Born Under a Union Flag: Rangers, Britain and Scottish Independence

[chilledbear 16]

relationship between sport and national identity.

 

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I remember Argentina 1978 and scarring trauma of it all. Scotland lost some of it's swagger directly because of it it's fair to say, and it may have negatively influenced the devolution vote of 1979. I'm sure the book will be an interesting read.

 

Who thought that one up, absolute rubbish.

[neutralscot 0]

I can assure you, if you watched 1978, you were scarred by it. For life. Anyone else?

 

It affecting the 1979 devolution vote purely speculation on my part.

[chilledbear 16]

I can assure you, if you watched 1978, you were scarred by it. For life. Anyone else?

 

It affecting the 1979 devolution vote purely speculation on my part.

 

Don't be daft.

[pete 2,499]

Don't be daft.[/quote

Sorry CB but if you want to debate then you have to let us know what your thoughts are, just saying things are rubbish is no argument.

[Rangersitis 0]

Given how much passion they arouse, it is only natural that a fan's football team will have a certain amount of influence on their personal politics. Various teams have political affiliations or have historically drawn their support from certain groups within the population.

 

Rangers, Celtic, Beitar Jerusalem, Hapoel Tel Aviv, Livorno, Red Star Belgrade, Dinamo Zagreb, St. Pauli.....the list goes on.

[der Berliner 3,808]

I would like to take our name away from a list of clubs that has next to nothing to do with the way we support our club. I'd refrain from painting our whole support in similar colours like some of the hardcore loonballs supporting those clubs, who will have normal football supporting people too. It's a bit like telling the world that our whole support thinks and breathes the way like those "hardened souls" at Brora yesterday, who entertained the audience with some dire singsongs throughout the match. More embarrassing than watching the game - not exactly the songs as such, but the way it was done.

[The Real PapaBear 0]

Don't be daft.

 

what's your memory of that time?

[The Real PapaBear 0]

Would RBS have acted any differently had Scotland been independent? You and I certainly wouldn't have had any say in what they were allowed to do. How would we have dealt with the bailout? Our situation may well have been more like that of Ireland ( i.e. borrowing from the UK to cover the cost, and austerity measures introduced to claw back the debt).

 

As Scott7 said above though we've veered off-topic for the football forum here.

 

I think it's more likely that an independent Scotland would have prevented the bank from becoming so big that it posed a threat to the country. It's much more likely that our situation would have been more like Norway (with whom we have much more in common economically) than Ireland. That's obviously speculation, but then so is any claim that, had we been independent, we would have followed the UK regulatory framework which allowed the banks to behave as they did.

 

Did you know that whilst the world economy was imploding in 2008, Norway's economy actually grew?

http://www.newsweek.com/stoltenberg-how-norway-escaped-economic-meltdown-70511

 

Imagine being able to control your own economic levers to suit your own economic demands. Something to think about when interest rates in Scotland go up because the housing market in London and the SE of England is starting to overheat.

[Scott7 6,168]

I remember Argentina very well. We had a team of decent footballers (wish we had them today) and a manager who could motivate so well that the players thought they didn't have to work. Simple as that.

 

A football defeat is disappointing, often bitterly so but you get over it sooner rather than later but it doesn't affect the national psyche whatever that is.

 

I suggest that the RBS failure was a greater disaster than a World Cup collapse. Were they among others not an example of Scotland's great skills and energy, part of Mr Salmond's "arc of prosperity" - Iceland, Ireland, Scotland and Norway? Whatever happened to the first two?

[Rangersitis 0]

Had we been independent, what makes you think we'd have allowed ourselves to get into that mess? How did Switzerland get on during the crisis? Sure, those Swiss banks which were exposed to London/NewYork casino-banking suffered, but it doesn't seem to have done too much harm to the overall Swiss economy, (which actually suffered because it was too successful and thus offered a safe haven for foreign currencies, thereby pushing the Franc into the stratosphere).

 

Or, on the theme of small European nations, how about the Norwegian or Swedish or Finnish or Austrian or Danish banks?

 

They all seem to have weathered the storm very nicely, despite having the massive disadvantage of being independent countries in charge of their own economies.

 

Norway, Sweden and Finland all learned lessons from their own failures in the early 90s. Denmark was one of the economies worst affected by the recent crisis with the collapse of the housing market leading to many regional banks merging to save them from going under. Austrian banks are now coming under increasing pressure due to high amounts of lending to a struggling Eastern Europe, with one major bail out already this year.