Wednesday 5 February 2014

BLEAK FUTURE IN THE BLEAK UK

What passes for a smile at an ordinary pleb person
According to the Huffington Post, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), remember them, they are a ‘highly respected’ right wing Tory think tank, says that Mr Osborne is less than half way through his planned spending cuts after proposing to extend them up to 2019.

The influential Conservative think-tank, so beloved of Alistair Darling, has said that, despite the improving state of the economy, the chancellor will only have implemented 40% of his planned spending cuts by the end of the current financial year.

They point out that, if Osborne continues to protect the Health, Overseas Investment, and Schools up to 2018-2019, other departments would have to lose over 30% of their budgets.

Extending the fuel duty freeze beyond the next election and up to 2018-2019 would cost a further £4.2 billion.

Even the government’s own forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), predicts that Osborne will have to borrow £96 billion by the end of 2015. This is £59 billion more than he planned in 2010.
 
My future in the House of Lords needs You
The IFS further warn that the level of debt will only return to pre-crisis levels in the mid 2030s.

That kind of debt means that just paying the interest costs us nearly 4% of national income.

Now I’m not suggesting that Scotland can simply walk away from all of this. The current government says that it will accept its share of the debts in return for a fair share of UK assets. I cannot see any other government of Scotland going back on that in the future.

However, when they tell you that the status quo is safer, remember that these cuts are coming, and one excellent way of saving around £5 billion a year would be to remove the Barnett Formula from Scotland. (Of course that the same would have to happen to Wales and Northern Ireland saving even more money, but it is likely that London would escape, given its status as the capital.)

British Embassy in Paris
(next door to USA embassy, so they can keep an eye on us)
So not only would we get cuts that are coming to social security, the much vaunted defence budget (the 4th greatest in the world), and the ever present British Foreign Office with its hundreds of embassies and thousands of consulates in every corner of the world, without which we are told we would be stranded impoverished and alone in the world (just like Denmark or Finland, the poor souls), we would also have massive cuts to our domestic budgets for health and education, care of the elderly, roads, law and order, and so on.

Ah, but the Conservative might not win the next election, you may say.  True. It is all in the air at the moment.  The current polls show that a Labour victory is possible, although the level of trust in Miliband and Balls is low.  With 15 months to go to the election, there is all to play for. But remember, Labour has promised to be just as ruthless at getting the deficit and the debt down. So don’t expect any huge difference in the two possible futures under the UK.
LIAR
And don’t for a minute think that the Barnett Formula is not doomed. Mr Cameron said he has no plans to change it. He had no plans prior to the last election to raise the unprogressive Value Added Tax, but it went up by 2.5% before Gideon's first budget. Mr Cameron’s word is not worth ****. In any case, Mr Cameron's right wing is strong, and Tory MPs want the formula scrapped.
 
A collection of Unionists on a Junket
Imagine! Despite an SNP government elected
by the people of Scotland, the UK set up a constitutional
convention which refused to discuss independence
as an option. How democratic was that?
The Calman Unionist Commission wanted it scrapped (Labour and Tories) Labour’s Johann Lamont's commission has already said that Barnett should go and money should be allocated to Scotland on a “needs” basis along with collection of Income Tax. The needs being determined, no doubt, by the Westminster government. English local authorities are also pressing for it to be scrapped.

It will go.

If we vote no, look forward to a very impoverished future, while you continue to contribute to the greater good, mainly of the life sucking south east of England and London.



31 comments:

  1. we need to find a way to get this info out there since I doubt the MSM will cover it. So all you twitters and FBers, get the news out there. Folk like me will plug away btl - new cybernats are being upgraded every day even if Steven Moffat isn't of them :-)

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    1. Fell free to click the buttons at the bottom of the article to share on Google, FB, Twitter, etc...

      I agree it's really important to get this out there.

      Doom and gloom about Scotland on it's own, but you'd think that being part of the Uk was some sort of cake walk...

      Well, not for me it's not.

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  2. tris

    Having just read that I will now go and hang meself,,,

    Wot i dont understand is why the Scottish people freely
    choose not to support the snp in the Westminster election
    and given the snp only aim is to destroy the Constitution
    of the U.K.. why would they be invited to any convention
    unless of course it was dedicated to the destruction of a
    Union of nations,

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    1. Well, they support Labour in Westminster because they know that Labour can form a government. Supposing every man jack of us voted SNP, we would ahve 59 members in a 650 member parliament.

      At least they feel that Labour can join Eng;ish and Welsh Labour voters and some of the time, at least, you get a Labour government.

      But the last Labour government we really had was 1979, and the last socialist government was in 1950, when the King persuaded the prime minister to stand down and have another election so that he could have Winston back at this side while he was dying and when the Queen came to the throne.

      People like him didn't like having to deal with commoners, and Winston was an aristocrat.

      If you are going to have a discussion about the future governance of Scotland, it seems to me you really have to listen to ideas from across the spectrum.

      No devolution, less devolution, same devolution, more devolution, much more devolution, independence, should all have been legitimate points for discussion, but mr Brown wouldn't countenance independence even being discussed, despite a realistic proportion of people wanting it.

      I was ostrich like. I'm going to pretend that no one wants independence and so we will talk about everything else but that.

      Its very much like Cameron refusing to have a referendum on PR. He Gave two choices, neither of which anyone much wanted, but kept the choice that many people did want, but that would have changed the governance of the UK and modelled it more like a continental government.

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    2. PS: Don't hang yourself Niko. I forbid it.

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    3. Waste of good rope rather you repent at what you have done for your fellow citizens by abstaining or voting no.

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    4. LOL... Yes would be better!

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    5. The UK has a constitution?

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    6. Apparently so, well that is if you believe the court of extraordinary liars that currently reside in Westminster. Oh don't go looking for it though cause it doesn't actually exist in any physical form it's all held in their heads, nuff said!

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    7. Apparently they do have one. It just isn't a written constitution.

      Because, just like it didn't need a human rights convention, Britain was superior to other countries that required things written down. It seems they believed that a chap could and should trust a chap when a chap said something. Word of a gentleman don't you know.

      But the truth is that they make the constitution up as they go along.

      A rather obscure example of this, but one, nonetheless, that stuck in my mind.

      History tells us that when Edward 8th wanted to marry Wallis Simpson the constitution denied him that right because she was a divorce lady with a husband living. Charlie however will be king although he is married to a divorced lady with a husband living. (Although I wouldn't give much for Parker Bowles chances when the Queen dies.)

      Likewise, when Edward abdicated he was demoted from HM the King, to HRH the Duke of Windsor. That should have made his wife HRH the Duchess of Windsor. However the new King withheld HRH from her, on the basis that she was a bit of a tart and tended to tire of husbands after a short time. It wasn't unlikely that she would drop him and marry someone else.

      They said that once given, the style Her Royal Highness could not be taken away, and therefore, based on her past she could marry someone else and take that title with her, disgracing the royal family and with it Britian.

      When Diana got fed up with Charlie's carrying on and they were separated, she lost the title HRH. When Fergie and Air Miles split up, she lost the HRH...

      What changed?

      The needs of the government.

      Lack of constitution is one of the great advantages for the UK government. It makes it up as it goes along. Like bullies in the playground.

      It's another one of these things we will look at in the future and wonder how we ever allowed it to happen.

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  3. After independence, whether this time or next, we will look back in disbelief that we willingly allowed ourselves to be run by the likes of Osborne, Cameron, Darling, Blair, Brown, Thatcher and the rest of them. Our children will be amazed at their fellow Scots fear and self-loathing manifesting itself as rational thought or masquerading as some weird kind of internationalism. Creepy, kooky and embarrassing.

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    1. I absolutely agree with your Ryan. I couldn't have put it better.

      This situation is ridiculous. We loathe this government, but we get it anyway.

      Lords tell us what we can and cannot do with our poor.

      Remember when, we will say, women earned less than men for exactly the same job; remember when only people over 21 had the vote; remember when elected members of our parliament had to go begging for decency from unelected millionaire placemen aristocrats?

      Remember when we had nuclear weapons only spitting distance from the centre of Glasgow?

      Oh how we will look back and laugh.

      :)

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    2. 1992RyanB,

      You said:

      "After independence, whether this time or next...

      There will be no next time.

      This is a one shot opportunity.

      Do you doubt that Westminster wouldn't adopt a constitution like Spain's that made us all indivisible? After all, Scotland ceased to exist after it was subsumed by England, 300 years ago, according to english constitutional lawyers. We have voted no, so no objection to recognising the reality of a Greater England, surely?

      I genuinely think we must win this year to have any prospect whatsoever of looking our grandchildren in the eye.

      For, if we lose this battle, we lose hard.

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    3. Yes this is the only ever opportunity Scotland will ever get in a peaceful manner if ever again.

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    4. I guess that's possible.

      I certainly don't believe it will happen in the near future. I don't think there is any doubt that regardless of what we vote for in 2016, if we have voted no, we will not be allowed a referendum.

      I think in any case they will try to do something to stop a majority SNP government having the power to do that, perhaps by putting our laws through a committee of the House of the Living Dead Blue Bloods, which will veto everything.

      But if they take away Barnett and don't give us our oil money, we will have to lose free education, prescriptions, nationalised medicine etc etc, while they spend our money on wars and London. I don't know how people would feel about that.

      In some ways, those who are pretty apolitical are indifferent to our situation because they are protected from so much by the Scottish parliament.

      At the moment they have free education; they have NHS (imperfect though it is); they have good care for the elderly, etc etc...

      Wait till they have the same crap conditions as the English, they will be gagging to get away.

      What happens then if the UK government refuses another referendum?

      Scary.

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  4. Tris

    I think those of us with a brain understand things are about to get a lot worse. Just because London is booming on risky property, again, they think the economy is on the mend. What a lot of shit, anyone believing that must be mad. Actually most no voters I meet are in denial, some of them in positions that stop debate which makes it even worse.

    No, we need to continue to keep trying to get the message out no matter how hard. I was surprised no one picked up the FT article, although I should not have been, but it's what we are up against. The unionists are afraid, they are in fear because they are being used to do the bidding of the wealthy and can't see it. They will teach the subjugation of Scotland in the future as psychological warfare against a whole nation by a posh few with the most to lose. We should all be ashamed that we allowed ourselves to be deceived and used by the quislings and the posh.

    But we are going to pay if others vote no.

    Bruce

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  5. it's amazing that journalists are not writing about this. The BBC could have talked about the FT article, but they chose to talk about a personal opinion of an American CEO of BP...

    The BBC has been rumbled for its 3/2 bias, but have we had any articles about it?

    We have been badly served by a press in the hands of the big business London papers and a BBC determined not to lose the money they get from Scotland and unashamedly cheating us.

    Yes. We will pay if people are taken in by Cameron's crap and a lot of self seeking politicians looking for preferment and elevation to the aristocracy.

    I watched PMQs for a second on the news. The Labour front bench with the almost completely brainless and laughably incompetent Curren jeering at the Tories because they had no women sitting there.

    And I was thinking, yeah, Labour has a lot more women in the shadow cabinet, but for god's sake look at them!!!!! Curren for heaven's sake.

    That's what you get when you promote on gender and nationality alone.

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  6. True, Curren is only there because people suspect she is a woman but I think the majority of people see women as mostly caring so that rules her out. She is not there for her brains or dress sense, it must be because she can ridicule Scotland with the best Lethem.

    Bruce

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    1. I see you have as high an opinion of MarGrit as I do.

      Actually I've met her; I've worked with her. In her own way she is...or at least was... a nice enough woman.

      She's just so filled with bitterness over the SNP; so racist; and frankly well out of her depth when representing Scotland in England.

      She is excruciatingly embarrassing on tv.

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    2. Sounds like she has the same problem a lot of Labourites have:

      The party has abandoned its values to chase power, and is *royally* pissed off that anyone else is promoting the values they abandoned and is having any success at all. Let alone having the cheek to do it whithout lying about their intentions.

      The SNP's success is slapping them in the face for the deal they made with the devil. It's not much of a suprise that Labour is furious with them.

      I still maintain that the if we end up with a No vote in September, the SNP should run in England as well, on the same platform they're using in Scotland: universal services, free tuition, etc... I think they'd do better than they think. (and just the fact that they might actually have a chance in Westminster might get them more MPs in Scotland, it would destroy the "we might as well vote for the winner" mentality)

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    3. Well it's an interesting idea. The trouble is that even if they got vast numbers of the vote the system that the UK uses for its elections militates against any party other than the big 2 getting seats.

      Look at the results in the last UK election. The Liberals got more than half the votes the Tories got, but they got fewer than 1/5 of the seats!

      But the North of England needs a party of the left of centre, and they don't have it with Labour.

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  7. First we need to devolve Westminster, no jobs, no pensions and no place in the UK.

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  8. Hi Tris, I found this over on my partner's Facebook page and thought you'd enjoy it. Apparently we, the fighters of freedom a.k.a. the freedomnats, have a mole inside the inner circle of the Better Together Headquarters. This is the latest video they have managed to secrete out.

    https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=801237303225801

    Now we understand how the hierarchy of Better together really works.

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    1. Nice to see you Arbroath. We've missed you.

      Hope you are feeling well.

      I'm always a bit dubious about using that film for comic effect. I mean it is funny, but it cost Tom Harris his job when he thought it was a good way to depict Salmond.

      We should be careful not to sink to their levels.

      Although I have to admit that the Cameron government in many ways does seem to have leanings to the tactics of Germany in the 1930s. Iain Duncan Smith's department in particular.

      :)

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    2. Hi Tris, aye I'm getting through it best I can just gone through a period of being pissed off with the internet thankfully nothing too serious on the health front. Biggest problem is computer, specifically Windows 8 and it does or doesn't allow. Still I'm back in some form or other. :-)

      I take your point about the video, just couldn't help myself, you know what I'm like. LOL

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    3. Stick in there Arbroath. We worry about you when you're not here... as we do with everyone when they disappear for a while.

      I know it's not always something serious, but you know, we are kinda like mates on here, and I guess we do worry a bit about each other.

      Windows 8 was sent from HELL

      My mum bought a new all singing, all dancing computer, which in theory should be able to do more or less anything.

      The trouble is it is WINDOWS 8, and as such, completely nightmarish. I dread this computer giving up the ghost and me having to buy one with the infernal operating system.

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  9. This is a test post from computer as I cannot post again from iPad

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    1. Ahhhh... it worked.

      I wondered where you were.

      Welcome back.

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  10. The caption under Flipper's photo should read something like 'My future needs YOU'.

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  11. Hi WRITG: Welcome to MR

    Yeah, I agree and I've altered is along the lines of your suggestion :)

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