SNP’s ‘pig in a poke recession’, Scotland appears to be heading towards a major recession as shock figures show that Scotland is badly lagging behind the rest of the UK, Nicola Sturgeon and Derek Mackay playing the ‘Brexit’ card show how playing political games make you look and sound irrelevant, the country is going down the tubes due to SNP mismanagement, invest in education and infrastructure

Dear All

If you are running a business, you want economic security as much as possible with little risk or minimised risk from the political parties as they push their agenda while in government. Scotland is a country which business is backing away from, the continual dragging down the country with uncertainty isn’t a good climate to contemplate investment at the moment.

Scotland is at risk from going into another recession due to the SNP’s ridiculous obsession with independence, business is also worried by a failing SNP government which is solely focused on a single issue instead of laying the foundations of infrastructure for a stronger Scotland.

Business needs confidence, it needs certainty and it needs it now.

As news trickles down that there is ‘concerns’, the political parties are doing what they always do, blame each other and hope they can get their message over to tarnish the other side. The blame game is one of the reasons why people are turned off politics, it is like a game of ping pong or musical chairs where the main parties just move from government to opposition and vice versa.

Depending who you are and in which party, the ‘causes’ are getting defined as ‘Brexit’ or the nonsense of a second independence referendum being rammed down Scotland’s throat. Scotland’s economy shrank in the last three months of last year because the SNP aren’t planning for Scotland, we keep hearing of the now famous ‘ten year plan’, obviously because of inflation the old 5 year plan isn’t cutting the political mustard.

Last year Scotland's economy grew by just 0.4 per cent; this is far below the figure of 1.8 per cent for the UK as a whole. So, why is the rest of the UK doing so well, it comes down to investment, the SNP aren’t investing in people and their education, they want a dumb downed society so they raise immigration as an issue to claim we need ‘skilled’ workers when they aren’t investing to produce home grown talent.

The most important thing a country can do is invest in the education of its people; Nicola Sturgeon as we all know isn’t the genius which the Nationalists like to claim she is, far from it. Our education system in Scotland is in a dreadful state and it isn’t a secret anymore, how can 25% of our kids leaving primary school be functionally illiterate?

Think about that for a second, 25% of our kids leaving primary school are functionally illiterate?

Scotland is producing kids who have no future under the SNP, failed at every level right through the educational system.

 

The SNP take on the collapse of Scotland comes from their SNP Finance Secretary, Derek Mackay; he says that the fall is the "economic reality” of the June 2016 vote to leave the European Union. Derek Mackay as I have observed in the past is a walking SNP election leaflet, he just parrots what the party line is at the time, hardly inspiring don’t you think?

Nicola Sturgeon is in America preaching about the wonders of ‘globalism and immigration’ and here we have Derek Mackay rejecting Brexit which effectively means he is just using the same theme as Sturgeon, slightly different angle.

This talk by him of Brexit being the ‘evil of all our ills’ is just bonkers, if his case held water we would be economically more or less in line with the rest of the UK albeit our position would be worse as per the norm for Scotland.

The economic reality is that the price of oil has crashed; the good times for that black gold appear to be over for quite some considerable time. As to his take that the foundations are "strong", you can take that with a pinch of salt which reminds me of Alex Salmond and his ‘second oil boom’, which never came to pass.

There might be a second Oil boom, but since Salmond isn’t an Oracle or even a guru, you have a better chance predicting the lottery.

I would also add, what happen to Scotland being the Saudi Arabia of renewables as Alex Salmond boldly claimed?

Why did that never pan out?

Jeremy Peat, visiting professor at the University of Strathclyde’s International Public Policy Institute says that:

“This is just the wrong time for Scottish growth to be so significantly underperforming growth in the UK as a whole.”

Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP cannot build a stronger Scotland, they don’t know where to start, what the plan is, how long it would take and critically they haven’t built up the all important connections. In the world of high finance, people like to do business with people who can be trusted; would you back the SNP with their small potatoes mentality?

Oil doesn’t have a lot to recommend itself at the moment.

Scottish services sector was flat in the fourth quarter of last year.

The construction sector has been hit by the fact that major infrastructure projects are coming to an end.

Where’s the plan Nicola for the future?

I will save time, there is no plan, there is never a plan, and things just tick along and if something ‘good’ happens; the SNP claim credit whilst not having done any of the work. Did you see the huffing and puffing by the Nationalist over the £6.3 million investment that Sturgeon’s crew were crowing about, the deal depended on £1.5 million in grants from Scottish Enterprise.

As I remarked, it is hardly Xmas, 44 jobs, isn’t even a drop in the bucket but Nicola needed something to wave about for her highly expensive visit to the US to justify it to voters.

£6.3 million investment doesn’t turn Sturgeon into a ‘Statesman’.

Scottish Conservative shadow finance secretary Murdo Fraser says the SNP Government have to “take responsibility” for the disastrous figures. One thing that Nationalists don’t do is take responsibility for anything, everything is a botched up job when they get their hands on it. Murdo added that he rejected the SNP’s claim that Brexit was to blame for the contraction in the economy.

He said:

“If that was the case, why is the rest of the UK powering ahead, while Scotland comes to a standstill?

There are a lot people with questions which the SNP can’t answer.

Why is the rest of the UK powering ahead?

Brexit down there is really the same as Brexit up here, there isn’t a lot when you get right down to it.

Nicola Sturgeon made Scotland the highest-taxed part of the UK and guess what, there isn’t a land of milk and honey being produced, no nirvana just loads of people wondering if they will have a job tomorrow. As Murdo Fraser aptly says, we really are seeing real-life impact of her mismanagement. Scotland’s government has been run as a part time plaything, then the SNP run off to do something else which by enlarge is mostly independence related.

Scottish Labour’s Jackie Baillie chipped in her bit when she said the SNP have to call off another independence referendum.

She added:

“These figures provide further compelling evidence that the last thing Scotland needs is another divisive independence referendum. With Scotland’s economy flatlining and Brexit creating unprecedented levels of uncertainty, it is time the SNP government in Edinburgh started taking some responsibility for its failures and acted to address them. The SNP should take a second referendum off the table and get back to governing the country.”

With the economy looking bleak, no appetite for independence in Scotland, and a government floundering being out of its depth, you have to wonder just how bad the defeat will be for Nicola Sturgeon when or if a second indyref is approved by Westminster.

Quick question, can you sell a pig in a poke?

No?

Well, you are about to see Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP try, you can't sell failure no matter how you dress it up, we all know this as a self evident truth, and what is needed hasn't been addressed by the SNP Government, there is no roadmap, just meaningless short term knee jerk announcements to get them over crisis after crisis.

The SNP is a government that has ran out of steam! 

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University