly based on their being a seperate Cornish language. The current government has, or at least had (I don't tend to keep too up to date with such matters) plans to introduce regional assemblies with greater devolved local powers, yet another layer of government to sandwich in. :roll: Under the current system both Scotland and Wales have independent national assemblies with powers of certain laws within their countries, but it is causing more than a little friction at the moment that whilst only Scottish MPs can vote on matters purely affecting Scotland and IIRC the same for Welsh MPs, anyone, even Scottish and Welsh MPs whose constituencies will be entirely unaffected, can vote on matters that will only affect England. According to a report on the BBC recently, there is in opinion polls now for the first time notable English Independence sentiments, largely English people who have got fed up with vocal Scottish and Welsh whinging on about how much they hate us. How soon the dissolution of the Union will happen remains to be seen, or even whether it happens, I think the formal dissolution is likely to take longer to sort out (Agreements and treaties need to be sorted out over North Sea Oil and divisions of military assets for a start) than a few years though. Once either Scotland or Wales is independent, the other will soon follow though. Personally, I think the UK has more to gain by remaining as the United Kingdom rather than three independent nations and an independent Scotland or Wales (Or England for that matter) will be far weaker politically on the international and European scene, the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. Whether nationalist feeling in Scotland or Wales is enough to over-ride political pragmatism is another matter. An autonomous Cornwall or Yorkshire is never likely to occur in any meaningfull way though, unless England as a whole ends up fracturing into a collection of smaller county-sized republics and/or principalities.
I don't take Cornish independence as seriously as Scottish independence, neither does the Cornish I believe, and I didn't know that autonomy had been an issue in Yorkshire. What is this based on? The heritage of Erik Bloodaxe? Scottish independence on the other hand, is something I believe Scotland would profit from. The warnings against it is more or less the same heard by Norwegians before 1905, or in connection with voting against membership in the EU. And we've done fine. We are still harvesting the benefits of the boost in morale independence gave us. Of course, Norway already had full autonomy in everything but foreign matters by 1905, we had a fully developed infrastructure and even our own armed forces, so the step from union with Sweden to independence was not that dramatic.
I'm wondering about one small issue though. Will the Orkneys and Shetland be returned to Norway if Scotland gets independence?
And the Scots still owe us taxes too, according to the treaty of 1274. With interests, that should sum up to a pretty nice amount of money by now. :smok: Sure, you can have a few blonde ladies. You have no idea how boring they get when you live in Norway. Maybe you can ship us some fiery redheads in return?
I think that Scotland may well be independent within ten years. If the Scots take all the (reducing) oil fields, that will roughly compensate them for losing their financial subsidy from England. Wales would take longer: there appears to be no interest in it, and they may suffer a significant financial disadvantage from independence; I think they are also subsidised. Northern Ireland may take longer still: the majority Protestants are passionate about staying British because they fear that the alternative is to fall into the hands of the Catholic Republic of Ireland. However, the Catholics in Northern Ireland are breeding faster than the Protestants and will probably outnumber them in the foreseeable future. The Protestants may then feel that independence is better than the alternative. Of course, they are heavily subsidised by England as well... There was an amusing outcome of an opinion poll a year or so ago, which revealed that 53% of Scots were in favour of Scottish independence - and so were 59% of the English! Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum
I sure hope we don't break diplomatic relations with the Cornish Nationalists... I mean, where would we "Yanks" get cornish game hens? Tim
I don't think that there is any chance of any English regions breaking away. The government tried to encourage the formation of English regional assemblies a few years ago, and opinion polls in the regions they chose (the most likely ones) firmly rejected the idea - it was just seen as yet another layer of bureaucracy to push up local government costs.
