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And what about the Darien Scheme...
Mate, I can't really be arsed engaging much further on this: you have your position and from my perspective it's not founded on an honest or informed appreciation of either fact or history.
Point in case "what about the Darien scheme": this was THE financial mechanism used by the English to put those Scottish titled landowners in a position where they would assent to a political Union, by encouraging the scheme in partnership with English investment, then pulling out at the last minute (once so much money was committed that not proceeding was going to create huge losses) then using the English navy to actually blockade the Darien settlement to ensure it failed, basically bankrupting the investors and crashing the Scottish economy. Sound like a spirit of partnership and equal good will? Those Scottish nobles were then strong armed into Union to save their own fortunes, lands and titles (let's not forget, bankrupts back in the day were also jailed and shamed) and effectively stole land and political power from the general population by inventing legal deeds to it. Again, I refer you to Andy Whiteman's book 'The Poor Had No Lawyers'.
So yeah. Some Scots did well out of Union, but not so many as you seem to like to believe: the Highlands were effectively cleared of people to the extent it is now recognised as a cultural genocide, and lowland Scots were likewise forced into horrific conditions brought about by industrialization. Hundreds of thousands had to emigrate to colonies, families broken apart, death from disease and poverty... Again, this sets the scene for enduring social and economic conditions throughout the country and in ex-industrial cities like Glasgow in particular with some of the highest mortality and lowest life expectancy rates in the first world through social conditions, drugs, murder... Your Trainspotting analogy seems to miss the point.
But yeah. Keep looking at it through your Union Jack tinted glasses if you like.
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Certainly, there were and are significant cultural and religious differences between the two nations, but I 've never brought the "Trainspotting " argument that the Scots were colonised by the English.
Both countries, at all levels, did well out of the Empire and were equally engaged. Where would the Empire have been without the intellectual power of the Edinburgh Enlightenment?
And what about the Darien Scheme...