Cheers to the United Kingdom!

[TheLastColdBeer]

Watched the news last night at midnight (our local GMT -6). Bit of a relief, rather the UK didn't dissolve. The West's enemies would love to further divide and conquer, and this didn't help. Shades of Gladstone, London has won another chance to get home rule right. Hope this time they can make it work.

Maybe Ireland is watching.....ask em' how that European deal is working out.

[little_old_man]

Congrats UK. You dodged a bullet this time.

[billyblade]

 

Does this mean that this does not apply anymore???????? the times they are a changin..........

[TBB]

  Does this mean Joe C. and Pete will be moving back?????

[Sonovabich]

 

Does this mean that this does not apply anymore???????? the times they are a changin..........

 Stop it with the Hollywood history please Billy, yes times are a changing, maybe you should be looking towards Hawaii.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=hawaiian+independence&espv=2&biw=1920&bih=965&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=7E4cVKK5MLKB7QaQsYHQBw&ved=0CFIQsAQ

Edited September 19, 2014 by Sonovabich

[Grumpy_Git]

Congrats UK. You dodged a bullet this time.

 

Dodged a bullet ... ??     Pretty sure most of England couldn't really have gived a toss, unless they were of Scottish decent or Ginger ...

 

Would we have been worse off .... hmm .. Perhaps in Curling and ........... nope, can't think of anything else

 

What you all got to remember, is that most of the swets, will support anyone else rather than England. If England play any other team in the world, they will support the other team.

 

But the English always support Scotland in sport, It's in out nature to support the underdog ......

[billyblade]

 Stop it with the Hollywood history please Billy, yes times are a changing, maybe you should be looking towards Hawaii.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=hawaiian+independence&espv=2&biw=1920&bih=965&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=7E4cVKK5MLKB7QaQsYHQBw&ved=0CFIQsAQ

Oh SOB...us hawaiians gave up on that a long long time ago...lest we fall in the hands of the japanese...which they own it already......

[little_old_man]

Oh SOB...us hawaiians gave up on that a long long time ago...lest we fall in the hands of the japanese...which they own it already......

 

I don't know Billy, the last couple of times I was on Oahu there were still a lot of angry locals around, especially on the north shore. Signs in their yards with not terribly nice things to say about tourists. Can't say that I blame them, we did steal it from them after all.

[TheLastColdBeer]

Now that Cameron's fears are alleviated (for the time being). This might be the chance to make significant changes in how the UK is represented. Welsch, English, Scotish, and Irish MP's could better handle local affairs without explaining themselves and having their decisions overruled by MP's from different regions. English MP's should make the decisions for England, without having to ask Ediburgh for their approval. Vice versa.

Maybe a United Kingdom confindent in its' own identity could shake off the EU thing completely. I never understood why the UK needed to be joined to anything else. Wasn't the Industrial Revolution & Empire all British doing?

Time to do a little thinking, and build a better UK, while time allows.

[DEEJAYKEG]

The reaction of HM The Queen, as reported in the Daily Telegraph, includes:

“Now, as we move forward, we should remember that despite the range of views that have been expressed, we have in common an enduring love of Scotland, which is one of the things that helps to unite us all."

 

I don't believe she was using the royal "we" in that context.

 

Though it pains me to disagree with our sovereign lady, there are many of us to whom Scotland is insignificant.

I have no family there (or to my knowledge anywhere in the family tree, being of English Celt ethnicity), have never

visited and have no ambitions so to do.  I like eating Scottish beef, salmon and crab and that is all that interests me

about the place.

 

The one positive side-effect of this upheaval among a minority of UK residents (there are probably more Scots

living in England than in their home country) is that, at last, there is a focus on improving democracy in England.

Scotland has its own parliament governing much of its affairs (with further powers to be devolved) yet sends its

MPs to Westminster to tell the English how to live (the West Lothian Question).

 

The media has always been disproportionately loaded with Scots - you cannot watch a news bulletin or a current

affairs report without coverage of some remote Highland village or the Scotian accent hitting the eardrums.  I'm

thankful that we are spared bagpipes for most of the time.  Maybe the Scottish universities churn out thousands

of Media Studies graduates!

 

[Sonovabich]

Now that Cameron's fears are alleviated (for the time being). This might be the chance to make significant changes in how the UK is represented. Welsch, English, Scotish, and Irish MP's could better handle local affairs without explaining themselves and having their decisions overruled by MP's from different regions. English MP's should make the decisions for England, without having to ask Ediburgh for their approval. Vice versa.

Maybe a United Kingdom confindent in its' own identity could shake off the EU thing completely. I never understood why the UK needed to be joined to anything else. Wasn't the Industrial Revolution & Empire all British doing?

Time to do a little thinking, and build a better UK, while time allows.

The Scots Welsh and Northern Irish do handle their own affairs, they all have their own Parliaments, it's called Devolution, Scotland more so then the others, did you know that Scottish MP'S, even from the Scottish National party can vote on things like English tax laws and National Health affairs but English MP's cannot vote on anything Scottish, the Scots could only win win win with this little rebellion, now they will get lots more powers, more then most English regions who will suffer because of this, did you know that out of 32 districts  that could vote in this Scottish election, only 4 out of 32 voted to leave the UK, and non of those 4 had more then a 57% share of the vote, the best thing about them staying for me is that it means the Conservatives will not have a monopoly on running the rest of the UK, they hardly get a vote north of the border which means most Scottish MP's are Labour or S.N.P., but Cameron is already trying to use this election to his own advantage and change laws that will stop the Scots helping the rest of the UK to kick him and his party out of power, looks like another win win situation for the Tories too.

Edited September 20, 2014 by Sonovabich

[TheLastColdBeer]

Yeah, that's the bit I couldn't understand. Why has Westminster allowed non-English mp's to have voting rights on English concerns. More of that buying favoritism to stay in power thing? Sounds like the tail wagging the dog. You don't have a monopoly on that, we're riddled too.

Good thing Taff ain't here to read this. I see I misspelled Welsh earlier, there'd be hell to pay for that slip.

Put the Union flag up under the stars & stripes yesterday, just to annoy the dagos in this little village. Good for a grin, in any case.

[Sonovabich]

Yeah, that's the bit I couldn't understand. Why has Westminster allowed non-English mp's to have voting rights on English concerns. More of that buying favoritism to stay in power thing? Sounds like the tail wagging the dog. You don't have a monopoly on that, we're riddled too.

Good thing Taff ain't here to read this. I see I misspelled Welsh earlier, there'd be hell to pay for that slip.

Put the Union flag up under the stars & stripes yesterday, just to annoy the dagos in this little village. Good for a grin, in any case.

No you are not getting it m8, we are Great Britain, it was and still is a British Government not an English government, but because of Devolution, more powers were given to Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland, when the British Government passed a bill or a law, all British MP's had the right to vote for it and rightly so, now everything seems to weighed in Scotlands favour, as i previously said Scottish MP's can vote for things in the British Parliament but only their MPs can vote in the Scottish parliament, it is fucked up, for example they don't pay prescription charges for their medicines (not sure if Wales don't either) us English do and we are wondering why because we feel we are funding the cuts that they are enjoying.

Edited September 20, 2014 by Sonovabich

[TheLastColdBeer]

Yeah SOB, unfortunatly, I do understand. What would be nice if parliment would allow voting for matters that concern Great Britain, then butt out of things that concern Dover. Fat chance that'll happen. Too bad being British trumps being English. Especially if you're the one paying the bills. I noticed the queen saying "we" also. "We" don't own estates in Balmoral.

That's something Disraeli, Gladestone, and the fine gentlemen should have sorted out a century or more ago. If they could have defined a better UK, they might have run a better empire. Water over the dam.

[Fire]

I was born in London but brought up in Scotland since i was 5 years old and when we got the news yesterday

that we lost in the YES vote i was hurt and so was all my family as we really thought we could win this.

But you all forget that we get the tests first meaning????

1/ we were the first to get the poll tax

2/we were the first to get the smoking ban

3/ we were the first to get the bedroom tax

England never we always had to get it first to see if it works before they started in England so

you wonder why we wanted to go on our own thats why we just don,t want to be taken as fulls

again and i hope we teached them and take there fingers out there arss and sort it as they

won,t get a second chance.

[billyblade]

No you are not getting it m8, we are Great Britain, it was and still is a British Government not an English government, but because of Devolution, more powers were given to Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland, when the British Government passed a bill or a law, all British MP's had the right to vote for it and rightly so, now everything seems to weighed in Scotlands favour, as i previously said Scottish MP's can vote for things in the British Parliament but only their MPs can vote in the Scottish parliament, it is fucked up, for example they don't pay prescription charges for their medicines (not sure if Wales don't either) us English do and we are wondering why because we feel we are funding the cuts that they are enjoying.

so then...all kidding aside...is this a good thing or a bad thing????? i know nothing of british politics other than it looks way more complicated than our own.....

[DEEJAYKEG]

Billy, democracy is a grand thing if everyone enjoys it in equal measures.

The way things are at the moment, the majority suffers to appease the minority.

 

The voting system favours the large well-established parties so, whilst none of the

"big three" earns sufficient support for an overall majority, I think we shall be stuck

with coalitions for some time to come.  They are essentially weaker as they have

to compromise but, as we have seen with our current shower in power, there can

be a stronger partner and its puppet forcing through unpopular and unwanted

laws.

[Sonovabich]

It should be a good thing, the Military will not be broken apart for one thing, on a personal level for me it would have been a bit of a disaster to lose all those Scots MP's who hate the Tories and will never vote for them, i think Cameron secretly wanted the Scots to leave, that's why he went up there twice in the last week before the vote, he probably made more people vote for independence by doing that because him and the Tories are despised up there, some of us here might look like we wanted them to leave but i think that is just because we were a bit hurt that they wanted to dump us like a discarded lover lol, if the Scots had planned this better they might have voted for independence but it looks to me like they just blundered into this, if they had left it mean't they were out of the EU and they would have had no currency, they would not be British anymore so they would lose the British pound, i have no idea how they would find a way around that one, looked like they were hinging everything on the North Sea Oil,we have since been told there is not as much there as everyone thinks there is, about a year ago the polls were saying they had no chance, as the year went on and they started closing the gap you could see they didn't really have a plan i really think Mr Salmond got what he really wanted all along, that is more powers for Scotland, i don't know if this is true but i heard  that all the Scots that live in England never got a vote (that bit is true) yet immigrant workers who only work in Scotland were allowed to vote, perhaps someone can enlighten us on that one.

[DEEJAYKEG]

I was born in London but brought up in Scotland since i was 5 years old and when we got the news yesterday

that we lost in the YES vote i was hurt and so was all my family as we really thought we could win this.

But you all forget that we get the tests first meaning????

1/ we were the first to get the poll tax

2/we were the first to get the smoking ban

3/ we were the first to get the bedroom tax

England never we always had to get it first to see if it works before they started in England so

you wonder why we wanted to go on our own thats why we just don,t want to be taken as fulls

again and i hope we teached them and take there fingers out there arss and sort it as they

won,t get a second chance.

 

I'm pleased Putin didn't get the result he wanted and NATO remains in place in Scotland.

 

It was the Scottish, not Westminster, parliament that instituted the smoking ban, by the way...

[DEEJAYKEG]

@Sonovabich  Here are the voter qualifications cut from the official guide.

Yes, you will note that, whilst Scots resident outside Scotland and other

British nationals in the UK were denied our say, EU nationals and Irish

citizens could determine the future of the union.  That was, as one of

my pals on here would say, "f***ed up"!

 

[Sonovabich]

@Sonovabich  Here are the voter qualifications cut from the official guide.

Yes, you will note that, whilst Scots resident outside Scotland and other

British nationals in the UK were denied our say, EU nationals and Irish

citizens could determine the future of the union.  That was, as one of

my pals on here would say, "f***ed up"!

 

Yes it certainly looked fucked up Keggy, like i said they didn't seem to have a plan at all.

[TheLastColdBeer]

An EU citizen living in Scotland could vote? That makes me a bit queezy. Makes me wanna say things that shouldn't be heard in polite company.

[billyblade]

so, is it safe to say that the real reason the scots decided to stay was that they as a sovereign nation would be broke as they would have no currency and not enough independent economy to sustain the needs of the citizenship? i know with hawaii most folks realize how susceptible they would be to an armed takeover as geographically hawaii is the only real spot between east and west. They would, like the scots, have no basis for their own currency, nor would they be able to sustain a viable military, so truth be known its either be a state or annexed by another country...which at tyhis point is completely unnacceptable. They would be forced to be a broke nation with US military occupation still present just to protect themselves from, most likely, chinese invasion. The whole movement is more predicated on cultural values and the hawaiians having more access to free land and government handout. I know plenty of lazy hawaiians who would want nothing more than to chill all day on homestead land and get money for nothing...who doesnt? But thats apples to oranges here.

Edited September 21, 2014 by billyblade

[Sonovabich]

Well it's quite funny as we are talking about Scottish Independence, i have just been watching a news program and they are talking about the Catalans (Barcelona) in Spain wanting independence with a vote on that coming soon, the Basque region of Northern Spain and South West France have been trying gain independence for a long time and now i see the Dutch Flemish region of Belgium are also wanting to be independent, it would be interesting to see how all these very small countries would fund and support themselves, probably by begging from the EU, have you seen the size of Belgium, how small would a Flemish state be lol, thing about Europe is that most of the countries you see now never existed until recently, Belgium being one, Italy was made up lots of regions like Venice and Naples etc and even Germany was just a lot of regions like Westphalia, Prussia existed but has been swallowed up into greater Germany, what would happen if all these small states decided they all wanted independence too lol.

[codpiece]

The world is ever changing. There are even regions in the U.S. that talk about the same thing from time to time. Texas is the most notable. However, even my state of Arizona has a provision in the state constitution to succeed given a particular set of circumstances.