Capeesh

I don't mind paying tax for services. What I'm not too keen on is having tax dodging, corrupt, multi millionaire Tories telling us we have to tighten our belts while they stash their cash in the Cayman islands and are handsomely rewarded for enabling the same perks for their elite mates.

Interpret*... spelling and punctuation... D-

I agree, the Supreme Court can only interperate the law as it stands but those laws were written in a Parliament where Scottish MP's are outnumbered by more than 10:1 and a second unelected House of Lords full of Tory and Labour cronies completely opposed to Scottish independence. When the Scotland Act was rewritten after 2014 nearly all the Scottish elected representatives in Westminster were SNP and every single amendment they put forward for the Bill was voted down by MP's from outwith Scotland and then finalised and written into Law by the House of Lords. The amendment you talk of will always go the same way. I find nothing divisive about a Nation wanting to run their own affairs, it's completely normal. Ties of family are unaffected by where on the globe they live. Business ties will be affected without a doubt but let's not forget that the Brexit the majority of Scots opposed put unnecessary obstacles in the path of our business ties with 500 million of our European friends and neighbours. Right now Scotland is an energy rich country paying through the nose for energy, we have the only two party's with a chance of power, (Conservative and Labour) doubling down on a Brexit Scotland didn't want, a court telling us Scotland is no more than an English county, a Tory government Scotland has rejected at the polls since 1955 and to top it all off we're being told that Scotland is in a "voluntary union" we can't seem to get out of.

The Supreme Court has ruled on the legality of the Scottish Parliament holding a referendum and the five judges unanimously said it can't hold one. They were also at pains to say Scotland was not a colony. There's also been loads of interviews with politicians of the unionist persuasion that go something like this... Q1: "Is the union a voluntary one?" A: "Of course it is!" Q2: "How do you get out of it then?" A: "Oh look, there's a squirrel >>>> *politician vanishes* Now call me cynical but if people from another country that rule you tell you you're not a colony but you've no democratic or legal way to be free of their rule what on Earth is Scotland?

This Brexit's going well isn't it? Who would've guessed the so called fear mongers vastly underestimated the damage it would cause. People are realising they've been hoodwinked. The dead giveaway the snake oil salesmen that sold this pup are panicking is they're doubling down on their dishonesty. They want us to believe the little boats crossing the Channel, Covid and the war in Ukraine are the reasons the economy has tanked and the NHS is woefully understaffed. Unfortunately for them there's a Brexit sized elephant in the room that even a blind man can't help but notice.

Like African dictators it's one last hurrah for the Tories to bleed the country dry before they're booted out. Time's running out, the country's on the verge of a general strike, wages are way behind rocketing inflation, people can't afford to heat or eat, interest rates are shooting up increasing mortgage costs and other personal borrowing, the £ has plummeted, the national debt is soaring. The markets are so alarmed at the state of our economy and the reckless decisions our government are making the cost of government borrowing has become even more expensive. True to form the self serving Tories are emptying the till before the country collapses around them, the latest wheeze is borrowing billions upon billions of £££ to fund a big fat tax cut for themselves and their wealthy cronies. Instead of being arrested for stealing our money and starving/freezing/impoverishing the people they're meant to serve they'll get their super wealthy Daily Mail/Sun/Express owners and lobbyists masquerading as independent think tanks to convince the gullible that foreigners are to blame and massive tax cuts for the wealthy will trickle down and make us rich too.

The energy providers: "We need to up the bills to provide energy to you." "We have just made record breaking profits." Zombie Tory Government: "We can't do anything because we haven't chosen a new leader yet." "No we couldn't possibly cut vat on your bills or tax the energy companies." "What we might do to stop the riots is con you by using your own taxes and/or print more money to 'gift' you a few hundred pounds to help you pay your energy bill thus maintaining the massive profits and share dividends both us and our backers enjoy." The whole thing is a massive con, what the companies do (legally) is create subsidiaries that show a loss thus protecting them from paying tax. At the same time the parent company rakes in the profits. The doo doo is about to hit the fan this winter so what will probably happen is the government will (yet again) use public money to bail out private companies and package it as a 'gift' to us from the Chancellor so the gullible keep voting for them. One thing's for certain, privatisation is very expensive for us and highly profitable for companies, the only thing that stops the whole house of cards from collapsing is a large number of (better off) voters in addition to most of those in government are shareholders in these businesses collecting annual dividends in the biggest sure thing you can possibly get... 'Privatised' companies that get bailed out with public money every time their profit margins don't satisfy the shareholders.

@ Colin Yes absolutely! 1)The UK voted for a party that stated it was going to have a referendum on EU membership 2)The referendum was arranged in the UK with no interference from the EU on the process, eg timing, question etc 3)The referendum went ahead, the majority voted to leave and the UK left. Now a few years on we're in this situation with Scotland... 1)Scotland voted for parties that stated they're going to have a referendum on UK membership.... See the similarities? (Here's where the hypocrisy about sovereignty, self determination and democracy comes into effect) 2)UK to Scotland - You can only have a referendum if/when WE allow it. That's the UK government's hypocrisy, some of the stuff I've heard from Brexit voters, even on this thread, goes further than this into the realms of the ludicrous. Things like.. Insinuating the UK government could ignore the result of any plebiscite and send the troops in. Cheerleading the partition of Scotland. (these are just a couple of examples in the last few posts, can't be bothered to look further but there's loads and loads of this type of stuff. The funny thing is this, imagine if the EU had said to the UK something along these lines... 'you can't have a referendum unless we say so and if you have any type of plebiscite without our permission we won't accept it, we'll send our troops in, you can maybe get a vote on the condition that we keep the chunks of your country that voted to remain. etc etc' It's absolutely unthinkable! Imagine the front pages of the Daily Mail, I'm sure they had some made up garbage about some EU directive on bananas! They would've had a field day with troop ships crossing the channel!

Brexiteers (leaving a union of Nations) - Doesn't matter if 2 out of the 4 Nations of the UK didn't want to leave the EU, respect the result, sovereignty, self determination, democracy etc etc Also Brexiteers (leaving a different union of Nations) -cough cough, Not you Scotland, we won't allow it, send the troops in, we will only allow it if you partition your country and give us some etc etc.

If you go through this quote ^^^ and change "Scotland" to "the UK" ... Then change "Scottish independence" to "Brexit" you get a good example of hypocrisy. It would go something like this........... The UK can do anything they please, on one condition. That, in the event of the UK holding a referendum, and the result is in support of Brexit, that they then give Shetland and/or Shetland and Orkney the opportunity to hold a referendum to decide whether Shetland and/or Orkney goes with the UK as an independent country, stays with the EU, or something else... ... However, if they're not willing to agree to a referendum for us, then we should be blocking their's at any opportunity on the grounds they're hypocrites...

If by "fails" you mean a no to independence then from a democratic standpoint it would be whenever the Scottish electorate demanded one by voting for a party or parties that have holding one in their manifesto's and them achieving a parliamentary majority on that issue. The same's true if by failure you mean the majority vote FOR independence. A party or parties would have to go to the polls with a manifesto pledge to hold a referendum to ask the electorate if they want to give up their country's independence, they would then have to achieve the majority of MP's needed to vote it through Parliament. I know there's some people out there against Scottish independence who would prefer if all mention of it went away. Maybe if the UK government had done something to make the UK a more attractive proposition for some of the 'yes' and reluctant 'no' voters after the 2014 referendum it could've panned out that way... We'll never know. What I find disturbing are those who would deny ANY democratic path to independence. Thankfully we don't live in a dictatorship and despite some of the rhetoric that's out there Scotland is still a voluntary member of the United Kingdom. The people will decide whether or not they want to remain part of it.

Great, if it's in the bag for the union somebody needs to tell those in Westminster that there's nothing to worry about and let democracy take its course.

Meanwhile on Normal Island we have a PM who has just resigned as party leader but will remain PM until September!!! The moron can't even resign properly! No wonder a large chunk of the Scottish electorate want out, the UK won't have a functioning government for months at a time when the problems facing the average Joe in the street are as bad as they've been for 40+ years.

Boris is the 15th unionist party leader she's seen come and go, if I was a betting man looking at that form I know who my money would be on but she's only one woman and Boris is only one man, in a democracy it's the multitudes that matter. One thing's for sure, Scottish independence doesn't seem to be going away as has been proven, beyond doubt, in every election since 2011. It's the message the electorate is sending that matters not the leaders, they come and go with the breeze.

I see our Tory government is having a complete meltdown today, loads of ministers resigning, lying, corruption, the country is going down the toilet. Rampant inflation, food banks, people having to decide whether to eat or heat and the guy that's meant to fix it all ( the Chancellor of the Exchequer) has just quit along with the Health Secretary, and loads of others, complete shambles..... Surely we could make a better fist of things than this, couldn't we?????