BBC lauding the prospects of an Independent Scotland – cheerleading for Mr Toad look-a-like Alex Salmond. It slyly claims that Salmond would keep the Queen as Head of State and the Pound Sterling. How kind. The BBC has a record of indulgence towards the SNP – after all any political party committed to breaking up the Union will always get BBC hearts a beating. A considered dissection of the SNP position is one thing you will never hear on the BBC which is all the more reason for this site to pick up on it/
SCOTLAND THE NOT SO BRAVE
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“Salmond would keep the Queen as Head of State”. I am sure she will be eternally grateful.
So brave Alex the Bruce is too chickensh!t to break Scotland out of the UK economy entirely, eh? Does he still want Scottish MPs in Westminster, then?
David P,
Mr. Toad is a dangerous nutcase.
And very ignorant as well.
What if England doesn’t allow Scotland to keep the pound. Imagine the effect on the Scottish economy ?
What if England has significantly lower taxes ?
What if England leaves the EU as would be quite likely if England went independent from Scotland ?
Yes, cowardice is Mr. Toad’s watchword. He is quite insane.
He knows that the more he squeels, the more English tax payer’s money our pathetic PM will send him.
Whatever Mr.Toad does, Scotland will remain just another region of the EU anyway.
All this talk of independence is just window dressing. In reality it means nothing. How can any country be independent when 80% its laws are made made in Brussels?
Exactly! Salmond is nothing but a fraud.
Nationalist my arse!
I am not worried. Sean Connery will come back to Scotland and lead us to the promised land !
Schwartzenegger in California, why not Sean Connery in Scotland? In place of Cameron, we could have had Norman Wisdom (RIP) run England . At least we’d have got the occasional laugh during our descent.
London,
I thought Norman was lined up to run Albania ! Yes, RIP, good man.
London, you better hope Connery does a better job than Ahnold has. A RINO at best, he took the state down the environmental rabbit hole, allowed the public sector unions to bankrupt the state, and left things so bad that even the loopy far-Left Jerry Brown said they’ve got to cut spending. Sound familiar?
Grant, would that be the land of clouds and cuckoos?
there’s as much chance of Scotland voting to leave the union as there is for all beebzeera doing an unbiased reprt on Israel
ie-it’s not going to happen anytime soon!
There is nothing irrational about either of Salmond’s options.
Elizabeth II is constitutional monarch of 16 independent states from Canada, Australia and New Zealand at the big end to tiny West Indian nations. Having her as Queen has the advantage of lower costs, certainty and avoiding the politics and horsetrading of electing even a ceremonial president.
It is a sign that Salmond wants to retain the Westminster system of government. Given the mess most US style presidential systems are in (I claim the only US style presidential state to have succeeded is the USA) that is not a bad call.
Retaining the British Pound as currency, a process known as dollarization although it doesn’t have to be the $US, is not a new idea. The Channel Islandsof Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man produce their own local issues of sterling; The pound sterling is also used in Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands and Saint Helena and Ascension (alongside the local pound).
There are more substantial examples for the US dollar and formally Panama, Ecuador and El Salvador, and informally several countries do it. Even the BBC obsession Israel has it’s currency in informal use in PA and Gaza. When the Gazans shop in Israel they convert shekels to the Egyptian pound.
Dollarization is supposed to promote fiscal discipline and bring greater financial stability and lower inflation. It has the disadvantage that the dollarized country has no currency control and is entirely at the mercy of the country producing the currency. It must buy currency at the market rate, which as we know tends to fluctuate, effectively putting the country into debt when the rate is high and they are forced to borrow. OTOH I believe that in a world of instant currency transfer to follow the greatest profit, devaluation never works for any long period and how many countires revalue upwards? BTW Israel is one of the few and did it in 1980 (for national pride reasons) and in 1985 (against run away inflation).
But, deegee, it is not for the wee nyaff nor the Scottish people to decide whether Scotland keeps the Queen or the Pound !
I’m not quite sure how the BBC can be said to be cheerleading for Mr Toad. Whatever your political persuasion, there’s no doubt he won a quite stunning victory in getting a majority in the Scottish Parliament – something that was designed to have been virtually impossible. He’s about to be sworn in as First Minister again and the BBC would be remiss in his duty not to give coverage.
Where I think it has been remiss is in not taking further the gap between this victory and the much lower support in Scotland for independence. To my mind, it was a protest against the three UK parties rather than any wish to elect a separatist government and I would like to have seen this probed more deeply. For instance, what if a viable protest vehicle were to arise in England against the 3 big parties, such as if UKIP got their act together.
Mr Toad is a canny operator and did nothing in the years of minority SNP government to frighten the voters – in fact he more or less did nothing, full stop. Governments who do nothing much tend to go down well with the voters because they upset nobody, and Alex Salmond could use his position as a minority administration to explain away why this, that or the other could not be done. He is now in a different position, where he cannot use this as an excuse and will now be dealing with a lower budget.
Watch him pick a fight with the UK government on some issue that Scots find important. Again, there should be a lot more discussion on this inevitability but it’s perhaps a bit early in the game to pass that off as bias.
Roland,
Fair points !
Elephant in the room: forty one Scottish Labour MPs sitting in Westminster, voting on laws for England that don’t apply to their own constituents:
http://www.scottishlabour.org.uk/mp
No need for “The Coalition” if we waved goodbye to them.
My Scottish better half refers to the SNP as “Tartan Tories”, so I really don’t get the BBC line
It goes back to the ’70s, when the SNP was more of a single issue, fringe party which was neither left nor right and took some of its vote from the then Tory heartlands. It voted against Callaghan’s government in 1979, leading to the election that brought Margaret Thatcher to power.
Ever since, Labour have tried to frighten voters by calling the SNP “Tartan Tories”, with some success until now.
London,
I suspect your Scottish other half is a bit out of touch. The Left took over the SNP over 2 decades ago. The last “Tartan Tory”,to my knowledge, was Willie Wolfe.
Maybe, Roland can comment, but I wouldn’t want this blog to descend into two Scots navel-gazing !
Roland,
Wrote my comment before reading yours, that will teach me !!!
Agree with your post.
I agree with Roland Deschain. Mr Vance seems increasingly happy merely to assert without evidence that the BBC is “cheerleading” for any group or cause he dislikes. I happen to share most of his dislikes and believe that the BBC is now irredeemably biased to the left, and against core western values: but as many others have pointed out, Mr Vance frequently seems to forget that this site should be focused on BBC bias, not on merely attacking the left and ridiculing causes or views Mr Vance does not share. Mr Vance’s views on Scottish independence are irrelevant to this site; evidence of actual bias in BBC reporting would be, and in this instance he offers no evidence of such bias. Unless, reporting anything that comes out of Salmond’s mouth now counts as bias? Unless the BBC should only broadcast views of which Mr Vance and his vanishingly small portion of the electorate approve?
It used to be about BBC bias. It’s increasingly a sounding board for Mr Vance’s pet peeves and neuroses. He also cheapens the site by resorting to this infantile ‘Mr Toad lookalike’ stuff. Very grown up indeed, very mature. I’m sure Mr Vance won’t mind my pointing out that he is no Brad Pitt himself, and that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
Thanks for the feedback. If you don’t like what I post, don’t read it. Simple as that. I will comment on whatever I want, you are free to comment or ignore.
Tsk, tsk, David. You’ve made a stealth edit. How very BBC of you! =-O
“If you don’t like what I post, don’t read it.”
David, if I don’t read what you’ve written, how will I know whether or not I like it? Or do you think I can un-read it if in retrospect I didn’t like it?
In the absence of any argument or rebuttal (save for the usual “I’ll do what I want and you can’t stop me” reasoning) I’ll take the stealth-edit as an admission that I had a point.
Of course sir, you can indeed comment on ‘whatever you want’ – I just thought it might make some sense if a website called ‘Biased BBC’ tended to focus quite strongly on actual BBC bias.
Just a thought. If you don’t agree with it, don’t have read it.
Now , now, boys !
Dare I say that this blog is bigger than any of us.
At least it is only very lightly moderated unlike the BBC !
Full-blown Scottish independence won’t happen. Mind you, it is one of those issues for which the BBC don’t have a ready made default answer – have you not noticed some uncharacteristic shifting and alternating of their message?
Meanwhile one thing is for sure, Salmond will manoeuvre so as to weedle just as much money from the English taxpayers as possible. Just like Gordon Brown and his ilk he has at heart an utter contempt for those ‘bigoted’ English.
At least the BBC can relate to that. They may not be cheerleading for the SNP but they can recognise fellow travellers.
As I see it,
You are right. Narrow-minded, parochial, naive , unworldly Scots like Salmond and Brown really do think the English are “bigotted”.
It would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.
Yesterday’s You & Yours phone in was a classic example of where the BBC stands. Supposedly a programme about the likelihood and practicality of Scottish Independence the studio guests were: An SNP supporter (fine, you’d expect that) but on the other side which in an impartial debate you would expect to be a defender of the Union, they had an English nationalist who was quite happy for the Scots to go their own way as long as England got a Parliament. Defence of the Union didn’t get a look-in.
Am quite relaxed about the SNPs “stunning victory”.
It ought to wipe Labour out as a relevant party nationally, and they can follow the Tories in trying to make the case for why we ought to vote for them and their public sector clientele…workers and clients.
Those Scottish Labour MPs can get themselves up to Holyrood and put themselves forward-we down here can get on with a party that ultimately will deal with the E.U/global arming tosh and dismember the BBC into its local parts.
Might then get the country we want-and would turf all the shortbread romanitcs dunking their biccies in our bathwater up with said MPs.Wark,Naughtie and the like really need to gambol in the heather and not forever sing about it,so creating jobs for all those poor unemployed youngsters that they weep for!
Oh dear!
Having heard John Humphrys self detonate on asking Alex Salmond about Scottish independence this morning(23.5.11) I can only assume that the BBC is determined to ensure Scotland goes its own way as soon as possible-nearer for them all to head home from Salford I`m thinking.
Salmond pasted poor old John-his utterly hopeless efforts to stay off piste when Matron had clearly given him a highlighted script to follow were gripping tragedy,but not news-and the porr schmuck blundered on regardless.
Is the idea to make Salmond cleverer than he is?…more slipppery that we know he is already? For Gods sake, let Humphrys ask some Welsh AMs about bin collection in Newport-first rumblings of Welsh seccession…yes John, of course!
Don`t see why we have to pay for the walls to be cleaned after Humphrys has been scraped off the walls…that he isn`t aware of it is not the point! We are-and Alex would have got lots of succour in knowing that the best the British establishment can think of to stop him in the Tabby of Tiger Bay!