I think the no vote will win by a small margin although as an Englishman my views have changed. Originally I wanted Scotland to stay as it was better security for the whole and because the SNP are, contrary to their claims, the ones acting like bullies here not Westminster. Salmonds flat out refusal to accept he won't get a currency union, blackmailing to not take on their share of the debt, trying to tell the EU it has no decision on whether Scotland joins or not etc. He seems to think he is god and if he says something will happen, it will even if the decision is entirely in the hands of others.
It wasn't that many years ago that Salmond himself called the £ a millstone around the neck of Scotland that they wanted to get rid of ASAP. Now he's prepared to play stupid games with the debt in order to try to bully the rest of Britain into a currency union to keep that same millstone. Many people seem to have forgotten that. However Westminster have been complacent in thinking a no vote is certain and Darling is NOT the sort of man to debate Salmond, who is the perfect politician when it comes to shouting someone else down and not answering the question. However now the Scots are being bribed with even more devolved powers in they say no, which I feel is a worse situation than full blown independence. I want Scotland to become independent for this reason and to reap what they sow. Being independent also means being responsible for the outcomes of your actions. It was largely Scottish banks run by Scots, allowed to bend the financial rules made by a Scot and then bailed out by a Scot that got Britain to where it is now. To then turn around and not claim any responsibility by taking on the share of the debt is outrageous.
Also when Scots claim they have a hard deal, let's look at what Scots get:
1) Their own Parliament. British MPs cannot legislate on matters controlled by the Scottish parliament. This is currently the NHS, education, law, housing, sport, environment, local tourism, agriculture and local government.
2) Despite this Scottish MPs can vote on matters that affect the rest of the UK. Most notably tuition fees for English students would not have passed without the support of the Scottish vote. All together this is called the West Lothian question.
3) Due to the above, Scots gets free prescription, no university fees and more spending from the UK government than anyone in England except for those in London (the funding process is called the Barnett formula)
The argument that English MPs are dominating Scots is ridiculous, it treats English MPs as a monolithic voting block all voting the same way. In matters of English welfare vs Scottish that may have been an issue but that rarely is the case and as we can see, the average Scot gets a much better deal than the average English person.
So I say the current system is wrong and in the event of a no vote, the country needs to be fundamentally reorganised. I'd like to see Westminster challenged too but I don't want to see an already unfair system being made even more unfair in favour of Scotland. It would basically be independence without the need to accept responsibility for a variety of things and the rest of the UK still being there to support Scotland if their banks mess up again (Scotland would not have been able to bail out their banks if they had been independent before the crisis). If the alternative to this system is independence then I hope they get independence but also accept the consequences of such a decision. If they are good, well that's grand. If things go wrong though, don't you dare start blaming England again.
I wish the Scots well whatever the outcome but I don't wish to see nationalistic hatred being levelled against the English or the system being made more unfair. I literally saw someone say it was Englands fault that Glasgow had such terrible health and crime problems and it was not a joke.
they do get pissy about that
