As an Englishman married to a Scot and with a home north of the border, I do have a keen interest in how this will pan out. As with all political debates, it is hard to get to the truth. The SNP will make repeated claims backed up by 'facts' of how much richer Scotland will be if it goes solo. Westminster will argue exactly the opposite with 'counter facts' and those in the middle will have to make a tough decision with far reaching consequences. For regular readers of 'The Economist', they provided an excellent article a few weeks ago that suggested it would be a huge economic mistake for Scotland to make albeit, who can put a price on freedom. I understand that Alex Salmond was enraged by the article from the aforementioned highly respected magazine.
When the Czechs and Slovaks split up in the early 90's, the division of assets between the 2 was fairly easy, as the population had a nice 2:1 ratio (10mil:5mil). Slovakia, with a similar population to Scotland, experienced a huge public funding shock on the realisation that it suddenly had to create it's own FCO, Home Office, MOD HQ, embassies abroad, Border Security etc... even down to a whole bunch of senior officers being required to fill newly created NATO posts. I wonder if any of this has been factored in and I really would like to see detailed future plans and costs before arguing with Mrs PA's family on how they should vote. One thing is for certain, individual tax rates would take a huge hike to pay for the massive welfare bill north of the border. Hopefully, I could stay in the English tax system despite being domiciled in Scotland?
Of course, as we are seeing in Greece and France, I'm sure the SNP would be succesful if they promised a free I-Pad to all those who voted 'yes'.
Serious bit over with - now you can return to the racist comments that fill up 90% of this thread....