The Scottish First Minister told the Queen for the first time in public that Scotland should become an equal but separate nation to England while retaining the Union of the Crowns.
In a pointed message to the monarch that she has implicitly backed separation, he quoted back to her a speech she gave at Dublin Castle in May in which she said Britain and Ireland are firm friends and equal partners.
Mr Salmond delivered his strident warning that the UKs days are numbered during an address to the Scottish Parliament at the Royal opening of its fourth session since devolution began in 1999.
The Queen is understood to have told David Cameron of her anxiety the 304-year-old Union between England and Scotland will be broken in the wake of Mr Salmonds landslide election victory two months ago.
The Scottish National Party leader intends to hold an independence referendum in the second half of his five-year term, but yesterday attempted to reassure the monarch she will remain head of state in Scotland regardless of the result.
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#2
How about if Britain then loses the UN seat, since it won't be Britain anymore but England.
Scotland as an independent nation with the Queen as head of state will be just another country in the Commonwealth.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/02/2011 19:11 Comments ||
Top||
#3
I think it's about time. Scotland and England are just too different for one to rule the other.
It has long been noted that the reason Scotland has never had an effective king for long, is that they are their own worst enemy. Any time someone showed prospects as a leader, everyone would turn against him.
But Scotland has an unusual and very interesting historical partner, in of all things, Poland. And even right now, the two have what the other needs.
#4
Correct me iff I'm wrong, but technically speaking, wasn't Scotland already supposed to be in confederatist political, etc. union wid England as part of the original United Kingdom [England, Scotland, + Ireland = now Northern Ireland], where Scotland technically maintained its national "sovereignty" + "cooperated" wid the ruling English Monarchy later Parliament, albeit it ended up ultimately becoming dominated by England = London???
IIRC the Scottish Govt was officially "asked" many times by London to give its consent to the recruitment, etc. of Scots into the English, later "British" + "Commonwealth", military forces in addition to Scotland-affecting econ policies???
A doctor involved in horrific torture by Saddam Hussein's henchmen is working in British hospitals.
In an astonishing immigration scandal, border officials have allowed the suspected war criminal to treat thousands of British patients.
Dr Mohammed Kassim Al-Byati was given a permit to work as a doctor in the NHS by the Labour government in 2004. Checks failed to uncover his history of working for the notorious Iraqi Intelligence Agency, which ran the country in a reign of terror during the Saddam years.
His job was to patch up torture victims so that they could be subjected to more appalling treatment. In 2007, Al-Byati contacted the Home Office to confess to his horrific past so that he could claim asylum. But, incredibly, this did not prevent him from carrying on earning tens of thousands of pounds working at a hospital in Wales.
Even now, despite his file being referred to a specialist war crimes unit, he remains cleared by the General Medical Council, and has been working in the West Midlands.
The details have only now been unearthed by Home Secretary Theresa May, who was 'horrified' to discover what had been taking place. She has ordered an urgent inquiry, and is planning changes to the rules to stop any similar cases slipping through the net.
There will also be a shake-up of the UK Border Agency war crimes unit. Whitehall sources say the case shows the total shambles which UKBA became under Labour. At its heart lies the Human Rights Act and a little-known EU directive which permitted the doctor to work even when his past was known.
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
