Be Excellent To Each Other

Yeah, but they're not contemplating another middle eastern war, are they?

I hesitate to respond substantively, chap, since we've been here so many times before and it never seems to sink in.
Briefly, though, "the market", of course, had nothing whatsoever to do with the so-called 'Banking Crisis' - this was mass, coordinated fraud, itself borne of inept, useless regulation from a Labour government (that people like you cheered to the rafters) that utterly failed to understand the arcane workings of the "industry" whose clear responsibility it was to regulate. They were too busy bigging them up during Mansion House gatherings and collecting the ill-gotten tax receipts for their ruinous public sector expansion projects (at the expense of "real" jobs doing nasty, oily stuff that could be left to the "poor, old fashioned" German economy). I mean seriously, you might as well blame the markets for the existence of organised crime; the markets can only work on whatever information is disclosed to them, and funnily enough the banks kept schtum about their LIBOR cartel, passed on "repackaged" junk debt bonds (with AAA ratings), money laundering on a vast scale and all the rest.

It is ironic that those same uber-Left types who blame everything on the free market totally fail to acknowledge these real causes of the situation - a combination of human greed and crucially, this lack of regulation. If I leave a case stuffed with £5 and £10 notes in the middle of the street, for every one person who'd hand it into the nearest Police station, there will be 10 or 100 who'd pocket the lot. I loathe banks - and bankers - more than most, but can I really fully blame them for capitalising on the vast, illicit money they were able to freely take, like candy from an unmanned sweet shop? No-one in government asked the right (or pretty much any) questions, just as long as the whole ponzi scheme kept paying those dividends. But crime and fraud <> business, capitalism or the 'free market', and most certainly, the so-called 'bailout' involving printing hundreds of billions of pounds thereby diluting the entire UK economy and investing untold billions in 'real money' before, during and after through de facto nationalisation of said banks was anything but as well. In the real economy, such companies (banks) would all - quite rightly - have gone to the wall. THAT is free market economics, I think you'll find.

People like you love to demonise Thatcher for selling council houses!!1!! but then, Labour, Blair and Brown... a near ruined economy, Middle East in flames (and quite possibly seeds of the next World War sown)... think I know who I prefer somehow. But of course, I forget myself. There's always this (entirely retrospective) claim that that Labour wasn't "real" Labour, huh. Well, whatever, one thing's for sure - it's the Tories' job to clear up the mess, just as we always have done and are doing. Those horrible old Tories with their 3-4% year on year growth and record falls in unemployment within less than a single Parliamentary term, eh. Time to move out of the UK and become a 'political refugee'...

In terms of the Scottish debate, the tragically amusing thing is that Salmond is an ex-banker, and was a big proponent of the Euro, RBS, Iceland and Fred "The Shred" until pretty recently. Yeah, think I'd be staying in the UK if it were me.

If it were me I'd probably want to engage with the fact that I was voting for the entire future of the country and not actually electing a single man as dictator-for-life.

Heh. Has anyone told Mr Salmond yet?

Not to derail the thread, but as someone who works in financial regulation, I think it is a little harsh to lay the global financial crisis at the door of Brown and Blair (and I have very little time for either of them), and the current government haven't really done anything to improve regulation of finance at all. The only real things in place are the likes of Basel II and Solvency II, both of which predate the current government (they're EU-wide) but take bloody ages to implement (and aren't really going to stop it happening again entirely).

The problem is that banking or insurance regulation pays a fuckload less than actual banking or insurance, so anyone sufficiently qualified in those areas is highly unlikely to go work for the regulator, unless it's a brief stint to look good on a CV.

To be fair, that's not quite what I said, Curio. The City of London (and UK financial sector) represented (and still represents) a large chunk of the global total, and thus the abject failure to regulate this part which fell under UK governmental jurisdiction is significant in global terms to be sure, but of course the US in particular is also key.

It is certainly fair to say that failure to effectively regulate (or regulate at all) on the part of those governments most affected, the UK's prime among them, was at least one side of the coin - the greed and duplicity of the banks themselves being the other.

If Scotland votes yes, the average annual rainfall in the UK will decrease by 20cm.

The prospect of Solvency II taking effect before the start of a new financial crisis is still fairly remote. Indeed, the prospect of Solvency II actually being implemented and taking everybody by surprise to the extent that it causes a financial crisis would be the highest rated scenario in that scenario.

Bargain. Get the deckchairs out.

In other news, at least £2,300,000,000 wiped off the value of Scottish companies in one single day on the Stock Exchange yesterday, apparently. Those "scaremongering" risks seem to be becoming somewhat more tangible of late.

VOTE YES FOR DRIER ENGLAND

Shall we tell him?

Is that we we, Royal we or football team we?

It starts in under four months!





Sort of.

Interesting.

The 'Sort of' is quite important, there.

Well, you have to be fully compliant for Lloyd's.

Capital flight was inevitable in these circumstances, short of a very high opinion poll for the No side.

Anyway as I see it, the sky didn't fall in when devolution happened, and it won't if independence happens; that's it really.

Is it me or is the latest 'X-Men' film going to be a disappointment?

More like the C-Men.

Seriously, I'd vote yes just to piss them off.

Oh, joy. In the space of the next week and a half we have
David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband, Nigel Farage and a lovely orange order march telling us to vote no all to look forward to!

In all seriously, I'm fairly certain that at least two of those things are very bad for the No Campaign. Really have no idea what they are thinking.

Totally agree. All fucking Westminster idiots should stay away. They really have no idea that they're what Scotland wants to escape, do they?

I can't speak for anywhere else in Scotland, but I know that in my area (North Ayrshire) they are all very much.... disliked. They will definitely be the driving force behind more than a few yes votes.

Another great piece by Monbiot today and an absolute excoriation of Brown being parachuted in as a last-gasp measure by the No campaign.

It's persuasive stuff, and maybe Scotland will have the courage and the hope to ditch the Union and forge their own path.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... f-all-hope

Another great piece by Monbiot today and an absolute excoriation of Brown being parachuted in as a last-gasp measure by the No campaign.

It's persuasive stuff, and maybe Scotland will have the courage and the hope to ditch the Union and forge their own path.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... f-all-hope

At the same time they can't be seen to be doing nothing and allow the UK to sleepwalk into crisis.

"great piece by Monbiot" is somewhat oxymoronic.

What's interesting is that the press now seem to be saying that the swing will continue and a Yes vote is all but inevitable (in time more than words, perhaps).

You can still get odds against on a Yes vote. 40 quid would return 110.

They seem good odds, even though I don't know which way it will eventually go.

Though those aren't necessarily the actual odds the bookies think about results. Due to huge early betting on No, they actually want more Yes money as a hedge.

But still.

Don't think I could read the whole piece, but wading through the usual uber-left boilerplate and land-of-milk-and-honey nationalist BS, the thing that strikes me is this: Scotland is to be "rescued" by an ex-banker who snuggled up to RBS far more than even Gordon Brown did; an apologist for Fred Goodwin; his very profession?

Bah. Total humbug. People will no doubt retort 'but Salmond isn't independence', but y'know, given his profile and position over the last 20-odd years, that's like saying Thatcher played a relatively minor role in 80s Conservative policy.

Oh God, it's started. A sniff of a Yes victory and all the chest beating anti-establishment types start frothing at the gash.

Yay.

Yeah, like I say, I'm still fully expecting a No vote - just (much) tighter than I thought.
I wouldn't bet on Yes even at 5-1.

I might move to Scotland now and hope I get grandfathered citizenship.

A yes vote will cost a fortune to implement for both sides, all money that could be better spent on better things.

Think it will be a close call for a No vote, but you never really know. Laugh of it is I know people who live in the UK but where born there and don't get a vote, but there are what 120,000 people from the EU who live there and will get a vote, many of who will vote Yes as they think the UK is anti EU.

It is messed up that at this point all the money to run Scotland comes from Westminster, yet they have free prescriptions and maybe university education (not sure if this has changed now?)

Not free. Free at the point of use. Still has to be payed for.

The SHS will be entirely free, because socialist utopia.

Paid for by Oil!

Is there any truth in the claim that whilst Scotland abolished tuition fees, this has been met by a reduction in places?

These two thought processes annoy me. There seems to be so many people basing their decisions on moving away from the incumbent leadership and not what they think is best for Scotland in the long term.

People saying they are voting yes because the current Tory Gov't has raped the NHS, Scotland could still get a Gov't in the future who (continue to) do this.

Aye. It's not like an election, where four or five years later we can change our minds. This is a serious, long term, constitutional change. And if Scotland goes its own way, and someday the excrement were to hit the fan, I doubt the rest of the country would welcome them back unless the situation were exceedingly dire.

Can you imagine a worse situation than and Independent Scotland needing a bailout in 10 years?

An Independent Scotland getting a bailout in 10 years?

Well, quite. It ain't gonna happen, especially off the back of what would be, no doubt, highly acrimonious negotiations post a Yes vote and all the ensuing bitterness, notleast from rUK citizens seeing real economic damage wrought upon them by actions entirely outwith their control, largely motivated by self-interest and nationalism.

Me? I just can't believe that the Scottish people are actually going to buy into this half-arsed shite, with so many fundamental unanswered questions, the destruction of the Union no less - all on a wing and a prayer and some vague notions that 'things will somehow be better'. What an absolute crock.

Salmond buys dark glasses and a joblot of medals, starts going around with a harem of attractive-but-highly-trained female bodyguards, and declares himself 'President for Life'.

Actually, that would be quite cool.

Given how ducked off West Germany was when The East rejoined it, I can't see much sympathy being extended towards an independent Scotland if it were to ask for help.

So, wouldn't Scottish people here need work permits?

*snort*

Superb.

Mali - re: work permits, if Scotland isn't in the EU when it becomes independent, then they may well need them, yes, unless Salmond can negotiate some sort of freedom of movement of workers arrangement with the UK, which strikes me as somewhat unlikely.

I think the Irish have always been allowed to settle and work here.

Wouldn't the Common Travel Area cover this?