No I am not Scottish but was married to a wonderful Scottish lady for many years. I believe I was careful in my wording to not criticize the Scottish people who are generally very enterprising and most welcoming to the ancestral homeland. I honestly think it is quite sad that the politicians are misleading by the way they whitewash the truth and try and sanitize the economic history and the current economic reality. I still have quite a few Scottish friends living in Scotland and by and large the current political scene is worrying them hugely.
That is interesting. From this side of the channel, although we don’t hear a lot about it, it would appear that every Scotsperson and their dog would vote for Independence, if only to get rid of Boris Johnson and chums. It reminds me of a Scotland v England football match that I was invited to at Wembley some years ago. My hosts were Scots restaurateurs. The animosity the Scots fans had for their English counterparts, and vice versa seemed very real to me.
I know PSG and Marseilles fans don’t like each other but this was on a different level.
From this side of the channel, although we don’t hear a lot about it, it would appear that every Scotsperson and their dog would vote for Independence, if only to get rid of Boris Johnson and chums.
Welcome to continental media bias 
There is a massive anti-UK sentiment, driven by brexit (one also sees this when trying to buy stuff from the mainland, notably from certain countries; I expect it will die down over the coming years) and anybody who is on that side is “your friend” by default (your enemy is my friend, sort of stuff; usually this works only for a short time, like the WW2 alliances). So of course most mainland European media will support the Scottish independence angle – totally unrealistic as it is, for many reasons (start by googling N Sea oil production over past 30 years, for example).
I admit I haven’t a clue whether Scotland would or would not be economically viable with independence,
It would work only if (a) Miss McTermite got her totally bizzare shopping list (google for that; it is an absolute scream, especially in the bit about not taking on any UK national debt) and (b) Brussels (read: Germany) threw in a load of cash as well (and continued to do so for ever; to get that bit, visit Scotland in person and see how many Scots work in low paid jobs, say the hospitality sector… answer: very few; most are from Romania, etc, while the Scots who arguably should do those jobs are living on social security).
Yesterday at the aeroclub was a strange day 6 people wanting “vol de decouverte”.
3 brand new Renault Alpines in the same blue, an Aston Martin Vantage and an RV9 belonging to the flight school at Vannes.
Unfortunately, one sees a lot of people with 100k cars who spend nothing on their plane and let it fall apart. I have always seen this, over the 20 years I’ve been flying.
Sorry but that bs is just @Peter anti Europe/EU bias. The media here is not anti UK. I simply mentioned reports from both Sky and other stations which give the impression that most Scots seem to want to be independent. @Fenland_Flyer pointed out that the Scots he knew were against, and with a Scottish wife I accept he has the greater first hand knowledge.
The guy who owns the 100k Aston is the owner of a beautifully kitted out and maintained Mooney.
I believe we need to work. With our present Scottish education and taxation systems the local marine jobs are now done by East Europeans. The disincentive to work and the incentive to take drugs are linked. Education too often leads to non-productive tax-supported jobs. Before retiring in 2006, to help 13 year old kids chose next year’s subjects I looked at the local Tech College website for motor trade courses. I didn’t find anything obvious, but plenty of eco training ones.
I find the hate some of you show for Ms Sturgeon interesting. As I said, I am not an admirer of her policies, which are as crazy as the UK ones.
From this side of the channel, although we don’t hear a lot about it, it would appear that every Scotsperson and their dog would vote for Independence
Sorry but that bs is just @Peter anti Europe/EU bias
You can’t have it both ways
And the 2nd one is a personal attack, which happens to be TOTALLY WRONG. I have no “anti Europe bias”. That is just something some people write because, on a moderated forum, anyone who beats up a mod/admin is a hero, and anyone who (eventually) gets banned, is a martyr. So the mod/admin is always a good target. The smart troublemakers beat up only the mod/admin The thick ones beat up everybody… The really thick ones beat up people and don’t contribute aviation content… We have done this to death before; you can have a non participating mod/admin but you will have to pay and you will have to pay a heavy price. It’s been done before, on GA forums too, and always you end up with mods who are a bunch of weirdoes, who get to hate / ban random people, who usually go renegade (Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now is my favourite analogy) eventually and totally lose the plot, and even at the best of times the forum doesn’t get modded intelligently because to mod a forum properly you need people who understand the subject well. And the admin usually runs multiple personas. It’s also been written on some sites by certain ex EuroGA characters who basically wanted a forum where they can beat people up (the way they do on their domestic ones) and found they got into trouble if they tried it on EuroGA.
I am also critical of procedures in some countries, and some people hate that because some countries have been elevated to the status of a saint. And on an international forum (of which EuroGA is a rare functioning example) you get national (nationalist, frankly) axes…
I’ve been in business (electronics) since 1978 and have exported to most countries in the world, including every one in Europe. I have met many people from all those countries… I have great personal friends all over Europe. Anti Europe? You’ve got to be kidding! And as everyone knows I really hate travelling outside Little England. Anyway, I come from Czechoslovakia. Anti Europe? WTF!!!!! You can’t get any more “central” than CZ – a little country, relatively very peaceful and laid-back, which has always been beaten up by its neighbours.
Why write personal attacks? It’s dumb. If you want to argue a point, argue the point. Fortunately, on EuroGA, approximately 98% of the active community has never written anything offensive. So clearly it isn’t rocket science.
I simply mentioned reports from both Sky and other stations which give the impression that most Scots seem to want to be independent
Check the opinion polls; they are in the public domain.
And remember each media channel has a narrative… Sky is trash; similar to the Daily Mail but with fewer adverts, and isn’t as nauseatingly PC as the BBC which has a basically good website.
We have done this before… The UK channels which are watched by mainland Europeans, all that are of good quality are behind paywalls, and who is going to pay to read the news from another country? So most educated mainlanders read the Guardian, but that one has a really slanted narrative.
Of course any country “can” go independent. Corsica could go independent. Actually they would probably get a majority vote there! It is the required economic aid package which is one problem (because most regions which want to go independent are also the poor regions, full of uneducated lazy people, because those are predominantly the people who support politicians who build platforms out of old nationalist building material) and guess where the social security package is being generated? The other problem is that most of the time the sovereign power isn’t going to allow it because everybody knows that once they start, it won’t stop there, and when the poorer bits have left, they become wastelands and their inhabitants come back to the wealth generating bits and live off the social security there. That is why Kohl spent a trillion DM on East Germany (he said so).
BBC brexit aftermath
Unfortunately that mess does not only hit those who voted for this but also the rest of the population.
One hope for Scotland may be quite a few companies in England prefered to go there once the Scots got the chance to join EU instead of having to settle for a new company in EU for avoiding all bureaucracy and delay when dealing with EU and customs . My first bigger orders from UK were in 1987 and this was a real mess when having to go to customs even with my private orders of vintage motorbike spares. After 1989 this changed for the better, VAT was paid in each country and esay non customs imports from UK to EU. Now we are back in pre 1989 times so I will do my best to spare me orders from UK, same with USA , so it´s China for me, no troubles with them. So much for animosities in EU or United Queendom . . .
Ahhm, Trig is in Edinburgh, a great company – unlike Garmin et al . . . .
Figures from the Office for National Statistics in April suggest that more than one in 10 UK hospitality workers left the industry in the last year.
Not really surprising given that according to another report 9.7% of businesses in the sector went bust in the last year, presumably mostly due to CV19.
There will always be a large “churn” in that sector (for many reasons but basically starting yet another cafe is easy) but it has been hit really hard this time.
Now we are back in pre 1989 times so I will do my best to spare me orders from UK, same with USA , so it´s China for me, no troubles with them
Fortunately what matters is B2B, which remains duty free. Retail (mail order) imports from the mainland, into the UK, were never big, because everything in the EU was, ahem, equally expensive And now we have the own-goal of HMRC requiring registration for overseas exporters for under-£135 stuff, which is quite bizzare (Ebay and Amazon take care of that for the exporter). That’s why China is laughing all the way to the bank, via Ebay and Amazon, and will continue to do so, a large % of the goods being counterfeit notwithstanding.
Personal imports from the mainland tended to be difficult due to “cultural issues” (generally poor pre- and post-sales product support to a “foreign country” customer, etc); I’ve had plenty of bizzare experiences, most recently trying to buy some bike inner tubes from France or a specialised media card interface from Germany, and that’s before the famously discussed (and of course denied) one with Roeder Precision in Germany telling me they deal only with German customers My most notable success, one of the few, was that Kjus ski jacket (CHF 1700 in Zermatt and €350 mail order from Germany ).
The challenge with the Scottish independence sentiment – pretty much the same as with the Brexit – is, that many (not all) of the supporters of independence believe in a dream about what will happen after independence that will never come true.
As many of the British Brexiteers were hoping for a future that brings unrestricted access to EU markets (w/o the liabilities that come with an EU membership) plus a great trade agreement with the US and others (plus billions for the NHS, etc. ) many Scottish leavers are dreaming of an EU membership of an independent Scottish state. That is, however, impossible to happen.
A truly independent Scottish state, however, would have a pretty hard time to negotiate deals on e.g. fishing, that are substantially better than what they have today – not to mention international trade agreements with like the US that has pretty clearly stated that even the UK including Scotland is too small to be relevant for them.
Malibuflyer wrote:
The challenge with the Scottish independence sentiment – pretty much the same as with the Brexit – is, that many (not all) of the supporters of independence believe in a dream about what will happen after independence that will never come true.
That is true for most secession movements. We even may see such stuff happen in the US before too long, given the politican division there. Secession movements are all over the place, in many cases a testament for the worse and worse political polarisation which happens everywhere.
However, the jury is still out on how these things eventually develop. In the Scottish case, their now primary motive would be for an independent Scotland to reverse Brexit and get back into the EU. You say that is impossible, I wonder why? It would be the major coup for the EU as it would be the ultimate humiliation of rump Britain and snap them up, which obviously then would replace one dependence with another. What Scotland in such a position could achieve or not, whether UK companies would flock there to be back under EU cover, whether the EU would strive to make an example of Scotland being the land of milk and honey for political reasons (at least initially) is totally in the open.
What will happen in the UK post Brexit as a whole, again the jury is not even out yet. Clearly the EU will wage some sort of economic war, as they do on Switzerland now that we have refused their contract which would have made us a de facto member without voting right. In the end the question will be who needs more of whom. In the case of relations with the US, it depends strongly what the US stance on the EU is. Biden will not have too much of an interest to hack off the EU and buddy with the UK, whereas Trump would have quite possibly done that with relish. There may well be a chance for the UK to establish themselves as a trading post outside the EU with attractive tax conditions e.t.c. but it totally remains to be seen if this works or not.
In general it is far too early to see where this goes. It will depend on a lot of things we are not even aware of yet as they have not happened. Who of us would have expected a seizure like Covid to happen… well there are other potential seizures out there and all of them can totally reverse outcomes or send them into a different direction.
