I am half Scottish with a pretty Scottish name - Iain Mackenzie, however, in my opinion, if the Scots want independence they can bloody well have it.
For me, in this current climate, this is the last thing that people should be worrying about and to be honest, if it did happen then people in England would be better off (albeit not by a lot)
Public spending per head is higher in Scotland than in England, a fact English nationalists use to make the case that the English are subsidising the Scots and would be wealthier if the union ended.
Scots nationalists say they could cope perfectly well without money from London, if they were able to levy their own taxes and make their own spending decisions, particularly if they were free to keep the revenue from North Sea oil.
North Sea oil
As FactCheck has shown in the past, most of the UK's fossil fuel lies off the coast of Scotland.
"Detailed research of the money brought in by the UK oil and gas fields suggests that Scottish waters - defined by the line of demarcation used in the fishing industry - accounted for 91.1 per cent of UK North Sea revenue in 2008/09," our team found.
But even with this revenue, Scotland has raised less in tax than it has spent since 2005. Official figures show the deficit was £2bn in 2005-06, rising to £14bn in 2009-10 (10.6 per cent of Scottish GDP) as the economy worsened. But Scotland's deficit was lower than the UK's (11.1 per cent of GDP).
Countries don't collapse as a result of constitutional change. Prof David Bell, Stirling University
Professor David Bell, an economist at Stirling University, told Channel 4 News that while public spending was higher in Scotland than in England, England would not experience a gold rush if Scotland went it alone. "It's not a huge sum of money. It's not nirvana by any means at all."
