The General Election

[Guest tv tanned]

Unfortunately' date=' politics generally doesn't attract "good" men.[/quote']

you'll find that there are a number of exceptions, and they exist on all sides before anyone insinuates i only mean from the snp...

[soundian]

you'll find that there are a number of exceptions' date=' and they exist on all sides before anyone insinuates i only mean from the snp...[/quote']

Power doesn't corrupt, remember that kids.

(Strange sense of humour you have)

[Guest tv tanned]

Power doesn't corrupt' date=' remember that kids.

(Strange sense of humour you have)[/quote']

likewise

[soundian]

likewise

Thank you.

[Guest neil ex]

must read up...

I really must do some more reading before May.. I guess I'm in favour of Charles Kennedy the most, however I don't feel strongly for any of the main Parties, and I certainly need to know more before I vote..

[Project S.A.M.]

Yes

Then what are you doing to change the present system? If nothing that must mean it pleases you. Therefore you are pleased to be part of a state which projects itself as the British nation.

I also fail to see why you think that Scottish independence is a "parochial backward" step. Are you arguing that Canada' date=' New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, India have been parochial and backward too for rejecting the (ahem) outward looking and futuristic British imperium?

So why do you accept it then? Why do you accept a Government imposing it on you? Why do you accept such authoritarianism? By doing so you accept a British nationality. If you don't want this why do you allow them to do it?

So you support having a British nationality.

[/quote']

Either you've totally missed the point, are deliberately misrepresenting what I said, or you actually do think in these "with us or against us" terms...

Let me try and be as unambiguous as possible:

I accept the fact that, as things stand now, it is more or less unavoidable and convenient that I have a nationality.

Insofar as I am a human being, it is not essential- ie human beings have in the past existed quite happily without this status and have been no less human, and have had, I imagine, a sense of community and identity.

As I have said, having a nationality 'imposed' on me is a necessary evil- regardless of whether it is under the current state or an independent Scottish state. I don't think either are intrinsically valuable- if the British state disappears in the next 20 years, nothing of real value will have been necessarily lost, just as if an independent Scottish state appears, nothing of real value will have been gained. Unless it can be shown that there is something intrinsically worthwhile about having a Scottish nationality, and that having British nationality is of intrinsic demerit, I can't see how the claim that I am a British nationalist follows.

Remember, a nation is not a real entity. If people stop believing in it, it goes away.

As I have already suggested, the fact that an existing political state came into being in immoral circumstances is, in itself, no reason for requiring that such a state ought to be dismantled. Of course states or nations should resist invasion. But the fact that a state exists because of an invasion which occurred centuries ago is no longer morally relevant, unless oppression still goes on, which is not the case in Scotland.

No nation has a right to self-determination- simply because a nation is not the sort of thing that can have rights. (Read that carefully, please) The idea that Scotland or any other nation has a collective will is a myth, and one perpetrated by the general personification used in the associated rhetoric. Rather than talking about what 'Scotland thinks' or wants, why not try 'people in/of Scotland'?

[Skull Commander]

i deliberately chose to stay out of this thread

Typical politician, aways going back on his word.

[Hardcore Mel]

i like the fact that the bookies are citing that lib dems are only 10 times as likely to get in to government as father dougal maguire is to become the next pope.