Currency / central bank? "We shall seize hold of the economic levers needed to grow the Scottish economy! And then, er, hand the biggest one of all back to London..."
Broadcasting? Wishart admitting that "households would have to pay a “commercial” charge on top of the licence fee, by installing satellite or cable TV, if they wanted to watch other BBC shows that “have got very little to do with the experience of living in Scotland”. " As pointed out some time ago in this very blog, of course. It appears that, back in 2009 when "Weasel" Russell said that Scots would be able to continue to watch the BBC, "just as" they do in Ireland, he was either deluded or lying. Who'd have thought it?
And then there's defence. Not much for me to say really, as the Nats' attempt to define a realistic policy collapses in a heap and various knowledgeable folks pile in and destroy them.
But here's a thought which I haven't seen elsewhere: what happens to the intelligence services?
It is generally accepted that ours are, still, some of the best in the world. After all they have been around for rather a long time, and one legacy of Empire is that we still have links, connections, and knowledge about all sorts of obscure places.
And of course there is the alliance with the US - the UKUSA Agreement, in place since WW2 and which gives the two countries unprecedented and unique access to each other's intelligence, knowledge and assets. Later broadened out into the AUSCANNZUKUS organisation, it gives the countries of the "Anglosphere" a unique advantage in the global intelligence arena.
So would an "independent" Scotland get any of this? You can't divvy up an intelligence service on the basis of pro rata population share, even less than you can the military.
Even if you could, intelligence services and their international alliances operate on the basis of secrecy, trust and shared objectives. Would a neutralist, anti-nuclear, anti-NATO "independent" Scotland be seen by the US as a country which could be trusted as an intelligence partner?
Would this "independent" Scotland have any intelligence assets of its own which it could bring to such a partnership?
No and no, are the obvious answers.
An "independent" Scotland would have no meaningful intelligence services of any sort at all, and we'd be left sitting as a soft-touch back-door for any Al-qaeda or other nutcases bent on mayhem.
Have the Nats thought of this? No, of course not. At least not beyond the ludicrous assumption that we wouldn't be a target for anybody, because, er.... ah..... um.
Idiots.
