I'm a Mancunian who moved up to Edinburgh over the summer. One of the women at my local chippy asked me what I thought of my new home and I told her it was just like Manchester with a different accent. She laughed and nodded her head, before tossing a few extra chips onto my already belly busting pile. The point is that Scots have more in common with the Northern English than either have with the people in Southern England. To my mind that is the only reason why a working class person should vote no next September, to avoid leaving the Northern English in the lurch.
However, if people back home are willing to take all the nonsense that the Tories and New-Labour conspire to give them, then why should I run the risk that my life will revert to being as horrible as it was before I moved up here? As things stand, London is willing to give Edinburgh almost anything at the moment, but if there is a no vote then Scotland could find that Westminster starts clawing back those powers as the nationalist threat lessens.
To give you one example. The government here has now banned the sale of council houses. Prior to that they emasculated the policy by preventing new tenants from buying their houses. As I write, Edinburgh is one big building site as more and more housing association flats are built, with the help of the council and government. Jump forward a decade and we could imagine a Scotland that does not have a housing problem because most people will be able to get a house pretty much at will. The fear must be that when the English see this they will demand the same, so to prevent that happening Westminster would force Scotland to fall back behind a line drawn in London.
For this reason I will almost certainly vote yes to independence next year.
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