A week with Unionists

This week I've had a few very interesting debates with unionists regarding Scottish Independence.
One of my neighbours, a very amenable chap whom I've known for about 20 years, engaged me in discussion about Independence after discussing the mooted STV series about William Wallace (Fingers crossed for Gerard Butler as Wallace!).  We both had a few snide comments to make about the historical accuracy of Mel Gibson's effort, but that brought us round to the oft mooted opinion of Unionists that much of Scottish Nationalism is about looking back into the far past and being caught up in a foolishly romantic idea that it was somehow better then than it is now.  Not true, ladies and gentlemen, would you swap the wonders of the internet, electricity and indoor toilets for the hard fought Independence of the 1300s?  I wouldn't, I'd quite like to have a modern Independent Scotland thank you very much.
He made a point about nationalism that I'm sure many people are familiar with, that all nationalism is bad as it implies that somehow we as a people who believe in our nation do so from the vantage point of looking down on all other nations.  He even used the Hitler argument, which is a hard one to take while keeping a smile on your face!  I told him that our nationalism isn't about being better than others, it's just about being better placed to deal with Scotland's unique problems.
So of course, he switched tacks to say that without England, Scotland couldn't pay it's way.  I mentioned our pay our of tax, he asked me how much we get back so we agreed to go away and check those figures exactly.  Alex Massie answered the question for me, we pay out 9.4% of UK tax and receive 9.3%  of expenditure, figures which are taken from the GERS report.  My neighbour has written to our local MSP for the same figures, who just happens to be Alex Fergusson, so I'm already a little curious as to what kind of reply he'll get!
By comparison to the other discussion I had, where my opponent quoted Nigel Farrage at me, this was a very civilised and pleasant debate, in spite of the use of the H-word.  Throughout all though, I kept smiling and trying to put my point across with figures and facts.  We have two long years ahead of us where these arguments are going to become more common and we, as supporters of Independence, are going to become incredibly practised with our arguments.  It could get unpleasant for some of us.  My neighbour did tell me he feared that anti-english attacks would increase towards the referendum, but this is something I certainly don't agree with.  My advise is this - Keep Calm and Keep Debating.  Let's not rise to the inflammatory language and engage only with those arguments that are based in rationality and not plain prejudice.  This debate will get hot, but don't let it be the pro-independence believers that lose their tempers and resort to negative or pejorative language.