Devolution took place in 1999. This time it's independence.
Money.
https://fullfact.org/factchecks/will_an ... _off-28889
But more than that, the things that money can buy. We would finally have control of our own revenues, to spend as we see fit. Or at least, as our government sees fit. For the first time in 307 years, the government of Scotland would be elected by the people who live in Scotland, and (very importantly) they would have the economic and social wellbeing of Scotland as their priority, rather than it being a vague annoyance that they ocassionally have to throw a concession at (that's how the Uk Government has always saw it).
So we'd have control of our own revenues, and the ability to truly elect our own sovereign governments. Most countries would consider that reason enough for independence. Many have in the past.
UK Governments have been deliberately and provably acting against Scotland's economic and social interests for at least the last 40 years, and lying about it into the bargain:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... cords.html
The UK Government documents are held in the National Archives, if anybody has a spare day to go and check them out. It's well worth it.
Very few people in Scotland, England, Wales, or Ireland-Northern Ireland have ever enjoyed any benefits at all from the Empire.
At the very height of Britain's imperial glory, in the very epicentre of the imperial capital, we were still sending kids up chimneys and burning straw in the grates to stop them from climbing back down again. The wealth from all our international burglaries rolled in at the ports of Britain, but it was unloaded there by men who scarcely had any more rights than our slaves on the plantations in the West Indies, and then the money rolled up the big hills into the big houses and simply stayed there to this day. It's still there now, and the descendants of those same owners still essentially own us now.
Look at the great port cities of the imperial period - Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Cardiff, London. They were shitholes at the time, when the Empire was supreme, and they are still shitholes now.
If Empire is supposed to bring the homeland wealth and prosperity, why does Denmark have a higher GDP per capita and noticeably higher standards of living than the UK right now? Why is the same true of
all the smaller independent countries in north west Europe? Surely the citizens of Great Britain should be richer, happier, safer, more secure in themselves than the denizens of these wee Scando backwaters, most of whom never had an empire of note? But it's the opposite. They are better off than us.
It will be for sale at a fair price. Undoubtedly at a far cheaper rate than what a military invasion of Scotland would cost England in this day and age.
Even in these days of reduced recruitment from Scotland, at least 10% of the British infantry are Scots, 8% of the air force, and around about ten percent of naval personnel. A bit silly to threaten invasion, even hypothetically, unless they're all going to be fired first in Hammond's defence cuts.
No closer than the ties we already have with Europe now, seeing as the UK is already
in the EU. We just need to cut out the middleman, since the middleman has a long and troubling history of selling our interests short for his own benefit:
http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/t ... t-1-634422
The English are fine, nobody has said otherwise. I think they could make a real go of governing themselves.
As for the alternatives being better, we see them very close by, in Scandinavia, and all across the entire north west of Europe. The small and medium-sized independent countries there are noticeably better run than Britain, are far less corrupt, did not deliberately destroy their own manufacturing and export bases, and have been thriving uninterrupted throughout my lifetime. They do not suffer from the UK's post-imperial hubris or ridiculous rollercoaster economy, and are ranked as being better than the UK on nearly all social indicators, and by all international measures (UN Human Development Index, etc).
Mac, I thought Russell Brand's support came across as more than a wee bit ... shaky? Qualified? Some papers are preferring to run with him trashing the SNP and telling us not to get our hopes up about the post-independence future. Which is fair enough.
Sorry for jumping in there coffin_dodger, I cannae help masel.
) and the Electoral Commission and Electoral Management Board have printed up 120% of the required ballot papers. 
