our Britain

Columnist

Thursday 26 January 2012

My concern in this independence debate is that Scotland should not be a burden on England.

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Tom Shields

The English should not fret about the Barnett Formula by which (they claim) billions of pounds are sent north of the Border for us to fritter away on medicine, caring for old folk and sending the weans to university.

It is time for Scotland to go on its own can. Own can is an old Glasgow phrase for fiscal autonomy. How will Scotland cope financially after ending the 300-year marriage with England? Start with the divorce settlement where we keep the oil and England gets both the houses in Westminster.But we don't walk out with just the oil. There's the Bank of England which was founded by Scotsman William Paterson. For all but 14 of its 318 years in existence, the bank has been a British institution. They just forgot to change the name to the Bank of Britain. So Scotland retains its stake in the Bank of England. In the interest of fairness, the governorship should be held alternately by a Scot and a non-Scot. No debate about Scotland retaining sterling. Or the Bank of England remaining our lender of last resort.Then there is the Scottish stake in the British Broadcasting Corporation, largely founded by the efforts of John Logie Baird, who set up the world's first TV station, and John Reith, who built the BBC in his own image. We would be happy to continue running the BBC as a joint Scottish-English entity.Scots soldiers, inventors, industrialists and even accountants did much to build Britain over the last three centuries. Naturally, we will keep Britain as a trading name. With strict rules about our neighbours not using the word England when they mean Britain.There is much detail to be discussed as we unpick our involvement with England. Under a new social union a lot will be shared. Auld Lang Syne and supporting Andy Murray, for instance. Sir Alex Ferguson, Kenny Dalglish, et al, will run great chunks of English football. Alan Hansen will keep them right on tactics.But England can have their nuclear subs back from Faslane as soon as they like.Finally, there will be no more Barnett Formula. For the English, Barnet will just be rhyming slang for hair.

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