Britain meaning England then?

Seeing as Wales is not a country and Northern Ireland is not a part of Britain (Great or otherwise)

Proper squeaky bum time for those of a Labour persuasion in Westminister - new poll show Yes as leading 51% 49% amongst those certain to vote.

All of a sudden the next general election is looking interesting - take out the 40 or so Scottish Labour seats and the Conservatives will probably be the largest party in Parliament. Not just for this election, but for many to come.

If they want to take the BBC then they will be able to sign broadcast deals to watch those channels. But they'll also have a chance to say no thank you, we don't want to send our citizens to jail for not having a TV licence and don't want to support that.

Having the Scottish keep the pound will probably by in the Bank of England's interests. But the Bank of England haven't been allowed to make that decision because all the politicians are insisting they won't allow it. Funny that, but according to the law the Bank of England has authority over monetary policy so really it isn't even down to the political leaders, is it?

Forgive me if I am wrong, because I am hungover and this is back of a fag packet maths (not that I smoke), but my understanding is that:

Parliament has 650 seats. Take away the 72 in Scotland and it has 578.

The Tories have 304 Parliamentary seats. Take away the one in Scotland, and even the one they are about to lose to UKIP, and they still have 302.

Labour has 257 seats. Take away their Scottish MPs, and they are down to 217.

Current opinion polls give Labour a majority of around 20-30 next year. Take away their Scottish seats, and we are into hung parliament territory, or even a small Tory majority. Also, I think there will be a swing towards the Tories as we approach the GE, when people are reminded what a cluster the last Labour government was and that much of this parliament has simply been spent fighting fires that were started by Labour.

And, if the Tories have any sense, the first thing they will do on a majority is sort out the electoral boundaries, which currently favour Labour. That will be worth another 2-3 percentage points come future general elections.

Either way, Labour will be out of the picture for a couple of elections, possibly much longer. And you may, perhaps, be surprised to learn I take no pleasure from it. We need a balanced democracy with strong opposition parties.

It would not surprise me if UKIP overtakes the Lib Dems as the 3rd party in the next few years. And they will take votes from both the Tories and Labour.

I honestly believe the biggest threat facing the UK at this very moment is not ISIS, Russia or lunatics preaching jihad above a kebab shop in Luton, but Scottish nationalists.

It is also interesting to note that a Scotsman running around waving the Saltire and saying nasty things about the English is acceptable. Yet people moaning about the EU and immigration are called xenophobic or even racist.

No, Britain as being part of a Union...... Salmond & co are basically behaving like a wife who requests a divorce from her husband and then asks the hubby to decorate and furnish her new house for her - The husband would quite rightly tell her to f*** off, the Union should do the same.

You are forgetting the first rule of divorce - the person with the assets (and it is usually the man), gets taken to the cleaners.

Do you seriously believe the electorate will fall for the "it's all Labour's fault" line again? Especially given the ideologically-driven austerity measures that have been introduced by this government. Any fool could see that the rich continue to be rewarded at the expense of the poor and vulnerable.

Once trhe sums have been done and the electorate see that Osborne has managed to borrow more in 5 years than Labour did in 13, they may think a little differently. Instead of employing Keynesian measures, Osborne reverted to the usual tory strategy of slash, burn and plunder. Cameron's poster will be paraded again, just to remind the electoratehttps://leahfraser.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/nhs-commitment.jpg" >

And will be seen for all the bollox and lies it really was

How is it chauvinism when it is a fact?

As for previous...never married, no kids.

The Tories have completely turned the economy around after the utter shambles it was handed to them in. But don't let the facts get in the way of your extreme left wing hate rants.

I hope Scotland vote yes - no more Labour government for a while sounds good.

Without Labour's 41 Scottish seats the Conservatives would have had an absolute majority in the current Westminster parliament rather than having to share power with the Lib Dems.

The lastest national polls suggest Labour would be 10 seats short of an overall majority. But if you exclude the Scottish seats then the Conservatives would have 278: Labour 274, Lib Dem 18 and others 21.

The Labour led 'Better Together' campaign has been a disaster and is seems ironic that with Labour having most to lose from independence they have failed to deliver the Labour vote for the 'NO thanks' campaign with a dramatic defection over the last two weeks as Labour 'No' voters have switched to the 'Yes' camp unlike the Conservatives and Lib Dems who are firmly voting against independence.

Which perhaps explains why Ded Moribund (likened to a visiting alien in The Herald)) has suddenly leapt into action and flying north of the border with his shadow cabinet and he plans visits from 100 Labour MPs from south of the border.

Something I pointed out many months ago.

What is now being mooted is that if the 'Yes' vote wins the day then our election in 2015 is postponed until Scotland actually becomes independent (Salmond is sticking to his 18 months of negotiation) or if the 2015 election does go ahead then any Scottish MPs elected will only serve until independence day.

You seem to have fallen for Salmond's muddled economic thinking

The difficulty for the 'Better Together' (BT) campaign is that the Scots are not happy with the status quo and it was only right that Salmond's fantasy promises were exposed. Unfortunately this meant some negative stuff. But Labour's ineffective Alexander & Darling led BT campaign has been out thought and out smarted by the bluster of Salmond.

Salmond's economic's simply don't add up. He talks of having a mandate if they win to demand to keep the pound and was not challenged strongly enough on this point. Every time he said this the counter point should have been made that the rest of the UK also had a mandate, and a much bigger one at that, which would not allow on purely economic grounds for the Bank of England to be the bank of last resort to what would then be a foreign country. Examples of the troubled Euro zone is proof of this.

Falling oil revenues, high public spending and a lack of currency plans wreck the economic case for voting yes. Make no mistake either the real and negative effect a Yes vote will have on the rest of the UK. We could lose our G7 place and influence in Nato. Our economy would suffer as we would incur huge extra costs in moving our defense forces back to home territory many business would relocate south of the border again with wasted expense. The pound would weaken and stock markets would drop. We also would no longer be in control of our borders as Salmond has not budgeted enough for a defense force.

I haven't fallen for anything Salmond has said because I haven't listened. I think I posted last week asking whether it was full independence or they'd still be part of the UK. I paid so little attention to it I didn't know and I was actually surprised that it was a vote on an exit from the UK.

It just seems the English are really, really scared of Scotland voting for independence and I don't really get why. They are a small country of 5m people and a fraction of the UK economy. The way the English politicians say that Scotland can't survive by themselves as though they are a basket case, but if they were such a basket case then surely we'd be happy to see the back of them.

Not being in control of our borders is a nonsense scare tactic. Like we're suddenly going to become vulnerable because Scotland is independent. No one was planning on invading us before, they won't be planning on invading us afterwards.

The truth is that we probably wouldn't need to move any defence bases. We pay them a stupid rent of a few pounds/dollars/euros and they'd stay defended as they are and benefit from the spending of the troops. The businesses that leave Scotland and come back to England, this is supposed to be a bad thing for England? All scare tactic BS IMO. If Scotland was a viable place for business before it will still be viable afterwards.

If Scotland and England can't amicably split then it really shows what a bunch of utter cretins our politicians are when they have destablised countries throughout the world and created war zones. It's alright for Ukraine to push for independence with our half ar5ed backing and create the problems with Russia but if the people of Scotland vote for independence from us then we threaten to put up every block we can to it.

I think if Mexico was polled on becoming the 51st state of the USA they'd vote yes in a heartbeat. The US doesn't want them because they're too poor. If Canada was polled they'd vote no. On heath care alone they simply wouldn't accept becoming American. I think Scotland is a great deal closer to being our version of Canada than they are a Mexico.