Dear All
There is plenty of Oil in Scotland.
What type?
Hate!
Hate is the Oil that the Scottish National
Party produces by the barrel load.
‘It’s Scotland’s Oil’, the cry from the
1970’s is back again, wasn’t able to work then and 40 years down the line it
still doesn’t work.
Scotland’s ‘jolly fat man’ Alex Salmond is
under pressure from opposition leaders at Holyrood to explain how an
independent Scotland would deal with the dramatic fall in oil revenues.
The answer is ‘hark back’ to the distant
past, but we all live in the here and now!
And that is where the answers should come
from.
Scotland ran a deficit, the shortfall
between public spending and the taxes raised to pay for them.
That number is huge, a jump to £12 billion
after North Sea receipts dropped by £4.4 billion in 2012-13.
An independence bid and the economy of
Scotland cannot all hinge on a single oil field’s production.
Salmond’s bluster after being caught out
was to tell MSPs at FMQ’S that the UK is in deficit by more than £100 billion,
but insisted Scotland is in a “relatively stronger position” over the past five
years.
This shows he is living in denial, and you
can’t live in denial, although he isn’t responsible for the North Sea Oil
industry, he hasn’t bothered to do the work on reform of Government or Local
Government leaving Scotland vulnerable.
Labour leader Johann Lamont said that
Scotland’s public finances would be in worse shape than the UK based on the
most recent figures.
She said:
“Will he now confirm that the rest of the United Kingdom has
a relative surplus compared to Scotland’s relative deficit?”
She added:
“And can he explain how he would maintain
our schools when he has lost the equivalent of an entire school’s budget would
he cut services or raise taxes?”
And the truth is Salmond would have to do
both to manage a disaster.
Salmond was forced to accept Scotland was
£283 per head poorer than the wider UK last year.
Did you see the posters by Yes Scotland
seen by many as an SNP front, would you like to live in one of the wealthiest
countries’
How wealthy would be if taxes are raised
and budgets cut?
This isn’t the land of milk and honey he
and unpopular Nicola Sturgeon have promised, this isn’t nirvana.
Tory leader Ruth Davidson then made the
obvious point about being part of the UK helps Scotland to “absorb these
shocks”.
She added:
“We
have the support from the UK Government to keep the North Sea going and we have
the support of a nation with broad shoulders to absorb the shocks. The last
thing we need right now is to end these advantages.”
Although that sound terribly good, we
should also remember that no of this translates to helping the poorest in
society, something which will keep the Scottish Tories are a fringe party in
the minds of the Scottish public.
Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie said
that “one year of problems” in the North Sea oil resulted in £4 billion being
wiped off Scotland’s balance sheet.
Salmond said he didn’t expect that type of
problem to happen again, how can he guarantee this?
He can’t, he put all his eggs into the one
basket and when it got dropped it was a rather costly affair.
Rennie added:
“Which taxes would go up and which taxes
would be cut?”
To lose £4.4 billion without a backup plan
to offset such an event rather shows that the deeper people look into his
independence vision, the more people will see that is substance lite in every
key area.
How can anyone vote for independence when
the Scottish National Party are so far out of their depth?
Quite simply, a No vote is required even if
you do believe that Scotland should be independence, independence is supposed
to make people’s lives better, in the SNP, it is all about making the SNP clique
richer at the Scottish public’s expense.
That isn’t happening; Alex Salmond has gone
as far as he can go!
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow
University
more and more like many Scots I see no pointing in voting for indy and the SNP.
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