Its the wrong question...

A work trip and then a few days with the family up north has meant I've been too long away from key board and blog... but that's probably a good thing for my sanity!

Being abraod for a few days caused me to reflect on the "could Scotland survive on its own" debate. That reflection has brought me to the conclusion that that's the wrong question. There is no doubt that Scotland could "survive" on its own. That is not the point. The question is, would we improve not just our quality of life but the quality of life of both our neighbours and those we are as yet strangers to by being independent. That seems to me to be a lot less certain.

Take the HBOS/LLoyds TSB merger. I get the iconic thing, (though, interestingly, the TSB bit of LLoyds TSB is as Scottish in origins as any bank), so keeping it separate makes some sense. But it would only be viable to HBOS is now only potentially viable as a separate entity because of money it received from Westminster. So now we have a debate about a Scottish icon being "kept Scottish" only possible because of British economic capacity. Had we been independent we would not have had that capacity and the iconic bank might well have tumbled anyway, tumbled because, alone, we were not able to save it. So who wins then? Certainly not those furth of Scotland whose money and custom is just as important as Scottish support. And Scotland would have lost not just a bank but an Iconic part of its national identity.