There is another name: Great Britain, or GB. Feel free to call us that. :-) Yeah, technically it doesn't include Northern Ireland but we might as well expand the definition to include them. Why not?

Often when we compete in sporting events, we call our team "team GB".

Heh, "As an American" I find you utterly hypocritical. Abraham Lincoln set the military on Southern states that wanted to secede and I bet Obama would too if any state did today. And you have the gall to complain about countries not allowing self-determination?

The Tories fucked up pretty bad, and will probably continue to fuck it up for union.

Which is why people need to vote UKIP. Hopefully UKIP is about to get its first elected MP in the commons, and long may their rise continue. They don't hate Scotland and are a grassroots party so will hopefully engage with a lot of voters from all over the UK. I think they would actually institute proper constitutional reform too.

As an English guy, you really have little idea (it seems) of the reasons why Scotland might wish to go independent.

I agree on that, mainly because I don't think there are any good ones.

* getting rid of the tories (Scotland has not voted for a Tory government in the last 20 years but has suffered many years of their policies)

Well they don't just afflict Scotland and it's not fair to judge the entire rest of the UK as if we all support the Tories, but whatever, I'm done arguing about this. I would just make a passing comment, though. Without one of those evil Tories, David Cameron, Scotland wouldn't be having an independence referendum. No, really - he had absolutely no requirement to hold one. Really quite ironic. He should probably be on the new Scottish flag. :-)

No, not really. Anyway, why would Cameron care about looking like a tyrant to the Scots? The Tories basically have no presence in Scotland anyway, and nothing to lose. Nevertheless, there are myriad ways he could have set up the referendum to as to make it very hard for the SNP to win; requiring a 75% vote in favour for example, or allowing Scots currently resident in England to vote - or even allowing the whole UK to vote. Why he decided to set up a referendum extremely favourable to the independence campaigners is anyone's guess.

Yeah, I won't. Otherwise then you might have to tackle Normandy, Berry, Foix, the part of the Basque region and Catalonia that are in France and wonder how you would feel if they voted to break away from your Glorieux Pays.

I live in England NOW. I'm not a complete tosser who's sold his soul to the Americans and The Daily Show and Jon Stewart.

I don't see what the beef over immigration is -- it actually works both ways. There are about 1 million Britons living in Spain right now under the same rules.

England is one of the most densely-populated countries in the world. Part of the beef over immigration is that we need to build 100,000s of new houses every year because there are more and more and more people, and some of us would actually quite like to stop before we get to the stage of sea-to-sea housing developments.

Evidence, please, that they "get screwed" on a regular basis? There was the Thatcher era, where they got hurt because anywhere that had powerful industrial unions did (not just Scotland, by any means). Apart from that, for the past few hundred years of union, Scotland seems to have done pretty damn well out of union.

Um yeah, but surely with their Washington DC overlords like every other US state? How is that any more "acceptable" than London being overlords of Scotland?

I suspect the way things might go is like this - if there's a yes vote, the complications of cleaving the UK in two will soak up all spare Parliamentary time and political capacity for the next few years and push out an EU in/out referendum by some time. By this point the English will have realised that Scotland is desperately trying to get back in and being a part of the EU is a significant bargaining tool with the new iScotland. Seeing the effects of not being in the EU first hand will change a lot of minds, especially once the serious debates start going.

Then again, Scotland by that point will probably be in such a state that they would be a net recipient from the EU - meaning that unless the rUK pulls out, their EU contributions will be going to fund an independent Scotland that recently told the rUK to go fuck itself. Sounds like the best argument yet for leaving the EU. :-)

Tell that to Abraham Lincoln. He set the military on a bunch of US states that wanted self-determination. Or are the US schools painting Lincoln as an evil tyrant these days?

Which makes it all the more hilarious that the Scottish Greens are supporting independence. Scotland's #1 economic crutch is basically going to be "drill, baby, drill!" How exactly does that fit their agenda again...? I guess all the million and one wind turbines will make up for it.

Any voter should consider the probable situation twenty or fourty years from now, not whatever happens in a year or two.

What, you mean when they're on their deathbed? Yeah, that'll be really useful for them during the bulk of their lives.

The UK agreed to this vote.

Cameron ageed to this vote. Most UK citizens would not have. There was no good reason I can see for Cameron to have agreed to it.