Mrs Merkel may be able to soldier on at the head of a difficult coalition, but she has lost substantial authority for her EU policies.
**************
Oh dear, Mr Redwood,
OK, to start off with Angela Merkel has a PhD. And she’s German. So she isn’t “Mrs Merkel”. My best guess at her title is Frau Doktor Merkel. (Ed will correct me, I’m sure, if I got that wrong.)
I can’t help thinking that, although it’s a small point, it would probably help international relations a little if Brits didn’t always assume that their way of doing things was the only way.
Secondly, you may be forgetting that, like the Germans, the Brits just had a General Election.
Unlike the Germans, it was one held by choice rather than legal necessity.
And, as I recall, Mrs May has managed to soldier on at the head of a difficult uneasy coalition with a hard Christian fundamentalist party, thanks to a large wodge of taxpayers money harvested from this elusive magic money tree which could not be persuaded, only weeks before, to fruit for nurses.
Of course, Mrs May’s policies on Europe have to some extent been saved by the fundamentalists (as long as no one refers to anything having happened any more than 6,000 years ago, anything gay, or any kind of abortion plans), but as her policies on Europe have been limited to: “Brexit means Brexit”; “Brexit will be red, white and blue” and “No deal is better than a bad deal”, I’m not sure that that is of any great matter.
Mrs May never really had much in the way of authority, having been the “best of a terrible bunch” candidate when Cameron broke another of his promises and stepped down.
She became a figure of fun during the subsequent unnecessary and disastrous election campaign (which she had promised not to have), playing, in closed factories, to houses little bigger than the crowd that failed to turn up to see her speech in New York, and having doors slammed in her face.
However, since she lost the election she has become an international figure of ridicule. The phrase “strong and stable” will never have quite the same meaning again.
Most leaders have ups and downs. Mrs May only seems to have missed out entirely on the ups, but then you’d really be stretching things to call her a “leader”.
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
The problem is that our state and all who sail in her are also considered insane by most of the rest of the world.
After all “WE” elected her,didn’t we and the Scottish Cringers in 2014 gave England’s Tories carte blanche to do what they liked,didn’t they?
We’re all in it together,the merde that is.
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Aye, but apparently it has broad shoulders, cette merde-ci.
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Don’t you dare leave that comment there. Pick it up and put it in the bin where all useless things must go!
What a crowd we have foisted on us. Fighting like weans and making the world look on with amazement and amusement…
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Maybe at last Britain and America have found their place in the world.
Entertainment…end of pier style
Everyone is laughing at the orange goon in the Gold House… and the Strong and Stable gibbering idiot in Downing Street.
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Frau Doktor Merkel it would be, except you’d probably want to call her Bundeskanzlerin Merkel, I should think.
https://www.angela-merkel.de/
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P.S. John Redwood is a well-known prannit.
P.P.S. He’s one of those who, when poked in the correct brain cell, will quack that that England has to have FPTP because it’s the only way to get strong and stable government at Westminster. This despite all evidence to the contrary. He is not one of what the transatlantic cousins sometimes call “the fact-based community”.
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He’s an ass!
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Wasn’t Redwood touted as being the young blade, at one point. More Tebbit than Tebbit and the rightful heir to Thatcher?
Or am I mistaken and it’s all been a bad dream and I will awaken to a peaceful, prosperous, pastoral existence where the last 40 years have all been a bad dream?
If I’m not mistaken then that means I’ve been awake.
Jeez, we’re so-oo fcuk’d
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Nah, you’re right about Redwood. The Vulcan, they called him.
I think he was one of the ones they said was super bright. Frankly, if that is super bright, I shudder to think what the only relatively bright ones were like… much less the dim ones.
Like Foxy, for example… or May.
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Aye well, the dummy in the Welsh choir got it wrong!
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Maybe, but he’s done very well for himself in the meantime thank you very much. He’s maybe never managed PM but he’s kept himself In the political sphere, just like a good Tory should.
He’s also made himself a bit of folding in the process.
He is of course a complete arsehead but hey! Who said life was fair?
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Oh, I think be a complete and utter arse and doing well in the British establishment go very well together… One is almost dependent on the other.
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Redwood is perhaps the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy, our home galaxy folks, sucking the life out of it. Am I the only person that thinks the lunatics have taken over the asylum? It is “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” time. Where the inmates, us, are more sane than our jailers. Sadly, some folk are in a sort of Stockholm Syndrome, where they argue for continued incarceration, just because freedom would be ” too much” or “a step too far” for them.
No, life is neither fair nor sane. Whilst we are democrats we are entitled to wonder at the few that turned the vote – around 5 or 6 % or so – and we have to wonder whether we should go after that marginal ‘no’ voter and appeal directly to them?
I believe we have to. There is a strange rush of fools writing in a derogatory sense about Scottish Independence on what were previously reasonable forums. This does not bode well for an actual referendum. These folk have a degree of traction that, just by repetition, is likely to be persuasive of the 10% doubters, y’know the folk we have to win to win.
We need to go on the offensive, and if I hear ‘not yet’, once more, I will scream and scream and make myself sick.
2018.
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I wish I knew the answer, Douglas.
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Me too.
I put it out on here because this is where the sane community hangs.
I have a feeling, and I wish I didn’t, that the tide is going out. For example, the ‘Herald’ forum has become over-run with Unionists that tell half-truths and outright lies. It takes an enormous amount of energy to contradict that. It is an endless torrent of:
“We voted to stay in the Union, get over it.”
and
“You just don’t understand the financial disasterathon that you would unleash”
And so on and so forth.
The ‘Yes’ movement needs energized to fight back.
I just chucked out a lot of triple A batteries that were flat. I think that that is me right now.
I am a tad weary of being right and losing. You’d think, as a lifelong Partick Thistle supporter I’d be used to that by now, but I am not.
The following is my thought on Munguin’s New Republic.
Your web site is among our last, best hopes. (There are a lot of others, my reading list is available if anyone is interested). If independence is to be won it will be through a samizdat of web sites such as this and face to face discussion. Main stream media has got significantly worse, imho.
We, tris price williams, and your readers are free.
That alone, is probably enough for one generation.
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Well, smetimes, Douglas, it easy to get disheartened by comments from people on newspaper threads.
Intelligent ones, even if they disagree with you, are worth a read. We have no monopoly on common sense on our side, and some of them make valid points.
But the majority of comments are simply regurgitation of SNP bad, Tartan Tories, even though that’s so patently obviously rubbish… and in the Europe débacle is’s all about how the horrible foreigners are ganging up on wonderful Britain.
They aren’t worth reading. They are ignorant comments from people who haven’t read much more than the front page of the Daily Diana.
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I have been wondering if some of the trolls we’ve been seeing are actually being paid to put out the propaganda, or acting under instruction in some way, shape or form… not that I’m paranoid or anything, and no, I don’t think our pal Vlad in the Kremlin is raising whole farms of trolls and trollbots in Macedonia or Moldova or somewhere to generate target fake news… no, we have our own home-grown meeja for that. Far too much like Pinky and the Brain, and off into tinfoil hat territory, thinking that the Kremlin must be behind the Britnats here in Scotland (or even the Cybernats).
I mean, we know that the Cringe myths, for example, are self-sustaining; once such things become internalized in people’s minds and ingrained in the culture, they persist of their own accord: people take them as axiomatic and no longer examine them critically. They persist by communal reinforcement and a sort of mental inertia. Dogmatic slumber, maybe.
Just as a by the way, it would be a good idea to be a lot stricter with trolls anyway – they should be booted out, blocked and barred as soon as they raise their ugly heads. Freedom of speech is all very well, but not when you’ve got paid or congenital hecklers, troublemakers and provocateurs on the go. I’m become even more intolerant of intolerance the older I get, you see, and very short of patience with eejits. Life is far too short without having to deal with timewasters.
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you want to google brigade 77 – the British army’s psychological warfare unit. They are using facebook and twitter. For example
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/return-of-the-chindits-mod-reveals-cunning-defence-plan-10014608.html
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Thanks for that, pp. Bookmarked in a new folder in my browser.
I think we can take it as a given that there is a psy-ops operation against Scottish independence actively on the go right now. I have a feeling I should have been aware of this already… I remember the Thatcher years, the old Greenham Common days, when they used to bug CND people’s phones – I had a pal who used to organize anti-nuclear demos, and he proved it to to me.
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It makes sense to do it from their point of view, Ed. But I’m pretty sure that the Sun and the Daily Mail do a better job… not to mention Union Jackie on the BBC.
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Ah, so the Brits have realised that it is no longer 1990. The trouble is the information they put out is likely to be as reliably truthful as that that ISIS put out.
Interesting, nonetheless.
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eddjasfreeman,
“I mean, we know that the Cringe myths, for example, are self-sustaining; once such things become internalized in people’s minds and ingrained in the culture, they persist of their own accord: people take them as axiomatic and no longer examine them critically. They persist by communal reinforcement and a sort of mental inertia. Dogmatic slumber, maybe.”
Brilliantly explained in a way even I can understand. Seriously.
__________________________
How do we bust that?
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Thank you, Douglas! You’ve made my day.
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P.S. I wish I knew. What I do know is that it takes a lot more effort to winkle false notions out of people’s minds than it does to get them in there in the first place.
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I would like to think that the cringe exists in mainly the older generation. If it does exist in younger people (at least the ones I know) then I cannot see it. I of course am rapidly coming to the end of my 6th decade and to be honest am nane too chuffed at the prospect given the ever increasing array of aches and pains coming with it. The cringe fortunately is one I don’t have.
If the cringe does reside in these young folk, I’ve maybe lacked the necessary awareness because I’m too out of their culture to detect it.
What kind of society gives another an inferiority complex so it will swallow its lies? Why the British establishment of course. Say no more.
I live in hope
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“What kind of society gives another an inferiority complex so it will swallow its lies”… I have been thinking about that. Now, the Usual Suspects would, I am sure, pooh-pooh the very idea of this applying to wonderful old Cool Britannia, mother of parliaments, mother of the free, but – the first example that came to my mind was slave-owning societies. In the old Roman Empire – according to the history I’ve read, because contrary to popular rumour I wasn’t actually there at the time – there was for a long period, or long periods, something jaw-dropping like six or eight slaves to every freed man, pleb and patrician. A ridiculously large proportion, anyway. And still, slave revolts were few. Propaganda. Act and talk as if slavery is the way of the world, the way things are, part of the natural order of things, the way they’ve ay been.
Move on a couple of thousand years, to the American South, and those convenient lies the slave-owners used to tell themselves, that their slaves used to sing all day in the cotton fields because they were so happy… and still today you don’t need more than a couple of modern African genes to be called Black, or the n-word, and risk being shot dead for no reason by some ar*ehole of white police officer, who will then be found not guilty of murder in any degree by a majority white jury.
Sure, those are extreme comparisons, but the point of commonality is that people of a particular colour or class become so convinced of their own powerlessness that most of them believe that their condition is hopeless, and away from the familiarity and security of the abusive – it doesn’t get any more abusive, really – relationship, how can they possibly survive on their own? Ah, I think I can hear the ringing of little bells right about now.
You see the same sort of thing with many battered wives (and the occasional battered husband, I’m sure). Everyone looking at the situation from the outside – if they have the victim’s interests in the forefront of their minds – realizes that they have got to get out of it, but the victim herself resists, resists, resists.
Similarly, when Scotland as a nation lost its bottle in 2014, supporters of Scotland, regardless of whether they were diaspora Scots or others who were well-disposed towards us, wondered what the hell was wrong with us. And what is wrong with us – as a nation – is the Cringe.
Russia is a society that has lived under tyranny of one kind or another for most of its existence. They have a proverb that I think applies here. As so often with Russian proverbs, it manages to be both gloomy and insightful. I goes something like this in English: if you can manage to stand it, you’ll come to love it.
Yes, I’m sure there’s an element of masochism involved. Which necessarily implies the presence of a sadist, I think.
There’s a lot of emotional conflict going on in many Unionist souls out there, and I’m afraid that all the sweet reasonableness and factual accuracy we can come up with doesn’t help at all with that – I love sweet reason too, Tris, and I find this extremely frustrating on a personal level. It gets me almost literally hopping up and down with frustration, irritation and exasperation when people refuse point blank to use the brains they were born with.
There has been some research done on at least part of the phenomenon – excuse my laziness, but I don’t feel up to trying to find it today – and it’s one I’m sure we all recognize: when you show some people that they’re wrong about something, give them the facts, show them the truth, even if you are as nice about it as possible – it has completely the opposite effect from the one you want: instead of rejecting their old fallacy in favour of the new truth you are showing them, they double down on the counter-factual nonsense they feel comfortable with, and – my observation, not from the research – they tend to get very angry about it as well. How dare you make me think! At which point we have a hard time mastering the impulse to seize the offender by the neck and give them a good shaking and shouting at.
Britnat propaganda in general is designed to be Cringe-making, and it does significant damage to many of our people’s mental health. It has been doing so since the year dot. I call it criminal, whether there’s a law against it or not. If young folk – the internet-literate, social-media-using generation? – are growing up free of it, that cannot but be a Great Good Thing. It’s also an argument for holding our new referendum on the last possible date!
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I’m interested in that idea that people will believe what they want to believe, what they feel they should believe, even in the face of incontrovertible facts.
I wonder, if someone could prove to me that Scotland would be a basket case, or that Britain, outside of the EU was going to be very successful, would I be prepared to accept that and change my views to the point where I no longer wanted an independent Scotland in the EU…
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If someone proved to me that an independent Scotland would be a basket case, I would respond by saying that if that’s what 300 years of Westminster rule has got us, the sooner we get started on fixing it, the better.
If someone told me that Britain will be a rip-roaring success outside the EU, I would (a) laugh in their face; (b) if a relative, explore the possibilities of having them sectioned.
If they were to try to tell me both at the same time, I would … errrmm … how to phrase this … cast serious doubt on their sanity and intelligence.
If the rUK does perform well outside the EU – miracles do happen, I suppose – then good. I don’t want my English friends to suffer any more than they already are doing under that vicious regime; I would rather that they were at least moderately prosperous while having their freedoms ripped from them. However, as Scotland is such a basket case (we are told), obviously we need to pay a lot of attention to fixing that, and if it is not such a basket case (as we know), there is always room for improvement, and we will still have many other things to concern us as an independent State. We will have quite enough to do without worrying about matters outwith our control – as England’s / the rUK’s self-governance will be when Scotland becomes independent.
*Complete and apparently unprovoked change of subject follows. I maintain that being allowed to lose the plot occasionally is just one of the perks of having one foot in the grave.*
I don’t know if you will have come across this guy, people – his name is Trae Crowder, and he is both very smart and very funny (sez me). This clip is about the Mango Mussolini in the White House screaming about NFL players protesting by going down on one knee rather than stand during the US national anthem. Trump is using those protests as a useful distraction from his regime’s disastrous performance in, oh, hurricane relief for a start, and from the many enormous scandals and the obvious criminality that surround it.
I draw your attention in particular to his line about (I paraphrase) “Don’t make me think”. I just can’t think who it reminds me of… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfObia8aUZY
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He’s a fine dude….
Added him to my list.
Thanks Ed!
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eddjasfreeman,
Just trying to convert this amazing web-site into an occasional think-tank.
Would you agree that reinforcement of a message improves it? Or do you think that once an opinion on any subject is embedded – for instance instantly – then that’s it?
It does not explain voter swing, where, pretty obviously people change their opinions. Else one party would be in power for eternity.
I am of the view, and I could be totally wrong, that not everyone – though you probably correctly identify the bulk of the people with your analysis – is thurled to one viewpoint or another.
My question, which is not just for you, is how the heck do we get them on our side and not on the opposite side.
Just so’s you know, I am for Scottish independence come hell or high water, so I have chosen my side, right or wrong. Whilst it makes me ‘interested’ in swing voters, it is not something I am in anyway an expert on.
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We can do it by reason. By trying to persuade by logic, I think.
And by tactfully pointing out that things that they promised haven’t happened, or things that they promised wouldn’t happen, HAVE happened.
The Little Black Book did that perfectly.
Here’s another example that has just come to light:
Now the jobs haven’t gone. They have just been outsourced… but I’m willing to bet that they are at worse terms and conditions. And I’m wondering how secure they will be into the future.
Of course (and I’m as guilty as others for being rude about opponents. It’s hard not to when they are lying through their teeth and MUST know it.
Corbyn, a man for whom I have a lot of respect as comments on this blog will testify, has been either ignorant of, or willfully lied about how the SNP has dealt with austerity. OK, he has his vision to sell, and good for him… but it would be a more respectable vision if it actually told the truth.
We need to keep proving that under our own government health, education, transport, environment, farming, policing, law and order, etc etc, are better than their equivalents in England (under the Tories) or Wales (under Labour).
Of course, there will always be an example here or there where something bad has happened in Scotland, and the unionists will always jump on it. But we need to keep hammering home that our waiting lists are shorter, our education is free, we have help for the most vulnerable that is not supplied elsewhere.
We need to do the same over Europe. And sometimes that means talking down the other side. Today we understand that the USA, supposedly the saviours of isolated Britain, has slapped a 200% tariff on Bombardier of Belfast. With 4000 jobs directly at stake, and probably another 2000+ dependent on them, I think the UK government is going to have some explaining to do as to why we should put our faith in the special relationship for a future outside the EU.
We have to talk people into seeing that our vision is better… our reality is better.
It’s not easy to do when daily the UK press fills their heads with how great the UK is and how awful Scotland or foreigners are…
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Tris, much as I respect your views and those of pretty much everyone who comments here (including Niko), I seriously doubt if we can do much by reason or persuade by logic. I have to say I feel very pessimistic about the prospect of changing the mindset and intentions of those who oppose independence, much as I would like that to happen. As you say, the UK press (and the broadcast media) daily fill their heads with nostalgic dreams of Empire and fear of otherness – Johnny Foreigner and Jockistan – and I don’t see any signs of that changing soon. I’m not sure these people want to be persuaded of the truth or are susceptible to logical argument: they are afraid of change, afraid of reality and would rather continue in ignorance and prejudice than confront the obvious. To my mind, the only thing that will shake these folks out of their ignorant complacency is when reality bites, i.e. the reality that Brexit will drastically impoverish the UK financially and culturally and continuing rule from the FPTP Westminster Parliament will rob them of any real method of redressing things. Only when their wages, pensions and standard of living are hammered will they finally realise the dreams of “taking back control” and being a great trading power are just that, dreams. At that point, they’ll probably just look for another scapegoat – the E.U., “enemies of the people”, immigrants – take your pick because they’ll take theirs. You’re right, Tris, “our reality is better”…but they don’t want to know. Sorry if this seems negative but I haven’t seen many positives lately. Keep up the good work!
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No, it’s not negative, Andi. It’s reality. You’re right, as I just said in a response, I’m amazed at the collective lack of self confidence in our people… which is a mysterious as the collective over confidence of Brits.
I see (and agree with) what you say about things getting worse under Brexit. What worries me is that (and we’ve already seen it in the Daily Diana) the right wing press are already blaming the dreadful foreigners for trying to punish poor wee Britain for wanting to leave their union.
As things get more and more depressing here, Johnnie Foreigner will get the blame as he already has in part (along with lazy scroungers, sick, Muslims, disabled).
Nothing is ever their fault.
I wonder if the moronic tabloid press will be able to persuade their readers that now is the time that we must have the Churchillian spirit and stick together against everyone else in the world who would do us down.
They’ll try, of that I’m sure.
Meanwhile I’ll look at Denmark and wonder how they got so lucky…
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Apologies, I need some down time. Time to think about it too. There are no easy answers, we know that – but if I were McKim Jong Edward, I’d start by taking over State TV and radio.
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eddjasfreeman,
Take all the time you need. I get the general impression that there are no easy answers.
I have been thinking for a long time about how we prise (correct me if I am wrong, ‘prise’ is UK English and ‘prize’ – meaning the same thing – is US English) folk away from a ‘no’ vote to an independence vote. It is not an easy task. Your point at September 27, 2017 at 01:34 seems to me to encapsulate the issue.
The blog author, tpw, says just above, almost everything I agree with. It is difficult to appreciate how other Scottish voters could disagree. But disagree they do.
Thanks for helping to kick-start this debate up.
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Well, there’s not a right answer to it.
The truth is that the polls don’t show any great growth in popularity for independence, despite being dragged out of Europe and into god knows what.
There is no point in another referendum that will result in another defeat.
The current trend though, is for the countries of Europe (in particular the € zone) to grow, and for the UK to shrink.
There is bound to be knock on effects from Brexit.
It may be that when it starts to bite we will see a rise in the wish to ditch Empire II and be a modern European country in the EEA or EU.
What always amazes me is that there are people who don;t believe that 5 million Scots aren’t capable of it, and yet 400,000 Icelanders are.
That sounds like some sort of collective depression to me.
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trispw,
Thank you for engaging. I am going to attempt to lay out my fears and aspirations for this select audience.
You say:
“There is bound to be knock on effects from Brexit.”
I’d agree in that scenario. If we leave Europe behind, because we are bound at the hip to England, then, perhaps we would come to our senses. In other words Brexit happens, Westminster rules, and we and England are out of Europe. I’d assume, correct me if I am wrong, that the potential for a second referendum would be, err.., difficult to obtain democratically?
I am suggesting that the exit strategy from Europe might be so damaging that even fishermen and farmers in the NE of Scotland might come to their senses.
The issue, for me at least, is exactly when we hold a second referendum. It is clear that the amazing hill walker views this as a side-show because the entire Brexit process is actually an internal argument within the Tory Party and has next to nothing to do with electors. Given UK independence from the EU I would expect a second referendum to be blocked, or fought over. Neither option is acceptable.
So, we need to win our independence in a very small bit of time. Which is defined both in the early seconds and the late seconds. We have to get it absolutely right.
We need that sweet spot where the disaster that is Tories negotiating is seen to be the abject failure it appears to me to be right now, and the moment where we demand – not ask – for a second referendum.
I anticipate that that will be 2018.
This is a scenario. Feel free to knock it down.
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Douglas. I’m in a rush this morning and I’ll be so all day. Will answer your post this evening..
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I agree that it is a difficult challenge to convince people they need to do something. I think this man has the answer.
https://barrheadboy.wordpress.com/2017/09/24/sun-tzu-art-of-war-in-business-to-gain-independence/
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I’ve been doing this stuff online for about eleven years now, back when there weren’t as many platforms, like facebook and twitter. We cybernats ruled the early days, which is why we were so vilified, especially by the press who forseen their Hearst-like control slipping from their inky fingers.
Now, of course, there are online bots, 77 brigade and the always ever fresh supporters of a west of Scotland football team attempting a defence of their union by abuse and obfuscation.
But they won’t win. We will; of this I am sure. Peace and love comrades, non illegitimi carborundum, amicitiae nostrae memorium spero sempiternam fore.
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Thanks for that Conan.
Every time we seem down about it remind us…
Idem, for the second part of that… and the somewhat dubious first part, for that matter.
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It’s all too easy to get pessimistic. I go there myself too.
But I’m another one of those ol’ grey beards and from time to time I just need to remind myself what it used to be like.
I remember when Winnie Ewing won Hamilton. I lived a few miles away from the “count”, but lived up a hill and I could see the building from street in front of our house.
I heard the noise, the cheers…it filled that space between; I didn’t just hear it, or feel it… the noise, the enthusiasm was almost visible.
Years later, I was in Govan when Jim Sillars won. A great night all the sweeter because of the work, the effort put in; weeks of it, every night after work 2 or 3 hour of door knocking, and then, not preaching but listening, taking notes, feeding it back, and only then delivering the “pesonalised” reply addressing that voter by name, dealing with his/her individual concerns, signed off by the candidate.
But it was a hard slog most of the time. Between the set piece elections it was about fund-raising, leafleting …dark nights, streets silvery with rain, suspicious dogs forming an ever larger packs to see you off their territory. You slogged on. You did your quota. You looked forward to that pint afterwards and collectively marking off the streets on that map with the highlighter. Another pint…warmer now and a grey beard or two, an old timer, telling us about their antics running illegal radio transmitters ( and the rest…’ nuff said eh?)
Bloody youngsters these days…40%+ in the polls, referendums, our own ACTUAL parliament. I was an election agent once…I was thrilled when we saved our deposit! We’ve come a long way…patience, we’ll get there yet.
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That was just the boost I needed. Thank you, Jake.
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Jake,
Beautiful post.
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Sorry, people, but I do not feel up to doing the research to give you links for the following … so like good Scots of independent mind, all my information should be considered provisional, in the absence of corroborating evidence.
On the subject of the “too wee”part of the “too wee, too poor, too stupid” underpinnings of the Cringe-making Narrative of Failure, I had a look just now at the populations of the world’s countries. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that if Scotland were on that list, we would be in 116th or 117th place out of the 234 listed – in other words, almost exactly half way, with about as many countries with larger populations than ours as there with smaller populations. (Mind you, Vatican City is last on the list, with the truly ginormous population of 801. I expect the extra 1 is the Pope himself, but what do I know…)
It is worth remembering that in 1707, the ratio between the populations of England and Scotland was not about 12:1 as it is today, it was more like 4:1.
For the “too poor” trope, in terms of nominal GDP per capita (always a somewhat misleading figure, it has to be said), the UK comes in at (2015 figure) 19th on a list of 212. We know that Scotland is at least in the same ball-park, but we have the Cringe to deal with here as well: the “financial black hole”, the purely imaginary £15billion deficit, chucking money over Hadrian’s Wall, the whole economic basket case schtick, we’d be like Greece… even though we independentistas are as sure as we can be that none of that is true, and are absolutely sure that Scotland has been ripped off big time for decades, if not longer, people are still stubbornly convinced that Scotland is an economic basket case, and Could Not Survive On Its Own.
“Too stupid” – how dare those barstewards say that Scottish education is failing? How dare They tell slanderous lies about our hard-working and dedicated teachers, and our world-class universities? How dare They make Scottish school leavers think their Scottish examination qualifications must be rubbish because they’re not A-levels? The last thing adolescents need who are struggling with life, plooks, the universe and everything, is yet more attacks on their self-esteem. I call it criminal, even if there’s no law against it.
My experience is that it’s that in Scottish v. English education, the boot is actually on the other foot: our European friends think it’s English university degrees that are a bit inferior, because it takes them only three years, as a general rule, when the norm practically everywhere except England etc. is at least four. That being the case, it’s the Scottish four-year honours degrees (in arts subjects, anyway) that they accept pretty much without question, not the English ones. That’s my experience, which is anecdotal, I suppose, although my interlocutors were various High Heid Yins and not so High Heid Yins from universities in France, Belgium, Morocco, Rwanda (fairly similar), and Germany and the Netherlands (more similar to each other than with the first lot) That’s the impression I have, anyway. Equivalences with the US system and with others like it are such a minefield that I am going to cop out completely, and take my wheesht and haud it.
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Oof. More messed up grammar and stuff than you can shake a stick at. Sorry, people, I’m kinda tired.
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Auch Ed, I’ve said this before… Don’t bother yourself about that. It’s not THAT important.
I didn’t notice anyway, and I’m forever making mistakes because I don’t have time to check my spelling and grammar… and I’m a seriously bad typist.
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In all these matters I agree, Ed.
I often wonder what a unionist’s answer wold be if we asked what it was about Scottish people that was so incredibly inferior to Irish, Icelanders, Norwegians, Swedes, Finns, Danes…
Why is it that the standards of living are far higher in most of these countries than they are here?
How can they manage it, but we Scots just can’t and would be basket cases without the Eton boys to show us what to do.
Our education is highly respected. It is more European, more broad based. and turns out more roundly educated students.
Concentrating on just 3 subjects after the age of 16 is rather limiting. It may save you a year in university, but it leaves you short of a broad base of knowledge outside of your speciality.
The extra one in the Vatican City State is the ex-pope. The guy that abdicated a few years ago, but gets to live on there in a wee apartment.
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Quite so… agreed about the A-levels, they specialize far too early. Also about government by the Bullingdon Club.
I thought the ex-pope lived down in Castle Gandalf, or whatever they call it… … Hm. It says in Wikipedia, home of all that is good and true on the internet, that Castel Gandolfo is an extraterritorial property of the Holy See, and not subject to Italian jurisdiction. So you’re right, Tris – he must be the one inhabitant left over … a bit like East Dunbartonshire used to be on maps – so instead of “Dunbartonshire (detached)” it would be “Vatican City (detached)”. Or some such.
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That’s it. Not bad place to live though, is it?
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Where is that? It looks Santorini like but not Santorini. Beautiful anyway.
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That´s Castel Gandolfo in the Alban Hills, and that’s Lake Albano. You’re right – it is volcanic. It is also not safely dead. Here’s some info on the Alban Hills volcanic complex: http://tinyurl.com/yav5n95s. There’s really quite an extraordinary amount of volcanism in Italy, some of it posing an extreme potential danger to large numbers of people – a bit like Rainier does to Seattle.
Everyone’s heard of Vesuvius, and Pompeii and Herculaneum are famous as a result of its eruption in AD 79. not so many have heard of the Campi Flegrei (Phlegraean Fields), which are basically in Naples on the other side of the city from Vesuvius. The “Phlegraean” bit comes from Greek and has to do with burning – think “conflagration”. That volcanic omplex is a caldera – it extends offshore – and there’s rather a lot of building actually on it. Or in it. About 3 million people live within 30 km of it. Its last known eruption was just shy of 500 years ago. http://tinyurl.com/yb9trpy9
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Huh. “Omplex”. Ah yes… we’ve had Cineplex and we’ve had Imax, and now the latest thing is Omplex, so called because you can make omelettes on the projectors.
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Well, that’s handy…. I suppose…
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Ha, I’m sure it will be kept safe, given that it is Vatican City territory and now more or less a museum.
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Just assumed that Vatican City didn’t have an, err, empire. Where do you find this stuff?
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LOL Wiki!
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Well, I put it down to having a vast store of knowledge, enormous erudition, and, of course, absolutely, fabulously unrivalled googling skills. But modest withal, natch.
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