Fiscal Autonomy vs Unionism vs Independence

If Labour had ever wanted to introduce fiscal autonomy they would have done it already. In fact without oil 'fiscal autonomy' would be worthless and would probably be less advantageous than Barnett (even though it is actually designed to squeeze our expenditure not increase it).

If you have Oil then it's independence. FA is a useful tool whereby you pretend you want more powers but in fact you would be happy to see Scotland get less money (while being swindled out of our rights to the Oil and Gas revenues). Wendy was in that camp, her own recent paper acknowledged it.

The fact is as well that Labour and not going to win the next GE so we would be reliant on the Tories to give us a fair financial settlement. This will not happen because the Conservatives support is in England and as such they don't care particularly how they are seen in Scotland (when in Government that is, as we saw last time). They are always more pleasant out than they ever are when they are in, prior to Thatcher they pretended they wanted 'stronger devolution' than Labour but they showed their true unionist colours eventually.

Their comments in Glasgow East were revealing, if you are poor it's your own fault. This from a public school boy who went to Eton and Oxbridge! Don't trust anything a unionist says and you will never go wrong.

Independence is normality so logical arguments against it are few and far between. All are flawed.

We would lose our seat in the UN security council.

We might but since it doesn't represent Scotland in any shape or form who cares? Rump England would remain a nuclear power if they had somewhere to put the weapons so they might remain part of the bullies council, but it doesn't matter to us. Scotland needs an ordinary seat in the UN with our flag flying at it. Until we have that we have nothing else.

Scotland would have a lesser voice in Europe.

Same as above we have no voice at the moment so independent membership, a seat in the Council of Ministers and improved representationin the parliament would be a significant step up.

The EU doesn't want you.

The EU wants everyone else (if they are democracies) and given the amount of natural resources like fish and Oil we have they would be daft to try and pull anything. In fact the EU is a mixed blessing anyway so this argument is losing it's teeth. (The EU are trying to make a mediterranean union btw behind the scenes which will infuriate the arab world, Libya is right on this). There's hasn't been a word about it in Scotland, so the truth is we are out of the loop in a lot of areas.

We would be out the G8.

Britain would yes (because it relies on the GDP of Scotland to make it one of the 8 richest nations) but apart from a fancy dinner Britain doesn't get much out of it anyway. Russia and China have poor human rights records so the body will never do anything significant anyway.
Scotland would however be eligible for membership of OPEC along with Norway which is the powerful group the G8 was set up to imitate!

We would also be members of numerous other world bodies, we would have consular representatives in all the nations in the world we wanted them. At the moment we have no influence world wide because on every maor issue the British Government represents their interests and it's not the same as ours.

Scotland could have an effect in a number of areas. We could increase the percentage of GDP we give to third world countries. We could reach free trade agreements which help open markets (but without strings attached) we could help towards world conflict resolution.

As for we're too poor/daft/incompetent to rule ourselves, if anyone believes that they should consult a psychiatrist because they have a colonised midset through reading too many biased British newpapers!

Others are simply disinterested/demotivated and say 'I'm not interested in politics, they are all the same' or 'why bother with change it's too much hassle let's settle for what we've got'. Why bother living at all then? Everything in life worth getting is worth risking something and if the only risk is having faith in your fellow Scots it shouldn't be that hard.

We have plenty of opportunity but we have to be able to see them and as the ex SNP MSP Cambell Martin said "for the unionists to see clearly they have to first get up off their knees."
Some people like it down there though they have their wee bit money and their big hoose and they don't give a damn about their fellow Scots.