Lets talk about the Scottish referendum

[mr friendly guy]

That's a catch-22, isn't it?
"They can't join Nato because they don't bring enough to the table"
"They are stupid for wanting to become UK miniature, they don't need real weapons"

Granted, logistics etc are missing but really, what do you think they should do to join NATO?

This is a silly question, but who is going to invade Scotland? I mean why would they need to join NATO. Are they interested in trying to contain Russia, as per NATO's original mandate.

[Sharp-kun]

Um, the English of course?

[Zaune]

This is a silly question, but who is going to invade Scotland? I mean why would they need to join NATO. Are they interested in trying to contain Russia, as per NATO's original mandate.

Anyone in Europe who isn't interested in containing Russia at the moment hasn't been paying enough attention to the news.

[Tribble]

If Scotland separates, we'll almost certainly see some sort of revival of separatist movement in Quebec. Even a close vote may be sufficient.

[The Romulan Republic]

It looked like it might be an unbroken series of wins for the no side until Dundee wrecked it.

[J]

On a lighter note, Scottish voters are giving it 110%

[Batman]

Everything worth doing is worth overdoing

[The Romulan Republic]

The BBC is predicting that no will win.

[FaxModem1]

Scotland votes no:

BBC

Scottish referendum: Voters to reject independence - BBC
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BBC One: Results programme
Continue reading the main story
Scotland Decides

What happens now?
Scottish referendum results Live
Local updates from across Scotland
At-a-glance: Referendum night

Scotland will vote to stay in the United Kingdom after rejecting independence, the BBC has predicted.

With 26 out of the country's 32 council areas having declared after Thursday's vote, the "No" side has a 54% of the vote, with the "Yes" campaign on 46%.

By 05:15 BST (06:15 GMT), the "No" campaign had more than 1,397,000 votes, with "Yes" on just over 1,176,000.

A total of 1,852,828 votes is needed for victory. The vote is the culmination of a two-year campaign.

The BBC is predicting on the basis of votes declared so far by Scotland's local authorities the "No" side will win the referendum with 55% of the vote while "Yes" will secure 45% of the vote.

This margin of victory is some three points greater than that anticipated by the final opinion polls.
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Scotland will vote to stay in the United Kingdom after rejecting independence, the BBC has predicted.
Better Together supporters celebrate
Alex Salmond Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond is en route to Edinburgh

Glasgow, Scotland's largest council area and the third largest city in Britain, voted in favour of independence by 194,779 to 169,347, with Dundee, West Dunbartonshire and North Lanarkshire also voting "Yes".

But Aberdeen City voted "No" by a margin of more than 20,000 votes, while there have also been big wins for the pro-UK campaign in many other areas.

Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond, who led the pro-independence "Yes" campaign, is expected to make a statement from his official residence at Bute House in Edinburgh at 10:00 BST (11:00 GMT).
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Nicola Sturgeon says she is "deeply disappointed"

In his first public comment since the results started coming in, Mr Salmond tweeted: "Well done to Glasgow, our Commonwealth city, and to the people of Scotland for such incredible support."

Prime Minister David Cameron said: "I've spoken to Alistair Darling (head of the pro-UK Better Together campaign) - and congratulated him on a well-fought campaign."

Mr Cameron is expected to respond to Scotland's decision in a live televised address following the final result.

Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon told the BBC the projected result was "a deep personal and political disappointment" but said "the country has been changed forever".

Ms Sturgeon said she would work with "anyone in any way" to secure more powers for Scotland.

[The Romulan Republic]

Fife just pushed it over the number no needed to win.

[Bedlam]

I'm rather relieved, I was actually having some trouble sleeping last night worrying about how a yes win would work out.

[Zaune]

I just hope the big two-and-a-half follow through on their promises to delegate more powers, and that we at least start talking about some devolution within the English regions; the country's just too large and too unevenly populated to be governed effectively with so much decision-making power concentrated in the centre, even without the economic disparity or our increasingly problematic electoral system.

[AniThyng]

Redivide the UK into 5 nations?

Scotland, Wales, N. Ireland, The Greater London Region and England-without-London

[Dartzap]

Redivide the UK into 5 nations?

Scotland, Wales, N. Ireland, The Greater London Region and England-without-London

You might think thats funny, but thats kind of how people are thinking.

Honestly woulnt be surprised if some form of Federalisation take place.

[AniThyng]

I thought I was joking too, but...http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21934564

Should Britain let go of London?

The BBC's economics editor, Stephanie Flanders, visits London, Birmingham and Manchester and explores an uneasy relationship

"A first-rate city with a second-rate country attached." That is how one rather brutal friend of mine describes London.

He happens to be an American, working in the City. But plenty of people working or staying in London from around the world feel the same way - even if they might put it more politely.

For a certain kind of "global citizen", London today feels like the new capital of the world - while, for people living in other parts of the UK, it all too often feels like another planet.

Our cosmopolitan capital is so different, so successful - have we got to the point where the rest of the UK would actually be better off without it?

That's the question I set out to answer, in my contribution to a new BBC 1 programme which was broadcast rather late on March 25th.
Faster

To anyone who lives in London that will sound crazy. But to others it might strike a chord.

The rest of the UK might be living through the toughest squeeze in a century, but it doesn't feel like it, walking around many parts of the capital. And in many ways, it hasn't been like that either.

London had a recession, but it didn't last long. Its economy grew by nearly 12.5% between 2007 and 2011 - twice as fast as the rest of the UK. And the property market barely stopped either.

A recent study estimated that the value of London's property had risen by 15% - or £140bn since the financial crisis began.

That increase - just the increase - is more than the total value of all residential property in the north east of England.

London's top ten boroughs alone are worth more, in real estate terms, than all the property of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, added together.

Why, you might ask, would the UK want to walk away from all that wealth - give up the goose that lays so many golden eggs?
More

The Office for National Statistics reckons that the average Londoner contributes 70% more to Britain's national income than people in the rest of the country - a difference of £16,000 each a year.

It's tricky to measure, but they also seem to pay more in taxes than they get back in government spending.

But of course, one big reason for that is that most other places have not been doing nearly as well. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, the divide between them has widened since the financial crisis, because London has been growing so much faster.

So, whatever the capital's success is doing for other parts of the UK, you might say that it doesn't seem to be helping them to catch up.

It made me wonder playing host to a "first-rate" global capital also came with a massive catch: that as well as subsidising the rest of the country, London's very success was also holding it back.

This is an idea that's been debated for decades - at least since London's massive expansion in the inter-war period, when planning rules didn't really exist and London became "Greater London", with a much greater population to match.
Wrong size

But the film set me thinking about all the ways that policy gets distorted by so much of Britain's economic, political and cultural all being concentrated in one place.

Without London, the UK would look like a rather different economy - one less focussed on financial services, more reliant on manufacturing. That could make a difference to macro-economic policy.

But more interesting, perhaps, would be the impact on policy-making in general, if the bulk of decisions stopped being taken in Whitehall.

Whether it's the "spare room subsidy" or the government's "new homes bonus", every politician you talk to, outside London, will have their pet example of a "one-size-fits-all" policy dreamed up in Whitehall which fits the priorities of London and the south east a lot better than the rest of the UK.

The chief executive of Birmingham City Council, Stephen Hughes, liked the thought experiment. He told me getting rid of London would be a fantastic challenge to big cities like Birmingham.

Because, instead of complaining about those one-size-fits-all policies, he and his colleagues would have to get on with coming up with their own.
Slow

Travelling around for the film brought home another crucial way in which London has got things sewn up: Transport. I'm ashamed to say I hadn't fully appreciated this point before making the film.

You don't, if you spend your time going between London and other parts of the UK.

You can cover the 120-odd miles between London and Birmingham in a train in 84 minutes. Birmingham to Manchester is not much more than half the distance, but I found the fastest train between the two actually took longer: about 90 minutes.

Similarly, it's only 40 miles from Manchester to Leeds, but the fastest train takes nearly an hour.

You might think High Speed 2 will change this - isn't it all about bridging the North-South divide?

But when you're sitting in Birmingham or Manchester, you can see why many people outside London think high speed rail will actually make things worse.

They worry that a faster connection to London will simply make it even less attractive to go anywhere else.
'Second tier'

Alexandra Jones, who runs the think-tank Centre for Cities, told me about research they had done, showing that businesses in cities like Manchester or Leeds tend to look first to London when they need to buy in specialist help or establish a joint venture in a particular sector, even when the talent or expertise they need is also readily available, more cheaply, in a neighbouring city.

Transport is surely one of many reasons for that. Why would you look closer to home if the nearer city takes just as long to get to?

Over time, you can see how London's dominance could become ever more entrenched, with Britain's "second tier" cities never reaching critical mass.

By now you might be thinking that all I have managed to do is take a circuitous route to a pretty standard conclusion: Britain has a really big North-South divide, which is very hard to change.
Trust

But I did come across some signs of progress - in Salford Quays, for example. It turns out it's all about what economists call "agglomeration" - linking businesses and others kinds of economic activity together in such a way that they can start to punch above their weight.

You might be familiar with Salford Quays. It's where the BBC has moved a big chunk of its operations.

But that's not why I went there. I went there because Brian Robson, now a professor emeritus at Manchester University, told me Salford was an example of what Britain's other cities might look like, if they were given the freedom to think about what works in this new economy, and chart their own course.

Robson has spent years thinking about how to help the UK's other cities get more of the action. He says the new city deals - and other moves the government has been taking to give Britain's "city regions" more scope to pool and control their own resources - are genuinely encouraging.

Lord Heseltine's recent report, "No Stone Unturned", was all about this. Fans would see the chancellor's decision to accept many of its proposals as another step in the right direction.

There are more examples in my film. By the end, I couldn't help thinking that it's not London that the rest of the country has a problem with - it's the UK's over-centralised system of government.

For generations, officials in Whitehall have taken more and more power away from Britain's cities - and trusted them less and less.

This government isn't the first to say it wants to change that. But you never know, maybe this time it might really mean it.

[Simon_Jester]

London as an isolated city-state might or might not do as well as London as a capital city. They seem to be benefiting in part from their status as the capital, although cities like New York do rather well without that status.

However, England-outre-Green-Belt would probably have some very serious problems on its hands, and lack many of the tools to solve them readily. Also, once we start talking about that level of federalization, we run into the same problem with currency (among other things) discussed with Scotland: you can't have a legally disunited group of countries who all use the same currency unless they have true collective control over fiscal policy.

[jwl]

Redivide the UK into 5 nations?

Scotland, Wales, N. Ireland, The Greater London Region and England-without-London

Just England then. The UK would still be the UK if Scotland left, and England would still be England if London gets removed.

[Broomstick]

When conditions are wildly different the rules under which people live should take that into account. Rules that work for a crowded urban center like London probably won't be applicable to somewhere more rural and vice versa.

That doesn't mean you should split everything into separate little countries.

[AniThyng]

When conditions are wildly different the rules under which people live should take that into account. Rules that work for a crowded urban center like London probably won't be applicable to somewhere more rural and vice versa.

That doesn't mean you should split everything into separate little countries.

I think the problem is more what to do with all those other crowded urban centers in England that aren't London. Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham etc.

[Broomstick]

Rotate the government to another city every so many years so the people making the rules have some direct experience elsewhere and attention is focused other places than just London.

[Crazedwraith]

Well I'm pleased with this result. looking at the figures it seems to have been reasonable close but not razor edge. I wonder how soon they'll be clamouring for another referendum.

As for the stuff about London. I'm think devolving more power to other areas is the solution. Whenever they try to strength local governments they balls it up. We just need Westminster to give a shit about the rest of the country. But an english parliment might be a good idea. Or at least a way to stop scottish mps in Westminster voting on matters that have been devolved to their parliment. So not they're getting a say on England and Wales and then doing something different up there...

[Zaune]

Broomstick's right; an 'English' parliament would just set us back to square one. Many of the issues raised by the Scottish Nationalists are equally applicable to Yorkshire or Cornwall or even Birmingham.

Personally, I think we should use the historic seven kingdoms plus Greater London for a starting point, and have the boundary commission adjust them to take into account changes in demographics. Ideally we'd end up with six to eight administrative regions each having between five and ten million residents.

Those regions could then have their own assemblies with the power to levy some forms of taxation and control over town and country planning, social welfare including healthcare provision and most matters of civil law. Criminal law, foreign and defence policy would remain under the control of Westminster.

[Purple]

So basically america but a bit tighter?

[Starglider]

Personally, I think we should use the historic seven kingdoms plus Greater London for a starting point, and have the boundary commission adjust them to take into account changes in demographics. Ideally we'd end up with six to eight administrative regions each having between five and ten million residents.

Ten years ago, the UK spent a lot of time and money verifying that no-one agrees with you. North-east England rejected the proposal to give them an elected assembly by 696,519 votes to 197,310; a result so bad (given that the NE was polling the highest of all regions to vote yes) that the referendums for all the other local assemblies were cancelled. The reason was of course that an additional layer of expensive corrupt worthless politicians in between the county and national levels would do nothing but waste more money, bother people with even more campaigns and ballots, and create more pointless drama.

Strictly regions could make sense if counties were abolished and districts became the next administrative unit, but that was not on the table due to inertia, jobsworths in county governments and pointless tribalism.

[Simon_Jester]

The problem is that (as we've seen in the US) one of the main functions of a federal government is to oversee transfer payments between richer and poorer parts of the same nation. These payments are a de facto necessity as long as development is not uniform unless you want the poorer parts of the country to decay to primitive levels. In the US, for instance, predominantly rural states almost never pay as much in taxes as they receive in federal funds. If the federal government weren't collecting taxes from the prosperous coastal and urban areas, and spending a disproportionate share of the money in rural states, the US would probably be a patchwork confederation of First and Third World economic conditions, with broad swathes of the country being at about the same economic level as, say, former Warsaw Pact countries.

[Ironically these states are also hotbeds of fanatical anti-tax, anti-federal-spending political sentiment... ]

When conditions are wildly different the rules under which people live should take that into account. Rules that work for a crowded urban center like London probably won't be applicable to somewhere more rural and vice versa.

That doesn't mean you should split everything into separate little countries.

I think the problem is more what to do with all those other crowded urban centers in England that aren't London. Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham etc.

Also that those urban centers, unlike London, don't receive an economic boost from the London financial sector. So policies that work for London aren't working for Manchester, and yet policies that work for the village of Upper Obscurity wouldn't work for Manchester either, or vice versa.