First thread the uk and Scotland

Not including oil and gas, Scotland sold £86.4 billion in goods and services to England. England sold £93.4 billions in goods and services to Scotland. Scotland in terms of countries is England's largest trading partner with exports to Scotland greater than to Brazil, South Africa, Russia,. India, China and Japan put together. Scotland is the only UK nation to have exported more goods internationally than it has imported every year since records began. In terms of exports per head, Scotland outperforms the UK: Scotland exports £17,455 per head per year, while England exports £8,626 per head per year. Scotland is an exporting powerhouse, whose success has had nothing to do with being part of the UK, but whose future has been jeopardised due to the UK taking Scotland out of the European Union.. . In contrast, England's international trade deficit in goods is massive.  It is only 20% of its econmy.  That is why he likes of Germany do 4 times more trade with the likes of China than he UK.  Brexit has hit Scotland worse than England. Because it exports more as England relies on 80% of its economy on financial services.

That is only as good as the next crash and coming to a street near you.  You are still paying for the last one. Research by the Centre for Business Prosperity at Aston University has shown that UK exports to the EU fell by an average of 22.9% in the first 15 months after the introduction of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, highlighting the continuing challenges that UK firms are facing. The UK has also experienced a significant contraction in the variety of goods being exported to the EU, with an estimated loss of 42% of product varieties. In short That is why the fish and farming industry no longer bother exporting to the EU. The cost of the so called cut in red tape promised by the lying wankers in Westminster, and the  sunny uplands has quadrupled. On top of that the OBR have predicted that Breix will be a bigger hit than COvid. A drop of 4% in the UK.  More than 6% in Scotland as part of the UK.  Trade and industry is retained.   It is coming to fruition. How bad do you need it if you believe Brexit was wonderful. As you highlight another reason why energy rich Scotland can no longer afford bankrupt England. 

i dont know if i told you this , but i voted to remain in 2016. I am and remain a lukewarm pro european .

I don't think the McCrone report has much relevance today, it was written fifty years ago when the economic landscape was much different in Scotland.  Yes, the vast oil revenues would have created great wealth in Scotland had all the profits and tax revenues gone to Scotland rather than the entire UK.
However, this graph below shows that in 50 years the manufacturing jobs have gone down significantly and therefore much of this wealth would have been used to compensate for this.



Scotland’s economy was changed fundamentally by deindustrialisation in the second half of the 20th century. Between 1951 and 2021, over 70,000 mining and quarrying jobs disappeared, and more than half a million people stopped working in factories and workshops .

If there is currently any validity of the contents of the McCrone report then the SNP should clearly define the situation, but they don't, presumably because they are unable to because the facts don't stack up, or because it is beyond them to do so.

I have said many times on this forum that no doubt an Independent Scotland could make a go of it, but not with the current politicians that it has chosen to lead them. I have yet to see the SNP make an intellectual argument for independence, merely aggressive and meaningless sound bites for their supporters, which as we see these soundbites make there way on to this forum.

Much of Scotland's wealth at the moment is dependent on it's inclusion in the UK, much investment in Scotland, particularly banking and financial services, comes from UK based Companies, it will not be easy to maintain that situation if Scotland becomes a separate EU member state, so whilst there may be validity in the quoted statistics regarding the exports Scotland currently enjoys, there is no guarantee that this would continue without the investment available from UK firms. 

Well you know my view borkie.

To support my earlier point,


After the bubble burst, Ireland's banks brought the country to its knees and forced the government into a €67.5bn (£56.5bn) international rescue, including £7bn from the UK Government. Since the financial crisis, Dublin has injected €80bn into its banks and nationalised or part-nationalised six of them.



Together with the bank bail-outs, the UK taxpayer has propped up the Irish economy with at least £20bn, which will renew questions about how the Labour government handled the bail-outs in 2008-09.


www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9813358/British-taxpayers-funded-Irelands-14bn-bail-out.html#:~:text=Together%20with%20the%20bank%20bail,%2Douts%20in%202008%2D09.

Much of that lies in the waters off Shetland, who have unequivocally stated that in the unlikely case of Scottish independence they intend to remain a Crown Dependency of the United Kingdom, (understandably). Another complication not addressed by the SNP.





No idea, nor have I any idea why the Scots voted to remain in the UK.

You're mad.