Quote Originally Posted by stewarty27 View Post
Lengthy indeed .where to start. I suppose the deception of the GERs figures would be a good start To suggest that Scotland, Wales and NI are responsible for more or less 100% of the deficit with under 20% of the entire population is fantasy. Just to quickly summarise we here is Scotland are face with what is a basic binary choice. Take our own future into our hands or the status quo which has worked so very well for us.... Actually its not even the status quo its far worse. Scotland is at a crossroad I say its time to be brave and grasp our future.
As I said above, how various things like corporation tax are allocated, means that GERS are a best estimate only, it's not a deception just that the statistics are not very well explained. There are 12 regions in the UK, 9 in England plus Scotland, Wales and N Ireland. Of these 12 regions 9 have a deficit, including Scotland and indeed 6 of the 9 English regions. These 9 regions deficit total more than 200% of the UK deficit offset by the huge surpluses in London and South East England and a small surplus in East England. It's statistically meaningless to equate any single region surplus or deficit to the overall deficit when you have pluses and minuses. What the statistics do tell us not surprisingly is that there is a huge economic divide between London/SE England and the rest of the country.

I understand why you and many others want to take a chance amid all of the uncertainty without knowing what circumstances you would be voting in given the dire and extremist choice provided by the two main UK parties but others like me are more cautious. We will wait and see what happens on the 12th December but based on recent opinion polls it looks like the majority of Scots will vote for Unionist parties, although not by a significant majority albeit SNP will likely win the huge majority of Scottish seats (don't get me started on our voting system as that is a debate for another day!!). Our country being pretty much split down the middle with no meaningful majority for or against independence or even for or against another independence vote is another reason that I wouldn't want another vote next year as the polarisation will just get worse (Mason's recent post is just one tiny example of all the crap that will be flying about in both directions by both sides)