The UK government is to reject calls for a Scottish independence referendum before Brexit after Theresa May said "now is not the time". The prime minister said the focus should be on getting the best Brexit deal for the whole of the UK. Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said Nicola Sturgeon's demand for a vote by the spring of 2019 would be rejected "conclusively". Ms Sturgeon said blocking a referendum would be a "democratic outrage".
Ms Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister, told BBC Scotland: "It is an argument for independence really in a nutshell, that Westminster thinks it has got the right to block the democratically elected mandate of the Scottish government and the majority in the Scottish Parliament.
The higher the Young's Modulus... God I hated Finite Element Analysis. It's always difficult to know exactly where something will break, but you can get pretty close. Building a political tectonic map of the UK, future historians will look back on this and say, "Well, that was as stupid as the English at Stirling Bridge"
ReplyDeleteMay is determined to go hell-for-expensive-leather-trousers as stupid as possible. It's impressive really.
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor I'm not sure if it's Lord Protector May (I think of her as a modern Cromwell) or just the Scottish Conservative Party under Davidson barking about another independence referendum. At any rate, Nicola Sturgeon will not be bluffed.
ReplyDeleteDan Weese Well, Cromwell may have had dictatorial tendencies, but at least he was intelligent and more-or-less did what he aimed to do. May, so far as I can tell, does not actually seem to have the foggiest idea of what it is she wants to accomplish, let alone any clue as to how to go about doing it.
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor Theresa May doesn't let anyone know what she's doing, except the people she's controlling. This doesn't mean she doesn't know what she's doing. She doesn't have big conference table talks.
ReplyDeleteIn poker, a player can betray himself with two sorts of Tells: a betting tell or a body tell. A betting tell is the more significant, a body tell can be faked. Theresa May is a sphinx. She's playing a very bad hand, left for her by Cameron. She doesn't like Brexit but she's playing the mandate thus created masterfully. But her cabinet couldn't be more different than May herself. They're much more Conservative than May. Let them take the lumps.
If Scotland gets independence, there is no guarantee they will be able to join the EU, or at least join fast.
ReplyDeleteThey should join the Republic of Ireland instead, that would go faster. Then if Wales follows, they can form the Reunited Kingdom. Maybe London should secede and join it too.
At some point an impoverished England may even realize that they should follow on.
Elie Thorne Not being entirely cognisant of every last detail related to application to full EU membership, this from former EC president José Manuel Barroso is the best I can come up with at short notice,
ReplyDeletescotsman.com - In full: José Manuel Barroso’s letter on EU membership
Dan Weese They say you should never attribute to malevolence what you can attribute to stupidity. In May's case, not so long ago I'd have said it was the other way around - malevolent, yes, but hardly stupid. These days I'm convinced May is both malevolent and stupid. She only looked intelligent in the leadership contest because her opponents were considerably more stupid. There's no grand plan here, no clever manipulation. She's simply incompetent.
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor I've learned few things about stupid people, over the years. The stupid are crafty buggers. Like intelligence, stupid comes in many flavours. You're closer to this than I am, I'm inclined to change my opinion on your say-so. It's as you say, her competition were stupid-er, but then I see so much of Cromwell in her - Cromwell wanted a constitutional government, wanted a measure of tolerance - we think of Cromwell as a hugely intolerant man - and he was! Theresa May is a similar mass of contradictions, personally opposed to Brexit yet presiding over this messy divorce, surrounded by a herd of swine: can you imagine having to manage Boris Johnson? Just think about that. Gives me the shrinky-dink, just to contemplate it. I'd have murdered him by now, were he my subordinate.
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor ... apropos to nothing, I presume you've gotten the good word about that 1A supernova in NGC 5643 ?
ReplyDeleteastronomy.com - There’s a supernova occurring right now in NGC 5643