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Car Tax - Should I renew for year?


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^ Irrelevant to the point being made, and off topic in this thread.

 

There however, is another lengthy thread more appropriate to the side argument you have started to head in to, so if you want to move it over there, I'll go and re-watch a certain Monty Python sketch to remind myself how I go about buying an argument.

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I've been thinking about this. In the event of independence many national organisations, such as the DWP, Passport Office, HMRC etc already have a presence here so presumably the exsiting Scottish head office would be the head office for the new state. Howver local vehicle licensing office were abolished years ago so there might be a gap before the Scottish equivalent of the DVLA is up and running.

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I've been thinking about this. In the event of independence many national organisations, such as the DWP, Passport Office, HMRC etc already have a presence here so presumably the exsiting Scottish head office would be the head office for the new state. Howver local vehicle licensing office were abolished years ago so there might be a gap before the Scottish equivalent of the DVLA is up and running.

 

Can Scotland just simply take it in trust that something along these lines will be handed over by Westminster in the event independence goes ahead?

 

Office buidlings/sites, office furnishings and fittings, records/archives etc for such agencies AFAIK were paid for out of Westminster funds, and belong to the Westminster Government. The staff too are Westminster employees and on that payroll. While Westminster, in the event of Scottish independence *may* just say to Holyrood, "Here you go, we'll turn it all over to you lock, stock and barrel gratis", equally, until and unless such an agreement is reached to do exactly that, they *may* not. There is no reason why, should Westminster choose to do so, ship all contents, records etc of all such offices back to Westminster, and hand out redundancy notices to all employees etc, and sell the buildings on the open market, demolish them, abandon them, whatever. Or, worse still for an independent Scotland, offer to turn everything over to Scottish control, but demand absurdly overpriced prices to do so.

 

Its little stuff of this nature that will make the difference between a seamless transition and a very difficult period to function for any independent Scotland, but as the saying goes, the devil is in the detail. These and similar "little" things like what sort of border controls, import/export constraints/levies, how current cross border national services will function, *if* they will be permitted to function etc are all largely being ignored by any and all who espouse for one opinion or another concerning independence, yet these are things that could play a very real and significant part in making or breaking a newly independent Scotland, and its for that reason I simply cannot take the current independence bid seriously.

 

Should Scotland go ahead and become independent the rest of the UK are the losers, and there's nothing to compel them to be helpful about it, in fact they could be spiteful, petty and downright nasty about it and there's no realistic mechanism to stop them deing so as long as they like. Should Westminster choose to take such an attitude towards an independent Scotland, there's as equal a chance as anything else that they ship out what can be shipped, and sell off anything and everything that is Westminster property in Scotland, make it very difficult for all non-Scottish business operating in Scotland not to follow suit, tear up the road and rail tracks crossing the border, heavily fortify Hadrian's Wall, ban all Scottish imports and exports via non-Scottish UK ports, ban all shipping and flights which had taken off from Scottish airports from entering non-Scottish UK territorial waters or airspace, etc, etc. Okay, certainly worst case scenario, but worst case scenarios happen too, just ask anyone who lived in Berlin post war, or lives in Korea right now.

 

Does Alec and his cronies have contingency plans to cover this or similar but lesser scenarios, I doubt it, or then they're keeping them very hush hush, have they even seriously considered their options for potential events of this nature.

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