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I posted up a comment in the Chokka Blog at http://chokkablog.blogspot.ca/ on which I said...
Might we start to consider the way Scotland could work with the UK to do the best job possible to take our country forward outside the EU?
After all Kevin did call for some calm reflection!
I have been giving this some serious thought myself as I don't see anything in the press about what we might do.
It seems to me that over the 43 year membership of the EU the UK has lost a lot of it's independence in the world. The EU forbids us negotiating deals outside the EU as the EU commission has that role. Now that we are out we need to negotiate memberships of a whole variety of global organisations like the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
So that is one thing we must do and likely we no longer have the people available to do this so we need to find new people and train them up.
The second point is that we now have to deal with the world outside of the EU and so we need trade negotiators of which we have only 20 whereas the EU has 600.
It's my considered opinion that we need to first go to where we might get a decent welcome and in my mind that is the Commonwealth. They have some 2.3 billion citizens and the Queen is at the head.
Asia is obviously the growing market of the future and in the Commonwealth are countries such as, Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam, India, Malaysia, Maldives, Pakistan, Singapore and Sri Lanka.
In the Pacific we have Australia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
In the Caribbean and Americas we have Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, St Kitts and Nevis, St Vincent and The Grenadines and Trinidad and Tobago.
In Africa we have Botswana, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Swaziland, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania and Zambia
And in Europe we have Malta and Cyprus.
In all 2.3 billion citizens.
The Commonwealth dates back to the mid-20th century with the decolonisation of the British Empire through increased self-governance of its territories. It was formally constituted by the London Declaration in 1949, which established the member states as "free and equal". The symbol of this free association is Queen Elizabeth II who is the Head of the Commonwealth. The Queen is also the monarch of 16 members of the Commonwealth, known as Commonwealth realms. The other Commonwealth members have different heads of state: 32 members are republics and five are monarchies with a different monarch.
Member states have no legal obligation to one another. Instead, they are united by language, history, culture and their shared values of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. These values are enshrined in the Commonwealth Charter and promoted by the quadrennial Commonwealth Games.
The Commonwealth covers more than 29,958,050 km (11,566,870 sq mi), almost a quarter of the world's land area, and spans all six inhabited continents. With an estimated population of 2.328 billion, nearly a third of the world population, the Commonwealth in 2014 produced a nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of $10.45 trillion, representing 17% of the gross world product when measured in purchasing power parity (PPP) and 14% of the gross world product when measured nominally.
It's my view that a re connection with the Commonwealth has great scope for the future of the UK and Scotland and the Queen could do a lot to help influence growing trade between us.
Read the paper "Scotland in the Commonwealth" by Dr James Wilkie at
http://www.electricscotland.com/inde...mmonwealth.htm
And of course the EU is a huge market and as the UK is the fifth largest trade economy it would be daft not to look at this market to do our best to preserve our trade relations. That said we currently show a 63 billion trade deficit with them. There must be an opportunity to reduce this trade deficit quite substantially. BUT how do we go about doing that as we are woefully unprepared to negotiate with them.
There are of course many other parts of the world like the USA, China and Russia where there are great possibilities. Again we are woefully unprepared to negotiate with them.
One thing Scotland must do now is to embrace this new world by demanding that our Universities put in place special courses in diplomatic and trade negotiations. We need to grow a whole team of people that can represent the UK on the world stage and if we want Scotland to have a strong voice we need to act now!!!
In my view this is the single major problem for Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP as the whole premise for an Independent Scotland has been to let the EU take care of all this for us. That's now not possible and Nicola needs to get over her fixation with the EU and move Scotland forward to this new world we're going to have to work with.
I believe the opportunities are enormous and while we may have short to medium term problems the longer term outlook for Scotland and the UK has to be much better.
In many ways I think all this provides Keven with a challenge as he is now going to have to consider the world economies to see where the UK might focus there efforts. Hey Kevin... this is going to be fun and a whole new lease of life for you and us as we examine the possibilities!
I think it would be worth contacting Dr James Wilkie (currently in Austria) to get his views on this and also David Thomson (currently in Lossiemouth in Scotland) to examine what we might do with our Fishing industry. Both of them are getting on in years but they are among the very top people in the world that we should be consulting.
Alastair
Might we start to consider the way Scotland could work with the UK to do the best job possible to take our country forward outside the EU?
After all Kevin did call for some calm reflection!
I have been giving this some serious thought myself as I don't see anything in the press about what we might do.
It seems to me that over the 43 year membership of the EU the UK has lost a lot of it's independence in the world. The EU forbids us negotiating deals outside the EU as the EU commission has that role. Now that we are out we need to negotiate memberships of a whole variety of global organisations like the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
So that is one thing we must do and likely we no longer have the people available to do this so we need to find new people and train them up.
The second point is that we now have to deal with the world outside of the EU and so we need trade negotiators of which we have only 20 whereas the EU has 600.
It's my considered opinion that we need to first go to where we might get a decent welcome and in my mind that is the Commonwealth. They have some 2.3 billion citizens and the Queen is at the head.
Asia is obviously the growing market of the future and in the Commonwealth are countries such as, Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam, India, Malaysia, Maldives, Pakistan, Singapore and Sri Lanka.
In the Pacific we have Australia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
In the Caribbean and Americas we have Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, St Kitts and Nevis, St Vincent and The Grenadines and Trinidad and Tobago.
In Africa we have Botswana, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Swaziland, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania and Zambia
And in Europe we have Malta and Cyprus.
In all 2.3 billion citizens.
The Commonwealth dates back to the mid-20th century with the decolonisation of the British Empire through increased self-governance of its territories. It was formally constituted by the London Declaration in 1949, which established the member states as "free and equal". The symbol of this free association is Queen Elizabeth II who is the Head of the Commonwealth. The Queen is also the monarch of 16 members of the Commonwealth, known as Commonwealth realms. The other Commonwealth members have different heads of state: 32 members are republics and five are monarchies with a different monarch.
Member states have no legal obligation to one another. Instead, they are united by language, history, culture and their shared values of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. These values are enshrined in the Commonwealth Charter and promoted by the quadrennial Commonwealth Games.
The Commonwealth covers more than 29,958,050 km (11,566,870 sq mi), almost a quarter of the world's land area, and spans all six inhabited continents. With an estimated population of 2.328 billion, nearly a third of the world population, the Commonwealth in 2014 produced a nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of $10.45 trillion, representing 17% of the gross world product when measured in purchasing power parity (PPP) and 14% of the gross world product when measured nominally.
It's my view that a re connection with the Commonwealth has great scope for the future of the UK and Scotland and the Queen could do a lot to help influence growing trade between us.
Read the paper "Scotland in the Commonwealth" by Dr James Wilkie at
http://www.electricscotland.com/inde...mmonwealth.htm
And of course the EU is a huge market and as the UK is the fifth largest trade economy it would be daft not to look at this market to do our best to preserve our trade relations. That said we currently show a 63 billion trade deficit with them. There must be an opportunity to reduce this trade deficit quite substantially. BUT how do we go about doing that as we are woefully unprepared to negotiate with them.
There are of course many other parts of the world like the USA, China and Russia where there are great possibilities. Again we are woefully unprepared to negotiate with them.
One thing Scotland must do now is to embrace this new world by demanding that our Universities put in place special courses in diplomatic and trade negotiations. We need to grow a whole team of people that can represent the UK on the world stage and if we want Scotland to have a strong voice we need to act now!!!
In my view this is the single major problem for Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP as the whole premise for an Independent Scotland has been to let the EU take care of all this for us. That's now not possible and Nicola needs to get over her fixation with the EU and move Scotland forward to this new world we're going to have to work with.
I believe the opportunities are enormous and while we may have short to medium term problems the longer term outlook for Scotland and the UK has to be much better.
In many ways I think all this provides Keven with a challenge as he is now going to have to consider the world economies to see where the UK might focus there efforts. Hey Kevin... this is going to be fun and a whole new lease of life for you and us as we examine the possibilities!
I think it would be worth contacting Dr James Wilkie (currently in Austria) to get his views on this and also David Thomson (currently in Lossiemouth in Scotland) to examine what we might do with our Fishing industry. Both of them are getting on in years but they are among the very top people in the world that we should be consulting.
Alastair
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