Your Scotland, Not Your Referendum.

So, King Eck's Prime Minister has taken it upon herself to inform European foreign ministers that SNPland would like to distance itself from those nasty English Tory Europhobes. Apart from the sheer chutzpah of it, yet again the nationalists are showing their true colours by extolling the virtues of one union, while ignoring the same virtues in the other.

Following Prime Minister David Cameron’s speech on Wednesday I would like to make the position of the Scottish Government clear as regards the European Union and Scotland’s place in it.

As you know, a referendum will be held in Scotland in the latter part of 2014 on the question of independence for Scotland.  The Edinburgh Agreement signed by the First Minister and the Prime Minister on 15 October last year sets out an agreed path towards that referendum which will be adhered to by both the United Kingdom and Scottish Governments.  That agreement is important in the European context as it provides reassurance to Member States that the outcome of the referendum will be respected by both sides and that in the event of a vote in favour of independence the Scottish and United Kingdom Governments will work together constructively to implement the democratic will of the Scottish people.

Actually, your so-called "Edinburgh Agreement" (no, not that one) says that the two governments are committed to continue to work together constructively in the light of the outcome, whatever it is, in the best interests of the people of Scotland and of the rest of the United Kingdom. Perhaps La Sturgeon needs reminding that the Scottish Government also promised to work constructively after the democratic will of the Scottish people has rejected independence?

Like all other nations in the EU, Scotland benefits greatly from the peace and security provided by membership. Our citizens enjoy freedom of movement and the right to work and study in other Member States. The ability to trade within a single market of 500 million citizens is a central aspect of our strategy to stimulate growth by increasing international trade.  The European Union continues to be Scotland’s top overseas export destination, our exports to the EU are up by around 15 per cent to over £11 billion according to figures released this week.

And of course, Scotland also benefits from the peace and security provided by its membership of the UK.  Our citizens have even more freedoms and rights in the other countries of the UK.  And the rest of the UK is Scotland's top export destination, full stop. In fact, more than twice as much as the rest of the world put together.

However we understand that those reform ambitions can only be achieved through dialogue with Member States from within the EU.  That is why we do not support the holding of an in/out referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership.  We have no intention of leaving the European Union.  On the contrary we will seek to be a constructive member of the Union working with other Member States to maximise the benefits we have enjoyed as members for over 40 years.

Is Cameron not trying to reform the EU through dialogue with Member States from within the EU before having his referendum? Would we enjoy the same benefits as the 20th largest and newest EU Member State as we have done as the third largest and one of the oldest? And how about seeking to be a constructive member of that other Union, working with other member countries to maximise the benefits we have enjoyed as members for over 300 years?

I sincerely hope that if the Prime Minister comes to hold an in/out referendum, by that time Scotland will be an independent Member State and will be playing its part as a valued and active partner within European Union.

"The people who live in Scotland are the best people to make decisions about Scotland's future." That's what the Scottish Government said in Your Scotland, Your Referendum.  But obviously Scotland's future in the EU is a matter reserved to party ideology, so we won't be needing a referendum on that.

Guess who?

In an economic crisis millions of people suddenly decided to turn to an unconventional leader they thought had "charisma" because he connected with their fears, hopes and latent desire to blame others for their predicament.

Who are they talking about?

Alex Salmond?

No... Adolf Hitler.

(Told you there'd be Nazi references...)

Wishful thinking and the EU

So, after everyone else has offered their tuppenceworth on the debacle of the SNP's arrant wishful thinking on European Union membership, Union Jock has felt obliged to offer his.

In the lamentable absence of any real attempt by the SNP to determine the issues and obstacles facing an independent Scotland and EU membership, the nationalists have been clutching at any passing straws. They have naturally latched on to Graham Avery's written evidence on the foreign policy implications of, and for, a separate Scotland to the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. But his is only one of 14 submissions to the committee, some of which directly contradict his views. And even Avery admits that Scotland would be unlikely to be able to negotiate opt-outs from obligations such as the Schengen Agreement, something the nats haven't been trumpeting quite so much.

Avery appears to be in part using the common nationalist argument about Scots being existing EU citizens and how it would be unthinkable to deny them this citizenship against their will. But those of us in Scotland who are British (and hence EU) citizens could (if we wished) surely remain so, until and unless our UK citizenship was withdrawn from us - and that could only be done by an act of the UK parliament. A Scottish declaration of independence would not in itself change our citizenship. As a historical precedent, after Irish independence in 1922, Irish citizens remained (as far as the UK was concerned) British subjects until after the British Nationality Act of 1948 was passed, and even then existing British passport holders, anomg others, continued to hold their British status.

The SNP still seem to be clinging to their dubious assertion that both Scotland and the rest of the UK would be considered successor states by the EU and other international organisations. Nationalists like to point to the 1978 Vienna Convention on Succession of States in respect of Treaties, which decrees that states which result from "separation of parts of a state" are to be considered equal inheritors of the treaty rights and obligations of the original state. But that's not an EU convention, and it hasn't even been adopted widely internationally. In fact, only four EU countries (Czech Republic, Cyprus, Slovakia and Slovenia) have ratified it.

Precedents for multiple successor state are rather thin on the ground - as today's article in The Economist point out, in the cases of the UK and Ireland, India and Pakistan, the Soviet Union, Ethiopia and Eritrea and Sudan and South Sudan, there was only one successor state recognised internationally. In the rather more symmetrical case of the break-up of Czechoslovakia, neither the Czech Republic nor Slovakia were considered successor states by the UN. Certainly, the recent statements by prominent European figures such as Barroso, Garcia-Margallo and Reding give no indication that they are entertaining the possibility.

Same old tunes on the Ross Bandstand.

Saturday's March of the McGlashans saw the usual uneasy alliance of Wee Eck, Margo, Patrick and Foxy, plus assorted hangers-on, all proclaiming their very different ideas of a separatist Scotland to a small and motley band of historical re-enactment enthusiasts, Basques, Venetians, Flemish, CND members, 32-county Irish republicans, Tommy Sheridan groupies and pot-smokers (sorry, the Legalise Cannabis Campaign). But the rhetoric was entirely predicable.

El Presidente opened with “Let’s think of some of the things Westminster chooses. Why should they choose austerity when we want to choose investment? We choose a different way to protect the people of Scotland and we want the right to choose whether our people should be sent into illegal wars and we want the right to choose to remove weapons of mass destruction from the shores of Scotland.”

Well, it's not just Westminster who chose austerity. Our neighbours in Eck's infamous "arc of prosperity" chose austerity too, and much more severe than ours. Though, being the small and vulnerable nation that it is, it was probably more of a necessity than a choice in Ireland's case.

As for "sending our people into illegal wars", well it may be news to Eck, but National Service ended 50 years ago. Our armed forces now consist of people who volunteered of their own free will to serve the UK. Anyone who joins up, especially in the last decade or so, does so in the full knowledge, or even expectation, or, dare I say it, even hope, that they will see active service, with all the risks to life and limb that that entails. This is amply illustrated by the fact that recruitment into HM Forces from, of all places, the Republic of Ireland, has increased in recent years. Scotland separating from the UK wouldn't stop those Scots who wanted to join the UK military from doing so, just as they do now.

And the right to choose to remove weapons of mass destruction? As Dr Michael Williams of Royal Holloway College pointed out this month, the UK's nuclear deterrent ain't going anywhere anytime soon; “Due to the sheer impossibility of relocating the assets at Faslane in the near term (if ever) a condition of Scottish independence will need to be long-term basing rights of the UK fleet in Faslane.”

Of course Eck claimed the recent British Social Attitudes survey "showed that independence was now the most popular option". Well, that 43% response that the nationalists have seized on with glee actually required a weasel-worded question which made no mention at all of the I-word. The more explicit question only resulted in 32% in favour of independence. Which just goes to prove how important it is for the referendum question to be clear and honest.

As for the supporting acts, Aamer Anwar made the embarrassing confession that he had been “inspired” by the film Braveheart. A film once described by John O'Farrell as being so historically inaccurate that it could not have been more historically inaccurate, even if a plasticine dog had been inserted in the film and the title changed to William Wallace and Gromit. Anwar went on: "The soul of Scotland, long suppressed, is finally finding its voice." Oops. Obviously didn't get the memo from Wee Eck earlier this year that "Scotland is not oppressed and we have no need to be liberated". Colin Fox announced “This is the beginning of the Scottish spring”. Sorry Colin, Gorgeous George got there first with his "Bradford Spring". Although to be fair, Foxy probably beats him for sheer ludicrousness by a nose.

On the benefits of unification ...by the SNP.

So, according to the Riaghaltas na h-Alba, we can look forward to a new, unified national Police Service of Scotland and Scottish Fire and Rescue Service as of the 1st of April next year.

Curious about the justifications given for the unification of these services, Union Jock decided to peruse the Scottish Government's Police Reform Programme Outline Business Case, published in September 2011. Cutting to the chase (Chapter 8: Identifying the Preferred Option), the main benefit proposed is, of course, cost saving, due to the obvious economies of scale: an estimated annual recurring cash saving of £106 million, they claim.

But there are non-monetary benefits as well. According to the business case, these are as follows:

Retaining separate forces would perpetuate the existing inequalities of provision across Scotland. Compared to an alternative option of a small number of regional authorities, the unified option would remove unnecessary duplication and ensure consistency across Scotland, given the autonomy the regional bodies would have in developing their own delivery models. The regional option would also require the most complex, lengthy and potentially risky transformation programme. So a single service model presents the best opportunity to drive out duplication, ensure consistency, and rationalise existing systems and structures as far as possible. Efficiencies would be realised through economies of scale; expertise, capability and budgets could be pooled at a national level then targeted to local need. Stopping the duplication of support services and deploying specialist resources flexibly across all of Scotland in line with need, would protect the services people care about most and lead to a safer Scotland. Anything short of full unification would involve a series of compromises and sub-optimal arrangements which would cumulatively undermine the economic and organisational case.

So, in short, the SNP administration say that maintaining separate fiefdoms is bad because it wastes money, leads to inefficiencies and inequalities and prevents the pooling of resources. Only by unification can a service to the public be provided effectively. In addition, complex, lengthy and risky transformation programmes are best avoided.

Fancy that.

Chairman Eck's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution?

So Wee Eck has had a bash at answering one of my 37 questions in his speech at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. Apparently BBC Scotland and the increasingly autonomous STV aren't tartan and shortbread enough for him. His idea of public service broadcasting in a separate Scotland would be to sequester the assets of BBC Scotland, and using the £320m annual licence fee income in Scotland to buy in programming from the BBC and create "more nationally focused material". To placate the proles, the bought-in content would focus on mainstream drivel (or "programmes of of outstanding quality" according to Eck) such as EastEnders, but anything remotely intellectual (or "not of overwhelming demand in Scotland" in his words) probably wouldn't make it to Scotland. So the subtext here would appear to be that Scotland is "too wee, too poor, too stupid" to care about anything in the rest of the UK other than soap operas, or to have any significant audience for high-brow content. And isn't "nationally focused" just a nice way of saying "parochial"?

Of course, he pointed to BBC Alba reaching viewing figures of 900,000 as an indication of demand for more Scottish content. BBC Alba is the Gaelic-language TV channel that knocked ten BBC radio stations (ironically including Radio nan Gaidheal) off Freeview in Scotland in order to entertain, educate and inform the 1.2% of the Scottish population who have the Gaelic. However, I presume he didn't point out that the 900,000 figure was reached when BBC Alba was showing a Rangers football match.

37 Questions.

The Scottish Conservative chief whip has recently been attempting, to no avail, to get answers to some obvious and pertinent questions about the SNP's plans, or lack of plans, for a separate Scottish state. In total, 19 parliamentary questions, all of which have been returned unanswered.

As it happens, Union Jock has been working on his own list of national bodies and other aspects of UK national infrastructure that we now take for granted, and are not currently devolved (or in a few cases, not fully devolved) in Scotland. So far I have 37, though I'm sure the list is not exhaustive:

1. Defence and national security
2. Citizenship and passports
3. Foreign relations and diplomatic service
4. Immigration control
5. Social security
6. Tax and customs collection and administration
7. Central bank, currency, reserves, bonds etc.
8. Financial securities market (i.e. stock exchange)
9. Corporate law
10. Company registration infrastructure
11. Financial regulation
12. Academic research funding and infrastructure
13. Postal service
14. Driver and vehicle licensing
15. Civil aviation and air traffic control
16. Marine transport
17. Transport safety and accident investigation
18. Railway infrastructure and regulation
19. Public service broadcasting
20. Broadcasting regulation
21. Telecoms regulation
22. Energy regulation
23. Energy distribution infrastructure
24. Business and competition regulation
25. Professional regulation
26. Health and safety regulation
27. Employment legislation
28. Gambling regulation
29. Consumer protection
30. Advertising regulation
31. Medical ethics regulation
32. Data protection
33. Equal opportunities regulation
34. Industrial standards
35. Weather forecasting
36. Mapping and geographic information (i.e. Ordnance Survey)
37. Film and video game classification

If the SNP want to be taken seriously, and not as a bunch of delusional fantasists, then they need to be providing convincing and feasible proposals about how each of these these functions and responsibilities would be executed in their hypothetical independent Scotland, and by whom. Not only that, but honest, detailed estimates of the time, money and effort required to set up, transition to, and run their alternative arrangements are also needed.

We're waiting.