The trouble with Scottish independence...

...is that it will make a right mess of rather a lot of flags.  My being a unionist is well documented, but rather than dwell on that, I present some aesthetic reasons for maintaining the union, based on my less than l33t skeelz at image manipulation:

So, the Union Flag, in all her glory.  Readers might have seen this before.

 
Something of a design classic, it is generally reckoned.  Josh Parsons, in his outstandingly entertaining flag ratings site gives it 70/100 and a B grade, reckoning it a little busy.  Do look at his site, but please come back.

What happens if we just remove the blue?

This:

Not great, is it?


If the St Patrick's cross is widened and re-centred we get this:

If anything, even more ghastly.

When that is applied to our colonies overseas territories the horrors really begin:

The British Antarctic Territory

Not good.  Nor this, Bermuda:

This, by the way, works on the presumption that we English types get to keep those assets during the divorce.  If the Scots decided they wanted the Falklands while we got to keep the cat and the furniture, this might be the Falklands' new flag:

Ignoring my technical problems with shades of blue, that's quite nice, isn't it?

There are also problems for our Antipodean friends, which are easily imagined - should they update the Union flag, keep it as is, or add a St Andrews Cross?  Vexing problems indeed.

Another possibility is that we do what the Czechs did after the Velvet Divorce and keep the old flag, even though they agreed that they would not...  Yet another possibility is that some po faced Edinburgh leftie will campaign for a new flag on the grounds that one with a cross is insufficiently inclusive, does not represent 'the New Scotland', is a colonial relic etc etc, thus sparing us these difficulties.