And you don't see the problem there at all...

An independent Scotland would come unstuck for all the reasons previously stated.

Rump UK would suffer worse without the Scottish votes to deprive the Tories of a permanent majority. The current regime's return to Thatcher's Victorian Values such as mass poverty, falling real wages, underemployment, children with rickets, epidemic depression, growing slums and overcrowding, sick and disabled people left to rot... ... is an indication of the disaster that awaits us.

The first article:
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, March 1851. illustrates the horrors that would follow.

On the topic of London, I have worked there, have friends who live there and my two longest standing friends were born there. It is a great city to live in - for the well off and for the culturally inclined. It does get a disproportionately large share of state spending on transport and culture. Far more so than Scotland ever has. Its influence tends to work against the national interest since it is the UK (and sometimes planetary) centre of financial crises. The consequences of which are born far and wide outside its bounds. The UK is far too centralised.

Among my other friends, one was born in Radcliffe and most live in and were educated in Manchester and Greater Manchester. The quality of life for the less well off is much better hereabouts.

The London media thought they could see off independence by demonising Alex Salmond and rigging opinion polls/panels. But Salmond isn’t on the ballot paper; independence is. And the debate has been going on for so long that Scots do know what they’re voting for.

People in the southeast may have been fooled into paying no attention because the London media said it wouldn’t happen. But they’re waking up now.

The southeast has also been lulled into thinking independent Scotland will lead to a Tory rUK. Again, they’ve just been brainwashed by the biased London media (including the BBC). The Tories are disintegrating now.

It could all end in chaos. But federalism is on the table and it won’t go away.

After the Yes vote, Miliband should admit he was wrong, commit to a velvet separation with Scotland and commit to devolution into a regional federal system for rUK .

Northern England has a lot to gain from that, with shale gas and Jim O’Neill’s report: Connected Cities – The link to growth.

Scottish independence is just the beginning.

Jeremy

There is no system that guarantees the happiness and well being of all of the people. Democracy would seem to be one of the better systems for delivering it for the majority.

jeffian

Do you even know what a socialist is?

I am a capitalist who knows that wilful ignorance, greed and malice are apt to spoil the party for us all. So, I support policies such as moderately progressive taxation to provide a decent level of health, education and infrastructure. These benefit the whole population.

Tories apparently believe that they can live in prosperity while leaving the rest of us to rot in the misery and squalor engineered by their policies. Do they want to live in gated communities protected by land mines, automated machine guns and razor wire? This is the logical consequence of your electing psychopaths and sociopaths.