Britain’s most senior civil servant Sir Gus O’Donnell has publicly questioned whether the United Kingdom will still exist in a few years’ time.
Writing in The Telegraph, Sir Gus O’Donnell asks whether the Union can survive increasing pressure for Scottish independence.
Sir Gus, who is the head of more than 440,000 civil servants in England, Scotland and Wales, says the future of the Union is one of several “enormous challenges” facing the political establishment in the coming years.
Read it all and follow the link to the full op-ed piece also.
Scotland should be independent again.
But more importantly than that, the UK is a degenerate secular state that will become Islamic to no one’s regret.
Michael. Oh, please. This site deserves something better than vapid chauvinistic rhetoric. The distressing truth is that while there is a great deal more Christian faith in the US than in the UK, in neither country are believers much able to influence the decision-making in legislature or the populist culture of the public square.
As for the main subject of the article, it chimes with my own feelings when I visited Aberdeen and the North East of Scotland in September last year. I watched Scottish TV, I read Scottish newspapers, I heard about the decisions of the Scottish executive and parliament. Suddenly, London and the rest of the UK seemed far away. It was a weird feeling. (But then to tell the truth when I spent a month in northern New Mexico, both the East and West Coasts seemed very remote and hardly figured in the Albuquerque Journal).
When I lived in England for a year, I took a trip up to Scotland on the train, and it was like going into a foreign country. I had to show my passport a number of times. I was an American, of course, so maybe that changed things, but it was like having to go through customs and checking into a foreign country.
Deep down in my soul I’m a Jacobite, so yea… go for it. But only if they bring back the Stewarts. Long live Francis II by the Grace of God Rightful King of Scotland and the Isles.
About 10 years ago I was in Edinburgh and was quite dismayed by the state of the city. There was trash strewn about the streets and graffiti on prominent monuments. During my stay, I had many opportunities to chat with local people and they were all disgruntled. They said things had gone downhill since Scotland got more autonomy and they faulted their parliament. Public services were abysmal and nothing was getting done expediently. One young woman told me that the building her flat was in had been infested by rodents and no one would respond to the frequent reports and complaints.
I haven’t been back to Edinburgh since then and hope they ironed out the difficulties. It’s such a cool and historic city that it was depressing to see it like that.
I’m pleased with this eventuality. England has been oppressed by the ridiculous expense of subsidizing Scotland and Northern Ireland for far too long. And having to put up with the cruel submersion of English national culture (i.e. “Englishness”) in the name of a generic British identity is unfair in the extreme. As for the extreme over-representation of politicians from the Celtic littoral of the British Isles in the upper levels of government is galling. Not to say the purely political, ethnic, and theologically biased appointment of the current holder of the office of Archbishop of Canterbury by the previous (Scottish) Prime Minister.
The one thing everyone needs to remember is, that even if the political entity which is the UK breaks up. Her majesty QEII is still queen of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Do a bit of a search and you will find there are groups wanting independence for many of the old heptarchy Kingdoms including Northumberland. Ask a Northumbrian, and he will tell you he is not and Englishman nor a Scotsman. There are still parishes in England where neighbouring towns will not work together because “they” were on the other side during the war.
Amusing article and good for a laugh.
Glasgow seceding from Edinburgh is more likely… :o)
Edinburgh accepting Glaswegians as social equals is equally unlikely.
When the clan aristocracy dispossessed the rank-and-file clansmen of their ancestral lands, the aristocrats moved to Edinburgh and London and the dispossessed and now penniless clansmen moved to Glasgow.
The English and Anglophile Scottish leadership succeeded in destroying the centuries-old clan system through co-option and corruption of the clan aristocracy.
The bewildered and now disenfranchised clansmen, many residing in Glasgow, developed a sort of Sockholm Syndrome hate-love relationship with their former clan leaders.
#8. Perceptive. Having lived in Scotland for a decade I am surprised at the disconnect between the ‘Braveheart’ view of Ecosse and the reality today. The Scottish National Party is far to the left on social and worker issues, and had looked to the success of the Irish Republic in the EU as a reason to ‘go it alone.’ That dream must now look terribly vain. A broken-up UK would leave Scotland looking like Romania (with apologies for the comparison to Romanians). If there is something like this in the future it would be the consequence of very tragic developments on the continent. But not a return to Sir Walter Scott’s Scotland-land.
@ ReinhertJ: Elizabeth Windsor is queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland–the Irish Republic has no queen. And if a United Kingdom should cease to exist, it is questionable whether the Scots, Welsh, Northern Irish, or English would choose to maintain the monarchy.
@Senior Priest: “England has been oppressed by the ridiculous expense of subsidizing Scotland and Northern Ireland for far too long,” you mean the way New Jersey or New York subsidize South Carolina or Mississippi? 🙂
Of course. Long memories.
[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLCEUpIg8rE]Scotland![/url]
Bruce Robison
Actually, Brian, it’s not the way NY subsidizes SC and MS. There is a formula (the name of which escapes me at the moment) which enshrines a differential in social spending between England and the rest of the UK. For every pound England gets, Scotland and NI get around 1.25.
RE: “you mean the way New Jersey or New York subsidize South Carolina or Mississippi?”
Oh we’d be ever so grateful for you folks to stop “helping” us so much.
One word (ok, three words): “North Sea Oil.” Scottish secessionists have always laid claim to the oil off of the Scottish coast. If Scotland had that, they would do quite well for a change– look at Norway. Without it… not so well.
“Oh we’d be ever so grateful for you folks to stop “helping†us so much.”
Was that the royal “We.”
Funny how you say that while our Senators and Representatives fight to keep the money flowing.
RE: “Was that the royal “We.—
Nah — just those who value the Constitution, individual liberty, private property, and free enterprise.
RE: “Funny how you say that while our Senators and Representatives fight to keep the money flowing.”
We made quite a good start of ditching your kind of people in 2010 and I think that trend will continue.