Yes and I threw it in basically as the person who coined it appears to be lurking on the list these day. Jargon can be a pain but it can also be useful. Would you prefer to read the Jim Sillars inspired sloganeering phrase "independence in Europe" or "a fully sovereign independent Scotland which is functioning outside of the United Kingdom of Great Britian and Northern Ireland which would be a member of the United Nations while at the same time retaining a political and economic union with the rump UK and other European states through full participation within the European Union and also retaining close cultural ties to other states within the British Isles through a Council of the Isles"? The key is to get the phrase used widely and often enough that it becomes the universally used shorthand for a complex concept that can save everybody time spent writing and reading about it.

F3 as I understand it means that all national level taxation would be the responsibility of the Holyrood administration and would be collected within Scotland and no money would flow from Whitehall to Edinburgh. Scotland would send money to Westminster to pay its share of shared UK institutions such as the Foreign Office and defense. Under this scenario Scottish representation at Westminster could be drastically curtailed and Westminster would become the parliament of England and Wales for most of the time. Northern Ireland would be the other semi-detached part of the UK but would probably require subsidy from Whitehall unlike Scotland so F3 is less likely to happen there. The Good Friday Agreement was the product of a negotiation process that was designed IMO by London and Dublin to result in transitory arrangement to keep NI in a holding pattern until a 32 county Eire could be peacefully achieved through consent as a result of the difference between the RC and Protestant communities birth, death and emigration rates. David Trimble very skillfully managed to negotiate a deal that may wind up making the NI power sharing scheme a lot more permanent than the other parties originally envisaged. The UK and an overarching sense of Britishness is therefore probably going to have a lot more staying power as an intellectual concept than many Scottish nationalists have liked to think and it will be interesting to see how the Council of the Isles in particular develops over the next decade or so.

The F3 scenario has its attractions for people who feel that Scotland benefits from being part of a much larger state when it comes to representation in things like the UN, NATO and EU and who don't really see the need for Scotland to suddenly have its own navy and air force or its own network of embassies and consulates etc. That would not be the preferred option for most SNP people but in an increasingly interdependent global community you can certainly argue that the concept of traditional UN membership style independence being the be all and end all to aspire to may be becoming somewhat dated.