Yes. This whole debate does come across very much like the whole palaver over Quebecois independence back in the day. And for the same reasons.

One of the very few voices that seems to be talking any kind of sense here is of course Nigel Farage's. He points out that if Scotland votes for independence, there are a whole host of unanswered questions that will suddenly become very important- including the question of whether EU law will take precedence over Scottish law.

If the Scots want to break away from the United Kingdom, then so be it. But upon their heads rest the consequences- and I imagine that once people have a good long sober look at them, they might just decide to stick with the hated English instead.

Things they haven't seem to thought about:

1. What they're going to do about the roughly $8B shortfall they're going to have when the equalization payment tap gets shut off.

2. The rest of Canada will very likely drop the whole bilingualism thing and therefore any services from the Federal Government and all government work places will be unilingual English only.

3. Residents of Quebec who work for the Feds will suddenly hit glass ceilings at work since preference is given to Canadian Citizens…of which they aren't any more (or at least shouldn't be) and being able to speak French will no longer provide them with any advantage.

4. The Natives who live in northern Quebec have said more than once that if Quebec decides to leave Canada, then they will leave Quebec and rejoin Canada, taking all their natural resources with them.

Running up to the last referendum, both the Canadian Prime Minister and US President (Clinton I believe) stated that Quebec would have to negotiate its way into NAFTA since that treaty is only between Canada, the US and Mexico. Also, Montreal used to be the financial centre of Canada but all the major banks etc. moved to Toronto after the last referendum stating political uncertainty as their reasons.

A friend of mine had a coworker who was very pro-independence and was seriously pissed off after the "yes" side lost the referendum. My friend quipped "Well, you guys asked the wrong people!". At that time had their been a referendum in the rest of the country, Quebec would have been out on its ass.

Have the English given any thought to what will happen to their armed forces should Scotland leave? During the last referendum the Canadian government quietly transferred all the F-18s from their base in Quebec to Cold Lake Alberta for "exercises".

In the case of both Scotland and Quebec, they are welcome to break off but they should both keep in mind that if they make a hash of their independence the price of being let back in might be very steep indeed.