The only truly logical position for a truly independent country is to have its own currency.
This would take some persuading however in the current economic climate of fear (despite headlines of growth etc; a lot of people are still not seeing this actually translate into any pay increases or job security for those in work, whose position has been eroded by stagnant wages, food price inflation, soaring utilities bills and all the rest over the last few years ).
Hence the SNP's fudge of a currency union, which doesn't seem to be a well-thought out policy; and also the not-politically insignificant necessity of not scaring into the "No" camp the majority moderate population, who, contrary to all the stereotypes, are not rabidly foaming at the mouth anti-English; except maybe during the worst tabloid jingoistic excesses during a soccer World Cup or similar : and that's hardly any basis for a risky exercise in setting up a new nation state.
And you have to ask yourself whether anyone in the UK really wants a Scotland with a separate currency. No serious UK-wide business on either side of the Scotland/England border wants to have to deal with currency exchange in cross-border trading.
In terms of a currency union, in theory anything is surely possible technically with enough political will on both sides. The Bank of England seemed to be pointing this out in as neutral a fashion as they could. However this clearly isn't the case politically at the moment, nor seems likely to be as all Westminster political parties seem to have ruled out currency union. However, is this an economic decision or a political one ? Probably a mix of both in truth. It doesn't appear that the economies within the Union at present are as divergent from each other when compared to different countries in the Eurozone ? Wasn't the BOE saying that for a currency union to work there would need to be mutually agreed stabilisation mechanisms in place should problems of divergence due to differing economic policies either side of the border arise in the future ?
This surely isn't so different as the way the current central UK government policy in theory is supposed to balance out regional economic variations within the Union, eg. between an over-inflated foreign investor driven housing bubble in London and Southeast and differing conditions in the rest of England/Wales, by targeting regional investment / public spending / tax incentives accordingly ? It would just have to be more formalised if it has to work between different nations within a currency union rather than across the UK as it is presumably supposed to work at the moment. Trouble is this particular coalition govt doesn't seem to believe in this, indeed it seems to believe in centralising as much as it can; cutting money from local councils while at the same time capping what they can borrow/raise locally, and selling out the delivery of vital services to private interests whose only motivation at the end of the day is to turn a profit. (The point of privatisation, public-private partnerships or whatever surely isn't to make services better, it's to offload debt and spending commitments from the Treasury in order to make UK plc balance sheet look good to all those money market speculators who have the power to bring down any nation whose policies work against their interests).
Previous government wasn't really any better in this regard- they were just as wedded to self-interested PFI deals which just mean the taxpayer gets shafted for poorer services in favour of unnecessary profit driven "management consortiums" who aren't actually interested in delivering a quality service running hospitals or running care homes, they're just interested in screwing the taxpayer for as much profit as they can. Market forces only really work if people have a genuine choice. How is that supposed to work with essential front line services ? Do me a favour. Where are you supposed to go ? These services are so complex and vital to current society that they are a natural monopoly. So regardless of whether they are publicly run or privately run; they will always tend to favour the producer rather than the user, unless they are rigorously regulated and are properly funded. If taxes aren't there to pay for them, then public services fail. If the business model of privately run "Trusts" or whatever you want to call them is fundamentally flawed, then you'll get the same result. But with the necessity of bailing them out with public subsidy, because the political and social cost of having these services fail is too awful. So now you're paying twice, for a poor service. Either way Joe Public is the ultimate loser; cos' they've got nowhere else to go.
SNP in Scotland isn't any better in this regard - it has frozen Council Tax in Scotland unilaterally regardless of individual local councils' different capacities and needs to raise revenue and pay for services in their own areas.
So the real question which never seems to be asked, is that -beyond the vociferous minority of deluded Braveheart-swallowing posturers, why would the rest of Scotland vote for independence ? The real answer to that seems to be a desire to have more control over fiscal and taxation decisions than is currently the case, and by a determination - hardened by long years of Conservative rule in the 1980s indifferent to the destruction of all indigenous manufacturing industry (not just in Scotland it should be added, but look at the North of the country as a whole) - to protect themselves from right of centre policies and ideologies which they consistently voted against at General Election after General Election, but which were maintained across the UK as a whole by a minority of right of centre voters in the South, and which policies were perceived to have a disproportionately harsh effect on those areas that hadn't voted for them in the first place.
Most opinion polls in the Scottish Referendum question however seem to support the theory that a lot of the "silent majority" of undecided and "No" voters would rather vote for the option of greater devolution powers - more capacity to raise revenue, control taxation, rates etc. But none of which would necessarily be possible/ work with a currency union either. But a newly independent nation with a totally new currency would also be likely to be at risk from the global markets, which "punish" decisions they don't agree with (because they are not in the self-interest of the large global wide, tax dodging enterprises who don't care about nations at all; and who only recognise one interest - the right of themselves to make as much money as they can anywhere in the world by any means necessary, legal, illegal or otherwise; not to mention the whole electronic stock market speculation merry go round of making illusory money out of nothing by pseudo scientific computerised gambling that's called "trading" or "financial services". )
So there seems to be no easy answer.
But it all serves as a distraction, and nobody really asks the real questions : why are market forces in every inroad of our public services the only answer ? In whose interest is it really ? Is it entirely unconnected with well connected lobbying and private interests ? Regardless of which govt we have, left of centre or right of centre, the creeping erosion continues. The politicians run scared. You have to ask what the point of any of them is. They increasingly represent no one but themselves - and the large private interests which bankroll them. All that happens is that every few years these private interests switch their allegiances from one to other, to ensure that no matter what the outcome of a General Election, they can carry on regardless.
But who cares about any of that when we can just present it on TV as a Political "X" Factor popularity contest between Slick 'Eck Salmond and Eton Toff Cameron and make it a hysterical racist issue about scrounging soap dodging Jock layabouts being subsidised by dynamic economically-thrusting Southerners , and all the other hoary old clichés ?
And as if I know anything about it
