The INDEPENDENT BUDGET REVIEW was set up by the Scottish Government to consider options for future public expenditure. Let's look at some of the main points:
- A cut in jobs by up to 60,000 by 2014
- A 2 year pay freeze and a review of pension arrangements
- No overriding presumption of protection for any services
- Council tax freeze discontinued
- All free and subsidised services in the Health Service including NHS eye examinations, personal and nursing care, reduction in prescription charges and concessionary travel should be curtailed.
- Scottish Water should be privatised
- Higher education should no longer be free
But what do the SNP Government do. They play into the Unionists' hands by pissing about with DEVOLUTION and whether we want a CALMAN or CALMAN PLUS, which anyone with any sense can see is a UNIONIST trap which will have Scotland keeping the UK economy afloat again, just as it has done since the 70s. Meanwhile the people of Scotland will keep on voting Labour, falling further into the mire of poverty. The Unionists are very happy to laugh at Alex Salmond's somewhat rash comments about the ARC OF PROSPERITY, before Labour's recession, but one of the countries in the Arc, was NORWAY, a country more akin to Scotland due to their oil wealth. There's no recession in Norway. Their old people don't freeze to death in the winter like they do here, despite it being colder and of course they had control of their own banks which weren't allowed to make risky investment decisions in foreign countries.
The SNP should be shouting the INDEPENDENCE MESSAGE from the rooftops, instead of adopting this gradual process to full fiscal powers. Many Independence supporters are getting fed up with this approach and instead of seizing the moment, if they are not very careful, it could lead to schisms amongst the Independence movement, when this should be the moment to press ahead to FULL INDEPENDENCE or at least FULL FISCAL CONTROL, with a shared agreement with England over things like defence. A country with Scotland's wealth should be investing in it's infrastructure and people, not MAKING CUTS!
14 comments:
Your comparison with Norway is appropriate. They have a population of about 4.8 million and are a major oil producer. On the other hand they have one of the highest standards of living in the world. People like to say it is because of their high taxation but they have a progressive tax system and it isn't much higher than in the UK added to which they have lower and fewer indirect taxes.
I have met a few Norwegians and like other Scandinavians, they have excellent social benefits. People can retire at 55 and the pension can be as much as 80% of the final salary. In addition everyone is a citizen from the age of 16 and the state pays education costs. I met a Danish girl who told me her university fees, accommodation costs, other costs, (such as books and living expenses), even though she was studying in London. Norway may have to cut back on its generous social services as the countries strategic reserve fund, (paid for by oil revenues), lost quite a bit on financial instruments sold to them by our good friends at Goldman Sachs and Citibank. So your right, we should be in a similar situation to Norway but we are not. Must be because of the English generosity they claim by supporting us or it could be that Scotland was denied the right to its own territorial waters as part of the Union. It doesn't matter if there is more oil than Saudi under the West Coast all offshore oil is regarded as a UK rather than Scottish asset and the revenue goes directly to the treasury.
Scotland's population is a lot bigger than Qatar's though. A better comparison may be GDP per capita. I expect Qatar's would be comfortably ahead in that respect.
I'd give you independence tommorrow provided you took all the Scottish MPs from Westminster with you - and I don't just mean the one's with Scottish seats.
Still, you do have Gordon so I am duly grateful for you keeping him up there!
What I would really like to see is an English parliament as we are the only country in the union NOT devolved!
Dioclese
Agree with you totally! Only one problem though - it is the English that fund these unionist Scottish MPs parties that are down there interfering in your affairs.
Get your fellow Englishmen to demand that this funding should be stopped and you will quickly get your wish.
Dioclese
Aye and you can take all the english MSP,s from the Scottish parliament back they are just as bad as broon oh and all the other tossers that exist in quangos on tv on the radio and just about every aspect of life in Scotland they utterly fuck up everything.
Antonio, the whole point with oil is that it becomes easier all the time to produce, so therefore the oil companies are tempted in to deeper water like off Rockall, (Nae luck Ireland, it's nearer us), so there is much more oil to be discovered but Scotland must not piss it away as it has been. We have been blessed with a lottery win and have given 92% of it to our next door neighbour. Its no wonder the men in white coats are coming for us. Can you imagine what we could do with it, like funding our Universities and research labs to invent things like we did many years ago thereby creating worthwhile employment in our country and also increasing the tax take. Instead we piss it into the British economy to pay for LABOUR'S failures.
RedEar, Welcome to the blog. Are you over on Twatter? Yes Qatar's gdp would be a lot higher than ours because they won't have let their banks make hopeless transacions in other countries. We should have a nationalised Bank of Scotland which only lends and invests in Scotland.
Greekers, you should have you own Parliament. Scottish MPs should not be allowed to vote on English matters that are handled by Holyrood in Scotland. The SNP MPs don't, it's only the Unionist parties that are funded in England that vote on English affairs. Trouble is, if we take back all the Scots, will there be enough English MPs with sufficient brains to run England?
Billy, spot on. These parties have to stand on their own two feet and become independent in their own right in Scotland. But they won't because they only contain fearties that won't stand up for their own country, because they only have their party's interests at heart. Fuckers.
We will never let you go until we have milked The Catcher dry.
Banned, I fear that may well be the case and it won't be the fault of the English but the frightened rabbits that are the Scots.
Lochnagar - your absolutely right.
SNP have gone from spine to supine.
Sad to see corruption bought for so little cost.
Crinkers, nice to hear from you again! Where have you been? I would hope their is no corruption, well apart from the usual wages and exs. I am getting really fed up with corrupt politicians. It's no wonder the French had a revolution. It's time we had one.
DL, busy with house moves etc.
By corruption I mean the allure of power and all the whistles and bells that accompany it.
There's no doubt the SNP have administered the pocket money wisely and honestly but that doesn't raise the adrenalin of the bewildered herd.
For too long as servants of Unionism they have absorbed the propaganda of subservience. 'What'll happen to our jobs; our benefits, our fly economies.' they cry. All the time forgetting it's the master they serve who nurtured and profited from the apathy they want to protect and cling onto.
That's the cancer the SNP should have been blasting to hell by exposing it to the chemotherapy of truth.
Scotland needs UDI, not fatigue through political attrition. Such is the strategy of Westminster.
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