Old imperial habits die hard

[unhappycamper]

http://atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-02-180914.html



Old imperial habits die hard
By Asia Times Online
Sep 18, '14

A tourist-targeted tea-towel often visible in Scottish kitchens has the Archangel Gabriel delivering his "the world has been created" report to the Almighty, listing all the delights he has granted the last piece of the global jigsaw - the bit of land off mainland Europe to be called "Scotland". The Almighty chastises His right-hand man for being far too generous to this one country. But the Archangel finesses the rebuke: "Ah", he says. "But I have given them the English as their next-door neighbors."

An eternity later, that cheek-by-jowl gift from above still rankles in the north of the United Kingdom, and the world - not to mention politicians and media in London - has only recently woken to just how much it rankles. Today's referendum for Scottish independence is the fruit of such insouciance; its result, whichever way it goes, the consequence of skillful politicking by Scottish Nationalist leader Alex Salmond and inept calculations by British Prime Minister David Cameron.

As the rest of the UK has belatedly recognized the possibility of losing the northern chunk of Britain, parts are also realizing that the campaign may not be only about independence - and that much more than merely Scottish "freedom" is at stake: nuclear weapons and a UN Security Council seat also lie in the balance.

Rather it is in no small part about the relative surge in power, wealth and infrastructure spending linked to an already wealthy London and southeast of England, where the world of finance became all-important even as the old heavy industries based elsewhere in the UK were allowed to decline - a process widely seen as inextricably linked to the days of (English, Conservative) prime minister Margaret Thatcher.