Scottish Independence

Dont have a problem with Scotland gaining independence, but have they thought this through?? What are they going to do about an air force, navy and army, border agency? How much of the UK debt are they going to take? What about the North Sea oil and gas? Should Wales and Northern Ireland become independent aswell?? How is an independent Scotland going to make up the difference when the Westminster hand outs stop?

If Scotland does gain independence then they should take some of the debt of the UK but how much? I think it should be 20% of the debt, about £200 billion now the UK debt is at a trillion pounds. The north sea oil should be split 50/50, this should make up for the Westminster hand outs and will help pay off the debt. How much do the need armed forces? They will need an air force for coastguard, search and rescue, mountain rescue, this would be main helicopters and transport airplanes, will they have a threat from another nation to need fighter jets? or would England's RAF help cover this? They will need a navy to patrol there waters but it wont be big. Really their armed forces would be small and defensive.

If the UK is to be broken up and England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are to become independent then the debt should be split England 50%, Wales and Scotland 20% and Northern Ireland 10%.

Overall I don't think the Scots have thought this through properly and this is a massive can of worms which will take years to sort out, I will add more once i've done some more research into it.

Racing- Formula 1

2 words- Pure Brilliance. They work to the tightest of time scales, push psychics to the limit, develop new technologies, McLaren- F-duct and steering braking, Redbull- rear blown defuser, Renault forward facing exhausts. The drivers are athletes, they are at their peak fitness, they work in opposite climates in all weathers. Everything has to be perfect and right, if its not then things go wrong, car sets fire, over or under steers, the down force doesn't work. Yes loads of money is spent but to make it safe, they have to spend, exotic materials- carbon fibre, titanium, aluminium, these materials are considerably more than steel. Powering the machinery to make parts and the wind tunnel to develop the aero parts. A front wing costs about £10,000 to develop and manufacture, you can buy a half decent car for that. I once went to a Prodrive open day and they had an engine out of a Aston Martin DBR9 was £250,000- you can buy a house for that!!!

Developing technologies to be passed down to the road car doesn't happen that often but in McLaren's new road car the MP4-12C they have developed their steering brake so the car handles better. KERS is a hybird based system that gives an extra boost to the formula 1 cars, im not sure who developed it first but formula 1 teams have developed it and McLaren and Mercedes are rumoured to have the best KERS system. Formula 1 is not the greenest of sports but then it will never be green, but they are improving/ changing the regulations to lessen the carbon footprint, smaller engines, going from V12s down to V10 and currently V8s but after 2014 they will have V6 turbos, changing the mix of the fuel can help and using more eco friendly trucks/transportation to events.

I do think the drivers are paid too much but they are the best in the business and to get into formula 1 you have to go through feeders series and most of the time your have to pay for the privilege so it sort of evens itself out. I do feel sorry for the drivers who have a bit of bad luck/ things don't go their way and they get dropped but the steaks and pressure are high and it is a results sports. Driver spats do make the sport alot more interesting as long as they don't go too far and people get seriously hurt.

The BBCs coverage has been brilliant, sometimes better than the races themselves!! It is a shame that they have to split it with Sky and half the BBC team are moving to Sky, but the BBC has to cut costs as an organisation and they see formula 1 as an area they can save money in. Sky are putting lots of money into their coverage and setting up a whole new channel dedicated to formula 1, but im afraid I wont be getting Sky because of the split.

English football and footballers

Football is like a religion and marmite- either love it or hate it!!! The problem with modern football is money, too much money has started to ruin the beautiful game. When the English Premier League was created in February 1992 they sold the live TV rights to sky and since then Sky and ESPN have shown all the premier league games and none have ever been shown on terrestrial TV, because of this TV money teams have been able to spend more on players and their wages, improving training grounds, football stadiums and there academies, all good in principle but and this is a major but chairmen and owners have gone over the top on spending and we have seen clubs (Leeds, Portsmouth) go bust/ majorly backwards over chasing the dream and it failing! Chelsea and Manchester City have mega rich owners who can back the clubs without batting too much of an eye lid, but what will happen when these mega rich owners have had enough and pull out? who knows. Some clubs are properly run and work within there means, which the fans are happy with. When a club gets relegated from the premier league they receive parachute payments which is a good idea to help them out in the next few seasons but when the payments have ran out and the team have not got back in the premier league they struggle with the reduced cash flow and so they have to sell their best players and find it harder to get promoted back to the premier league, but when they get promoted back up they get a massive pay day (£90 million) so you get championship teams pushing and pushing for this massive pay day!!!!

English football also suffers from the amount of foreign players coming in, they are cheaper to buy, can be paid less. This gives young English players less of a chance to succeed in the premier league unless they are one in a million player (Rooney, Wilshere, Walcott). Foreign players have bought a new dynamic and skills to the premier league and made all of the fans sit up and go wow, but they have bought problems too, hard to understand, moan about the weather, get big headed, think they are bigger than the club itself. I do think the balance of English to foreign players is balancing back to more English, this can be down to better English players coming through the youth system, club managers/ owners getting fed up with media/ fan pressure in buying less foreign players and the smaller premier league clubs not spending so much on transfer fees.

Due to the amount of money the footballers are paid per week is making them become millionaires over night and detached form everyday life which some fans are jealous of and don't like but its the way these things go. Fair play to player who donate money to charity and help out in the local community.

the labour party

This is only about the English labour party and not another one form another country. The labour party got elected in 1997 under the leadership of Tony Blair, then followed by Gordon Brown in 2007 until 2010. They have single handedly taken this country, England back a few steps by changing the immigration rules to allow more people in who then claim benefits, made it easier and relaxed the tax laws so big multi national companies can have HQs in this country and pay much lesser taxes compared to other countries, they have destroyed manufacturing, numerous car manufactures have pulled out or gone bust in England. They sold off England's gold bullion when gold was at record low prices and now (december 2011) it is at its/ near its record high, they have overspent massively on useless computer systems/ central command centres. They have created massive paper trails to get jobs done. Made health and safety over the top!! Now they are not in power they are trying to give the coalition government a hard time over the spending cuts when they are the ones who got us in this mess!!!! I shall add more and back up these comments in the future, lets get debating!!!!

setting this up

this blog is all about the way I see things in the world/ my life, some will agree others will disagree, I do not aim to hurt or upset anyone in any way shape of form, but if I do then im sorry in advance, happy reading and lets have a good debate!!