United Kingdom?

At the Conservative Conference Prime Minister David Cameron, referring to the question of Scottish independence said, “There are many things I want this coalition government to do but what could be more important than saving our United Kingdom?”

Well I can think of a few things Dave.  How about eradicating Child Poverty and Fuel Poverty, creating jobs, fair taxation and an end to tax evasion/avoidance, reducing carbon emissions.  (All things that the Scottish Government is already trying to do by the way!)

One thing that’s always puzzled me about the independence argument is that if Scotland and Wales are so dependent on England, and couldn’t possibly survive without England, then why are the English so bothered about letting them go?  Surely England would be better off without the burden of supporting the Scots and the Welsh?

Perhaps we should give them the benefit of the doubt and allow that their concerns are purely altruistic.  They’re worried that the poor Celtic nations will not be able to survive without being subsidised by rich England.

“But the rich rarely subsidize the poor; more often they exploit them. They may not do so directly so much as through the terms of trade. They may obscure the situation a little by a certain redistribution of tax revenue or small scale charity, but the last thing they want to do is secede from the poor.

“The normal case is quite different, namely that the poor provinces wish to secede from the rich, and that the rich want to hold on because they know that exploitation of the poor within one’s own frontiers is infinitely easier than exploitation of the poor beyond them.”

 (E F Schumacher, ‘The New Economics’, Resurgence Vol 2 No 3, Sept-Oct 1968).

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