Saturday 30 June 2012

WHAT A LOAD OF RUBBISH THEY TALK


The dependence parties, have been accusing the SNP of ‘constitutional hokey-cokey’ claiming that the SNP has  changed its positions since the 2011 election on a number of independence issues – the Queen, currency, financial regulation,  Britishness and a shed load of other stuff.
This is just another example of how no-one can trust a word the dependence parties say. Their claims are untrue.
Obviously no-one has bothered to look at SNP policy or Scottish Government proposals, all announced before the historic 2011 election result.
What does this misrepresentation say about the credibility and honesty of other things the dependence parties are telling people? With the help of the SNP records, I debunk a few of these issues here. I shall continue with more items in the next days and weeks.
THE QUEEN/MONARCHY
Retaining the Monarchy has been SNP policy since the party’s foundation in 1934. This position was also clearly laid out in the Scottish Government’s White Paper “Your Scotland, Your Voice” (published in 2009).
The current constitutional arrangements, with the Queen as Head of State of an independent Scotland, … would provide a robust and tested constitutional framework for Scotland in the event of the transition to independence.” (“Your Scotland, Your Voice”, page 130)
The Queen is already head of state of 16 Commonwealth Realms, and also head of a Commonwealth of 54 independent states - a quarter of the earth's independent countries. I'm a republican, and I dread the idea of Charles Rothsay as the Kind of Scots, but the majority of Scots seem to want the monarchy, and if so that's OK with me.  That's democracy!
STERLING
Using sterling and therefore sharing the independent Bank of England has been SNP policy since 2005 if they had cared to read ‘Raising the Standard” (published in November 2005):
“The currency shall continue to be sterling…”
And ‘Your Scotland, Your Voice” (November 2009) said:
“Scotland would continue to operate within the sterling system...” (page 31)
I would have prefered to have a Scottish Dollar or Crown or whatever, independent of the BoE, but it has been suggested, by economists, that if Scotland, with it's oil, left the sterling zone, it would cause a run on the pound, which would be devastating to the English economy. Contrary to what some non thinkers suppose, we do not wish England to suffer, indeed as one of our major trading partners, as well as allies and friends, we need their economy in a good shape, as we need France's, Norway's, Iceland's, etc...
BRITISHNESS
We cannot NOT be British; our country is on the British Isles. Just like Sweden cannot NOT be Scandinavian; it is a part of the land mass of Scandinavia. Just as Portugal cannot avoid being Iberian because it lies on the Iberian peninsula.  No one has seriously suggested carting Scotland off to the Mediterranean or the Baltic . Indeed in an article in the Herald from as far back as 1974  the SNP’s then Vice-Chairman Douglas Crawford wrote:
For the record the SNP seeks self-government under the Crown, with a Customs and passport union with England and the other countries of the British Isles, and an association of States of the British Isles to look after the mutual interests of all the countries.”

7 comments:

  1. tris

    There you go no need to bother with the snps separation campaign then is there eh! ah thought not...


    next yer be saying its snp policy since 1900 and splat to call Scotland little England.

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  2. Just setting the facts straight here Niko.

    If you Tory-funded lot will keep on telling us that we changed our mind about the Queen, and currency, and a whole raft of other stuff, and I can give documentary evidence that your lot are lying, as they so often are, then I think it's not a bad idea to highlight it.

    These things can work like.

    Look at Scandinavia. Between these totally independent countries you can travel without passports, there are no land borders; they share a whole pile of facilities, because it makes sense to do so; no one get in a terrible state about being called Scandinavian.

    And most of them have belonged one each other at some stage in the past. They don't, however, seem to want to get back together and be ruled from Copenhagen or Oslo or Reykjavik. The only country that is still dependent is the Faeroe Islands; they have devo max and are heading, like their sister country in North America, Greenland, for total independence.

    Read and learn instead of carping all the time Niko....

    Anyway, the sun is shining, get Taz out for a long walk over the Pentland Hills today...do you both good. Stop you being so grumpy and unionist and Tory.

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  3. Tris

    This is why Ally auntie and Charlie if he ever turns up were too chicken to tell people where the money was coming from for the YesNo or is it NoYes interlude is coming from.

    http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/referendum-news/lords-obes-and-a-tory-dining-club-the-people-behind-better-together.18013845

    Bought and sold for English tory gold. I wonder if Bravefart will be along any moment to tell us why the wee pretendy socialists are so happy to be tory lapdogs.

    P.S. What do you call a Scottish poodle? Scottish Labour.

    P.P.S. posted yesterday as Anon, could not find my ID.

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  4. LOL Poor old you Dubs, losing your identity. Still it's nice to see you got it back :)

    I just typed this out and posted only to find that Blogger had kindly logged me out and I lost it all!

    So here goes again:

    Gotta thank you for posting this link.

    How interesting that the had to bus all these people up for England (well OK, not bus, clearly it would be Lear Jet).

    I think it's actually worth a post of its own.

    And labour are happy to be associated with this? I always knew that since Blair English Labour had become a Tory party in all by name, but I thought that Scottih Labour had retained a tiny affiliation to socialism.

    Now I realise that Lamont associating herself with this pile of detritus, even if she didn't get an invite because she's a woman (and she slurps her soup), proves that they have been bought up by the English money that these Tories are spending.

    Labour: A Wholly-Owned subsidiary of the Conservative Party

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  5. Tris

    You can add in the fact that about two months ago 38 Scottish Labour MPs voted for a Labour amendment at Westminster to support further privatisation of the National Health Service. They voted even though this only pertains to Westmonster, at the moment.

    They not only want tory money to try and keep us in the toxic union they want to introduce tory policies in Scotland as well.

    When Alex Salmond said on Question Time from Liverpool "do not let these MPs destroy your NHS" I bet he never thought that Scottish Labour, used to be socialist, MPs would be fully supporting their tory pals.

    We could probably generate electricity from the energy of all the old socialists spinning in their graves.

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  6. Ah Dubs. I've just posted the article, and haven't much mentioned Labour involvement (just really a comment on the article...) but I will certainly use that factagain (I did use it at the time, because I criticised the way that they voted, and the FACT that they voted on something that did not affect their constituents.

    And it's not like it was a Labour government that needed their support to get the thing through. It was a Tory government they were supporting.

    Does that, you have every right to ask, mean that if |labour got in in Scotland they would introduce the selling off to private companies of the entirely separate Scottish Health Service?

    It suggests to me that ideologically they are in favour of our health service being run by companies, almost all of which will end up being run from abroad.

    Do we really want Chinese and American companies owning our health service?

    Probably not, I think.

    God we have to keep these people OUT. They are Tories; they probably eat children.

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  7. Dubs, I managed to squeeze that fact in at the end of the new article!

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