Och Aye The Noo or Not

It's not often that I agree with David Cameron but I think he has a point lurking within all his bluster about holding a referendum on Scottish independence. The Scottish National Party should, sooner rather than later, get round to telling us what they mean by independence and then have a vote on it. Do they mean to re-establish Scotland as a completely separate state? This would be a long and complicated process requiring redistribution of resources and debts from the UK, application by Scotland to join the UN, the EU, NATO, the European Court on Human Rights, the International Labour Organisation, and many more. There are probably zillions of treaties and so forth they'd have to renegotiate. The paperwork would be immense and require the employment of squadrons of Scottish civil servants and lawyers for years. And for what? To be free of the English yoke. A bit of an outmoded concept these days, given that we are all equally oppressed by the laughing jackals of the globalised neo-liberal capitalist financial system.

Of course, the SNP philosophy presumes that the English want to keep Scotland yoked to the UK. But I doubt whether most English people are bothered one way or the other. What they do know is that there are a lot of Scotsmen in England, none of whom are required to have passports, visas or work permits, and some of whom are more welcome than others. Most people like Kenny Dalgleish but most have mixed feelings about Alex Ferguson, for example. One is a 'canny Scot' and the other's a semi-literate gum-chewing big head from Scotland.

Any road up, no doubt Cameron and Salmond will keep up their blathering for months with bluff and counter-bluff. It's quite an effective distraction from actually getting on with running the country.