Lemme outa here!

The beautiful unicorn is by Boo Paterson.


People walk out on lousy situations all the time: chuck the job that is making them ill, abandon the disfunctional friend who is using them, give up on the family that's bad for them.

If you get yourself into a bad relationship, you're also allowed to walk away. A bad marriage is more complicated but still in the end both parties can have a fresh start.

This is because everybody knows before they get into it what their rights and responsibilities are - and what happens if they renege on them. Bluntly, you pay. Emotionally as well as financially.

Countries are in the same position most of the time: Czechoslovakia was a fake country even as it was being set up. So it split up by agreement and with 'help' (not always very helpful help) from neighbours. Yugoslavia wasn't so easy a split: the country was created out of an ancient, unresolved civil war as well as a more recent world war - and it has taken several more wars to break it up. A lot of people have suffered in the process. And there's no guarantee the break-up is over yet.

In some cases, there's not just war and civil war, there are threats and foreign intervention that leave bitter memories. Not everyone remembers the back story - or if they do they use it like a cudgel to beat people with.

That causes another split - and it's rarely a friendly one: if you're old enough to have been involved in the initial chaos, it's hard to move on. If you're young, you never knew and you don't understand what all the fuss is about. It's all too long ago. So the division of Ireland, started centuries ago by the Norman invaders' wish for land and kept going by the English crown's invading armies, goes on affecting the lives of people who mostly just want to be left alone to do their own thing.

But there's a further situation - and I know it's absolutely banal. How do people and countries get out of toxic relationships when one side enjoys great benefits from the 'partnership' and wants to hang on in there?

This, of course, is the situation that exists between England and her partners in the United Kingdom.

By force of sheer numbers, England has been the self-appointed top nation of Britain. For some reason, England always has to be top dog in any situation. This attitude stopped the UK getting into the Common Market (with a bit of help from General de Gaulle) in 1973 and drove it out of the EU just the other day.

The Treaty of Union of 1707 is always said to have been entered into freely, although a bit of reading on the situation in Scotland and on the signatories of the Treaty will tell you that's not the whole story. Same with the current claim that the UK is the most successful union of nations in the world. Look a bit closer. The ignorance of much of the population of the UK about the UK suggests Scotland, Wales and Ireland were to be absorbed by England. No partnership that anyone else can see. Do people know that Ireland didn't enter the UK till 1801? Have they even heard of the Treaty of Union? What do they think the relationship is between the members nations of the UK - do they even know there are members nations.

Someone did a propaganda job on the 4 nations way back then - and it was a good one.

But what happens when one partner wants out of the partnership of nations? Is there a mechanism in the partnership to allow for a break-up? Or does England remain top dog and Scotland has to go cap in hand to get permission to split? If there isn't a mechanism, can the partnership even be changed as
times change?
If not, the whole affair seems anti-democratic.

In the divorce courts, there used to be ridiculous rules about how long people had to wait to leave a marriage. Five years if one partner objected to the divorce. What exactly are the rules in the UK? And how do we change them?