Scottish independence: Scotland’s unpopular Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon explodes into ‘angry wee Nat’ as Gordon Brown asks questions about how pensions can be funded if independent, can’t ‘play the ball so attacks the man’, weak leadership isn't a hallmark of an A Team

Dear All

One of the things about this Scottish independence debate is that many people from all over Scotland are coming out to fight against Scotland’s ‘jolly fat man’ Alex Salmond.

Where were you in the fight to save Scotland from becoming a fascist state?

Did you vote No when your country needed you?

The Alex Salmond party within the ‘shop front’ that is the Scottish National Party has had a killer blow dealt to their credibility over the last week and it is still continuing this week.

Now, the SNP Government has failed to provide the evidence that it can fund the pensions.

How can this be?

How can any credible bid for independence be made by the complete sham that Salmond and unpopular Nicola Sturgeon have made of this campaign?

Up pops former Prime Minister Gordon Brown to put his boot into the two buffoons responsible for the collapse of independence support.

Brown warns a Yes vote for independence would mean the loss of the "pooling and sharing" of resources to help pay for state pensions.

Brown also added he did not believe the SNP administration's assertions that pensions would continue to be paid and properly funded.

How now believes a word out of the mouth of Alex Salmond?

Not me, and I am pretty much got my finger on the pulse of Scotland.

Is this pension issue the third major problem for Alex Salmond?

Well everything else has been torn apart for the incompetence that it is, why should pensions be extempt?

Brown was speaking to an audience of pensioners at an event in Lochgelly, Fife, to launch the campaign group Keep our British Pensions.

He said:

"We know when we look at the figures for pensions; we in Scotland get a higher share of the UK pension money."

Brown then went on to speak of benefits such as pensioners' credit, the winter fuel allowance and free television licences are added to the state pension.

He said that Scots receive around £200 more on average each year than their English counterparts

That is a ball park figure of £200 million extra in total for Scotland.

He said:

"Why does that happen? It happens because we pool all of our resources as part of the United Kingdom. We pay our national insurance and we pay our taxes so that we can pay for our pensions later. We have more needs (in Scotland) and more pensioners, therefore we get more."

Brown continued:

"The SNP know that they have got a problem... the rising demand for pensions, set against the money that they have, means there is greater volatility in social security spending. They haven't answered the basic problem - you have paid into your pension, into the UK Exchequer all your lives, you've paid your national insurance, you've paid your taxes so that you have a right to a pension. You are expecting, quite rightly, that you will get a British pension - but if there is independence, the British pension stops, the national insurance fund that you're paying into is broken up. There will be a separate Scottish national insurance fund, and the rest of the UK will have the lion's share."

Pensions will be another headache for Salmond and Sturgeon, since trust is an issue and we all that they cannot be trusted.

The SNP in part bank a lot on oil revenues.

Salmond and Sturgeon hyped up North Sea Oil as a golden egg that would help fund pensions under independence.

But within the SNP Government, we found out that private documents leaked to the media paint a different story.

The SNP are over egging the pudding all the time to cover up the cracks in their figures, classic con man trick on Scots.

Brown said:

"They didn't expect to get £6.9 billion from oil, they only expect to get £4 billion...far from having all these billions of resources, the SNP are exaggerating all the time. That difference of over two million is the equivalent of half the amount of money spent on everybody's pension in Scotland. If that money is not there, how are pensions going to be afforded?"

The SNP described Mr Brown's comments as "scaremongering".

They really don’t have an answer to anything but to retreat to calling everything they don’t like as "scaremongering”.

Unpopular Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said:

"The last person anyone in Scotland will take lessons from when it comes to pensions is Gordon Brown”.

Rather than attack the message, Sturgeon has decided to attack the man, what’s the matter Nicola can’t you kick the ball?

Do you need a bigger target?

One thing is certain, the SNP have still to answer a lot of questions and the sooner that they replace the GAY Team within an A Team, the sooner they might be able to put a brave face of losing perhaps with a certain amount of dignity.

No GAY Team can ever win independence for Scotland because independence isn’t a laughing matter.

“In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team”

2014 and A Teams are still needed!

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University