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Wednesday 22 October 2014

Be a nation again

If we're to become an independent country, one of the first things we need to do is to normalise the idea of Scotland as a country.  For a large part of the world, Scotland is simple one part of the United Kingdom, a province if you will.  We need to change that so that the idea of Scotland as a country seems obvious, normal, natural.

If you've ever signed up for an account on a website, you'll know you are very often asked to select which country you're in from a list.  Here in Scotland we normally only have one choice - United Kingdom.  It's a standard list of countries.  I think we need to get Scotland included in the standard list of countries.

The source of the standard country list is the International Organisation for Standardisaton (ISO).  Country codes are covered by ISO-3166-1 and subdivisions of countries are covered by ISO-3166-2. Scotland is currently covered by ISO-3166-2. The standard website drop-down list comes from ISO-3166-1.

I haven't been able to find anywhere the criteria used for including a country in one or other of the standards, but it might be possible to make a case for Scotland to be included in ISO-3166-1 as we have our own parliament, especially if we get anything close to DevoMax as a result of the 'Vow' (ever the optimist!).  We also have the fact that our sports teams are often competing as Scotland, separate from the other three nations in the UK.

Now it may not be possible for us to be moved to ISO-3166-1 while we are still governed in any way bu Westminster, and I have a feeling any such move might be opposed by allies of Westminster, but it's got to be worth a try, no?

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