I THINK NOT
From Finn McWhirter’s Facebook page
1. Estonia is one of the most digitally advanced countries in the world, with e-residency and e-voting systems.
2. Over 50% of Estonia is covered by forests.
3. The country has one of the highest literacy rates in the world at 99.8%.
4. Estonia has one of the world’s best internet freedom rankings.
5. It was the first country to adopt online voting in 2005.
6. Estonians celebrate “Day of Restoration of Independence” on August 20.
7. Estonia has a unique singing culture and hosts the world’s largest amateur choral event, Laulupidu.
8. It has over 2,000 islands, the largest being Saaremaa and Hiiumaa.
9. The official language, Estonian, is one of the hardest languages to learn for English speakers.
10. Estonia has no standing army, but every male citizen is required to serve in the military.
11. The country is famous for its digital start-ups, including Skype.
12. Estonia has a high number of meteorite craters per square kilometre.
13. Tallinn, the capital, is one of the best-preserved medieval cities in Europe.
14. Estonians love saunas and often combine sauna sessions with a dip in icy water.
15. The country has a rich folklore and mythology tradition, including tales of forest spirits and magical creatures.
16. Estonia is a member of the European Union, NATO, and the Eurozone.
17. The country is known for its high-quality dairy products, particularly its cheese and butter.
It only has a population of 1.3million, and yet some idiotic folk still think Scotland couldn’t cope as an independent country.
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Finn kindly gave me permission to use this.
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wonderful why don’t you move there it being so wonderful.,,
and leave the rest of us ALONE thank you very much .
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Unfortunately, I can’t thanks to Brexit, which you may remember Scotland voted against.
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so did I mr smarty pants 🩲
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Not the will of the Scottish people, then, huh?
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Know a bit about Estonia as one of the other pro indy bloggers spent time there. They were a Soviet command economy but have flourished with indy. As we would. Let’s leave no stone unturned in order to make Scotland the next new member of the UN.
O/t Versailles is on fire. Here’s hoping they get it under control soon.
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OH That’s terrible news. I’m not much in to royal palaces but the gardens there are amazing… and let’s face it the French had the good sense to dump their grasping grubby royals in 1793.
Probably the Brits should have followed.
Let’s see if we could be like Estonia.
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Good news. Palace was evacuated and firefighters got it under control. No real damage to collection. Relief!
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Great news.
It seems it was the same thing as happened at Windsor, but they caught it before much damage was done.
The loss of notre Dame a few years ago was a huge blow… Fortunately rebuilding will be completed this year.
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https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/palace-versailles-briefly-evacuated-due-smoke-construction-damage-111023488
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Estonia GDP per capita is $21k.
https://tradingeconomics.com/estonia/gdp-per-capita
The UK has a GDP per capita of more than double that at almost $48k.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp-per-capita
I’d rather that an indy Scotland was more like Sweden ($56k) or Denmark ($61k)!
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Ireland @ £71,000+ sounds good and a lot better than Britain’s £43,000.
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and with a smaller population than us, how can this be, I wander, not.
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Maybe the Estonians don’t care to be punching above their weight?
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Estonia run by and for the Estonians.
Scotland run by and for the Etonians.
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Good one, Alex!
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Too stupid? It looks like it.
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Yes, Alan. That is how it looks.
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I was told, Iain Lawson?, that Estonia and other Baltic states sent boat loads of food over to Scotland after the 1314 battle for independence. They valued Scotland as a trustworthy trading partner and knew that the guerrilla methods used by Bruce, in denying Edwards army food would leave the Scots short of food.
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🙄
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I do doubt the veracity of this claim tbh. Estonia was ruled by the Danes at this point in history. I was wondering about the meaning of Estonia as a nation state in an era 300 years before Westphalian sovereignty so I looked it up. Ruled by the Danes, managed by Germans.
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Munguin says he’s oing to employ you from now on and let me go.
🙂
Good luck! You’ll need it.
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Thanks Terry, I never looked it up, will have a look now though. I’m now wondering if it might have been the Hanseatic League. England, even way back then was keeping a distance from anything European, they were never part of the Hanseatic League. They was trading, but no appetite for joining.
Ridiculous, I’m remembering this from a CD computer game from 30+years ago. The Patricians and the Hanseatic League, prompting me to look up Hanseatic. A promising historical game that never worked, kept crashing.
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out of 195 or so independent countries, Scotland would fit in around No 120 mark.
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population#Method
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🙄
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Interesting list, Alex.
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Indy is over .. and you lot should get over it as well .
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Niko, are you looking forward to the prospect of a Labour* government? Please show your working.
*In name, at least…
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LOL.
I can’t wait to see all this “change” they are telling us will happen.
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I’m not.
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I see SIR Keir isn’t that popular in his own constituency.
Some life long Labour people less than happy with him.
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😢
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🙂
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It’s worth noting that when the Russians left Estonia they took with them everything of value that could be shifted. They also left Estonia without a functioning parliament, or a currency (the rouble had been in use previously), or a functioning legal system (Soviet law had been imposed) and indeed Estonian law had only existed between WW1 and WW2 when it was an independent state, so reviving their legal system was very difficult as there were very few people with knowledge of it. The Estonians had preserved their culture through their language and choirs. In spite of being left with just the shell of a country, they got it up and running remarkably quickly and were admitted to the EU and NATO in something like 8 years. If they can do it from a standing start, Scotland can surely get there much quicker?
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I didn’t know that. This is the sort of stuff that should be made more public, so that those undecided voters could see that Scotland has a very good chance of being independent.
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Spread it around, Tatu.
Life in the UK gets worse by the year.
Maybe most people don’t know anyone who lives in another country and so have nothing to compare it with.
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Where there’s a will…
They must have had some damn good leaders.
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Most were arrested by the nkvd and were either imprisoned or disappeared.
https://riowang.blogspot.com/2012/06/change-of-government.html
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That wouldn’t have been nice for them!
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and a confident population that hasn’t had three centuries of being told they need the “assistance” of their neighbours to do anything of note…
The Cringe has been given plenty of fertiliser over the years. And a major role has been played by the media. Shame on them.
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They survived Soviet dominance, though.
The Soviet Union formally annexed Estonia on August 6, 1940. Some 1,750 Estonians were killed as a result of resistance to Soviet troops, and some 7,450 Estonians were killed during the Soviet occupation.
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