The four main types of logic are:
- Informal logic: Uses deductive and inductive reasoning to make arguments.
- Formal logic: Uses syllogisms to make inferences.
- Symbolic logic: Uses symbols to accurately map out valid and invalid arguments.
- Mathematical logic Uses mathematical symbols to prove theoretical arguments.
Supporting Scottish independence is a logical choice for anyone living in Scotland. If you believe Scotland is, a nation then is it not logical that all nations are better at governing themselves? It is not logical to have a neighbouring country govern your own nation of birth is it?
Logic should tell you that when your total representation in this British Union Parliament is 59 out of 650 you are never going to win a vote or achieve anything of note. It should also inform you that if there are 533 English MPs and only 59 Scottish MPs they are never going to give Scotland anything that might be a disadvantage to England. When they vote on jobs or inward investment or infrastructure expenditure or where all the raised taxes go which country in this union gets the lions share?
When choosing a political party to support in Scotland logic should dictate that your best choices would be political parties that prioritise Scotland. Again logic should tell you that the political parties that are registered and headquartered in Scotland will have your best interests at heart.
Conversely, any political party that is registered and headquartered in England will have England’s best interests at heart. It is, after all, logical, is it not? The Tory Party is headquartered at:-
4 Matthew Parker Street
London
SW1H 9HQ
England
The British Labour Party is headquartered at :-
105 Victoria Street,
London
SW1E 6QT
England.
The Liberal Democratic Party is headquartered at :-
Top Floor
1 Vincent Square
London.
SW1P 2PN
England.
Logically on polling day nobody in Scotland should support these parties, right?
To all the Scottish Unionists that have fallen for the Scotland is too weak, too poor and too stupid to be independent let me offer you some logic.
The Tory UK Government that took in office in 2010 is one of the most financially right-wing and destructive administrations in the developed world. Here are some examples of their financial vandalism and incompetence.
Sure Start is a UK-wide programme that was introduced to support children under the age of four and their families. It supports parents from pregnancy until their child starts school, ensuring children in disadvantaged areas are given the best start in life and helping them reach their potential. Since taking office the Tories have closed 1,000 of these programmes throughout the UK to save money!
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/apr/05/1000-sure-start-childrens-centres-may-have-shut-since-2010
Figures uncovered by YMCA reveal the true extent of cuts to youth services funding by local authorities in England and Wales since 2010, with an allocation of just under £429m in 2018/19, compared to £1.4bn in 2010/11 – a real terms decline of 70%.
https://www.ymca.org.uk/outofservice
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has calculated that upon retiring the average British worker will receive a state pension and related benefits worth 29% of what they had previously been earning. This is the lowest rate for any OECD country, where the average is 63%, and countries such as Italy and the Netherlands workers enjoy rates as high as 80%.
https://www.ageuk.org.uk/latest-news/articles/2017/december/lowest-state-pension/
OECD countries spent an average of 20% of their GDP on social expenditure, on things such as public cash benefits, healthcare and pensions. The top 5 countries spent an average of 29.1%, while the UK spent 20.6% of its GDP on social provisions. Not very generous at all!
UK austerity policies implemented since 2010 have not been substantially reversed or retracted in recent years. In fact, they have often been levelled at the most marginalised social groups. In 2019, cuts in total expenditure on welfare and benefit payments alone were expected to total £37 billion a year by 2020.
Austerity in the UK is here to stay. The Bank of England has warned that the country is facing the longest recession since records began, predicting that the economic slump will extend well into 2024.
https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/austerity-has-its-own-life/#:~:text=Austerity%20policies%20implemented%20since%202010,billion%20a%20year%20by%202020.
If you have a spare bedroom and you’re renting a council or housing association property, your Housing Benefit, or housing costs element of Universal Credit, might be reduced. This is often referred to as the ‘Bedroom Tax’ – or the ‘under-occupation penalty’ or ‘removal of the spare room subsidy.’
They even tax your granny’s spare bedroom!
Taking all that information into account are we to believe that this same set of financial hooligans and spivs are so generous that they want to keep subsidising Scotland and Scots to the tune of £ billions every year? Does that make logical sense to you?
All the propaganda tells Scots that we only exist because of English largesse! Does that sound logical to you?
When Theresa May announced her resignation in May 2019. She left office on 24 July and was succeeded by Boris Johnson. During the Tory leadership hustings Mrs May’s Chancellor, Philip Hammond let the cat out of the bag regarding just how important Scotland’s wealth is to the English ruling majority.
Let me ask you this, does that statement make you think that England subsidises Scotland or does the logic in your brain say Scotland actually subsidises England?
Unfortunately, politics is based on tribalism for many, not on logic! Everything logical says if you live and work in the nation of Scotland Independence is the logical choice! It tells you that you should not vote for a political party registered in another country.
So the next time some Unionist tries to tell you Scotland is too poor ask him this simple question. If Scotland is such a burden on the English taxpayers why do the English political parties hang on to Scotland so tightly? So tightly in fact they wont even let Scots vote on a decision to leave the union!
Surely the English registered political parties should be encouraging these subsidised Scots to go? They should want to kick us out of the union Then the English taxpayer will be so much better off! As Mr Spock would say, It’s logical!
And yet…….
The logic is infallible when applied to the regular punter. There have however always been those who would be bought off; place individual privilege over the common weal. The parcel of rogues of 1707 were the start of a continuum of folk prostituting themselves to Westminster in exchange for base gelt. Most prominent among these today is one Gordon Brown.
Brown manages to be simultaneously functionally impotent and presentationally omnipotent. In his latest wheeze to save the dysfunctional and putrid UK, he tries the old “Northern kin divided by an artificial border” homily.
According to “the Broon” we don’t yearn for independence, rather we nurture a grievance specifically and exclusively against the SE of England, London and Westminster. This is stale and meagre offerings. It may have exhibited traction prior to the political awakening of folk in 2014, but Brown’s argument (like himself) has passed to irrelevance.
Brown will stage yet another “Broontervention” tomorrow. The latest in an ever diminishing series of lacklustre performances which will have the compliant, British media in thrall for 24 hours before the next inevitable demonstration of the fallaciousness of his core thesis.
This “brotherhood of the North” schtick has been wheeled out before. In 2014 the BBC commissioned Tory MP and former British spook, Rory Stewart to produce a two part “history documentary” extolling his bizarre, amateur hypothesis in “Border Country: The story of Britain’s lost Middleland.”. The problem is, it has demonstrably never been true.
Dr. Ronan Toolis has proven that the Tweed / Solway line has been a clear cultural border since pre-Roman times.
A county by county breakdown of the Brexit vote shows clear demarcation between Scotland and the North of England (Cumbria and Northumberland). While Scotland voted Remain by a 22% margin of victory, the North of England voted Leave by a 10% margin of victory, a compound differential of 32%.
Fronting for his AstroTurf think-tank (with undisclosed funding) Our Scottish Future, Brown will spin the results of polling conducted in May. Here, “spin” is the operative word as the data itself doesn’t support Brown’s tired contention. Two questions are posed, split into differing regional blocks. Respondents are asked whether they “share common values with … “ and whether they “have bonds with … “.
When asked whether they “felt a common bond” with “English people in general” (excluding don’t knows) the split is 39% Yes to 61% No, a 22% differential. Since the polling must be presumed to consist of folk resident in Scotland and this would include those born in England (who would naturally vote 100% Yes), Brown is clearly flogging a dead horse.
In an attempt to advance the “Northern brotherhood” argument, the poll asks about our attitudes towards “Geordies”. That’s right, the poll uses the friendly, colloquialism “Geordies” rather than the formal “residents from the NE of England”. Who couldn’t love our “Geordie cousins” as opposed to say “xenophobic neighbours in the NE of England who voted in the Brexit referendum to Leave by a 16% margin of victory”. This is pure sentimentalism as sentimentalism is all they have to offer.
To step back from Brown’s attempt to deploy sophistry to present his case, let’s consider the practical implications of this polling with regard to governance.
It is entirely possible to “feel a shared bond with” or “common values with” folk from Newcastle, Liverpool and Manchester. Does it automatically follow that we should be governed in a shared polity? Here Brown presents false prospectives. Scots could just as legitimately share “bonds” and “values” with folk from Dublin, Oslo and Reykjavik. Having more equally proportioned populations, we could choose to enter into a loose political and economic arrangement with our Celtic and Scandinavian cousins rather than our gargantuan Southern neighbour.
Intellectual and physically, Brown is a pitiful shadow of his former self. He is permitted to strut the stage mimicking power and authority long since past. Truly a toom tabard. Brown is essentially an indentured servant to the British State, forever beholden. Revived from deep, frozen storage and dusted off for one more vainglorious, Quixotic tilt at “saving the Union”.
Excellent post, it would make a great article!
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“Unfortunately, politics is based on tribalism for many, not on logic!”
Unfortunately, we are also dealing with a colonial situation, which is hardly a ‘normal’ political situation. The ‘colonial mindset’ is a psychological condition and in a colonial society “it is only the values of the colonizer that are sovereign” (Albert Memmi). Political science tells us that people vote in line with their ‘values’ and not necessarily for what is in their best interest, or what may seem ‘logical’. In such environments an oppressed people may even celebrate their oppressor.
As Aime Cesaire wrote: “…colonization is based on psychology, that there are in this world groups of men who, for unknown reasons, suffer from what must be called a dependency complex, that these groups are psychologically made for dependence; that they need dependence, that they crave it, ask for it, demand it; that this is the case with most of the colonized peoples”
Or, as Dr McCoy said, “Spock! Are you out of your Vulcan mind!!”.
Sadly, too many Scottish folk seem to be when it comes to the constitutional question.
The British nationalist media cultivates the Scottish Cringe. Sadly too many pathetic Scots remain brainwashed by the too wee, too poor, too stupid narrative. Too many are simply feart. This is compounded by the fear also exhibited by those politicians who profess to be in favour of independence, who garner votes on the premise of being in favour of independence but who, when the political situation demands and Scotland’s future welfare is at stake, shy away from any true confrontation with England and hide behind the false belief that Scotland can do nothing about independence without England’s permission. A truly sickening position.
Meanwhile the anglicisation of Scotland continues.
Scotland needs fearless leadership. We need political martyrs to lay down their political lives to show the feart just how wrong this so-called union between Scotland and England really is.
This is the message that I have been promoting for years – i.e. that if Scotland is such a burden on the rest of the UK, why would they want to hang on to us? It’s not logical!
Why is England the ONLY country in the world that is scared of becoming independent?