Scottish independence: Scotland’s ‘jolly fat man’ Alex Salmond and increasingly unpopular Nicola Sturgeon are taking Scotland towards taxes going through the roof, 14% rises in independent Scotland just to keep declining services, two buffoons muck up indy bid

Dear All

One plus one adds up to two and from there the world lies before you.

The Scottish independence campaign is a farce, it’s a complete farce; how do we know this?

We know this because there is no Scottish Government reform and no local government reform.

The entire campaign is hollow, it’s bogus and it has no substance to it, recently the Grangemouth dispute shows how unprepared Scotland’s ‘jolly fat man’ Alex Salmond and Scotland’s unpopular Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon are when it comes to forward planning.

One man held an entire country to ransom.  

The Grangemouth refinery supplies 70% of the fuel used at Scotland's filling stations and it also supplies fuel to Northern Ireland and the North of England. This means that this national asset on which so much of Scotland would depend is unstable.

Plan McPetrol and McDiesel by the SNP?

No!

Another disaster facing working class Scots due to the ill prepared bid is that taxes would have to rise.

The current figure quoted comes in at almost 14% if they were the sole method used to fill the fiscal black hole facing the government of an independent Scotland.

For years I have been commenting on how Scottish Government reform and local government reform was an essential part of the process on the road to independence.

Taxes will rise, there isn’t an alternative under the current setup to fix the problems of the black hole, the SNP like to talk around it as if it doesn’t exist; they play on the idea that the Oil Fund would solve anything and everything.

The SNP leader of Salmond and Sturgeon are running a con trick on Scots.

Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) latest report on independence also highlights another problem again this hasn’t been addressed by the SNP leadership that is service cuts. Far from the land of ‘milk and honey’, Scots face the grim prospect of austerity on a par with Greece…. without the sunshine!

So, we are being setup for a mix of tax hikes and spending cuts if Salmond and Sturgeon get their way on Scottish independence, for them the great pity is that Scots can read and think for themselves.

Senior IFS economic researcher Stuart Adam said:

"This gives people a sense of the scale of the fiscal challenge facing an independent Scotland."

Alex Salmond and the increasingly unpopular Nicola Sturgeon went for an independence bid too soon.

However, the fairytale by the SNP hasn’t been played out, not just yet, earlier this year, John Swinney, the Scottish Finance Secretary, said he did "not envisage increases in personal taxation in an independent Scotland".

His reputation is increasingly taking a battering as he must know the bid is entirely wrong and unprepared.

Swinney’s pitch is that lower business taxes would help "grow the economy and thereby grow the tax base".

Assumption, and if England does the same it cancels out any advantage.

Duh!

So, we can see that having left everything to the last minute and with the additional spending pledges, the term Skintland used jokingly isn’t far off the mark.

You can’t have independence without proper preparation and quite frankly the ‘Fat man’ and little Ms. Unpopular haven’t done the work, the sums don’t add up and trust is a major issue for the SNP leadership.

You can’t mislead people on matters of fact and expect them to believe you in future, the EU lies literally destroyed all credibility on the subject of independence.

No plan for a Scottish pound was another factor.

On most reserved matters, the SNP are out of their depth, defence being a major issue that shows how incompetent the Nationalists have been.

You name it they have buried pretty much every issue with their short sighted and Neanderthal approach, the white paper is coming next month and we will see what kind of story that produces.

The truth is that Scottish independence is now dead in the minds of the Scottish people, in the time left there is not enough time to construct a proper bid, not with these people at the helm, the SNP turned this into a cronies campaign a rich man’s campaign, a campaign for vested interests, it was never about making the people of Scotland’s lives better, it was all about one man, Alex Salmond.

It was all about his dream of destroying the union at any cost to the people of Scotland so he could have a place in history.

Well he is getting a place, the man who lost Scottish independence based on his own vanity and stupidity.

The sums don’t add up, the reality is that things would never be perfect for a bid, however you certainly could cut down the limiting factors, he chose to present a bid based on a stupid smile on his face and that would be enough for everyone to gamble their future, their jobs and their homes.

He isn’t that popular and neither is Scotland’s unpopular Deputy First Minster Nicola Sturgeon.

Better Together campaign claimed the report and another by the Centre for Public Policy for Regions shows that the SNP's economic credibility was in tatters. They state that you cannot have an Oil Fund and maintain services without spending being slashed.

And it is so obvious, Scottish Government reform and local government reform was needed to have been started in 2011.

George Laird right again.

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University