Scottish independence: Nicola Sturgeon gets 'politically ass raped' on Newsnight Scotland by Gordon Brewer, torn apart, shown to be inadequate, SNP welfare report is another nail in coffin of Alex Salmond, SNP can’t be trusted to protect Scots

Dear All

Did you catch Scotland’s unpopular Deputy First Minster Nicola Sturgeon on NewsNight Scotland last night?

Asked to guarantee welfare, she point blank refused to answer the question.

Sturgeon was on the programme to use the SNP buzzword “expert”, if that somehow reassures people on benefits that the SNP can be trusted on welfare.

Saying "expert" all the time doesn't mean shit Nicola, you know not everyone is as dumb as you think, maybe you are jaded because of the lack of talent in the SNP.

Gordon Brewer annihilated her as she tried to defend a substance lite document which didn’t answer the big questions.

The latest unworkable piece of spin is that the Scottish Government has said it wants to share the UK's welfare system.

And lets us be absolutely clear, there is no Scottish plan for welfare, it doesn’t exist, so it comes down to trust, do you trust Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon who are banking on ‘it will all be alright on the night’.

That is not good enough for millions of Scots.

The “expert” report says that there are "serious risks" to payments if an independent Scotland created a stand-alone system immediately.

Plan McB to deal with this problem?

Like the currency and EU debacles, there are no plans; it all rests on the SNP using the British system, which begs the question, what exactly will be independent about Scotland?

More and more, it looks like the SNP has overreached due to the continual problem of being run as a one man band, coupled with a genuine lack of talent by the SNP MSP, MP, Councilor and activist drones.

Next year the SNP plan to publish long term plans, that isn’t good enough, with all the other issues to be looked at in detail, whether you are for or against independence, the sensible conclusion is to say no now!

Sturgeon and Salmond’s plan all hinges on the UK saying yes, they will not do that if indy is won, at the end of negotiations, planned by the SNP to end in 2016 to meet the SNP election timetable, everything will have been moved or replicated in England.

 Alistair Darling, the head of the pro-UK Better Together campaign, claimed the policy showed "separation makes no sense".

Increasingly the SNP are publishing reasons not to vote for independence, because as their various “expert” groups conclude, everything is better done at a UK level.
 

80 years the SNP had to have a plan for independence and they couldn’t be bothered to have a rolling blueprint which would need to be just tweaked to take account of present circumstances.

And they couldn’t do it.

Outside their own little bubble, they think the world exists to revolve round them.

The plan to share the UK's welfare system was the key recommendation of the Scottish Government's expert working group on welfare headed by Darra Singh, a former chief executive of Jobcentre Plus.

If you don’t know Jobcentre Plus is another part of broken Britain which was never fixed, so I take Darra Singh’s expertise with a pinch of salt.

And I know many disadvantaged people who have been treated rather badly, because they can’t get a job where none exists or where opportunity is excluded from them.

In Scotland there is a highly integrated system in which Department for Work and Pension centres in Scotland administered some benefits for UK recipients.

In an independent Scotland, some of the DWP would be sacked in the medium term, what plan to help these people?

None!

Just like there is no plan for to replace military shipbuilding and save the yards on the Clyde.

Was that work done by the SNP?

No!

Rather than helping the SNP independence cause, this reports highlights what Scottish people already know, Alex Salmond, Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP can’t be trusted, their plan is “high risk” but with the safeguard that in the event of failure, their money is not at risk.

The panel concluded:

"Immediately separating these services would present serious risks to the continuity of payments to people in both Scotland and England and so a challenge for both an independent Scottish Government and a UK Government."

The so much ‘we can make our country anything we want’ statement is looking rather out of date now, as the panel added:

In adopting this approach, the Scottish Government would need to ensure any early priorities for change could be accommodated by the UK Government. A downside of continuing to share services might be that an independent Scottish Government finds itself unable to implement some of its early priorities for change to the benefit system."

That means that the bedroom tax will not be getting scrapped under an independent government for some time, if at all.

Adding some gravitas to the problem, Alastair Darling said:

"What would a separate Scottish welfare system look like? We are none the wiser after today's report. Slowly but surely the nationalists appear to be coming to the view that we are, in fact, better together."

The SNP are too stupid, too wee, too provincial minded to be the government of an independent Scotland, when you get through the spin, smoke and mirrors, and the lies, they stand for nothing that represents Scottish values.

Last night was a car crash on Newsnight Scotland for Nicola Sturgeon, she had no plan, no answers just kept saying the word “expert” as if that had any meaning to people on welfare.

If she thought this report is a game changer it is just another pile of self evident shit we already know, welfare is better in the UK system, however, it should be autonomous in Scotland, but not run out of the Scottish Government.  

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University