Emotions favour Scottish independence
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The Scottish National Party (SNP) is absolutely delighted by The Economist’s ‘Skintland’ front cover story. Although not the official party line, for the SNP, the magazine’s latest cover couldn’t have been better worded, or timed.
Scotland is a proud country. Any suspicion of sneering from the south raises fury, and pushes increasing numbers towards the ‘yes vote’ camp. The offending cover picture was a map of Scotland – dubbed ‘Skintland’ by The Economist, with names of cities such as Edinburgh replaced with ‘Edinborrow’. The following story, unsurprisingly, colourfully described how Scotland could fail on its own.
Within hours media commentators and social media erupted with anger as Scottish people from all walks of life denounced the story. Alex Salmond, Scotland’s first minister, the prude operator that he is, slammed the magazine, saying it will “rue the day” it poked fun at Scotland. But is he really that bothered what a London-based magazine says? I’d bet not.
But he predicted the outcry such a cover would provoke among SNP supporters and, more importantly, those who are on the fence.
Just to stir things up a little further, on its official Facebook page the SNP published a retaliation mock of the original mock cover – supposedly created by a ‘member’. It hit back with ‘Skilledland’ with city names such as ‘Glasgoing places’.
Last year, I wrote a blog calling for sensible debate on the issue of independence. But it appears those who can influence do not really want sensible debate. What they want – and in this case I mean The Economist and the SNP – is to work on the emotions of the Scottish people. (blog continues below)
Comparing Scotland with Spain’s Catalan as The Economist did in its story certainly won’t start sensible debate. All it will do is infuriate Scotland’s people. If emotions are where this battle is to proceed, it is a battle that only the SNP will ever win.
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Shaun Cumming is a freelance writer on retail finance. You can follow him on Twitter.
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Readers' comments (11)
David Clark | 16 Apr 2012 11:15 am
A very sensible article in response to an arrogant and misleading article from the Economist. Scotland CAN comfortably survive on its own and this should not be the argument put forward by either side of this debate. Is Scotland better served as an independant nation within the European community or a subjugated part of England? Whatever the answer maybe I am more than confident both Scotland and England will continue as good neighbours.
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Charles Patrick O'Brien | 16 Apr 2012 2:12 pm
Sorry but emotions,just don't cut it,we look to the future with a calculation,that we want the best for each other,and no longer wish to have the City of London decide what will happen in our country.The story has annoyed a lot of people and awakened a lot more,infuriate I hardly think so as I look out over the Old Kilpatrick hills I cant see any fiery cross.Logic favours Scottish independence,not emotion.
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keith | 16 Apr 2012 5:13 pm
its really for the scots to decide whether they want independence or not. but i hope that once they make their decision, either in or out, that they then get on with making the best of it, and we stop hearing continuous wailing and complaining from north of the border(and indeed from those scots that have settled in england). as an englishman i am frustrated by the fact that we get no say whatever on the future of the union, or indeed the "west lothian question". isn't it also interesting that the scottish membership of the union may end up being "bookmarked" by two financial catastrophes. the disastrous darian scheme in the 1690's, and the massive failure of the scottish banks RBS and HBOS in 2008. as it turned out, neither of these events was scotland capable of surviving alone.
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Siôn Jones | 16 Apr 2012 8:48 pm
keith - you read too much unionist propaganda, otherwise you would not be taken in by the lie that the debts of RBS and HBOS would have fallen entirely to Scotland. Less than 10% of their trading activity was located in Scotland, most being in London, and according to existing conventions, the debt would have been shared proportionately. Do not be taken in by the fact that their head offices are in Scotland - they have been English banks of a number of years now.
The west lothiian question is a problem causued for England by the UK parliament . You may be interested to note that nationalist MPs, from Wales and from Scotland do not vote on devolved issues that do not affect their countries.
Personally, I think the SNP have played this very well. Nicola Sturgeon's list of advantages of independence (positive, not scare stories, which is all the unionists have come up with so far) does contrast very favourably from the puerile and unfunny graphic from the
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Scorpio Fax | 16 Apr 2012 9:25 pm
Keith, it's clear that you know absolutely nothing about Scotland. Perhaps you should do some actual research, yourself, before commenting, otherwise it just makes you look like a fool.
Here's a link on the Darien story for you: http://wingsland.podgamer.com/weekend-essay-skintland-britnat-mythology-and-the-darien-scheme/
WRT to your point about RBS and HBOS, unfortunately for you, 90% of those banks UK operations are in England, and almost all of the toxic debts built up are located in England. Had this scenario happened when Scotland was independent, England would have been liable for most of the debt, anyway, because that's where it was built up. This is why there were so many cross-border bank bail outs in Europe. It's also why RBS's American arm was bailed out by the US (and this was far bigger than the bail out the UK arm received). This led to grumblings about extraditing RBS staff to the States to face trial, but it didn't come to anything, because ultimately it's the responsibility of the Government of that country to regulate properly.
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keith | 18 Apr 2012 8:43 am
scorpio fax, thanks for your warm comments. i wont accuse you of being a fool despite your obvious misunderstandings about how the banking industry works. bank write offs are not recovered from anyone, that is why they are written off from the balance sheet. its the shareholder who takes the hit. then the taxpayer may have to step in, as we all discovered to our cost.
I am just wondering what reaction I would have got, walking in to the Edinburgh head offices of both RBS and HBOS in 2007, loudly proclaiming to all and sundry that these fine Scottish institutions were in fact now “English banks”. Next you will be telling me that the whisky industry and all that oil also belongs to those of us who live south of the border.
I can provide you with a short history lesson on what happened to both HBOS and RBS during the 2000’s. Both RBS and Bank of Scotland were encouraged to expand and make acquisitions by the then chancellor of the exchequer Gordon Brown (let’s not start discussing his merits). The acquisition of Nat West fuelled the megalomania of one Fred Goodwin (born Paisley - a good manager at cutting costs, but a hopeless strategist). In fact what led to the downfall of RBS was the acquisition of ABN Amro. This was so full of bad assets, that in reality it would have been a disaster even if it had cost Fred nothing to acquire.
HBOS’s problems were one of reckless lending and leverage, backed by the deposit base acquired with Halifax BS. In overall charge of the lending policy? One Peter Cummings, who started his career with BofS at the local Dumbarton branch age 16. Cummings would end up heading the corporate loans division, lending money to Iceland, to the Iranians, housebuilders... in fact to anyone who approached him with half an idea. He was finally fired in 2009, when the house of cards he had built collapsed.
So to claim that the banking sectors problems belong to the English, is far from the truth. But wasn’t it great that Scotland belonged to a union, where the pain could be shared amongst many millions of taxpayers? probably not a bad advert for membership of the UK.
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Scorpio Fax | 18 Apr 2012 10:36 am
I'm perfectly aware of what happened at both banks, which is why I mentioned what happened.
WRT your point about ABN Amro, this cleaned out RBS, so that when the financial crisis hit, it couldn't cover its debt obligations which were built up at its investment banking arm in London.
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Scorpio Fax | 18 Apr 2012 9:00 pm
With regards to Peter Cummings, it's rather strange that you think you are making a killer point here. It doesn't matter that he's Scottish. The fact is, most of the problems with HBoS reside south of the border, as they do with RBS. Perhaps you should remind yourself what the 'H' stands for in HBoS?
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keith | 19 Apr 2012 9:10 am
"H" stands for halifax. the reason BofS wanted to acquire the halifax, was that it provided them with a good old fashioned retail banking deposit taking institution. it gave BofS critical mass, and enabled them to gain leverage and do the deals that eventually brought them down.
you are correct, the peter cummings thing is a cheap shot. but no more so than the notion "the english are at fault, its their debt now".
should the shareholders of Lloyds blame the scottish people when they were hustled into a shotgun marriage by gordon brown to take on HBOS and all of its attendant problems? no of course not, but its just as illogical and bonkers to blame "the english" for the problems of RBS and HBOS.
banks belong to their shareholders, and their boards of directors answer to shareholders for the strategic decisons they make. shareholders take the ultimate risk of loss of share capital. sadly because banks are not like other businesses, next in line is the taxpayer to mop up the mess. in this instance, the taxpayer of the UK took on the debt of these UK based banking institutions. i am afraid thats all of us, much as we all might like to try and dump the problem on someone else as a matter of political expediency.
if you want someone to blame, in no particular order; the boards of the banks (including the names discussed earlier), the UK government of the time for "light touch regulation", the FSA, anyone spending more than they earn, the shareholders of the banks for encouraging the banks to do more deals or for indeed doing nothing to stop them, "bankers" (that would be most peoples no.1 target i guess), the US authorities, real estate speculators .... i am sure you can add more here yourself, but i would suggest "the english" as a national grouping should be left off the list.
best of luck though with the referendum ... i think the result is important to us all.
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Scorpio Fax | 19 Apr 2012 11:58 am
Keith, that's the thing, I'm not blaming the English for the problems at both banks. I'm pointing out that that's where the responsibility for the debt lies.
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