Great Article

[neilser]

George Monbiot on cracking form:

'Imagine the question posed the other way round. An independent nation is asked to decide whether to surrender its sovereignty to a larger union. It would be allowed a measure of autonomy, but key aspects of its governance would be handed to another nation. It would be used as a military base by the dominant power and yoked to an economy over which it had no control.

It would have to be bloody desperate. Only a nation in which the institutions of governance had collapsed, which had been ruined economically, which was threatened by invasion or civil war or famine might contemplate this drastic step. Most nations faced even with such catastrophes choose to retain their independence in fact, will fight to preserve it rather than surrender to a dominant foreign power.

So what would you say about a country that sacrificed its sovereignty without collapse or compulsion; that had no obvious enemies, a basically sound economy and a broadly functional democracy, yet chose to swap it for remote governance by the hereditary elite of another nation, beholden to a corrupt financial centre?

What would you say about a country that exchanged an economy based on enterprise and distribution for one based on speculation and rent? That chose obeisance to a government that spies on its own citizens, uses the planet as its dustbin, governs on behalf of a transnational elite that owes loyalty to no nation, cedes public services to corporations, forces terminally ill people to work and cant be trusted with a box of fireworks, let alone a fleet of nuclear submarines? You would conclude that it had lost its senses.'

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/scots-independence-england-scotland

Edited September 2, 2014 by neilser

[exile]

Mike Small with some good soundbites here:

5 reasons why yes...

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/04/scottish-independence-5-reasons-yes-winning-polls