Well I'll state it publicly here and now that I am totally in favour of the Union remaining unchanged.

Should Scotland end up deciding or voting otherwise then the breakup will most likely have a more devastating impact on them than the remaining part of the UK and so be it.

Large nations will always have an inherent advantage over small ones. It's not surprising therefore that the latter seek ways to "tilt the field" in their own favour to nullify that advantage.

Mike.

This doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

The Scottish Greens said a single issue general election on independence has to be an option if formal consent for indyref2 is not granted.

Co-leader Patrick Harvie said it would be the only alternative if both Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the Supreme Court block the request.

Opposition parties have criticised the strategy and its timing.

It comes after First Minister Nicola Sturgeon last week proposed holding a referendum on 19 October 2023.

The UK government said it would examine the first minister's proposals, but stressed that its position that "now is not the time" for another referendum had not changed.

It has also said that it is "clear" that the constitution is reserved to Westminster.

A new poll found showed 44% of Scots are opposed to another referendum, with 43% in favour.

The research by Panelbase for the Sunday Times also indicated that 48% would vote for independence, with 47% against, while 5% were undecided.

In 2014 Scotland voted to stick with the UK by 55% to 45%.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotla...itics-62028031

Westminster should give Nicola her 2nd referendum and also state that no other independence vote will be granted until at least the 2070's, if she fails in her bid once again to be the Mistress of Scotland's destiny she should fall on her sword and resign as Scotland's First Minister.

You can't have things your own way every time Nicola, lose this vote again and the consequences should be severe, as in your job, who knows, maybe that Black Clock fellow down in Westminster will take over and do a better job than you have done.
Hehehe, I'm sure there's many an MP down in Westminster who wished that the whingeing pillock would either disappear up his own rectum or even down a black hole. :O:

York (UK) - Münster (GER) in four days, including ferry.


https://www.yorkeuropean.uk/munstercycle.html


https://www.muensterschezeitung.de/l...enster-2595151


https://asc-images.imgix.net/2022/07...24&auto=format


Edit. I wondered how they managed to do the trip in four days when the navigation software gave me a distance via Dover ferry of around 1100 km. I mean - due to the long time to sit - it would be painful. But the German newspaper said they boarded the ferry already in Hull and unboarded in Rotterdam, so them clever Brits snipped a very huge chunk out of the trip distance. York to Hull and then Rotterdam to Münster in 3-4 days - that is doable. I got to Enschede, Netherlands, on bicycle myself, back and forth in one day, around 150-160 km.


Edit 2: York and Münster are "partner cities".

This is the UK Politics thread Skybird, shouldn't the above post be in your bicycle thread, unless of course you slap in a picture of Boris riding a bike, and I don't mean a bicycle. :haha:

I take it they want independence and control over (english) immigration :D
Nah, i guess they are looking for an own future after brexit, which they saw as a betrayal after the guarantee to stay in the EU.

This is from 2019:

"It was impossible to meet the unfounded promises of the Brexiters that won the referendum, but only the Brexit process could reveal the extent to which those promises were unachievable.

While many policy makers and academics made valiant efforts to try and resolve the contradictions, more people are now in opposition to Brexit than initially supported it, and for good reason. Considerable economic analysis showed that Brexit would lower living standards (there has been debate over the magnitude, but not the direction).

The Brexit referendum shouldn’t be remembered as the vote of a generation — it was a vote to lower the living standards of subsequent generations.

That referendum was never really about supposed European Union control over the United Kingdom or about Britain’s inability to set its own destiny without the encumbrance of myriad rules and regulations mandated by the European Union (there may be some basis for the latter). Rather, it was a lightning rod for an intertwined set of long-simmering issues that have plagued the UK economy:

stagnant incomes as a result of languishing productivity growth — it has essentially not risen in a decade — which the chief economist of the Bank of England, Andrew Haldane, notes is “almost unprecedented” in the modern era; the regional divide, in part brought on by trade and deindustrialization; rising inequality; inadequate funding for welfare programs and the National Health Service; and so on. To blame the European Union for these underlying issues is incredible.

Moreover, Brexit will only intensify these issues: if the United Kingdom can’t afford the current system, how will they afford it with lower national income?"

https://www.cigionline.org/articles/...m_medium=grant

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/iss...te-2022-06-28/

Boris it would appear is also responsible for bringing No 10 into disrepute.....hardly surprising really.

Even a bike rider is a zoon politicon. ;)



:O:

Health Secretary Sajid Javid quits the government, telling Boris Johnson he can "no longer, in good conscience, continue serving in this government"

He writes in his resignation letter that the prime minister has "lost my confidence"

Boris Johnson says it was "a mistake" to make Chris Pincher deputy chief whip given complaints about his conduct.

The PM says "with hindsight it is the wrong thing to do and I apologise to everyone who has been badly affected by it"

Pincher was suspended as a Tory MP last week after being accused of groping two men at a private members club while drunk.

The incident - and many subsequent allegations - have put pressure on Johnson to explain what he knew about Pincher's past when he appointed him.

Lord McDonald, the former top civil servant in the Foreign Office, has accused No 10 of not telling the truth.

Labour's deputy leader Angela Rayner says "this constant charade just will not wash"

NEXT!

Could the house of cards be toppling?

Rishi Sunak has just resigned from the cabinet.

In his letter he says "the public rightly expect government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously".

He adds: "I believe these standards are worth fighting for and that is why I am resigning".

Sunak says "our country is facing immense challenges".

"I publicly believe the public are ready to hear that truth. Our people know that if something is too good to be true then it's not true. They need to know that whilst there is a path to a better future, it is not an easy one.

"In preparation for our proposed joint speech on the economy next week, it has become clear to me that our approaches are fundamentally too different."

"I am sad to be leaving government but I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that we cannot continue like this", he adds.

It won't be long before the Tories self-implode and Bozo has been the root cause of it, any cabinet minister flying their flag on Bozo's flagpole won't be on the front bench much longer either, I can see Mad Nad aka (Nadine Dorries) holding on to Boris's flagpole until the very end, misplaced loyalty has always been Nad's downfall.

@Catfish, the UK has left the EU so why on earth are you bringing Brexit up once again, goodness me you Germans didn't keep moaning when things were tough in the old days, no, they usually gave their military some hardware and told them to give their protagonists a bleeding slap.

Get some politicians with some backbone and put Germany back on the map again, if you start kicking those frogs heads in again I might even buy you a LEOPARD 2 A7 + for Christmas.

Das war's.

Prick him with a fork, he's done.

The referendum of the UK unity had explicitly claimed that the whole UK would remain in the EU, which was a guarantee and one of the main reasons Scotland voted for remaining in the UK and against scottish independence.

"In 2016, the UK voted, by 51.89% to 48.11% to leave the EU.
Scotland, on the other hand, voted 62% to 38% to remain.
Scotland, the SNP and others argued, was being “dragged out” of Europe against its will.
The links between Europe and Scotland have always seemed strong, and the attitude towards the EU, especially the political attitudes, more positive. The SNP has always argued that Brexit represents significant constitutional change for the UK, and is therefore a reason to hold another referendum."

You know what happened next.

But do not fear, even a new referendum will most probably not bring Scotland to leave the UK even now :03:
I wonder who's people are more disgusted of their respective head of state in the moment, England or Germany :shifty:
Just of all the greens Habeck and Baerbock seem to have some faint knowledge of what they are doing, but they still have to put out the fires that stem back from the 1990ies, and deal with the crash of some recent gas treaties with an.. unfriendly nation.
Promised? I'm so excited :haha:
But on second thought better working together with France, no one can afford an invasion with those fuel prices.. :arrgh!:

And before i am accused of being a "natzi"[sic!] again by August or whoever, this was meant as a joke even if i did not put 27 smilies behind it :D

You know how majority votes work, Catfish. Scotland was and still is part of the UK and thus it's counts was added to the general count. That side of the count lost. Period. Scotland is in the same boat together with the others.

Say, a given city voted against Brexit 57 to 43. This now is not subject to Brexit...? The minority that lost a vote is not subject to the vote's outcome?

As long as Scotland is part of the UK, it is subject to any such voting result that is held across all parts of the UK. Referendum, whatever.

This is becoming repetitive, Catfish. Let it be, you have an undefendable cause there. The minority that lost a vote has no claim to make that it should be treated as if it had won it. A referendum on indepedence and a referendum on Brexit were and are two totally different things technically isolated from each other.

And as a German you and me should be happy that Scotland is not yet in the EU. Our economy is fundamentally degenerating, if you have not noticed it, and the counterfeit currency system we call Euro is exploding in slow motion right into our faces. The last thing we need is ever more hungry mouths at the table that demand to be fed at our expenses. We have very big, deep worries ourselves already, and they are existentially threatening. Nothing against the Scots, but they would not be of help, are net takers , not net donators.
-------------
And Habeck, he is a blender, a brilliantly talking "Menschenfänger". But he has no real clue, nor has anyone else in this carricature of an administration filled with incompetent "Quotenweibchen" and attention-craving "Alphabubis". Last May - three months after the beginning of the war ! - Habeck did not mind that germany burnt more of its precious gas for creating electrical power than in any May before since WW2 - record!. And for pure ideological reasons him and the Greens still completely reject any tlak on nculear power and extending the timne for the last three ones. The Greens want ecology only second anyway, they always more were about destroying the burgoise society and replacing it with something far more left-leaning and anti-German. And it is like this since they started as the GAL in West-Berlin. The whole energy revolution they intend to enforce ignores hard facts from reality, economic possbilities and worse: the impossibilities, what is not according to their textbook is completely ignored by them.

Its not just the war and inflation. Even without these we would hit the wall that we currently fall towards at maximum velocity. Have you recently tried to buy heaters? Coal, firewood, petroleum? I know how the martket looked last years, since I bought then. And I know how it looks right now. The supply is down by felt and perceived 90% or more. Refined petroleum of highest cleaning grade 5 (odour-free, that means), is practically impossible to get at Amazon or ebay and three distributors I checked. The stuff you still get, stinks. Delivery times: 2 weeks says the one, several weeks says the other, minimum 2 months said the third.

Kazachstan's oil does not get transported by Russia anymore, news opf this morning. Putin strikes at both Kazachstan (which did not follow Putin into the war, and objects to it), and Europe. After the gas gets shut down, now Russian oil exports will be reduced and finally ended. At the same time it gets reportet that Habeck lied about how much dependencies have been cut already, both gas and oil. They are still significantly higher than he claimed.

It will become a very non-nice winter. Cold, and very ruinous. Extremely ruinous.

^ this may all be or not, but what Scotland or at least a good part of it feels is that their were betrayed with the UK by leaving the EU, fuelling the new indyref debates.
During the indyref1 a poll revealed that "retention of the pound sterling was the deciding factor for those who voted No, while "disaffection with Westminster politics" was the deciding factor for those who voted Yes"
I do not think that the satisfaction with Westminster has risen much since then.

Of course if Scotland would apply for a EU membership, Spain could block that amid fears of repercussions with separatist movements in Catalonia and the Basque Country.
But I do no think that it will happen anyway, one reason being Johnson will simply not agree to a new referendum.

Quote of the day :D :

"The sinking ship flees the rat." (some Labour pawn whose name I dont care to remember).

:har:

Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labour Party

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw_ertFCAko