"Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?"

[Tellos Athenaios]

English people have never got the chance to vote for or against any independence motion from Ireland or wherever else in the former empire you care to mention.

Plus as already mentioned England would probably vote to kick Scotland out.

Well to be fair, I don't think the Irish or wherever else were ever asked for their opinion when the English came in and proclaimed them subjects either...

Still, at a very basic level it makes little sense for the English to decide on whether or not Scotland would like to remain part of the union -- whatever its faults this referendum will be a good survey to test Scottish public sentiment.

Then again, judging by some of the comments here it might not be such a bad idea if the English had a referendum of their own as well.

[rory_20_uk]

Well to be fair, I don't think the Irish or wherever else were ever asked for their opinion when the English came in and proclaimed them subjects either...

Nor were the lands conquered exactly fully functioning democracies...

[Greyblades]

The world was(and some would say still is) filled with what we would consider immoral jerks, Britain was the most successful bunch of immoral jerks, and apparently upon becoming less jerky over time became more embarrassed about it than everyone else because our jerks were jerks to the most amount of the other jerks that filled this jerky-jerk world. So we let the other jerks go from the empire whether or not their jerks could even handle being a independent nation full of jerks in this jerky world and predictably after leaving some of them started being jerks to each other to an extent that I wonder why we thought their jerks were better off being independent jerks instead of being jerks to the rest of the world instead of each other united under the British flag of jerk.

Jerk!

[gaelic cowboy]

Nor were the lands conquered exactly fully functioning democracies...

The so called imperial louts going around conquering were hardly anymore or less democratic than the conquered now were they??

[rory_20_uk]

Depends on which part of the world you are referring to and what time period.

The dear Pilgrims committing ethnic genocide were as democratic as it got for the period.
Many of the Indian despots that were overthrown were worse than the British Raj. The caste system made it oh so easy to perch on top of the existing system, and by that point there was democracy in the UK for over 100 years and they were overthrowing an autocracy.

But I thought that this illustrated the flaw in stating that democracy can not be utilised now as when Henry II was fighting the French there was no damn vote...

I'm not trying to revise the British as some sort of great thing that happened any more than the Romans were. I'm also not trying to cast the overthrown as "noble savages", be that the cannabalistic Maoris or the war thirsty Zulus.

[Sarmatian]

The world was(and some would say still is) filled with what we would consider immoral jerks, Britain was the most successful bunch of immoral jerks, and apparently upon becoming less jerky over time became more embarrassed about it than everyone else because our jerks were jerks to the most amount of the other jerks that filled this jerky-jerk world. So we let the other jerks go from the empire whether or not their jerks could even handle being a independent nation full of jerks in this jerky world and predictably after leaving some of them started being jerks to each other to an extent that I wonder why we thought their jerks were better off being independent jerks instead of being jerks to the rest of the world instead of each other united under the British flag of jerk.

Jerk!

Cry me a river, please.

[Greyblades]

Cry me a river, please.

Only if you build me a bridge and jump off it.

Don't mind me, I'm just failing to use humor to hide my dead pride over here.

By the way, the irony considering RvG's recent 'issue' is not eluding me.