Tuesday 26th August

Well, are we sick of this Scottish question yet?  It has been going on for quite a long time now, and yet like Christmas you turn around and before you know it is upon us.  We have now had the second debate, and yet in a way we know even less than before the referendum was even mooted.  The argument seems to boil down to guestimates about Oil production and whether the pound will be the currency of an Independent Scotland.  Answers to which nobody knows.  It is almost impossible to even guess what would happen in a United Kingdom, let alone two separate countries.  To my mind the economic arguments are both unanswerable and pointless.  The real question is whether Scottish people will feel more contented with a Government in Edinburgh than one in London making some decisions and another in Edinburgh making other decisions.  By the way whichever way they vote other decisions will still be being made in Brussels, Independent or not.  Or maybe not, as if the vote is no and then the Tories win and their promised Euro-referendum votes to leave the Scottish people will be even more at the mercy of Westminster policies.

And actually both Labour and the Tories are offering competing versions of Devo-Max should the vote be to remain with us.  Many people actually suspect that this is the real objective of the SNP, though exactly how Alex Salmond will portray a defeat as anything else is beyond me.

Actually I think that all nations states are rapidly becoming meaningless.  There are wars now in Ukraine, Libya, Syria, Iraq and South Sudan which are all really the aftermath of Colonialism.  Too often nations are not defined by geography or culture but by old administrative regions of nineteenth century Colonial states.  One of the ideals of Europe was to make Nationality redundant.  If we are all part of a United Europe then countries are less and less important.  It seems we have a long way to go.  And the Scottish question is if anything another backward step.