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Comment by gaius | Hacker News Reader

No, the vote makes perfect sense: Scotland wants political autonomy hence voting SNP in this election, but would like to keep the English money tap flowing, hence voting to stay in the UK in the referendum. It remains to be seen how long this will be possible. Certainly if it were up to the English taxpayer-voter, Scotland would be fiscally autonomous faster than you can toss a caber.

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So if there are so many people in England keen to see Scotland go, and I know that there are a lot of people who feel that way, why was so much effort put into the effort by UK organisations to keep Scotland in the Union?

Was it just a loss of face or pride thing?

We'd nowhere else to put Trident, in the short term.

I'm sure there must be somewhere nice in Kent.

Very much so. It would be another bit of the Empire leaving, and a refutation of the idea of the UK as the greatest country in the world.

There's also a weird strain of Protestant Unionism that is stuck in the 18th century but seems just below the surface (and on the surface when the Orange Order are marching)

The rUK never had a say in it - this point is kinda where things are right now. As of 2011 census the population of Yorkshire, as an example, was just marginally higher than the population of Scotland. Except Scottish people get more money from the treasury and their MPs got to vote on what happens in Yorkshire, the converse largely not being true. It wasn't until the referendum that this situation got the spotlight.

Nonetheless I think in general, as a UK citizen myself, that the British (ie UK citizens, the nomenclature gets convoluted!) consider the Union to be central to UK strength as a nation in terms of society and business and much else (education, sport, language, identity, history, position on the world stage, defence, ...).

Dissent grows though - once the Pandora's Box of the West Lothian Question had been opened and it started to sink in, and we saw that many in Scotland wanted to ditch the rest of the UK and make a run with what they perceived to be vital resources, that I feel rather unsettled people. Why shouldn't the rUK have voted at the same time whether to kick Scotland out of the Union too - that would have only been fair.

Her Majesties government certainly made efforts to retain Scotland in the Union, that could well be key.

"education, sport, language, identity, history, position on the world stage, defence, ..."

I can see that there is an impact in defence - Trident is based here and the Scots have always been over-represented in the UK military. The rest just sound like potentially damaged pride to me...

Can you expand on that - you mean that people who're proud to be British feel that they've been stabbed in the back to some extent? I don't see how that helps the Unionist position??

Expand on what part?

"consider the Union to be central to UK strength as a nation"

Really? Scotland is a small and relatively unimportant part of the UK. What possible direct impact could our gaining independence have on the rUK apart from damaged pride in that whoever is PM at the time would get made fun of at the next G8 summit for losing part of his/her country?

It's unimportant like your eyes are unimportant because they're small. Or like only one of your family dying is unimportant because there are several family members.

I'm British and have lived part of my life in Scotland, I don't consider it another country, it's part of our country and my relatives who live there are the same nationality as me.

It's a visceral, and probably illogical, thing to a certain extent - like feeling attached more to family members than to other people.

Also Scotland ain't that small, it's population is that of Yorkshire, it's geographic size is pretty big as a proportion of the UK (~1/3 I think).

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