Simon's Blog

Over the past few days the First Minister of Scotland appeared to be acting like a spoil brat. Told on Thursday that there is no circumstances whereby an independent Scotland can retain a currency union with the rest of the UK he has refused to accept this. Instead of coming up with cogent reasons why the rest of the UK should join with Scotland he has instead insisted that he knows best and to say otherwise is just wrong.

I have never understood this need to enter into a currency union in the first place. I thought that the whole idea of independence was just that – to be independent of the rest of the UK or actually to be independent of England which is legitimate goal. Then one of the first acts independence is to join England in a currency union which, by it nature, gives up sovereignty. Mr Salmond seems to assume just because he thinks something is a good idea then every one else must do as well – that includes the 50 odd million who live in England. I am no expert on these things but this would seem to be something that would need to have a referendum over and I doubt very much any one in England will support it. In short it is not viable and the so called £500 million in transaction charges that are supposed to be created by a lack of union doesn’t seem to be an obsticle. Companies will just insist they are paid in pound sterling and the charges will fall on Scotland. Failing that they will move away from Scotland as a base of operation – probably to England.

There appears to be a lot of guff, which I guess this blog falls under that heading, being written about it is also Scottish pound and many Scots have contributed to the success of the pound and so it be automatically their right to continue to use the pound should Scotland gain independence. This is really quite silly as the Pound Sterling is the currency of the United Kingdom and as Scotland has left that country they no longer have access to the support of the Pound. This same argument has been put forward about automatic membership of the EU. At the moment people in Scotland are EU citizens, through their UK citizenship and so, the argument goes, this should continue after they leave the UK. But of course they no longer will be citizens of the UK but citizens of a new independent county with all the freedoms and limitation that comes with that and as a new country they are not members of the EU.

I am not against Scottish independence, far from it, it just seems that if you are an independent country you act as such. You don’t immediately give up that independence. I also believe that My Salmond is right in that should the vote go for independence there will be some sort of accommodation will be sorted between Scotland and rest of the UK. I don’t believe it will be plain sailing and many of the things will take a long time to sort out – certainly beyond the two years allowed and in the end it will all come back to money, whether it is Pound Sterling, Euro or groat.