For Scotland to secede from the United Kingdom would be the triumph of romance over political and economic reality. Scotland is a windy, wet and cold place. The weather will feel a lot worse if they spin themselves off.  They think they'll be able to build a bigger, better welfare state on the proceeds of North Sea oil and gas. But that stuff will run out.

And why stop there? ''Freedom'' for Wales, the Isle of Man and Cornwall! Liberate the  whole Celtic periphery! Detach Brittany from France and Galicia from Spain, too! (The Irish Republic is quite all right.)

Vladimir Putin must be happy at the prospect of these little regions in Western Europe splitting off and thus inevitably weakening the Western Alliance.

I'm a quarter Scottish ancestry myself (McKay and Simpson among the family names). There were some productive people in the crowd, including the physician James Young Simpson, but also a large quota of  crazies and alcoholics  (or, to be more precise, crazies self-medicating with booze ).

They used to recite Robert Burns ad nauseam, though I always liked his line, translated from the weird Scottish dialect:

"Oh would some power the gift give us, To see ourselves as others see us.''

-- Robert Whitcomb

Et Vive le Quebec libre!