Quote:
Originally Posted by Skybird
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimbuna
I'm not sure what impact the judgement will have on the current suspension of Parliament but the government said it will appeal against the ruling to the Supreme Court in London.
|
This is where an arguable flaw with the 1707 act of Union between England and Scotland rears it's head.
One of the stipulations was that the Scottish Legal System would remain
separate from England's (likewise the same applied to the the Church of Scotland) otherwise it's highly likely that the Scottish social elite would
not have agreed to the Union with England.
That the UK has three distinct legal systems, that for England and Wales, the Scottish one and one for Northern Ireland isn't well known, even within this country. How they interact with each other within the whole UK legal system has, as far as I'm aware, never been set in stone.
You also have another problem in that the pro-UK side in Scottish politics has
always sold the idea that the UK is a Union of
equals, ergo, Scotland, a nation of 5 million, is the equal of England, a nation of 55 million. Naturally, England, where the concept of the individual is ingrained culturally, has difficulty accepting this concept when it becomes aware of it. Most English people seem to automatically interpret such an idea as meaning that one Scot equals ten Englishmen and resent it accordingly. For Scots, where,
traditionally, the group or community rates higher than the individual, this is interpreted simply as one community being the equal of another, regardless of the size disparity.
This is where EU membership for Scotland is attractive for it's supporters - all nations, regardless of size are (nominally) treated as having an equal voice, hence each country has a veto. In comparison, the UK isn't set up that way. It, is confusingly,
both a single Nation
and a Union of nations at the same time. This wasn't a problem when you had a single government (Westminster) but New Labour's devolution drive for the non-English parts of the UK upset and broke the balance that existed previously. Even moreso as England itself doesn't have a single voice of it's own.
Mike.