Mail.
A Hadrian’s Wall-style border might have to be built to stop illegal migrants flooding into England if Scotland gets independence.Ok, lets get the geography thing out the way first...
Other dramatic possible consequences would be David Cameron having to give up part of his £3 billion EU rebate, and the UK’s voting strength in Brussels being slashed.
The potential side-effects of Scotland breaking away are outlined in a Foreign Office memo leaked to The Mail on Sunday.
The document refers to the remnants of the UK, were Scotland to go it alone, as the Orwellian-sounding ‘remaining-UK’.
The phrase has echoes of ‘the former Yugoslavia’ name given to the elements of the ex-Balkan state, such as Serbia and Kosovo, which became independent after a bloody civil war.
The briefing contradicts Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond’s claims that after independence the border could stay completely open.
The Foreign Office experts raise fears that a fully-fledged international border would be necessary because Scotland could be required to join the ‘Schengen’ open-borders system used by 25 European states which Britain has opted out of.
Hadrians Wall is not on the Scottish border!!!!! It never was the Scottish border!!!!!
It's well inside the English borders of Tyne and Wear, Northumberland and Cumbria, it actually runs through Newcastle upon Tyne at one stage and terminates at the aptly named town of Wallsend where presumably the river Tyne was just too wide to cross easily.
Yes I know it conveys an image of some sort of border on side of which is civilised (for a given value of civilised) and the other side barbarism (it wasn't but that's sloppy thinking for you) and fanatical raids from kilt wearing picts (Kilts apparently invented in Lancashire, England)
I just wish for once that the journalists at the Mail and elsewhere would get their facts right rather than going into allusions and jingoism.
I know, I know I'm wasting my time, but just once it would be nice to see them get something right.
5 annotations:
It only said Hadrian’s Wall-style border...
Any reason Scotland couldn't remain in the CTA like Ireland?
I piece in the Telegraph stated that Hadrian's Wall was built when the two nations were still seperate.
No it wasn't. Niether existed and it fact the same people, ie British lived both North and South of the wall.
The purposeful ignorance of Journalists on this don't half get me wound up ;)
"I just wish for once that the journalists at the Mail and elsewhere would get their facts right" ..
Sadly, there appears to be little hope for a so-called "British" newspaper which captions a photograph of musicians from a Foot Guards band (probably the Scots Guards, as no plumes are visible on the bearskins)as being a photo of "Soldiers of the Household Cavalry" (the clue is the lack of horses) ..
Are they secretly employing YTS drop-outs or NVQ holders now ?
The "journalists" on the Mail, and I suspect most other papers, write what their kind of readers want to read.
Generally speaking (and I repeat, it is a generalisation) the readers of the Mail are the kind of people who would read the Sun if they weren't too ashamed to be seen walking down the street with it, or having the paper boy tell him parents that they took it.
They aren't, in short, overly bright. They want to have their prejudices confirmed; they certainly don't want them to be bulldozed by facts.
The journos, by and large, are able to write any crap, generally running down (without any balance or real facts): the EU, Scotland, foreigners in general, the unemployed (regardless of how they became unemployed) and the sick (on the basis that their readers want them to be lazy ne'er do wells, regardless of the nastiness of their chemotherapy).
Anyone young is likely to come in for a bit of a battering too. Because, once again the demography of the readership is elderly to ancient, and they always want to hear that it's all the fault of the young.
The management never seem to see the irony of their support for the Church of England one minute, and their bitter condemnation of the bishops if they actually appear to be doing Christ's work and caring for the poor, whom as we know they consider to be lazy tossers deserving of all that is coming to them.
Nor, unfortunately, do they see any irony in deprecating loose morals in the paper edition, and carrying soft porn photographs of the rich and infamous in their on-line edition.
They are disreputable to put it mildly.
They got a lot more wrong than just the wall.
If Scotland separates they'll have to reapply for EU membership as a new member. So they'll be forced to accept the Euro and the Schengen zone. Okay so far but...
It's likely that the southern part of the UK would also have to reapply - which would mean England, Wales and NI also being treated as a new member and also having to accept Schengen and the Euro.
In which case, there'll be no border of any kind at all.
Anywhere.
We can only hope the EU collapses before Oily Al's referendum. I have wondered, sometimes, if the reason he's delaying could be because he's secretly hoping the same thing.
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