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So if I'm understanding this correctly... Scotland wants independence mostly because they feel under-appreciated by England?

I think the new flag should look something like this....

 Easy E wrote:
I think the new flag should look something like this....

Oh no you didn't!

Last I checked you owed us about two hundred years worth of taxes and a couple of crates of tea!

 Easy E wrote:
I think the new flag should look something like this....

I See What You Did There!

 Easy E wrote:
I think the new flag should look something like this....
*wrong flag*

Yeah, something like that, just without stripes and perhaps with a friendly circle of stars:

chaos0xomega wrote:
So if I'm understanding this correctly... Scotland wants independence mostly because they feel under-appreciated by England?

Some Scottish people want independence because our political culture has diverged from the one which prevails at the UK level, and Westminster have taken all the alternative solutions to that problem off the table. Even those who don't currently support full independence tend to favour full fiscal autonomy, so-called "devo-max", or at the very least more devolution than exists presently. I used to advocate the Lib Dem idea of a federal model for the UK, until I realised that A; the Liberal Democrats are possible the most spineless, worthless, pointless sacks of flesh masquerading as people ever to run for office, and B; a federal UK is a pipe-dream, because the power structures at Westminster are too heavily ingrained to allow any kind of substantial reform.

Tibbsy wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
I think the new flag should look something like this....

Oh no you didn't!

Last I checked you owed us about two hundred years worth of taxes and a couple of crates of tea!

We paid that back when we saved yer butts during dubba dubba 1 and 2. Cause these colors don't run cousin


'MURICA

 Yodhrin wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
So if I'm understanding this correctly... Scotland wants independence mostly because they feel under-appreciated by England?

Some Scottish people want independence because our political culture has diverged from the one which prevails at the UK level, and Westminster have taken all the alternative solutions to that problem off the table. Even those who don't currently support full independence tend to favour full fiscal autonomy, so-called "devo-max", or at the very least more devolution than exists presently. I used to advocate the Lib Dem idea of a federal model for the UK, until I realised that A; the Liberal Democrats are possible the most spineless, worthless, pointless sacks of flesh masquerading as people ever to run for office, and B; a federal UK is a pipe-dream, because the power structures at Westminster are too heavily ingrained to allow any kind of substantial reform.

I was being facetious and troll-like, don't feed me lol.

That being said, if, hypothetically, the various commonwealth nations and the US were to join together in some sort of "super-union", I'd say we use this flag:



Just increase the number of stars around the Union Jack roundel as appropriate.

 Yodhrin wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
So if I'm understanding this correctly... Scotland wants independence mostly because they feel under-appreciated by England?

Some Scottish people want independence because our political culture has diverged from the one which prevails at the UK level, and Westminster have taken all the alternative solutions to that problem off the table. Even those who don't currently support full independence tend to favour full fiscal autonomy, so-called "devo-max", or at the very least more devolution than exists presently. I used to advocate the Lib Dem idea of a federal model for the UK, until I realised that A; the Liberal Democrats are possible the most spineless, worthless, pointless sacks of flesh masquerading as people ever to run for office, and B; a federal UK is a pipe-dream, because the power structures at Westminster are too heavily ingrained to allow any kind of substantial reform.

I don't know if you have looked at most political parties lately but they are all pretty much the same, regardless of which side of Hadrian's wall you look at. You have more Scottish MP's in our parliment than your proportion of the population would suggest you should have and they can vote on "English only" matters while we cannot vote in your devolved parliment on Scottish issues.

To be honest I am not really sure what else would be added by going your own way and can see pleny of downsides.

As to the list of "what we would like to happen if we become a country" - it kind of flies off into the territory of "dreams, wishes and rainbows"...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

chaos0xomega wrote:
[That being said, if, hypothetically, the various commonwealth nations and the US were to join together in some sort of "super-union", I'd say we use this flag:



Just increase the number of stars around the Union Jack roundel as appropriate.

It is a pretty awesome flag.

It's too awesome, it needs to be used for something.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
............

That being said, if, hypothetically, the various commonwealth nations and the US were to join together in some sort of "super-union", I'd say we use this flag:



Just increase the number of stars around the Union Jack roundel as appropriate.

BritMurica......feth yeah!

All the old obesity but now with better spelling and pronunciation!

And with the crazy gun laws and penal codes of some counties (formerly states) in BritMurica there is no reason at all for Piers Morgan not to be shot.

Long live Queen Britney and all who sail in her! Huzzah!



You see what I did there riiiight?

Union Flag with the Welsh Dragon in the top-left and swap the blue for green. Solved!

Seriously, Wales may nominally be represented by the Cross Of St. George, but screw that because Dragons are cool and green is a nice colour.

The roundel Union Flag one looks like advertising material for a British American Football Tournament. Do not want, YMMV.

This would be my pick:



Scotland gets quite a few perks that England doesn't currently, free university education being a pretty massive one. Free £27k to anyone north of the border that can get in.

 Alfndrate wrote:

Tibbsy wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
I think the new flag should look something like this....

Oh no you didn't!

Last I checked you owed us about two hundred years worth of taxes and a couple of crates of tea!

We paid that back when we saved yer butts during dubba dubba 1 and 2. Cause these colors don't run cousin


'MURICA

You haven't on a world cup, though.

Still win more olympic medals

 SilverMK2 wrote:

I don't know if you have looked at most political parties lately but they are all pretty much the same, regardless of which side of Hadrian's wall you look at. You have more Scottish MP's in our parliment than your proportion of the population would suggest you should have and they can vote on "English only" matters while we cannot vote in your devolved parliment on Scottish issues.

Thats a problem that fixes itself once we become independent

 Alfndrate wrote:

Tibbsy wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
I think the new flag should look something like this....

Oh no you didn't!

Last I checked you owed us about two hundred years worth of taxes and a couple of crates of tea!

We paid that back when we saved yer butts during dubba dubba 1 and 2. Cause these colors don't run cousin

'MURICA

You were a little late to the party on both counts!
WW1 started in 1914; not 1917
And WW2, believe it or not, started in 1939!

Tibbsy wrote:
You were a little late to the party on both counts!
WW1 started in 1914; not 1917
And WW2, believe it or not, started in 1939!

WW1, we were a last minute entry, we had to take a loss in Round 1 (Lusitania), but we still managed to make it to the top spot. As such, for WW2 we had a first round bye because of our awesome performance in WW1.

And KK, there have only been 2 'world wars' in the past 1 hundred years, the World Cup is every 4 years. We've got plenty of time . World wars prior to WW1 don't count, it's kind of like American football championships before the Super Bowl don't really count

 SilverMK2 wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
So if I'm understanding this correctly... Scotland wants independence mostly because they feel under-appreciated by England?

Some Scottish people want independence because our political culture has diverged from the one which prevails at the UK level, and Westminster have taken all the alternative solutions to that problem off the table. Even those who don't currently support full independence tend to favour full fiscal autonomy, so-called "devo-max", or at the very least more devolution than exists presently. I used to advocate the Lib Dem idea of a federal model for the UK, until I realised that A; the Liberal Democrats are possible the most spineless, worthless, pointless sacks of flesh masquerading as people ever to run for office, and B; a federal UK is a pipe-dream, because the power structures at Westminster are too heavily ingrained to allow any kind of substantial reform.

I don't know if you have looked at most political parties lately but they are all pretty much the same, regardless of which side of Hadrian's wall you look at. You have more Scottish MP's in our parliment than your proportion of the population would suggest you should have and they can vote on "English only" matters while we cannot vote in your devolved parliment on Scottish issues.

To be honest I am not really sure what else would be added by going your own way and can see pleny of downsides.

As to the list of "what we would like to happen if we become a country" - it kind of flies off into the territory of "dreams, wishes and rainbows"...

They're not the same though, that's the point. Which major UK party offers the voters a return to higher education based on the ability to learn, not the ability to pay? Which major UK party has committed to generating 100% of the country's electricity from renewable sources by 2020? Which major UK party advocates nuclear disarmament? Which major UK party is offering a primary and secondary education policy based on one of the most successful in the world's -Finland's- model? Which major UK party is advocating the reversal of the Royal Mail privatisation, which advocates taking the NHS back into public ownership from top to bottom, and which would propose renationalising the water supply? If presented with the Common Weal proposals I linked earlier, would any UK parties offer them serious consideration, or is it more likely they'd dismiss them out of hand because people in South of England swing/marginal seats wouldn't like it?

The Scottish Government has committed to, or already achieved all of those things. The only way to break the neo-liberal consensus and fossilised power structures at the heart of the British state which lead to all parties being "pretty much the same" is for us to get the hell out of it and try something new.

As for the "West Lothian Question", it's a nonsense. First, the number of Scottish MPs has decreased since devolution, and is set to decrease even further in the near future. Second, if you wanted your own devolved administration, you should have advocated for one, don't blame us because the campaigns for English or regional assemblies all flopped. Third, there are very very few "English only" matters decided at Westminster, lets look at some examples: HS2, the planned high-speed rail system that stops 200 miles short of the Scottish border - surely an English matter then? Except we're forking over a population share of the funding for that. How about the NHS, afterall the Scottish NHS has been separate from the rUK NHS since their inception, and health is a devolved matter...except part of the Scottish Government's funding under the Barnett Formula is determined as a percentage of UK spending, so if you privatise your NHS and cut public spending on health, we get less of our taxes back to pay for our health services. Same for education - devolved matter, Barnett funding affected by UK education spending. The House of Lords have just attempted to strip away our devolved powers over renewable energy, if their amended version of the Energy bill passes the Commons the UK will actually be taking powers back from us, and welfare, defence, foreign affairs, taxation, monetary policy, and a whole raft of other important issues are all reserved to Westminster where we have an ever diminishing voice.

What could be gained by independence? Well, other than getting the governments we actually vote for; the prospect of a more accessible, more local, more inclusive democracy; our main national elections decided by a system of proportional representation; the chance to legislate based on our social democratic consensus rather than the neo-liberal consensus of Westminster; the ability to tailor tax, welfare, employment, energy policy and so on according to our own needs and priorities; getting rid of the stockpile of nuclear weapons located 30 miles from the centre of our most populous city; and the opportunity to use the green energy sector and our engineering and academic expertise to build a high-wage economy that isn't crippled with some of the highest rates of debt -both absolute and per capita- in the world? Yeah, apart from all that, can't think of a thing

As for the White Paper, I take it you've not actually bothered to read the thing yourself, because frankly your remark could be a comment from below the line of a Daily Fail or Torygraph online "article". The procedural, mechanical, macroeconomic stuff in the White Paper is based on a series of reports by the Fiscal Commission Working Group, an independent group of several internationally renowned academics including two nobel laureates. There are also policy examples in there, like the Swedish-style childcare provision, which are SNP proposals designed to illustrate the sort of things we could do with independence which aren't possible under the current constitutional settlement, evidently meaning their implementation would depend on what government an independent Scotland would choose to elect in 2016.

It's very easy for Alastair Darling to go on TV and mouthfart into the camera about "wishlisting" and "fantasy", but we've been waiting for Better Together to offer their positive vision, their ideas about Scotland's potential future within the UK, and it becomes clearer every day that they simply don't have one.

I think some people have too readily bought into to straw polling where the only people voting are the ones who really really want it and the ones who really really don't want it. *prepares popcorn*

chaos0xomega wrote:
Still win more olympic medals

Not in the sports that count.

Why do you want to change your flag?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Still win more olympic medals

Not in the sports that count.

We have won ALL of the Super Bowls. Feel free to suck it, rest of world.

 kronk wrote:

We have won ALL of the Super Bowls. Feel free to suck it, rest of world.

Just like Scotland has always won the camanachd cup

 Kilkrazy wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Still win more olympic medals

Not in the sports that count.

You mean Ice Hockey? No, pretty sure we've got y'all beat on that one, our only REAL competition there are those scheming Canuckistanis to the north...

I personally hope the Scots do bugger off. I'm sick of all the whinging about how oppressed they are as part of the union.

Sounds kinda like half the states in the union... but here in the States when someone threatens to secede you know what we do? We ignore them until it comes to blows and fight a goddamned 5 year long bloody civil war and FORCE them to stay, because we're melon-fething America, thats why!

 filbert wrote:
I'm sick of all the whinging about how oppressed they are as part of the union.

Ain't that the truth.

 filbert wrote:
I personally hope the Scots do bugger off. I'm sick of all the whinging about how oppressed they are as part of the union.

Well we will be glad to be rid of you.

 kronk wrote:
Why do you want to change your flag?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Still win more olympic medals

Not in the sports that count.

We have won ALL of the Super Bowls. Feel free to suck it, rest of world.

I knew Americans are very fat, but please tell me you haven't made a sport out of eating puddings?!?!?

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 kronk wrote:


We have won ALL of the Super Bowls. Feel free to suck it, rest of world.

I knew Americans are very fat, but please tell me you haven't made a sport out of eating puddings?!?!?

And the award for "The Single Bluntest Comment on the Forum" goes to KK!