@Arkain2K wow man I don't follow Scotland very much. But seems they sat in their hands and figured oil and natural economic progress would fix their problems. Lazy and no foresight. Def dodged a bullet on independence here despite Brexit
Yeah, I'm all for self-determination and would gladly see Scotland finally making William Wallace proud, and I was cheering them on last time before they shat the bed - but man did they dodged a financial bullet, when the majority of the proposed Independent fiscal budget for all their social programs was banking on the hope that crude oil would remains excess of $100/barrel for years to come. I mean, that gamble was Venezuela-esque! I still don't know how Alex Salmond managed to keep a straight face when he insisted that the massive drop in worldwide oil prices was only a
short-term bump, even as the U.S shale revolution was in full swing and everyone knew the slide can only continue from there.
On the other hand, mainstream nationalists in Edinburgh would argue that
money isn't everything, and
it would be better to be broke and free rather than having your national budget subsidized annually under the political jurisdiction of Westminster. As a proud citizen of a country that broke free from the British Crown centuries ago, I completely sympathize with that - as it was the case for all the Americans who actually stayed up through the night to watch the IndyRef live votes tally coming in (arguably the first time ever that we did such thing for another country's national vote, for obvious historical parallels), and then threw up our hands in exasperation when it's clear that the Scots shat their bed and chose Financial Security over Freedom.
Ofcourse, judging on the comments below those same news articles, there seems to be a handful of folks in lalaland who actually believe that Scotland would have somehow
be more prosperous (rather than being nose-deep in austerity) had they split from the U.K five years ago, or even deny that massive Scottish annual deficit (as published by Scotland's own Scottish National Party) even exists when public spending far exceeds tax revenues, and the entire rationale of
"we don't have any deficit!" is often based on the hilariously-flawed belief that Scotland can somehow welch on its current financial obligations (including Scotland's share of the U.K government bonds and treasury bill payments) without consequences, but I hope we don't have any of those guys in the forum.
Aside from the public posturing at the height of the IndyRef drive in regards to
the Pound sterling that Britain refused to share, even Alex Salmond knew that if an independent Scotland just walked away from its fair share of the U.K's national debts - from the investments that undoubtedly has benefited Scotland over the years - it will instantly
becomes a pariah to foreign investors everywhere, and the only kind of interest rates they going to get from there on out would be equivalent to payday loansharks, so I think it's safe to assume that the novel argument of
defaulting on debts on the first day of Independence is far from mainstream, just like how the world chuckles in unison when funny Brits were floating the idea that Britain can somehow welch on their previously-agreed financial obligations to the E.U.
