Should Scotland be an independent country?

I'd start by getting political representation in the already existing infrastructure.

That sounds like hard work, can you do it for me?

Don't listen to Mark, I've heard from a reliable source that he spoils his ballot.

Ze Germans! Where don't you have your spies?!

Double agents and honey traps, the usual.

honey traps

Are they the ones used to catch wasps?

I hate wasps.

I think Oliver is suggesting that he seduced Mrak

Are they the ones used to catch wasps?

I hate wasps.

Let's call Mark a WASP, just for the hell of it. So, yes. :)

Can I hit him with a newspaper then?

Awkward boner.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/2014/mar/10/gordon-browns-speech-on-further-devolution-to-scotland-politics-live-blog

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/08/mighty-yorkshire-minority-cornwall-london-payback

Interesting that the Yes campaign are adamant that they will use the UK pound no matter what, when the rUK is saying categorically they will veto that. Of course an iScotland could use the pound, but would have no say in interest rates etc. A few years ago the pound was a 'millstone around Scotland's neck' and yet now 'the pound is in the best interests of Scotland and rUK'

So why doesn't iScotland simpy use the Mexican Peso? Or the Chinese Yuan? Both are freely traded international currencies and don't have that nasty rUK aftertaste

We live in fucking bizarre times if the Scottish people swallow this BS

I suspect it's because it's less complicated - people in the UK for the most part resist the idea of having a "new" currency (look how upset everyone got at the idea that we could use the Euro). By retaining the pound as currency it'll still be familiar, and Scotland already produces its own special banknotes and the like so there's already an existing sense that Scottish Money isn't like English Money.

I also think that at least some of the current feeling is "YOU CAN'T TELL US WHAT TO DO", which is why the volte-face about the desirability of the pound is just accepted.

IF Salmond had come right out with it and said 'We will create a new Scottish currency, there will be a period of unease, instability and potential problems whilst we transition' I think he would have far more kudos

He's thrown it. Totally (and would not surpise me if he knows it will a No vote with a sufficiently tight margin for him to ride the MP gravy train for the next ten years or so)

there are some great bargaining tools such as trident , i watched andrew neil programme (well worth watching) last night and the uk gov have made no plans to move trident in the case of independence , they saw it as a weakness if they made plans . i say trident gets a stay of execution say 5 years scotland gets the £ !

Scotland gets the pound anyway - Westminster can't stop them from having that. Westminster won't guarantee Scottish currency which would be normal, as why would a government guarantee another country's money?

"Ok you can do something that you were going to do anyway because we can't prevent you from doing it, if we get to keep Trident there lol" isn't really going to make a convincing deal.

scotland should go for it whatever the currency is , being from glasgow and the poverty i have seen in my life in the 6th wealthiest country in the world ,how the people were treated in the second city of the empire , we should ditch this system and start afresh , the "great" british isles is over as a power . when the union was made the population difference was 2/3 english and 1/3 scots in the union . now 8% scots and what 90% english ? remember USA / canada/ australia/ new zealand / south africa etc were all colonies of the british and they are all independent and doing rather well whatever their currency !

My mate Hadrian will sort all the problems said something about a building a wall and just leaving them be.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04dr69k/scotland-votes-whats-at-stake-for-the-uk

As Tories in Scotland are about as common as genuine Cinelli Lasers, the new reduced-fat UK would have an inbuilt (and probably inbred) Tory majority with no pesky Scottish Labour MPs.

Could this be why they're doing such a shite job of preserving the Union?

if scots get independence (not sure how likely) , and labour win next election (which is fairly likely) , scots (mainly labour mps) will have a say in westminster government until independence day 2016 meaning they can vote on the future of the rest of british isles and then leave .......creating a minority labour gov !

What's the story on the theoretical Shetland oil field that is (allegedly) large enough to have the whole of Scotland living on cattle ranches, wearing enormous hats and driving white convertibles with horns on the bonnet?

^ old news being resurrected by various Nat websites as 'new' - deep water, difficult and expensive extraction methods, was always not coming online until 2015 which cybernats have taken as sure sign it is being 'buried' until the vote is through

I learned nothing new from tonight's debate. Seems like Salmond was more convincing of the Yes arguments in this debate, compared to the last one. I wonder how may undecideds were actually persuaded one way or another by this shouting match.

Every time I look at Darling I see the manner of Tony Blair and hear the voice of David Cameron.

Not an endearing spectacle.

I think for most people it comes down to certain trade offs-if you're wealthy you'll vote for the status quo, if you're not you'll vote for change.

We keep hearing that Scotland has an aging population. Mostly because it ships 40,000 young people abroad every year to find work that isn't available at home, and has done for centuries. Cap Breton in Canada has more Gaelic speakers than Scotland, and a better social and economic outlook too.

Darling bringing up shipbuilding jobs on the Clyde is another fail: successive Tory and Labour governments have pursued policies that turned Glasgow into a graveyard from being one of the industrial hubs of the world and chucking them a contract to build MoD jetskis every few years doesn't solve a huge legacy of failure.

I've been undecided for a long time but all the No campaign can do is try and put the shits up people over currency, and the BBC/Graun coverage is infuriatingly loaded towards the RUK stance, which is in itself deeply annoying. The fact is that the Union has had a long time to improve the lives of people throughout the UK and have only succeeded in skimming off the top and giving it to the ermine robed cronies in Whitehall and their cohorts whilst the satellite cities and states are left on life support through a lack of interest and investment.

I'm in Glasgow now and the jobs available are starvation wage fodder, and that's the way it's been forever unless you go abroad for years, get experience and are then prepared to come back and take a huge pay cut to do the same work here.

So, I'll be happy to say goodbye to the Tories, a right of center Labour party, woefully ineffective Lib Dems, the House of Lords, UKIP, forced privatisation of essential services like the NHS, and actually feel that there's a direct link between my vote and the policies and actions that are enacted as a result, and if the shoe was on the other foot I think most English people would do the same. Of all the English people with a vote up here that I know, which is admittedly only about 6, all are voting Yes, and that in itself says a lot.

It's hard to disconnect the politics from the personalities. I think the figureheads of both campaigns can be equally grating for different reasons, but I think the strength of Salmond's conviction shines through. I wonder how much Darling's 'Of course we could use the pound' slip is going to haunt him.