The point I made previously though is that in this case, the sovereignty argument is valid. If someone says "I would rather Scotland is an independent sovereign nation even if we are poorer", they actually have a valid argument. You or I may not agree with it, but it's a valid point.
I utterly agree. But at the same time, I am anxious that serious scrutiny goes into the practical impacts of this potential decision.
For some people, governance away from the English will be sufficient and that's okay. I accept that, even if I don't agree with it.
For others, they are concerned about the impact of
Tory cuts (like any other government wouldn't have had to do something similar) but on the surface it seems that there is the potential for an independence vote to mean not only that a Scottish government will have to cut harder and deeper than any Conservative government would dream of doing. That
has to be examined.
The Scottish economy
is perfectly fine. It's almost impossible to accurately calculate the Scottish economy as it currently is, and it's useless to use the currently published figures (while in the union, and much is obfuscated) to try to make claims about the economy of an independent Scotland.
ETA There is no rational case for Scotland staying in the union, the only legitimate card that remains for the vote no lot to play is an appeal to Britishness. They'll use that, plus lies and scaremongering. Hopefully less folk will fall for it this time. I expect many of the same old lies will be regurgitated.
ETA2
This is also relevant.
Jeeez. In a nutshell, there is the problem. In your first two sentences you have utterly contradicted yourself. How can you possibly say that the
Scottish economy is perfectly fine when the very sources you call on say that no one knows?
Instead of making so much hay about the grievances in the relationship between Holyrood and Westminster, don't you think it would be a good idea to
find out first?
Based on what you've written and the sources you've used, it seems that Theresa May is absolutely correct to say that the Scottish people can't make an informed decision. At least (in the context of the Brexit potential "no deal" scenario) the UK government knows where it's starting from. According to that Wings Over Scotland article, the Scottish government doesn't even know that. That makes a potential referendum even more of a gamble than it already looked based on the data/estimates available.
I have, and it is deeply flawed and biased against Scotland. Just off the top of my head there are quite a few companies registered in England, paying taxes in England, that operate in Scotland. There are also companies working out of London that are owned by mostly Scottish shareholders. And then there is the question of who owns the natural resources in Scotland and in the North Sea. And, of course, there is the fact that Scotland actually has around 90% of the UKs fresh water supply.
I call bull, or at least gross exaggeration. Get some verifiable figures/facts up. Let's talk about some specific companies. I've gone looking for proxy data as a substitute for formal revenue/wealth (business rates/income tax figures released to the media by the SNP government) and found nothing outwith 17% of the GERS data. If the GERS data is so nonsensical, why hasn't the sitting government of the last decade addressed that? This gets vetted by the UK Statistics Authority.
GERs already accounts (via estimate, so certainly not perfect) for economic activity in Scotland (rather than being HQ'd in England) so I'd be interested to see what you've got that suggests the official figures are so wrong. The GERS methodology notes are
here.
