No to 70 million.

Posted by Leon Haller on January 20, 2012, 06:42 PM | #

This article from the repulsively PC establishment The Economist is worth comment from those across the pond:

Alex Salmond, Little Englander

In his determination to dismember Britain, Scotland’s leader has some surprising allies
Jan 21st 2012 | from the print edition

ALEX SALMOND, leader of Scotland’s pro-independence party and first minister of the Scottish government, has a revelation to share. Over the years, he confides, there has been a tendency among some people in Scotland to blame things that go wrong on the English. He adopts a sorrowful air, as if pondering—for the very first time—man’s capacity for grievance.

Happily, Mr Salmond has a plan. He intends to hold a referendum on Scottish independence in the autumn of 2014. Grant his homeland its independence from the United Kingdom, he says, and the honest folk of Scotland will be friends with the “plain people of England”. Flanked by a pair of large Scottish Saltire flags, he quotes the homespun wisdom of a childhood family friend, predicting that, after independence, England will lose a “surly lodger” and gain a “good neighbour”.

Mr Salmond calls himself the most Anglophile figure in Scottish politics. He has “great faith” that the English people can craft a modern new identity without the “appendage” of Britain. In a public lecture in London on January 24th, he plans to argue that the example of an independent Scotland will “reinvigorate” England, and old English traditions of radicalism.

Alas, there are a couple of reasons sharply to distrust Mr Salmond’s vision of the Scots and English shaking hands over the corpse of Great Britain. One involves breathtaking political hypocrisy. A more serious problem centres on Mr Salmond’s oddly old-fashioned understanding of identity in modern England.

Start with hypocrisy. For Mr Salmond to act dismayed by anti-English grumbling requires a degree of political chutzpah bordering on performance art. He is the man who once accused Margaret Thatcher of imposing a “government of occupation” on Scots, and referred to the British government’s taxation of oil revenues from Scottish waters as probably “the greatest act of international larceny since the Spanish stole the Inca gold”.

As first minister, he has shown a genius for stoking cross-border resentments. There was indignation in England this month when he declared that—after Scottish independence—the British government should be liable for the bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland and its vast debts (London officials failed to regulate the banks, sniffed the first minister). North of the border, Mr Salmond is portraying a legal wrangle with the British government over how to hold his referendum as a conspiracy by “Westminster politicians” to keep Scotland’s mineral resources.

Defences can be mounted for Mr Salmond. He is an elected politician, opportunism is what politicians do. Mr Salmond is no bigot. He says, with feeling, that modern Scottish identity is open to all: Pakistani Scots are as Scottish as any other.

Where Mr Salmond needs challenging, urgently, is over his vision for Britain. There he is out of date, and capable of wreaking real harm. Since his days as a gadfly member of the House of Commons in the 1980s, Mr Salmond has portrayed the British state as a relic, calling it “fundamentally unattractive” and sunk in xenophobic decline. As late as 1999, according to his biographer David Torrance, Mr Salmond told the BBC that Britishness had been claimed as an identity by thugs and racists, while Englishness was an “aristocratic, almost medieval concept”.

Follow that line, and independence sounds like a progressive act to promote friendship between the yeomen of England and the brave hearts of Scotland, liberating two ancient cultures from the moth-eaten baggage of imperialist, embittered Britishness.

But Britishness has evolved. Two decades ago, it was a complacent default identity, with many English using Britain when they meant England. Now, it is becoming a consciously-chosen layer of identity, especially among immigrants, from British Muslims to black Britons and beyond.

Englishness is the subject of a tussle. To some, it carries nastily tribal, exclusive overtones. Racists want to appropriate the English flag of St George, as they appropriated the Union flag for a time, decades ago. Their adversaries, like the left-wing singer Billy Bragg, are as enthusiastic as Mr Salmond about England’s radical tradition. In between those two poles, there is evidence suggesting a link between the rise of Englishness and feelings of being ill-served by the status quo. YouGov, a pollster, recently compared voters who called themselves English with those who identified as British. Those feeling “English” were more likely to want to leave the European Union, by a margin of 58% to 37%. New research by IPPR, a think-tank, shows Englishness rising in popularity, alongside a growing sense that the English are not fairly represented in the British Parliament.

Painfully for Mr Salmond, who professes to love the EU and loathe the Tory party, his strongest sympathisers in the House of Commons are English Conservative MPs on the Eurosceptic right. Many are tempted to wave goodbye to a Scotland they see as a “subsidised People’s Republic”, says a Conservative MP from the 2010 intake. The move would have the happy side-effect of depriving Labour of scores of seats. The traditional Tory attachment to the union no longer stirs the grassroots, says the MP, who during his hunt for a seat earned his loudest cheer by asking why the English could not declare independence from Scotland.

Mr Salmond rejects such talk. Tory right-wingers do not mean what they say, he snaps: “They want to hold Scotland fast.”

The SNP leader has a right to argue for Scottish independence. But to make that case, he is seeking to make the English into foreigners, and deny millions of hyphenated Britons, from Anglo-Scots to black British, the country in which they feel at home, Britain. That is not a progressive act, nor a modern one. Warm words about friendship between neighbours cannot excuse it.

If I were English, I think I would be an English nationalist. And if I were Scottish, even being an ideological conservative, I think I would be a Scots nationalist. Only good can come from separation.

Posted by J Richards on January 20, 2012, 06:57 PM | #

Haller

Yet again, don’t post articles in comments; link to them.  And don’t troll.  The post isn’t about separation but about population size.  Now if you had some useful insights into the root causes of the increase in population size and what could be done about it, there’d be something, but when you were presented an opportunity to do so and subject your argument to peer review, you discombobulated!  So bow out if you have nothing useful to add.

Posted by The man from SMUSH on January 20, 2012, 08:27 PM | #

There is no hope for any people, when love of one’s own people, and dislike of getting genocided into extinction, is decried as “racism”. There’s no hope when the best England can ask is “Please Mr. Left, kill us a bit slower. Pretty please.”

The left has got to die. There is no other way.

Posted by Lurker on January 20, 2012, 10:18 PM | #

Ive just been looking at some of the other petitions on the e-petition site.

Found this one: holocaust denial.

One vote, you would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh.

Posted by Dan Dare on January 20, 2012, 10:51 PM | #

It’s already a criminal offence, Nick Griffin and the Heretical Two can attest to that!

Posted by Graham_Lister on January 21, 2012, 07:01 AM | #

Leon

There is a book “Pariah” by Tom Nairn about the politics of the UK particularly with regard to Scottish nationalism. His basic thesis is that the UK is a ‘failed state’ that is well beyond its sell-by date and must be broken up to breath new life into its constituent parts. On balance I think he is right.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pariah-Tom-Nairn/dp/1859846572

You might be interested to know that at the back of this slim volume Nairn has an exchange of letters with the liberal multiculturalist and uber-PC ‘journalist’ Yasmin Alibhai-Brown about the risks and consequences of the possible break up of the UK.

Guess what? Alibhai-Brown loves Britishness as it is an ‘open’ identity, a positively multicultural phenomenon and worries about ‘black Britons’ that cannot as easily or comfortably adopt the older ‘ancestral’ identities of the British tribes (English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish). She worries that such identities are less porous, more based in ‘blood and soil’ (organic) that the recently invented British one. She worries what a post-Union English politics would look like (little England and little Englanders etc.).

Nairn’s response is summed up in the idea that he doesn’t think that would happen but even if it’s a risk then why should the Scottish people put up with political arrangements they dislike merely so Ms. Alibhai-Brown can enjoy a vibrant multicultural London under the ‘safety-blanket’ of Britishness? Nairn does play the PC game by suggesting it is one of England’s great advantages compared to Scotland (97+ Euro if I recall correctly) that it (England) gets all these wonderful people from around the world to contribute to English life.

Posted by Dan Dare on January 21, 2012, 02:50 PM | #

This post includes a link to the correspondence between Tom Nairn and the Yazzmonster.

Posted by Robert Reis on January 21, 2012, 09:39 PM | #

  Adler and Block: Mossad Assassination of Obama and the “Anti-Semite Smear” Campaign in America
by willyloman

by Scott Creighton

A publisher in Atlanta, Andrew Adler of the Atlanta Jewish Times, recently wrote an opinion piece in his paper (What Would You Do?) which proposed the Israeli assassination of a seated U.S. president in order to defend Israel from nuclear weapons that Iran does not currently have and is not currently developing (according to the NIEs of 2007 and 2010)

Adler’s Jan. 13th 2012 article puts his 3,500 or so readers in the unenviable position of Israel’s Prime Minister facing what he seems to think is the inevitable destruction of Israel at the hands of the Syrians, Hezbollah, and Iran and asked them “What Would They Do?”: strike Hezbollah (killing civilians), strike Syria (killing civilians), or have Mossad agents already in the U.S. kill the president of the United States because he backed off a provocative missile defense drill, Austere Challenge 12,with Israel off Iran’s coastline?

“Three, give the go-ahead for U.S.-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice president to take his place, and forcefully dictate that the United States’ policy includes its helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies.

Yes, you read “three” correctly. Order a hit on a president in order to preserve Israel’s existence. Think about it. If I have thought of this Tom Clancy-type scenario, don’t you think that this almost unfathomable idea has been discussed in Israel’s most inner circles?

Another way of putting “three” in perspective goes something like this: How far would you go to save a nation comprised of seven million lives…Jews, Christians and Arabs alike?

You have got to believe, like I do, that all options are on the table.” Andrew Adler
Let’s hope Adler’s other little suggestion (Mossad assassinations) isn’t suggested next.
willyloman | January 21, 2012 at 1:16 pm | Categories: Scott Creighton | URL: http://wp.me/p5oOK-4KM

Posted by Robert Reis on January 23, 2012, 04:42 PM | #

http://gonzalolira.blogspot.com/2012/01/this-is-america-today-part-ii.html#more
ThisThis Is America Today, Part II
These facts are from the CIA—and they are undisputed:

• Infant mortality rate in the United States: 6.06 per 1,000 live births.

• Infant mortality rate in France: 3.29 per 1,000 live births.

• Average life expectancy in the United States: 78.37 years (75.92 for men, 80.93 for women).

• Average life expectancy in France: 81.19 years (78.20 for men, 84.54 for women).

• Total expenditure on health care in the United States: 16.2% of GDP (2009).

• Total expenditure on health care in France: 3.5% of GDP (2009).

• Expenditure on health care in the United States per capita: $7,517 per year (2009).

• Expenditure on health care in France per capita: $1,148 per year (2009).

So . . . to make it clear: France has a Socialist-Commie health care system, while the United States has “the best health care system in the world”—

—and yet the French live longer, have an infant mortality rate roughly half the United States’, and yet still manage to spend less than Americans on health care.

A lot less—in fact, the Socialist-Commie Frogs spend less than a quarter of what the United States does, as a proportion of GDP.

And when you break it down per person per year? The French spend less than one-sixth what the United States spends—yet live longer, and have a lower infant mortality rate

These are the facts—and they are undisputed.

So! One of two things is going on: Either the French—as a people—are simply better than Americans; made of finer stuff; simply superior physical specimens.

Or . . .

Big Pharma, Big Med and Big Insurance are stealing from the American people every last bit of money they can get their hands on, while the Federal government refuses—out of incompetence, stupidity or corruption—to do anything about this rampant, blatant theft.

Too harsh, you say? Well, next time you go bankrupt from your medical bills, tell me again if I’m being too harsh. Because if you go bankrupt in America, there’s a 60% chance it will be because of medical bills. And if you do go bankrupt because of medical expenses? There’s a 40% chance you actually did have medical insurance—yet went bankrupt anyway! (Source here)

These are the facts—and they are undisputed.

This is America today.

(Source: CIA World Factbook, French data here, U.S. data here.)

Posted by hullabaloo on January 23, 2012, 06:29 PM | #

To Reis:

Here’s another possibility for health care differences: France doesn’t have as many racial minorities with crappy lifestyles injuring health (infant mortality? we’re a Third World country practically). Or, maybe the French whites are superior to American whites (I think so), eating healthier and perhaps moving or exercising in short bursts more (partly due to American long distances, as well as minorities ruining urban environments -meaning that people really rely on cars). Also, as any idiot knows, American health care is a very complicated hybrid of socialism and markets. It is not remotely “free”.