Hacker News Reader

almost magic how far some western countries have advanced - in most of the world the "separatist" is pretty much equivalent of "terrorist" and a valid reason to send tanks in while in UK they just let the vote happen (even though it would be a high treason just a couple hundred years ago there too).

View on HN

The UK is unusual though - it is a "Union" with Scotland maintaining a lot of separate institutions that predate the union in 1707: notably the legal and education systems which are often completely different from those in the rUK. For the last while we've even had our own government here in Edinburgh.

So we were already a sort of a "country within a country" anyway.

Is rUK pronounced ruck or are-you-kay?

I've always read it as ruck, or just read Rump-UK in my head.

I think it was a typo. I've never heard of the term before.

edit: Oh, it seems it's a Scottish term for Rest-of-UK. TIL.

You must not be familiar with the recent history of Northern Ireland - widespread gerrymandering, suppression of civil rights, massacres of civilians by unaccountable armed forces of the state, illegal torture/detention camps for political detainees etc. A lot has changed but all of that is the very recent living memory of the UK.

But that is exactly my point. The fact that just mere 2-3 decades later such things didn't happen in Scotland is mind-boggling.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com