Scottish independence: Alex Salmond to announce plans for a Scottish tax service for ‘Skintland’, Salmond’s coming for your pennies, and everything will affect the pound in your pocket, future poverty and austerity on the cards, Scots could flee South to England!

Dear All

No taxation without representation.

It’s a famous American quote, the Scottish National Party plans taxation, in fact they plan a lot of taxation, too much; they have promised a Nordic style welfare system and also a low corporation tax.

The sums just don’t add up.

George Osborne, the UK chancellor is having a great Scottish indy campaign, people don’t believe a word that Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon say, too many times the promises and assertions turned out to be false.

Some people call it lies.

Whatever you call it, the entire Scottish indy campaign is bogus.

Osborne has said there would be "very significant" tax rises or cuts to public spending if a Scottish oil fund was set up post-independence.

That has the ring of truth; there isn’t enough money available to have an Oil Fund without drastic cuts.

That means the working class people of Scotland would suffer hardship beyond belief.

George Osborne popped out the pearls of wisdoms as part of the message of the latest UK government analysis on the possibility of an independent Scotland.

Short version, working class people are going to be screwed post indy, and then the austerity kicks in, we would be the Athens of the North.

Do you know any bins with food in them, keep a weather eye, you might be dining on a bin lid.

The UK Government paper said such a plan for the Oil Fund would mean taking £8bn out of a go-alone Scottish budget and diverting it into the fund.

Danger danger Will Robinson!

The Scottish National Party has backed a Norwegian-style oil fund for as long as I can remember, they are big on spin and short on detail.

Since 1990, Norway has invested profits from its oil industry into coffers for the nation's future, that fund is incredibly healthy, it stands at £475bn.

The trick with money is to save it that is how wealth is created, smart investments shows the Norwegians with a fund 40% bigger than the value of the entire Norwegian economy.

This makes them have the world's largest sovereign wealth fund.

Awhile ago, I had an idea for a smaller version called the City Sovereign Fund which is about Councils ploughing profits in a City Fund which could be used to fund special projects or get the Council out of a real jam.

 The analysis paper titled: Scotland Analysis - Macroeconomic and fiscal performance said:

"An independent Scottish state could try to smooth its public finances and manage volatile and declining oil and gas revenues by establishing an oil fund. Implementing an oil fund in a similar way to Norway would imply very significant tax increases or cuts to public spending, over and above the plans that have been set by the UK government to repair the impact of the financial crisis."

The money isn’t there is the bottom line.

Scotland’s unpopular Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said:

"If you were sitting in Norway listening to George Osborne you would laugh at him - I expect a lot of people in Scotland will today as well because they are a country of similar size to Scotland that is sitting right now on a £470bn oil fund for the future. That is what happens when you steward your oil resources properly."

I don’t see many people in Scotland laughing about the botched independence campaign or the threat to people’s jobs and security.

Osborne also said that Scotland had benefited over the last 30 years from oil and gas industry tax revenues.

The trouble is we should have benefited more; the money was used to shore up problems in the UK and Scotland.

We could have done better but we didn’t, but there is no evidence to suggest that Salmond and Sturgeon could manage Scotland better, evidence of cock ups tho!

There is no Scottish Government and local government reform and as such Scottish indy is completely bogus and No is the best option.

And the majority of Scots think the same as me.

Oil Fund good idea, trouble is SNP Government is such a shambles that they can't be trusted.

And you can take that to the bank!

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University