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  • Salmond on Newsnight
  • teamhurtmore
    Free Member

    whatnobeer – Member
    Its not Scotland fault that we get free uni education yet the English have to pay £9000 a year, that was CmD and his cronies who brought that in, and we certainly didnt vote for him.

    OOI – whatnobeer, do you know how much a Scottish Uni receives for each student. Is it the same as in the rest of the UK? Is the revenue to the Uni the same irrespective of whether its the Scottish state (for want of a better word) paying or an English parent?

    Or is it like the case of US students where the revenue (I think?) is considerably more. In which case will the law of unintended consequences mean that some Scots will be disadvantaged as Uni’s under revenue pressure decide to allocate more places to higher revenue generating students? There was an article to this effect in the Guardian re Edinburgh Uni. Imagine if you are a AAA student from a Scottish school and you lose a place to an English student with ABB simply because he will pay more. I assume this cannot happen, but can you confirm?

    igm
    Full Member

    Am I right in thinking that Scotland has 25% of Europe’s wind and tidal resource?

    Sure that was the number.

    ohnohesback
    Free Member

    If so they are welcome to keep them.

    TandemJeremy
    Free Member

    rio – 85+ % of the vote in Scotland goes to leftish parties. tories are an irrelevance on low teens last time and heading for single figures.

    IanMunro
    Free Member

    But only one in five would want to go it alone if it meant a £500 a year reduction in living standards.

    I’m sure there’s something about Scots and thrift in that 😀

    wrecker
    Free Member

    Am I right in thinking that Scotland has 25% of Europe’s wind and tidal resource?

    You’d have to be monumentally brave/stupid to base an economy around that.

    BigButSlimmerBloke
    Free Member

    So what happens when Abu-DabiShetland decides it would rather be independant seeing as you’ve decided the oil’s being divided up geographicaly rather than demographicaly?

    <yawn> so where’s this movement for Shetland Independance then, other than 1 English diddy claiming independance for himself and who is seen as bit of an embarassment by the rest of the islanders?

    tories are an irrelevance

    As Radio Scotland are so fond of mentioning, there are more pandas in Scotland than Tory MPs

    veedubba
    Full Member

    Who pays for all the new Scottish/ currently UK civil servants’ pensions? And all the other state pensions for that matter?

    igm
    Full Member

    Works for Russia. Pay up or the lights are going out. 8)

    teamhurtmore
    Free Member

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/sep/12/scottish-universities-uk-students-fees

    Ah, found the article. Apparently not – interesting to see how this pans out. Edinburgh strongly rumoured to discriminate the other way at the moment. I wonder if this will change?

    £4k difference in revenue to the Uni if I understand the article correctly

    BruceWee
    Free Member

    You’d have to be monumentally brave/stupid to base an economy around that.

    Maybe, but it can’t be much worse in the long run than basing your entire economy around tertiary industries as the UK does now.

    IanMunro
    Free Member

    How’s Scotland going to fair in the battle for Rockall without any warships?

    wrecker
    Free Member

    [hypothetical] What if westminster were to support and fund a shetland independence movement? Increase the living standards of the isles massively in exchange for preferencial oil prices[/hypothetical]

    zokes
    Free Member

    Am I right in thinking that Scotland has 25% of Europe’s wind and tidal resource?

    I very much doubt it. It’s damned windy in lots of places (Ireland being a good example), and pretty much anywhere with a coastline and reasonably shallow sea bed could host a tidal lagoon.

    zokes
    Free Member

    Maybe, but it can’t be much worse in the long run than basing your entire economy around tertiary industries as the UK does now.

    Touche!

    Though I think we know who we can blame for that….

    TandemJeremy
    Free Member

    Zokes – doubt all you want, Its nothing to do with tidal lagoons – its turbines. Scotland has a huge potential for alternative energy and it is vastly greater than most countries

    Rio
    Full Member

    Am I right in thinking that Scotland has 25% of Europe’s wind and tidal resource?

    I can’t even begin to understand what that could possibly mean.

    rio – 85+ % of the vote in Scotland goes to leftish parties. tories are an irrelevance on low teens last time and heading for single figures.

    I would expect all Westminster parties to be an irrelevance in an independent Scotland. The political makeup would change. It would be unwise to assume it would all go Salmonds way.

    mudshark
    Free Member

    People in Scotland people get more spent on them than those in England – £10k v £8.5k? How would Scotland get on without the oil money? Will they come begging to England, once the oil’s mostly gone, like they did before?

    TandemJeremy
    Free Member

    Rio – I suspect you are right to some extent and a mature independent Scotland the SNP would tend to split.

    However the consensus is well to the left of England and has been for 50 years. I am sure it would continue to be so.

    BruceWee
    Free Member

    Will they come begging to England, once the oil’s mostly gone, like they did before?

    Scotland ran out of oil before? Did someone accidentally turn the tap off?

    ohnohesback
    Free Member

    I think that refers to the scottish bankruptcy that led to the 1703 Act of Union.

    elzorillo
    Free Member

    However the consensus is well to the left of England and has been for 50 years. I am sure it would continue to be so.

    Even when they have to start picking the whole tab up for the lifestyle they currently enjoy?

    mudshark
    Free Member

    Scotland ran out of oil before? Did someone accidentally turn the tap off?

    Last time they had a financial crisis….

    BruceWee
    Free Member

    Well, in that case I’m sure that England will take us back like the abused spouses that they are. You just can’t say no when we make those puppy dog eyes can you?

    mcboo
    Free Member

    Well if independence forces the English Labour Party to take a large and permananent step to the right I will be delighted. I may even vote for them.

    Garry_Lager
    Full Member

    Ah, found the article. Apparently not – interesting to see how this pans out. Edinburgh strongly rumoured to discriminate the other way at the moment. I wonder if this will change?

    £4k difference in revenue to the Uni if I understand the article correctly This is unsustainable IMO / E and will change in the next few years. The 3 or 4 top drawer Scottish universities won’t (and shouldn’t) stand for this level of under-funding – they have a powerful voice and will be on the right side of the argument. Independence would be one solution, because then you can have the free education properly paid for by the copious Scottish tax revenues.
    More likely, independence gets booted into the weeds for the next few generations and the Scottish education model edges toward the English fee-paying one.
    Shame really as I strongly support ‘free’ education, as long as we’re, collectively, prepared to pay for it. Free education on the cheap is a recipe for long term decline. Guess that’s another thread.

    TandemJeremy
    Free Member

    elzorillo – scotlands economy is in surplus and has been for 4 of the last 5 years. Its perfectly affordable especially given the savings that would accrue on such things as no more trident, no foundation hospitals, no privatisation of the NHS, no foreign military adventurism. Plus an independent Scotland would be able to set economic policy to suit Scotland

    The UK governments own figures show Scotland has having a deficit less per head of population than the UK as a whole and there are significant flaws in those numbers that exaggerate the deficit.

    The cash flows from Scotland to England.

    Search out Druids posts on this for a nice summary

    chewkw
    Free Member

    mudshark – Member
    Will they come begging to England, once the oil’s mostly gone, like they did before?

    Sell their body parts perhaps?

    Turn Glasgow into fresh farm fish ponds?

    Produce more Salmon(d) that is consider the best fish (spin it) in the world and nothing but the best unlike you lot in the South eating fresh mackerel shite etc from the sea?

    Generate super dooper world bestest biggest turbine wind power?

    Be the world greenest country with the entire population living on renewable energy?

    Yes, the best of the best and the greenest of the green. They are on top of the world.

    Whiskey shots for all every Saturday night.

    si-wilson
    Free Member

    The cash flows from Scotland to England.

    proof?

    teamhurtmore
    Free Member

    Indeed Gary – but it will be interesting to watch. In the meantime, I wish some English Uni’s would look at the 4 year Masters course with a broader first two years. Such an excellent “education”.

    TandemJeremy
    Free Member

    si = search out druidhs posts on it.

    zokes
    Free Member

    Zokes – doubt all you want, Its nothing to do with tidal lagoons – its turbines. Scotland has a huge potential for alternative energy and it is vastly greater than most countries

    And just how will it export all this? Transmission losses stack up pretty fast over those distances…

    There are a lot more places in Europe than are currently utilised capable of generating renewable energy from one source or another. It would be good to see your definitive research that takes this into consideration.

    That and the fact that if worst comes to worst (as it probably will, soon enough), there’s a lot of coal down there too…

    zokes
    Free Member

    Plus an independent Scotland would be able to set economic policy to suit Scotland

    Not really, you either want to stick with GBP, in which case Westminster still has a big say, or the Euro, in which case Germany does. I think we’ve seen what happens to smaller nations under that scenario….

    mudshark
    Free Member

    Whiskey shots for all every Saturday night.

    Imported from Ireland?!

    Garry_Lager
    Full Member

    Indeed Gary – but it will be interesting to watch. In the meantime, I wish some English Uni’s would look at the 4 year Masters course with a broader first two years. Such an excellent “education”.

    Take it the speech marks mean you don’t rate it. I was an academic at Edinburgh up to recently and thought the degree structure was pretty poor in that respect. 5 year degree course for most of our Masters students with the first year being a wide-ranging study of bolloxology. Students could enter direct into the 2nd year if they were good though.

    chewkw
    Free Member

    mudshark – Member

    Whiskey shots for all every Saturday night.

    Imported from Ireland?!

    How dare you!

    How dare you for degrading the Bestest whiskey country in the world!

    The whiskey in Scotland is the bestest of the bestest and nothing like the shite everyone produce all over the world.

    Without whiskey the world will stop spinning and wars will start and starvation will increase all over …

    Whiskey is the blood of the world.

    😆

    p/s: very very small invisible print … ingredients might come from Ireland or other part of the world and the whiskey producers might be owned by multinationals …

    zokes
    Free Member

    chewkw

    Funny, I always thought the Scottish were famous for whisky.

    The Irish are however undeniably very good at whiskey

    HTH

    teamhurtmore
    Free Member

    On a far more important note, will the Scottish tennis player Andy Murray now lose to Djokovic or will the British tennis player Andy Murray now go on to win the Aussie Open? 😉

    Well done that man – and a couple of relatively easy matches/walk overs. Can he tame the Djok?

    teamhurtmore
    Free Member

    Gary – on the contrary, I rate it very highly. I learned more in my second year (still broad) than in the rest of the other three years. My ” ” were meant to indicate education in its proper sense. I think English Unis could learn a lot from Scottish ones.

    First year was too easy though to be frank!

    zokes
    Free Member

    Can he tame the Djok?

    Probably not, but it’ll be good to think so for a while before he lets us down in the same inevitable Henmanesque way that always seems to happen in tennis

Viewing 40 posts - 161 through 200 (of 458 total)

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