Monday 15 September 2014

It's been a while

Yes, your scribe has been off to foreign parts (I'm not including England in that just yet), and on returning the polls have narrowed and the atmosphere has grown even more febrile and poisonous. Sorry! I mean peaceful and joyous, of course.

One of the things which is skated over in this debate is the obvious outcome of a yes vote - we'll live in a small country rather than a medium sized country. Are there no implications to that at all? Maybe it's simply too prosaic for people to comment on... and yet....
Let us be that simple commentator. Compare Lanark and Edinburgh. Edinburgh has a couple of arthouse cinemas. Lanark has no such things. Not because there is no one in Lanark interested in watching the latest release from Iran, but simply because there aren't enough people who are. It's a small town.
And you can carry that analogy into Scotland vs the UK. As part of the UK we can share in a community which is much larger than Scotland. Will there be room for a Radio 6 Music in Scotland? What about the New Statesman magazine? What's its Scottish readership?
How many people in Scotland take part in activities which are organised UK wide because only then can the numbers reach critical mass? You may of course say that there is nothing to stop them still taking part, post independence. But then again, you've just built a border and created a foreign country... to what end? 

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