Invented Here, but Not Employed Here

Matthew Lynn of Bloomberg makes a fairly persuasive case for divorce between England and Scotland. If you know even the bare minimum of history, you would think that the Scots would jump at the chance (and oddly, "Braveheart" has been on TV, it seems, every night recently), but Lynn suggests that suckling at the big government teet for so long has calmed the passionate yearning for independence in the Scots. He also points out that despite being great entrepreneurs, as one would expect in the land of Adam Smith, the Scots would not seem to want a society hewing to Smithian philosophy. We've seen this sort of rejection of a country's great thinkers before.

UPDATE: The WSJ today takes up the idea in Scot Free. I like this not-quite-euphemistic, but nonetheless delicate formulation..."The Scots, once notorious for their financial parsimony..." Yes, the Scots are cheap.