SNP are agitating again.

[Suff]

If Sturgeon ever does get independence, I wonder what she'll do with it?
Small population, small economy

I feel a thread coming on...

Erm, small population and economy the size of Poland (without the 40 million people), and this is without Oil revenues.

How does Norway do? Must be a real nightmare for them....

It does irk me that just because the UK is the 6th largest economy in the world (India overtook us whilst we obsessed over Brexit), that people in the UK assume that fully 10% of that economy is small.

I don't like Sturgeon, but that comment is what is driving mainstream Scots to vote Yes.

[cromwell]

It was made out of ignorance rather thaan malice Suff.
The population is small as a fact and the comment on the economy was based on what Blackford said, about the economy not growing much and needing immigration to make it grow.
No offence was intended.

[Suff]

It was made out of ignorance rather thaan malice Suff.
The population is small as a fact and the comment on the economy was based on what Blackford said, about the economy not growing much and needing immigration to make it grow.
No offence was intended.

I know cromwell, but if it has annoyed me so much and I know a exactly why it is said, just imagine the furore it causes in Scotland.

I'm not offended, honest and it was not aimed at you at all, it was aimed at the press and politicians who repeat it as fact.

During Indyref2 Scots LibDem MP's were equating Scotland with Lithuania. So it is not just in England, but the majority of the attitude is.

[Workingman]

Poland GDP $585.816 billion (nominal, 2018)
Norway GDP $434.167 billion (nominal; 2018)
Scotland GDP $237.618 billion (nominal; 2018 est. including revenues from North Sea oil and gas)
*Various sources

Services make up 75% of Scotland's economy and of its £76 billion exports some 79% go to the EU and UK. Scotland’s notional deficit is £12.6bn or 7% of its GDP.

A friend asked....

[Suff]

Well, there you go.

It pays to go and revisit your research after 5 years. It turns out that if your currency devalues by 30% and the two economies you talked about run growth between two times yours and 5 times yours, then your figures are wildly out of whack.

At which point you make specific claims which cannot be substantiated.

On the other hand, Scotland, with 5.4 million people, is a very large 1st world economy sitting at around 43 in the table of world economies, by nominal gdp, right ahead of Pakistan (who have a population of 197 million and a huge amount of land).

The value of the £ will recover over the next 2-3 years and Scotland will climb that table all over again. If you put the 30% back in the £ you find that Scotland is not that far behind Norway.

I stand by my statement that calling Scotland a small country is destructive; when people in Scotland know that it is not true.

[Workingman]

The claim that Scotland's economy was as big as Poland's did not ring true and everything else followed from there.

I have no problem with bigging up Scotland. It has the finest national drink of any country in the world - whisky, or is it Irn-Bru? It also has some of the most beautiful and accessible countryside, scenery, geology and topography found anywhere. The economy, on the other hand, might not be quite so spectacular, but how that is defined will depend on how it is measured and who is doing the comparisons. If taken as a standalone economy at today's levels then in a list of European (not EU) economies it comes in at 21 behind Romania at ($239.552billion).

Re Independence and the EU. It is also not clear when, if or how Scotland would join the €. To join the EU it has to adopt the € meaning it has to enter the Exchange Rate Mechanism. It then has two years to converge - it is not yet known how it would meet the four convergence criteria. At present it would fail. If it did not converge then it would “not be fully compatible” with a key piece of EU law — the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and so would not be eligible to join the EU.

That's what I told my friend....