The Rant part of my Blog

Often the main arguments that the nationalist community use boils down to ” if we were independent everything would be better” Of course that is not true. For example the Western world economic crisis will not suddenly disappear. But as part of a smaller economic community that, and any future crisis, will be magnified. For example if we owe 6% of our income it is easier managed if our income is £500 rather than £50.  Bigger and stronger together.

The SNP would probably agree with me that bigger is better. Why else would they amalgamate police forces and fire brigades   

( I think that creating a single police force was a bad thing it has the danger of having more political pressure on one individual where before politicians had to convince all Chief Constables to follow their “requests” and basically now one man is in charge of policy and it stifles dissent and trying new ideas.)

I have to ask is breaking up the UK a good thing and what would we gain. Many of the nationalist sympathisers have emotional arguments without any real figures or facts.

    Trust us take a chance  = Take a Leap in the dark  

They make emotive statements that have no basis in truth eg “ you are not a true Scot if you don`t vote for independence” rather than solid believable facts and figures.

Mr Salmond et al seems to be promising us Utopia bigger pensions, better benefits, free higher education, free national Health service , lower council charges an oil fund for the future etc etc.

Like all promises he has made there is a price to pay and who will be paying ?

Look at the freeze on the council tax was that a good thing ?

How many jobs have been lost due to this?

Are your services provided by the councils improved ; remained the same ; reduced ?

Ask the old lady who has had her help from carers cut, who has many different agency workers calling when she was used to having one or two, whom she had got to know as friends and who knew her quirks and problems.

Ask the social worker who has their case load  become unmanageable.

Ask their clients who have agency social workers who know nothing about their problems then disappear as their contract is only for six months.  

While I support free education for all, that too came at a cost to the some families .

They cut the means tested student bursaries . Students whose families had incomes  of £25,000 annually, ie £500 weekly, had their bursaries cut by £1131 a year. If the family income is up to £19,300, approx. £380 weekly, the bursaries were cut by around £900.

But never mind they could increase their annual student debt to £4500 a year

Also colleges  had a £56 million real terms cut from the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) grants, the main income source and the SFC funding will continue to drop over the next two years.

 I almost want the SNP to come back in 2016 as a minority government to see if they could continue the populist policies that they have used to try to achieve their aim of Separatism or if suddenly everything would have to change. 

If it seems too good to be true it is too good to be true.

My political view is that I am part of the working class and the working poor in Newcastle in Manchester in London are equally as important as the workers in Glasgow in Inverness in Edinburgh.
When I see some of the supposed socialists supporting, a leading light in one case ,  the Yes camp I cringe. People who I, in times past, supported, canvassed for and voted for, walking away from the rest of the UK working classes.  

Mr Salmond went to England recently to tell them that it will be in their interest for Scotland to leave the United Kingdom.

 But he also said that if we stay in the UK we will be ruled by a Conservative government so logically, following his viewpoint, if we divorce it will make it more certain that we will leave rest of the working people of the UK to be ruled by the Tory party and maybe even worse in a coalition with UKIP.

So if he is right I am surprised the Tories aren`t helping them achieve their aim.

 Divide and conquer has long been used as a political tool but of course it is just more scare tactics from Salmond. Oh wait the campaign of fear comes from the NO camp not our honest leader.

So with all the things I have considered I am still going to vote to remain in the UK and vote NO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scottish Independence, Good or Bad, Convince Me !

OK My last post was on the position of Scotland in the Eu now I am looking for answers to another point that I find hard to ignore.
The unit of currency we will use. I argued, in my first post, that if we are to join the Eu we will have to have the Euro as our currency.

(Also if we are not a part of a currency union with the UK this would make joining the Eu, even with the euro, doubly difficult as we would not initially, at best, have a functioning central bank. )

The Euro seems very sensitive to fluctuation due to the fact that there are so many different countries part of this currency union and therefore if one or more countries have problem this will affect the value of the Euro.
We saw that happen when Greece and other countries suffered during the banking problems in recent years.
So, while I am certainly no economist, it seems the Euro would be quite risky for us compared with the pound sterling.
Also if the point of Independence is we in Scotland make our own decisions then, by becoming part of the Euro,  the monetary decisions on the Euro zone will be taken by European Central Bank and as part of the Euro zone we will also have to submit our national budget for approval to the same bank and I don`t see how we can say we are any more independent in this situation.

The best option I can see would be to have a currency union with the UK.
But, understandably, they may not want that. If we got into financial trouble this would affect the pound sterling and since the Bank of England would be our guarantor if we got into financial difficulties it would affect the whole of the British Isles, so would you take that chance if you were the UK why would you invite a foreign country to share your currency ?
Even if they did accept a currency union we would be a minor partner and would still not be able to make independent decisions on some of the most important parts of the economy as we would be out voted on any decisions we wanted, Is that Independence ?

I realise we could use the pound outside of a currency union but that is so complicated and full of pitfalls that I cannot see that being worth considering.

The last option would be setting up our own currency say the Scottish Pound. One problem I see with that is what would the exchange rate on that against the Euro, the US dollar, the UK pound . In other words would the "Scottish Pound" be worth less than the UK pound and that could cause real problems for us buying from the other nations in the UK, or in the world, for example food coming from south of the border or Europe etc.
Since almost every country borrows to pay for the services and infrastructure etc and, like getting a business loan from a lender, if we have our own currency and having no record of borrowing or paying back lenders would this make the interest charged by the global bankers on loans to Scotland be higher than at present. At present the Bank of England is our lender of last resort but outside of a currency union with the UK who would be our lender of last resort (ie who would guarantee our loans would be paid back to lenders).

As I said previously this is written from "the man in the street" perspective so no doubt there will be some of you who are experts in global fiscal arrangements who can advise me if I am wrong in my suppositions and perhaps tempt me away from the NO camp.


 
 

My Questions On An Independent Scotland and The European Union

As it is topical, my first ever blog is about Scotland being Independent and in the European Union.
Ok I don`t doubt that at some point a separate Scotland would get to be part of the Eu but at what cost?

If we separate from the UK we would be leaving the UK unilaterally and my belief is that the UK would retain it`s rights and we would have to negotiate terms to join.
First we would have to convince all the other member nations to let us join, since the Council of Ministers must unanimously accept a state`s application, so if one member nation said no then we could not join.

All new nations joining, under the Treaty, have to join the Euro. The UK and Denmark, who have the opt-out, are the exceptions to this.
 I would imagine that others who have had to join the Euro, or will when their state conditions are right, would not allow us to have membership terms different from their own.

The UK also has three other opt outs that we would not necessarily have.

My next problem with the separate Scottish state being in the Eu is we would not have any part of the UK rebate can you imagine countries who are desperate for the UK to give up it`s rebate saying ok just let Scotland keep its share of the UK rebate.

Alex Salmond said we would, as a separate country, have a place at the top table but at present we as part of the UK have 73 Eu parliamentary members and 29 votes in the Council of Ministers .
As an independent Scotland we would only have around 11 or 12 Eu parliamentary members and at the Council of Ministers we would only have 7 votes
The UK would still have their 73 MEPs and their 28 / 29 votes in the Council of Ministers
 Our voting strength would be about the equivalent of Eire, Croatia or Lithuania less than Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania et al.
On this basis whilst we will be at the top table, albeit there is only one table, we will have a pretty lowly position on it.

Of course there is so much more to becoming a full member of the European union but if my understanding is correct then the above, alone, would influence me to vote NO.