CONCIOUS UNCOUPLINGS / JOHN MAULDIN´S THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMM...

Conscious Uncouplings

By Grant Williams

June 9, 2014

		“Now we see everything that’s going wrong With the world and those who lead it We just feel like we don’t have the means To rise above and beat it.” — Waiting on the World to Change, John Mayer
“Boswell: I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it. Johnson: That, Sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help.” — James Boswell & Samuel Johnson
	“The 50-50-90 rule: anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there’s a 90% probability you’ll get it wrong.” — Andy Rooney
			“And when you trust your television What you get is what you got Cause when they own the information, oh They can bend it all they want.” — Waiting on the World to Change, John Mayer

It is with hearts full of sadness that we have decided to separate. We have been working hard for well over a year, some of it together, some of it separated, to see what might have been possible between us, and we have come to the conclusion that while we love each other very much we will remain separate.

We are, however, and always will be a family, and in many ways we are closer than we have ever been.

We are parents first and foremost, to two incredibly wonderful children, and we ask for their and our space and privacy to be respected at this difficult time.

We have always conducted our relationship privately, and we hope that as we consciously uncouple and coparent, we will be able to continue in the same manner.

Love, Gwynneth & Chris

With that simple statement, issued on March 25th, one of the world’s best-known celebrity couples, the Oscar-winning actress Gwynneth Paltrow and Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin, went their separate ways.

No muss, no fuss. On the contrary, it was clean, simple, and effective (unless you factor in the amount of ridicule the two were subjected to in the popular press for their choice of words).

Now, contrast that ending of a life lived together under the spotlight to the EU’s unholy alliance, clinging to a union which has long since deteriorated into frostiness and antipathy.

If that union were a marriage, its members would claim to be staying together for the sake of the kids — only this time, their stubborn refusal to acknowledge that they probably never should have gotten together in the first place is hurting those kids in ways that are clear to just about everybody except the “parents.”

The latest Eurostat youth unemployment figures for the Eurozone show a drop in total youth unemployment for both the EU-28 AND the EA-18 — that’s the good news.

The bad news is this:

The EU-28 still has 22.8%, or 5,340,000, of its under 25s unemployed. In the EA-18 that percentage rises to 23.7%, or 3,426,000.

What’s more, the nations where that number has risen over the last twelve months are perhaps not those you’d expect.

Austria, Finland, Cyprus, the Netherlands, Italy, and Belgium all have more under-25s unemployed now than they had 12 months ago.

 

(For reasons explained with a simple “Data Not Available” footnote by Eurostat, data is missing for Greece in both February and March of 2014, but I’m quietly confident in stating that Greece’s number will still be above 50%.)

Back in late 2013, the World Economic Forum released its “Global Agenda Report,” and high on the list of priorities was youth unemployment:

(UK Daily Telegraph): A lost generation of jobless youth in the eurozone could tear the single currency apart if nothing is done to address chronic levels of unemployment, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has warned.

“There is a growing consensus on the fact that unless we address chronic joblessness we will see an escalation in social unrest,” said S. D. Shibulal, chief executive of Infosys, who contributed to the WEF’s Global Agenda Report.

“People, particularly the youth, need to be productively employed, or we will witness rising crime rates, stagnating economies and the deterioration of our social fabric,” he added.

John Lipsky, who served as acting managing director of the International Monetary Fund during the height of the Greek crisis in 2011, said the problem was likely to get worse before it got better.

He told the Telegraph: “Right now it’s hard to see any decisive move back the other way at a time in which everyone feels their circumstances are under threat and are worried about their economic future.”

 

Across the world, the number of people who say the economic situation in their country is “bad” is climbing — despite the much-vaunted recovery we all keep hearing about from politicians.

No surprise in the numbers from Greece or China; Japan feels about right, despite the miracle cure of Abenomics; and the Brits will always have something to complain about; but in the US — where supposedly things are getting markedly better according to policymakers and central bankers — we find a surprisingly strong majority who claim things are not just “not good” — they’re “bad.”

Disenfranchisement amongst youth and disenchantment amongst the more reliable voting classes has led to a rather predictable outcome, one which was demonstrated beyond any doubt whatsoever in the recent EU elections.

When I wrote about what were then upcoming elections (“Behold Politics,” TTMYGH, Jan 27, 2014), I said that the previously ignored elections for the EU Parliament would be the single most important event of the first half of 2014. And, as the dust settles, it looks as though I was right.

Across the continent, electorates sought a cure for the ails they blamed upon the incumbent party.

They sought an antidote, and they found it in the anti-vote.

The one overriding theme as Europe went to the polls was a surge in votes cast for opposition parties. Not just parties IN opposition, but parties OF opposition — opposition to “Europe.”

In the UK, Nigel Farage’s Ukip party became the first party outside the Tories and Labour to win a national election outright; and, as he promised he would, he caused a “political earthquake”:

(UK Guardian): Nigel Farage has unleashed his much-promised political earthquake across British politics as Ukip stormed to victory in the European elections, performing powerfully across the country.

The Eurosceptic party’s victory marked the first time in modern history that neither Labour nor the Conservatives have won a British national election.

In a stunning warning to the established political parties, Ukip was on course to win as much as 28% of the national poll. That is a near doubling of the 16.5% it secured in the last European elections in 2009, when it came second to the Tories with 13 seats....

Twenty years ago, in its first European election, Ukip managed 1% of the vote.... Ukip polled strongly across the country, except in some urban areas, and was expected to take a seat in Scotland, which formally declares on Monday. The SNP showed no increase in its share of the vote on 2009, but topped the poll in the nation.

The Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems will acknowledge that this is a powerful symbolic moment: a party that was founded in 1993 has pulled ahead of all the established parties, whose roots date back more than 100 years.

Meanwhile, across the rest of continental Europe, anti-EU parties shook the establishment to its foundations:

(NY Times): An angry eruption of populist insurgency in the elections for the European Parliament rippled across the Continent on Monday, unnerving the political establishment and calling into question the very institutions and assumptions at the heart of Europe’s post-World War II order.

Four days of balloting across 28 countries elected scores of rebellious outsiders, including a clutch of xenophobes, racists and even neo-Nazis. In Britain, Denmark, France and Greece, insurgent forces from the far right and, in Greece’s case, also from the radical left stunned the established political parties.

Whilst the upstarts failed to win enough seats to control the EU chamber, they have ensured that the Eurosceptic voice will be heard louder than ever, and as the NY Times so beautifully put it:

... [T]he insurgents’ success has nonetheless upended a once-immutable belief, laid out in the 1957 Treaty of Rome, that Europe is moving, fitfully but inevitably, toward “ever closer union.”

It also threatened to redraw the domestic political landscape in several core members of the 28-nation bloc, putting pressure on mainstream parties, particularly in Britain and France, to reshape their policies to recover lost ground.

Nowhere was the establishment shaken more severely than at the very core of Europe — France — where François Hollande (arguably the least “presidential” leader to hold office in Europe in several decades) saw his socialist party trounced by the far right Front National, led by Marine Le Pen.

Hollande’s comments in the wake of what was a truly stunning defeat bore testament to the damage done to the status quo. Bemoaning the public’s “distrust of Europe and of government parties...,” Hollande hit the nail on the head when he said, “The European elections have delivered their truth, and it is painful.”

For some, François, for some.

Meanwhile in Greece, Alex Tsipras, the firebrand leader of the staunchly anti-EU (and radically LEFT-wing) Syriza, delivered on his pre-ballot promises, and the opposite end of the political spectrum had their day in the sun, too:

(Links): The victory of the radical left was not particularly surprising, although undeniably historic. The Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) is now the biggest party in Greece having received 26.56% of the vote and winning six members of the European Parliament (MEPs), whereas the leading governmental right-wing party, New Democracy, received 22.73%.

The neo-Nazi party, Golden Dawn, is now the third-biggest party in Greece (9.40%), electing three MEPs for the first time in modern Greek political history.

But beyond the headlines, the result in Greece was a huge slap in the face for the austerity movement:

(Links): In order to grasp fully the significance of this result, we need to factor in the successes of the radical left represented by SYRIZA in the municipal and provincial elections that took place on May 18 and 25. 

SYRIZA managed to secure a victory in the largest province of the country (Attiki), where Rena Dourou marginally yet decisively beat the government-supported candidate, who has held the post for 12 years. Perhaps even more impressively Gabriel Sakellarides, a young radical economist supported by SYRIZA, secured an unprecedented 48.60% in the municipality of Athens, a traditionally conservative constituency. 

Further, candidates supported by SYRIZA managed to come first in the second round of the municipal elections in a number of working-class neighbourhoods.

Crucially, it is the first time in Greek political history that a left-wing party has clearly come first in the European election.... The victory of SYRIZA acquires added political and symbolic value given that it constitutes an anti-austerity vote with clearly left-wing characteristics in a wider European context of the rise of the extreme-right.

 

Whilst the anti-EU bloc failed to get enough seats to derail the bureaucracy of Brussels, they DID win enough to create some serious waves and make it far harder to railroad through policy the next time the wheels on the wagon start to wobble.

Overall, what the elections showed was the deep (and deepening) level of dissatisfaction with the EU project, and in the wake of some crushing results a couple of things have stood out.

Firstly, there was the marked willingness of certain previously pro-Europe politicians (who had been sitting conspicuously on the fence) to start pandering to the anti-EU crowd as if they’d been anti-Europe all along.

David Cameron, for example, in the wake of the Tories’ defeat to Ukip, started getting awfully (and very publicly) tough on Europe — calling for “real change” to Britain’s deal with Europe and even threatening the nuclear option of leaving the Union if things didn’t go his way (a stance guaranteed to play very well to the disgruntled Tory supporters who had defected to Ukip on the back of Nigel Farage’s antagonism towards “Mr. Barosso” and company:

(UK Daily Mail): David Cameron today signaled he would call for Britain to leave the European Union if Brussels refuses his demands for change.

Tough talk, Dave. Sadly, though, Cameron then exposed his naiveté:

But he repeatedly insisted he remains confident his plan to overhaul the EU’s powers will be successful.

Dave... you can’t “change” Europe — certainly not when there are people like Jean-Claude Juncker around.

(Bruno Waterfield): Jean-Claude Juncker was an architect of the troubled euro and has spoken of the need to mislead the public in order to advance the European Union’s cause.

If any individual represents the “old Europe” and the wheeling and dealing that led to the flawed euro and the EU constitution it is Mr Juncker, who is one of the last believers in a United States of Europe.

Mr Juncker, 59, was until last December the prime minister of Luxembourg and the EU’s longest serving leader until he was forced to resign last year in a bizarre scandal involving illegal phone tapping by the Grand Duchy’s secret service.

The longest serving veteran of Brussels deal-making, until last year Jean-Claude Juncker headed the powerful Eurogroup meetings of eurozone finance ministers firefighting the crisis in the EU’s single currency — an institution he had helped create, warts and all, in the Nineties.

“We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don’t understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back,” he said of the euro’s introduction.

At the height of the eurozone crisis, Mr Juncker was described as the “master of lies” for organising a meeting of finance ministers to talk about whether Greece could remain in the single currency and then trying to deny it was taking place.

Germany’s Suddeutsche Zeitung accused Mr Juncker of “taking the lead on the deception” and warned he had managed “to fritter away the last remaining trust the people of Europe still have”.

Mr Juncker has never hidden his view that the compromises and deals being worked out in EU meetings or leaders or ministers need be protected from public scrutiny, by lies if necessary.

“When it becomes serious, you have to lie,” he said.

“When it becomes serious, you have to lie.”

Juncker is now the de facto front-runner for the most powerful post in the EU based on a convoluted system of voting around blocs within Parliament.

The post Juncker craves so much — President of the European Commission, the most powerful position in Europe — is, of course, NOT entrusted to the votes of the European electorate but rather decided upon behind closed doors amongst unaccountable politicians.

Of COURSE! Why select the top job democratically? This is Europe.

But, the wave of public dissatisfaction with Europe has led many of Juncker’s backers to decide it is better for them NOT to be seen to be behind his bid; and despite an almost embarrassingly tenacious attempt on Juncker’s part to get the post he desires oh so badly, his support has crumbled in recent days as it has become clear to the political class in Brussels that being seen to be in his camp would be bad for THEM.

The other interesting thing to come out of the EU elections is the sheer level of antipathy towards being one big, happy European family that rages right across the continent.

 

A desire to NOT be part of the greater whole is hardly something new or unexpected in Europe — far from it. A quick look at the map above will tell you all you need to know.

The map shows all the currently active separatist movements in Europe, from the more widely known Basques and Catalans in Spain that both seek secession from Spain proper to the citizens of Venice, who want out of Italy (the word ballot actually originates from the Venetian word ballotta or “little ball”), and the Cornish Nationalist Party of Southwest England, who demand independence for Cornwall. (Anybody who’s ever stopped to ask for directions from a Cornwallian will realize that televising THOSE debates would require subtitling on a level never before attempted.)

But I digress. Across Europe — indeed, across the world — the voting public are primed to be mobilized in the service of causes that are inherently not in their best interests because they are angry, upset, confused, and don’t know whom to blame. The natural targets of their ire are, of course, incumbents (and in the case of Europe, that ire is correctly targeted), but their frustration leaves them open to making decisions which are at best ludicrous and at worst downright dangerous to their well-being.

Nowhere is that more obviously displayed than around latitude 54°N, where England and Scotland share a border.

September 18, 2014, has been decreed the date upon which every Scot will have the right to enter a booth and answer one simple question:

“Should Scotland be an independent country?”

Time for a little history:

The Acts of Union between England and Scotland were passed in 1707. Although both countries had shared a monarch since 1603 when James I of England simultaneously became James VI of Scotland (see you, Jimmy?), an official joining of the kingdoms had not taken place.

However, a somewhat disastrous attempt by the Scots to establish a trading colony called “Caledonia” on the Isthmus of Panama at the Gulf of Darien in the late 1690s set in motion a chain of events that would lead directly to the choice being presented to Scots in a mere 16 weeks.

The project became known as the Darien Disaster; and, as gambles go, it was a typically Scottish one.

Between a quarter and a half of all the money circulating in Scotland at the time was used to back the Darien Company, established by an Act of Parliament in 1695 to hold a monopoly in trading with India, Africa, and the Americas. After a fractious process involving competing company factions, the first expedition was decided upon, and William Peterson set off for Darien in July 1698. The best one could say about the Darien Company was that it did have a very cool flag.

Five ships and 1,200 colonists successfully navigated their way to Darien; but due to poor planning, inadequate provisioning, lack of demand for trade goods, swirly weather, outbreaks of disease, and a siege laid by Spanish forces, the Scots abandoned Darien in April of 1700 and headed home — most likely with some wicked sunburn.

When the accounting had been done, the Darien Disaster had drained roughly a quarter of Scotland’s liquid assets in a little under two years, and the country had no choice but to ask the English for a little something to tide them over — you know, just until they got back on their feet.

The English government agreed to cover the debts owed to the Scottish people by its government; the Act of Union was signed in 1707; and England and Scotland, putting a long history of tribal conflict firmly behind them, became one big happy family.

The precedent of government handouts to the people of Scotland was also established.

Fast-forward a little over 300 years, and it appears the Scots are finally back on their feet.

A little round fellow by the name of Alex Salmond (the d, unlike the man, sadly, is silent) has, in his roles as leader of the Scottish National Party and, more influentially, First Minister of Scotland, agitated for the country of his birth to renounce the Acts of Union and become an independent nation. With the upcoming referendum on September 18, he is a step closer to realizing the country’s his dream.

In the picture (above, right) Salmond can be seen making the traditional Scottish salute which involves the simultaneous raising of two thumbs in a gesture of friendship and something the Scots call fandabidoziness — a greeting that Scotland’s finest ambassadors have been taking to the rest of the world for generations.

But back to the referendum.

The case against Scotland’s going it alone has been laid out by everybody from David Cameron to David Bowie, and it encompasses a raft of economic and societal logic which is hard to refute — starting with the common currency, the good old British pound:

(The Week): Alex Salmond was “pilloried” for the assumption... that Scotland will be allowed to keep sterling. Salmond says David Cameron would be “in breach of undertakings to the Scottish people” if he refuses to allow an independent Scotland to join a sterling currency union, the Guardian reports. But the Chancellor, George Osborne, has made it clear that it is “highly unlikely” that Scotland will be allowed to keep using the currency after independence. Former prime minister Gordon Brown has also said that Scotland “could not force the UK into a currency union against its will.”

Salmond promised his constituents that he would use Scotland’s economic bargaining power to join the European Union but — in a nod to the anti-EU sentiment gripping Europe — made another promise, that the country would not have to adopt the euro:

The currency issue is further complicated by the desire for a newly independent Scotland to join the EU, but opt out of the Euro. Salmond says there’s “no prospect” of Scotland joining the Euro, but experts believe it may be forced to use the European currency. 

Professor Jo Murkens, an expert on Scottish independence and European constitutional law, told the Scottish Express: “Every new applicant state has to commit themselves in law to adopting the euro. There have been no opt-outs. It is a condition of membership.”

Then there’s the debt:

Another thorny issue raised by the separation of the two countries is the amount of the UK’s £1 trillion national debt that will be inherited by Scotland. The White Paper says Scotland will take on a share amounting to between £100bn and £130bn. As a proportion of GDP — gross domestic product, which is boosted in Scotland due to income from North Sea oil — the document says this is “less than the debt of the rest of the UK expressed in the same terms”. Alex Salmond has said that he may not agree to taking on Scotland’s share of the national debt if Scotland was not allowed joint control of the pound.

You have to hand it to Salmond — he’s got some front: “We want to pool the debt, but not the revenues from North Sea oil & gas. We want to keep the pound and we want to be a part of the EU but not use the euro.”

Folks, if anybody promises YOU that kind of Nirvana, you should immediately cast your vote for the other guy, whoever he may be.

In a recent poll from the Centre for Macroeconomics, only one respondent out of the 46 respected academic and city economists surveyed agreed that Scotland would be better off in economic terms if it left the United Kingdom (no word if that respondent was, in fact, Salmond himself, who, amazingly enough, is a trained economist who served seven years as an assistant economist at the Royal Bank of Scotl.... ah...); and the chief battleground for the economic debate centres around the oil revenues from the UK’s North Sea fields, which will provide the bulk of an independent Scotland’s income and which employ some 450,000 people across the UK.

 

Source: HMRC/OBR

Since 1964, when the first licenses were granted, 42 billion barrels of oil have been extracted from the North Sea, with a further 24 billion estimated to be recoverable. That equates to roughly £57 bn in tax revenue between now and 2018 — according to the Scottish Government, at least. But those figures have recently been called into question — by one of Salmond’s own advisors — and that has put a little dent in Salmond’s plan:

(Scotsman.com): One of Alex Salmond’s economic advisers has produced figures suggesting that the Scottish Government’s oil revenue forecasts are out by around £2 billion.

In evidence to Holyrood’s finance committee, Professor Andrew Hughes Hallett — a key member of Alex Salmond’s Council of Economic Advisers — said “it would be reasonable to expect North Sea oil revenues to rise to £4.5-5bn [per year] between 2016-20”.

Last week, the government released a paper claiming oil revenues would be £6.9bn for 2016-17 — which the SNP says would be the first year of independence.

At First Minister’s Questions yesterday, Conservative leader Ruth Davidson MSP challenged Mr Salmond to explain the £2bn discrepancy in the figures.

The government claims that Prof Hughes Hallett’s figures were submitted before its oil paper was published last week.

Ms Davidson said: “Numerous experts have questioned Alex Salmond’s inflated oil figures, but his knee-jerk response is to say that everyone else is wrong.

“Now, the First Minister’s own expert adviser has said his oil revenue estimates are £2bn short.

“This is the same man who Alex Salmond has said is part of a group which contains the ‘most formidable intellectual firepower ever to have tackled economic underperformance’. The First Minister’s economic case for an independent Scotland is reliant on high oil revenues — now we know they are just a piece of fiction. These inflated oil figures are an attempt to con the people of Scotland, but Alex Salmond has been caught red-handed.

“With just 100 days until the referendum vote, the entire basis for the SNP’s separation mathematics has been blown apart.”

Oopsies!

Certainly the production profile of the North Sea fields lends an air of credence to the UK Office of Budget Responsibility’s forecasts of a 38% fall in oil revenue by 2017-18:

 

Source: Oil & Gas UK

The issue of oil and how to divide the revenues is at the very heart of the argument for and against independence for Scotland.

Should the split be made purely on geographical basis, with the border between the two countries establishing who owns what, then Scotland would have the rights to 95% of the UK’s current oil and gas reserves. On a per capita basis, that would drop to 9%; so, as you can see, as go the oil revenues, so goes Scotland’s future.

Away from North Sea oil, Scotland’s economy relies on three main pillars to generate the £26 billion in export revenue it takes in, namely whisky — without an e — which generates up to £4.3 bn (though 80% of the whisky brewed in Scotland is produced by foreign-owned companies), electronics (ah’ve nae idea) and financial services. (Edinburgh was ranked 15th in the list of world financial centres in 2007 but fell to 37th in 2012, following damage to its reputation in the wake of the GFC; and in 2014 it was ranked 64th, so that contribution is definitely on the wane, I am afraid.)

Moving to the expenditure side of the balance sheet, Scotland’s benefits culture is something that has driven the voting in countless elections:

(UK Daily Mail, October 2012): Almost nine in ten Scots receive more from the state than they pay in tax because of a “corrosive sense of entitlement” north of the border, a top Tory said yesterday.

Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, said it was ‘frightening’ only 283,080 households — 12 per cent of the total — pay more in taxes than they get back in public services...

“It is staggering that public sector expenditure makes up a full 50 per cent of Scotland’s gross domestic product and only 12 per cent of households are net contributors, where the taxes they pay outweigh the benefits they receive through public spending.

“Only 12 per cent are responsible for generating Scotland’s wealth. There are people with household incomes of £50,000 who are paying tens of thousands of pounds in taxation and even that doesn’t cover the amount of money that government spends in their name.”

She said it was “frightening” that the average Scottish household consumed £14,151 more in public services every year than it pays in tax, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Yes... I know it’s the Daily Mail... but still... data from 2012–13 show that Scotland generated 9.1% (£53.1bn; this included a geographical share of North Sea oil revenue — without that, the figures were 8.2% and £47.6bn of the UK’s tax revenues) and received 9.3% (£65.2bn) of spending.

That could be a problem in a brave new Scotland.

The reasons for the Scots NOT to secede from the Union are clear and, to an outsider like me, utterly compelling, whilst, as far as I can fathom, the campaign FOR independence can be neatly summed up by the motivational poster below. And yet, amazingly, according to the polls the decision looks as though it could go down to the wire (although, encouragingly, the “No” vote has had a surge in recent weeks).

 

 

Source: BBC

Although it may be hard to fathom after what you’ve just read, I dearly love both Scotland AND the Scots (that should hopefully save me a kick in the heed from a wonderful Scottish friend of mine who offered to cook me dinner on Tuesday — before reading this, hopefully); and I genuinely hope they do the right thing and opt to stay a part of the United Kingdom on September the 18th. But, amazingly, it’s by no means a foregone conclusion at this point that they will, and the possible ramifications of a “Yes” vote to the question of Scottish independence have a bunch of career politicians right across Europe quaking in their boots:

(Washington Post): the European ramifications of Scottish independence go well beyond those of a possible one-third minority of “anti-European populists” in the European Parliament. While it is an exaggeration to predict a “re-balkanization of Europe”, there is no doubt that the Scottish referendum will have consequences for other E.U. member states.

For example, Belgium is feeling the pressure of the increasingly popular and radical separatist New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), the most popular party within the Dutch-speaking part of Flanders, while Spain has been confronted with mass demonstrations in favor of Basque and Catalan independence. So far the national elites have tried to stave off separatist claims by arguing that the new states would be too small to survive economically and that the European Union will not allow them to join as independent states. But if Scotland can pull it off, this important argument will have run its course.

Ah yes, those “national elites.” National elites like our friend Jean-Claude Juncker and his ilk, who either like the status quo very much indeed, thank you very much, or seek to take advantage of the high levels of dissatisfaction in Europe to persuade people to vote for things they really oughtn’t to.

The EU elections have shown the world that people will vote for anybody who manages to capture the mood of the public at a given juncture — even if that person is an extremist, as in the case of Marine Le Pen in France and Golden Dawn and Syriza in Greece.

Alex Salmond is trying to pull his own variety of wool over the eyes of the Scottish public, and who knows? Maybe, tragically, he succeeds.

To me, by far the most interesting vignette in this little circus is that surrounding Farage’s Ukip, who have managed to shrug off bogus attempts to tar them with what is surely currently one of the most powerful words in the English language: racist, and surged in the polls based on their opposition to Europe and putting the “Great” back into Britain.

Farage has captured the anti-European mood in the UK; and despite attempts to paint him and his party as extremists, the great British public have seen through the desperate angling of the establishment and voted for him in their droves. It remains to be seen how that anti-EU sentiment will translate into votes in the 2015 General Election.

So let’s recap what we’ve learned today. Well, we’ve seen that a sense of national identity can, under the right conditions, move large groups of people to vote in ways you might ordinarily expect them not to...

(The Atlantic): ...Plebiscito.eu, an organization representing a coalition of Venetian nationalist groups, held an unofficial referendum on breaking with Rome. Voters were first asked the main question — “Do you want Veneto to become an independent and sovereign federal republic?” — followed by three sub-questions on membership in the European Union, NATO, and the eurozone. The region’s 3.7 million eligible voters used a unique digital ID number to cast ballots online, and organizers estimate that more than 2 million voters ultimately participated in the poll.

[Results were] 2,102,969 votes in favor of independence — a whopping 89 percent of all ballots cast — to 257,266 votes against. Venetians also said yes to joining NATO, the EU, and the eurozone. The overwhelming victory surprised even ardent supporters of the initiative, as most polls before the referendum estimated only about 65 percent of the region’s voters supported independence.

We’ve seen that Jean-Claude Juncker has about as much self-respect as we thought he did...

(UK Guardian): Jean-Claude Juncker, the embattled frontrunner to head a new EU executive, delivered a bitter attack on Britain on Thursday, vowing he would not get on his knees to secure backing as next president of the European commission. He also strongly criticised European leaders, complaining he was being ignored after the grouping of Europe’s centre-right parties won the European election.

Strongly opposed by David Cameron in his ambition to become the next president of the commission, Juncker declared he would not genuflect before the British, lambasted what he described as a British press campaign against his candidacy, and warned that he was running out of time to secure the most powerful post in Brussels....

The Luxembourger sounded aggrieved and abandoned. But he vowed to fight on, seeking to mobilise a broad coalition in the parliament in his support.

And we’ve discovered that politicians will bend the facts to suit their side of the argument whenever possible...

(UK Daily Express): Alex Salmond was accused of continuing to mislead voters yesterday over his claims that a separate Scotland would effortlessly become a new member of the European Union.

It emerged that Mr Salmond’s assurance that a new Scottish state would quickly and easily be assimilated into the EU was far from the truth.

He has stated that legal advice given to the UK Government earlier this year said it was “realistic” to assume a newly independent Scotland could be within the EU in about 18 months.

The First Minister also insists a breakaway country would start life in the EU on the same terms as the UK, including an opt-out from the euro.

But it has been revealed that subsequent legal advice given to Westminster, and seen by Mr Salmond’s government, has highlighted major difficulties with his vision.

Shameless politicians who are willing to put aside technicalities such as the truth and a voting population that is tired of the status quo and looking for a change?

The conscious uncouplings may have only just begun.