Scotland, The Election And Other Things

Scotland is part of the British Empire now known as Great Britain. It has a population of a little more than seven million people. It has had an off and on relationship with England for a thousand years or more and has often been treated as a stepchild. It is valuable to England, because it serves not only as a port for England’s nuclear submarines, but its North Sea oil fills the coffers of the English. The argument with the oil is it is beginning to deplete and the Scots are being told it will be gone sooner than later. Scotland has a large coastline for a small country. It measures over 7300 miles and this fact alone makes it very useful to England. Energy is one of the main products of Scotland and it is one of the largest producers of petroleum in the European Union. Scotland has many natural resources such as iron, zinc, potash, coal, timber, natural gas, oil, fish, silica sand and more. They are now developing all sorts of renewable energy sources. At one time Scotland was the richest country in the world with the highest per capita income.

There are two basic treaties which established the boundaries of Scotland and they are the Treaty of York which was ratified in 1237 A.D. between Scotland and England and the Treaty of Perth which was between Scotland and Norway and ratified in 1266 A.D. Scotland joined with England in 1707 under the Acts of Union. The islands around Scotland have different histories. One island, Berwick used to be an independent country, but was taken by England in 1482. The Isle of Man is a crown dependency outside of the United Kingdom. Orkney was annexed to the Scottish Crown in 1472 and the Shetland Islands are now part of the Scottish Parliament constituency. While Scotland would not be a hugely populated country on its own, it has a far larger population than some other European Union countries. Β The entire European Union had a population of 503,665,739 people in 2013, but some states were only a tiny fraction of that population. Many of the countries have a smaller population than Scotland would have if it were an independent country.

Bulgaria has about the same amount of people with 7,261,00, Denmark has 5,612,000, Finland 5,436,000, Slovakia 5,413,000, Ireland 4,662,000, Croatia 4,258,000, Lithuania 2,956,999, Slovenia 2,002,000, Latvia 2,011,000, Estonia 1,283,000, Cyprus 888,000, Luxembourg 542,000 and Malta 419,000. You can see by these figures if Scotland had become independent it should have had no problem supporting itself since countries with far fewer people are able to do it. This proves one thing, the talk from England about Scotland not being able to make it if it would have declared YES in the vote for independence is baloney. As most of us know by now when the votes came in the NOs won. The people of Scotland had been promised more benefits by English politicians and this may have swayed some of the voters. It reminds me of when State Senator Bo Watson and Rep. Gerald McCormick interfered in the union election in a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga and made promises they never kept if the workers voted no to union representation. It was enough to change the outcome of the vote.

Taking about the election there are many different videos out already showing all sorts of irregularities. One clearly shows a poll worker who is supposedly there to count ballots taking a pad of blank ballots and marking NO on them and putting them with the other ballots. Another shows a woman stuffing the ballot box with what looks like hundreds of ballots while another woman, a pole watcher purposely looks the other way as she travels back and forth to the ballot box for more stuffing. Then there is the table with the ballots on it. This table is clearly marked “NO Ballots” and yet if we zoom in we see a lot of YES ballots piled on it and seemingly counted as NO ballots. Could this election have been one of the most corrupt in the Western world? There is all sorts of talk stating the elite in England would never allow the Scots to become independent and some are saying this was a rigged election. Rumors were circulated which stated the pensioners would lose their pensions or some money if the vote came in YES. There were also rumors medical services would no longer be free. These rumors were enough to scare the older citizens into voting NO even though there was no evidence these things would have been true.

The history between Scotland and England is a troubled one as anyone who has seen the movie Braveheart knows. The movie may have been mostly fiction, but it highlighted the differences between Scotland and England which lasted until the present day. Many modern day Scots believe they have been shortchanged in their relationship with England. There were many wars and invasions between the two and the English even took the most sacred stone of the Scots, the Stone of Scone or the Stone of Destiny. The Stone of Scone is referred to in England as the Coronation Stone. The stone was placed under the Scottish throne and meant a lot to the Scots. Edward I captured the stone in 1296. He had it fitted into an English throne chair and most English monarchs have been crowned sitting on this throne chair. This has been a sore point with the Scottish ever since. In 1950 four students from Scotland stole the stone and it broke. They took one part back to Scotland and buried the other, but four months later it was recovered by the English police as was the broken part which had been buried. To pacify the Scots the English ordered the stone returned to Scotland where it should be kept, except for use in English coronations after which it would be returned to Scotland.

Did the Scottish people really vote NO and if they did was it the right thing to do. I am not Scottish so my opinion may anger a lot of them, but this is not my intent. I believe the election was swayed by the English and now that a NO vote was registered, not only will none of the promises be kept, but there may be some punishment issued for taking such a vote. I hope I am wrong.