Monday 2 December 2013

Bootle gets it right on Scottish Independence

I don't have much time for economists and Roger Bootle in particular but he has written a very good piece in today's DT click http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/rogerbootle/10487194/Scotland-may-prefer-to-go-it-alone-but-the-EU-has-lessons-for-countries-that-secede.html

He supports my view that the ecomomic red herrings that are being dragged in are worthy but secondary to the issue voters must vote on, "Who will rule Scotland, the Scottish people or the English Metropolitan elite?"

Bootle has dug up some interesting stuff on optimal size of a country or more correctly political association. He makes clear the distinction between the two. A country is more than an association. A country has a common language and legal system. He points out the problem with the meddling EU is that is trying to be a country without the necessary cultural and historical underpining particularly a common language. As he points out they have only recently stopped fighting each other but the old enemities are still there. We mainland Britons used to fight each other but not for the last 260 years. Only a diminishingly few Irish seem to want to continue the feud.

Its an excellent article and well worth reading.  I won't attempt to plagirise it. The conclusion I draw is that the best way out for the EU  is to agree on English as its only official language and the French could never accept that. I suppose Esperanto is a possibility but it has zero cultural history - maybe not a bad thing.

1 comment:

Eric Edmond said...

Will the person who posted the interesting comment on Esperanto please repost it. I deleted it inadvertenly.