{"id":3797,"date":"2018-11-03T17:54:18","date_gmt":"2018-11-03T16:54:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/?p=3797"},"modified":"2018-11-19T09:33:26","modified_gmt":"2018-11-19T08:33:26","slug":"on-scottish-independence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/archives\/3797","title":{"rendered":"On Scottish Independence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Scotland is a country.<\/li>\n
  2. Countries choose their own governments.<\/li>\n
  3. No countries are truly independent but choose to pool some sovereignty\u00a0for mutual benefit.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    or<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Scotland is a region.<\/li>\n
    2. Regions choose local representatives to a central government.<\/li>\n
    3. Regions are delegated powers by a central government which may choose to revoke them.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Pick one option. To coin a well warn phrase, you can’t have your cake and eat it.<\/p>\n

      By all means support the continuation of the United Kingdom but if you do please don’t say that Scotland is a country or nation. Within the UK it is the region of North Britain and only a nation in the same sense that Fife is still the Pictish “Kingdom of Fife”.<\/p>\n

      If you believe Scotland is a country then it should get the economic and foreign policies its people vote for not those its neighbour votes for. It should be an independent sovereign state.<\/p>\n

      Either way you are a nationalist. You are either a British Nationalist or a Scottish Nationalist. The only way you can not be a nationalist is by really not caring.<\/p>\n

      You may wish that all these nationalists would just shut up and let people get on with their lives. You favour the status quo<\/em>. In this case the angst you feel is nationalist angst, British Nationalist angst. You may not like to call it that because you normally use “nationalist” as a derogatory term for other people. I have yet to meet a non-nationalist.<\/p>\n

      Of course none of this is worthing fighting, killing or dying for in a generally liberal, developed world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Scotland is a country. Countries choose their own governments. No countries are truly independent but choose to pool some sovereignty\u00a0for mutual benefit. or Scotland is a region. Regions choose local representatives to a central government. Regions are delegated powers by a central government which may choose to revoke them. Pick…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-misc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3797"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3822,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3797\/revisions\/3822"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}