THE UK MUST RETAIN ITS POSITION AS FOURTH LARGEST MILITARY POWER IN THE WORLD, EVEN IF IT KILLS YOU...AND IT MIGHT

Hammond the current mishandler
of the UK's Defence Dept

Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, wants the Treasury to transfer money from the English Department of Health and the English Department for Education and use it to save cuts in the Ministry of Defence.

According to the The Daily Telegraph as much as £500  million from the two protected departments’ budgets could be reallocated to Defence.

Who cares? Well we do.

Because this, of course, means that £100 million or thereby could be taken from the Scottish budget in  Barnett consequentials.

Because the policies of the UK Finance Ministry have been so inefficient, and because all the forecasts made by George Osborne, so completely wide of the mark, with lower growth and falling tax revenues the Treasury is still borrowing £120 billion a year, and austerity will have to go on and on and on and on...probably forever. The Treasury now wants cuts worth £11.5 billion from Whitehall departments whose budgets have not been protected.

So instead of trimming their budgets for killing people, which would never do. they will instead trim their budgets for educating them and keeping them alive. 

Why? Because there is prestige involved in having the fourth largest military spend in the world and being a big gun, if you'll pardon the pun, in the eyes of the world. Mr Cameron says that it brings us respect, so he does.

Translated into what that means to you and me, it might be that someone you love, maybe even you, could die because Cameron wants to play a big shot. A little island off the coast of Europe whose policies over the past 30 years have driven it to the brink of bankruptcy, wants to pretend that it is still a world player. Tough about your kid getting an education. 

You might care to remember that the Ministry of Defence is one of the least

Wedding photograph of Crafty and Werrity
(Crafty's wedding)

efficient departments of the UK government spending billions of taxpayers money on failed projects, dodgy materials and useless equipment and employing more clerks than troops. It has been overseen by a sad collection of ministerial losers; people for whom the words 'arse' and 'elbow' have approximately the same meaning... Hammond, BVI man; Fox and Werrity, the conjoined twins; Ainsworth the moustache man;  Hutton, the nonentity, and Des Browne, the part timer to name, but a few. There's not one of them (or two in the case of Fox) that I'd leave in charge of teapot.

And there are Scots who, despite all this, would still vote to be a part of this joke of a union.

Thatcher may be gone, but remember – her cruel influence lives on in the Labour Party

When Ed Miliband paid tribute to Thatcher as a “brave” feminist hero whose achievements he personally “honoured”, you knew she hadn't died at all.

In the wake of Margaret Thatcher’s departure, I remember her victims. 

Patrick Warby’s daughter r Marie was one of them. Marie, aged five, suffered from a bowel deformity and needed a special diet. Without it, the pain was excruciating. Her father was a Durham miner and had used all his savings. It was winter 1985, the Great Strike was almost a year old and the family was destitute. Although Marie’s eligibility was not disputed, she was denied help by the Department of Health and Social Security. Later, I obtained government records of the case that showed Marie had been turned down because her father was “affected by a Trade dispute”.

The corruption and inhumanity under Thatcher knew no borders. When she came to power in 1979, she demanded a ban on exports of milk to Vietnam. The American invasion had left a third of Vietnamese children malnourished.

I witnessed many distressing sights, including infants going blind from a lack of vitamins. “I cannot tolerate this,” said an anguished doctor at a paediatric hospital in Saigon, as we looked at a dying boy. Oxfam and Save the Children had made clear to the British government the gravity of the emergency. An embargo led by the US had forced up the local price of a kilo of milk powder to ten times that of a kilo of meat. Many children could have been restored with milk. Thatcher’s ban held.

In neighbouring Cambodia, Thatcher left a trail of blood, secretly. In 1980, she demanded that the defunct Pol Pot regime – which killed 1.7 million people – retain its “right” to represent its victims at the UN. Her policy was vengeance on Cambodia’s liberator, Vietnam. The British representative was instructed to vote with Pol Pot at the World Health Organisation, thereby preventing it from providing help to where it was needed more than anywhere else on earth.

To conceal this outrage, the US, Britain and China, Pol Pot’s main backer, invented a “resistance coalition”, dominated by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge forces and supplied by the CIA at bases along the Thai border. There was a hitch. Following the Irangate arms-for-hostages debacle, the US Congress had banned clandestine foreign adventures. “In one of those deals the two of them liked to make,” a senior Whitehall official told the Sunday Telegraph, “President Reagan put it to Thatcher that the SAS should take over the Cambodia show. She readily agreed.”

In 1983, Thatcher sent the SAS to train the “coalition” in its own distinctive brand of terrorism. Seven-man SAS teams arrived from Hong Kong and British soldiers set about training “resistance fighters” in laying minefields in a country devastated by genocide and the world’s highest rate of death and injury as a result of landmines.

I reported this at the time, and more than 16,000 people wrote to Thatcher in protest. “I confirm,” she replied to the opposition leader Neil Kinnock, “that there is no British government involvement of any kind in training, equipping or co-operating with the Khmer Rouge or those allied to them.” The lie was breathtaking. In 1991, the government of John Major admitted to parliament that the SAS had indeed trained the “coalition”. “We liked the British,” a Khmer Rouge fighter later told me. “They were very good at teaching us to set booby traps. Unsuspecting people, like children in paddy fields, were the main victims.”

When the journalists and producers of Thames Television’s landmark documentary Death on the Rock revealed how the British SAS had run Thatcher’s other death squads in Ireland and Gibraltar, they were hounded by Rupert Murdoch’s “journalists”, then cowering behind the razor wire at Wapping. Although exonerated, Thames TV ultimately lost its ITV franchise.

In 1982, the Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano was steaming outside the Falklands exclusion zone. The ship offered no threat, yet Thatcher gave orders for it to be sunk. Her victims were 323 sailors, including teenage conscripts. The crime had a certain logic. Among Thatcher’s closest allies were mass murderers – Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Suharto in Indonesia, responsible for “many more than one million” deaths (Amnesty International). Although the British state had long armed the world’s leading tyrannies, it was Thatcher who brought a crusading zeal to the deals, talking up the finer points of fighter aircraft engines, hard-bargaining with bribe-demanding Saudi princes. I filmed her at an arms fair, stroking a gleaming missile. “I’ll have one of those!” she said.

In his arms-to-Iraq inquiry, Lord (Richard) Scott heard evidence that an entire tier of the Thatcher government, from senior civil servants to ministers, had lied and broken the law in selling weapons to Saddam Hussein. Thumb through old copies of the Baghdad Observer, and there are pictures of her obsequious “boys” on the front page – cabinet ministers – sitting with Saddam on his famous white couch. There is a grinning David Mellor around the time his host was gassing 5,000 Kurds.

Perhaps it is too easy to dance on her grave. Her funeral was a propaganda stunt, fit for a dictator: an absurd show of militarism, as if a coup had taken place. And it has. As another of her boys, Geoffrey Howe, a Thatcher minister between 1979 and 1989, said, “Her real triumph was to have transformed not just one party but two, so that when Labour did eventually return, the great bulk of Thatcherism was accepted as irreversible.”

In 1997, Thatcher was the first former prime minister to visit Tony Blair after he entered Downing Street. There is a photo of them, joined in rictus – the budding war criminal with his mentor.

When Ed Miliband, in his unctuous “tribute”, caricatured Thatcher as a “brave” feminist hero whose achievements he personally “honoured”, you knew that she had not died at all.

Article by John Pilger, published in the New Statesman on April 25, 2013. without permission, but because everyone should read it.

SNAPS ON SUNDAY...

Yes, London audience of Have I got News for You, we're talking to YOU.

Even if I'd been a unionist before that would convert me. Useless waste of space if ever there was one.

Plato knew a thing or two. Look at his evil face, thin miserly lips. He could play Voldermorte with little make up.

Well, let's be honest. It's mainly shit you made up.

Sorry it's so small. It is worth enlarging

Just as well he doesn't work for the BBC or he'd be signing on by now

Joke of the month so far. A Labour Truth Team. Good Lord!

No Jim. People do dislike you before they meet you. Trust me. I know hundreds. But I not that RED ED backed his right wing Blairite team rather than his union boss. Might have been a mistake. They are replaceable. The union cash isn't.

Oops, did someone forget to let her out of the bunker?

OK. The spelling needs some attention, but the meaning is bang on. Smug sod. He couldn't last much more than 10 minutes on £55.

Just a wee blast from the past. I saw his cheery, warm hearty face and though... this should put a smile on readers faces and give them a nice warm feeling. Doubtless raised to the aristocracy by now and getting £300+ tax free a day on top of all the other stuff he's helped himself to over the years. But he was a brilliant Tory leader huh?  There's a little competition. Put in order of uselessness the Tory leaders of the 2000s. Wee Willie Baseball Cap Winkie, The Quiet Man, Something of the Night, and Eton Boy.

As always, click on images to make them readable... or get your reading glasses out of their case, whichever is easier!

WHAT A FUTURE: WHAT POTENTIAL FOR OUR KIDS AND GRANDKIDS...

Becoming independent offers Scotland - and its businesses - the opportunity of a lifetime. With control of our economic policy we can focus on the unique priorities of our economy. An independent Scotland would have a secure and stable economy. We can afford to be independent and have a government which is specifically focused on developing and nurturing our own financial well-being.

• Even those who favour Westminster rule agree that an independent Scotland could thrive
• An independent Scotland would be the eighth wealthiest country in the world
• Our oil reserves are worth up to £1.5 trillion - ten times our share of the UK national debt
• We have 25% of Europe’s potential offshore wind and tidal energy
• We have very successful food & drink, tourism, construction and agriculture sectors worth £39 billion a year 

Scotland is one of the wealthiest nations on the planet. But for most of us it just doesn't feel that way. We do not see this prosperity reflected in our daily lives.

There are two big problems. First, the wealth isn't shared fairly. Westminster policies mean that a very few at the very top get most of the benefit.  And, second, Westminster isn't working for Scotland's economy. Its one size fits all economic policy isn't making the most of Scotland's strengths for the benefit of the Scottish people. That is why we need to be independent.

OVERALL WEALTH

An independent Scotland would be ranked 8^th wealthiest country in the OECD (in terms of GDP per head) compared to the UK’s 17th place (2011). (And we'd be more likely to spend that wealth on what people need, rather than killing foreigners.) 

EDUCATION

We have three of the top 100 universities in the world. Our universities compete at the top of the world leagues for the quality of their research. (We've hardly got a record of being thick, have we?)

RENEWABLES

We have around 25% of Europe’s potential offshore wind and tidal energy and 10%of Europe’s wave power potential. (Even those who think its all a load of rubbish can't deny the jobs that this is creating.)

INDUSTRY

Recent figures show food and drink exports at an all-time high of £5.4 billion. Our world-leading industries include engineering, life sciences, tourism, life assurance and wealth management. (Not all about oil then, Alistair?)

PUBLIC FINANCES

Our public finances are stronger than the UK's. For every one of the last 30 years Scotland has generated more tax revenue per head than the UK. (So  they don't subsidise us; au contraire, we subsidise them.)

OIL

Up to 24 billion barrels remain in the North Sea. This equates to a wholesale value of up to £1.5 trillion at today’s prices – that's 10 times our share of the UK national debt. (So it's not actually running out at all.)

 INWARD INVESTMENT

Scotland tops the UK charts for levels of inward investment by foreign companies. (Despite the devastation and uncertainty that Osborne et al predicted and lied about.)

The stuff in Black type is Blair Jenkins'. The red is all mine!

WE'RE JOINING THE WORLD...

*Click for a larger picture

A CHALLENGE TO "NO" VOTING READERS

I'd wish someone in the unionist camp would give us some good reasons to stay in the UK.

I've listened over the years to Labour and Tories telling us that we are Better Together, before they even came up with the substitute name for the  "No" campaign. But I've yet to hear a convincing argument that doesn't involve being up there at the top of the tree, running the world, which, when you think about it, does the likes of you and me absolutely no good at all, but gives Cameron and Hague and their ilk their place in world history, or some silly argument involving heather curtains and passports or visas to visit your granny for the afternoon in Carlisle, which are plain stupid.

So what is the real argument for Scotland, a potentially rich and dynamic northern European nation, to stay entangled with England? (And I say England, because I see no good reason for Wales or Northern Ireland to want to stay either.)

Last week I listened to Johann Lamont tell us that she wanted the Labour campaign to be positive, to set out the reasons why they think we are Better Together ...and then spend the rest of her speech being negative about Alex Salmond and the SNP.

She gave us a list of aspirations for a Scotland run by Labour, and still a part of the UK (so, in fact, a Scotland run by Ed Miliband and Harriet Harman) but the only policy she actually had was one of devolving income tax to Edinburgh, a silly idea if ever here was one, and already knocked on the head by London, and in any case, a situation which we have had in part since 1999, and never used, because it is such a silly idea.

Nowhere that I could discern in Labour's conference, which seemed to be dedicated to the independence question, were there positives about being a part of the UK.

I can understand that for people who still think we have an empire, like the top Tory voters, who live in a world of starched collars, butlers, and fags and beating younger boys, Rolls Royces, county cricket, tennis parties and the social season, having the 4th largest spend on military in the world is some sort of a status symbol; being on the permanent membership of the Security Council, being important in the world, like Churchill, Palmerston or Disraeli, means more than anything to them, even if today it is all a sham and tittered about elsewhere.

But for real Labour supporters, what's not to like about an independent Scotland?

An independent Scotland would have, and could spend, large amounts of money to make life better for ordinary people. 

With no ambitions to sit on high at America's right hand; no desire to have the power to flatten a couple of suburbs of Moscow if Washington gave us permission, we wouldn't be obliged to spend vast amounts of our money on weapons to kill foreigners. Not bothered about our reputation as the 2nd most important country in the world ever, we would happily share embassy premises and consular services with friends and allies, freeing up even more money for some of our downtrodden and neglected towns and keeping Scots alive, in what is, after all, an oil rich country.

Surely the kind of state that Norway has created for its people; prosperous and generous (with massive banked capital of more than $600 billion), and most of all, happy, is far nearer Labour ideology than the right wing, war mongering, greedy, grasping, unfair, unpleasant, corrupt country that we have come to live in, where profit is the only motivator, and the devil take the hindmost (usually the old and the sick)...and that regardless of which party is in power in Westminster.

What could Labour possibly dislike about us taking control of our social security and paying money to people who need it without subjecting them to humiliating interviews designed to  deprive them of their life's blood? Why would they object to Scotland having power over ALL its taxation enabling it to tax fairly, decently... perhaps reconsidering the policy of giving tax rebates on earnings over £150,000, and concentrating efforts on keeping people on low wages away from the loan sharks, just to feed their kids, boosting business, encouraging trade.

Instead of policy being dictated by largely affluent people in the South East of England, we could have policy set by Scots for a Scottish economy and a Scottish ideology, with a parliament closer to us, and much less costly, or corrupt.

What could anyone object to in that?

So, if there is someone out there who reads this who genuinely believes that Scotland is better in the UK (and I know there are such readers), and who can make a real and plausible argument for voting no, I promise that we will read their comments with respect and engage in constructive argument. Maybe a reasoned debate would even change some yes voters' opinions.

It's up to you...  I will gladly accept a genuine guest post... My email is on my profile.

A DEAR GEORGE LETTER

This, from the inimitable Stephen Noon, was just begging to be shared.

Dear George,

Sometimes with you, it’s difficult to know whether to laugh or cry. On the eve of your visit to Scotland, though, we have to admit to having a bit of a giggle at your expense.  

You say that with independence we might be stopped from using Scottish bank notes. We understand that’s meant to scare us but we just can’t help but snigger.

Have you shared the joke with the Bank of England? After all they’re the ones who would lose the £3 billion of deposits that cover the issue of Scottish bank notes – and that’s enough to bring a tear to even a banker’s eye.

And haven’t you been arguing that independence would mean we lose the UK’s AAA rating? What happened with that, by the way?

You’re very welcome here in Scotland as part of the No campaign but instead of making up silly stuff about independence, how about explaining yourself to the millions of Scots who are losing out now because of your government’s policies?

You might want to hide behind bank notes, but we want to talk about the bedroom tax and your damaging welfare changes, about your years of austerity cuts and the real possibility that you are dragging the UK towards a triple-dip recession.

But of course, there is one thing we’d definitely lose with independence, but strangely you don’t mention it. We’d lose you as our Chancellor. And, yes, that is guaranteed and, given your record, something that is very much worth voting for.

Sincerely,

Yes Scotland

THE "NOBLE" HANNINGFIELD STILL FILLING HIS BOOTS AT OUR EXPENSE

Lord Hanningfield has defended claiming more than £21,000 in daily allowances despite not speaking during any House of Lords debate since his release from prison.

His "nobleness" , who was jailed for nine months in July 2011 after being found guilty of fiddling his expenses, says he is intentionally keeping a low profile.

He served just a few weeks and was released in September 2011, returning to the House of Lords last April.

Records show that since then he's not spoken in any debate or tabled a written question and still managed to "legitimately" claim £21,000 in allowances and £1,736 in travel costs. What, you might ask, has he been doing for all that money? The answer would probably be ... nothing much.

Members of the Lords can claim a £300 daily allowance and travel costs, all tax free. In November last year alone the noble Hanningfield claimed £5,100 in daily allowances and a further £407 in travel costs – £361 on train fares and the rest on taxis and parking.

Colchester MP, Sir Bob Russell, criticised the noble Baron's recent record, saying that although he was not breaking any rules it was a “slap in the face” for the taxpayer.

He said: “It’s quite extraordinary that having been sent to prison for fiddling his expenses he should then return to the scene of the crime and claim £300 every time he goes through the door as if it is some game of Monopoly."

Hanningfield, who was made a Life Peer (Baron Hanningfield of Chelmsford) in 1998, said he had been advised by friends to “keep a relatively low profile” in a bid to avoid negative headlines following his release from prison, but he was hoping to become more active in the Lords very soon.

He said: “I want to get involved in some committees. I’m working on it. It’s very much dependent on what the Lords put you on. I’m gradually building my career up again.”

Don't they make you laugh, these people?

If you want to keep a low profile matey, a good way to do this would NOT to be claiming thousands of pounds of our money for sitting on your fat backside doing sod all for more than most people who have never been convicted of fraud, and never spent time at Her Majesty's pleasure, can ever dream of.

Just a word of advice... I expect you won't bother taking it.

THIS IS WHAT WE ARE UP AGAINST

This appeared on one of the Better Together sites yesterday, and to be fair, was taken down pretty quickly. But clearly someone thought it was a good idea to encourage people to move house so they could vote against Scotland's independence, pretty much regardless of whether they had any other reason for coming here. 

The second part is a bit more worrying though...

"POSTAL VOTING SHOULD BE STRAIGHT FORWARD (sic) FOR THOSE WITH FAMILY OR FRIENDS ALREADY HERE."

Does that mean what I think it means? 

If it does then the dirty tricks campaign has stepped up a gear.  It's not illegal to lie or obfuscate. (If it were Johann Lamont would now be in police custody after yesterday's speech). But arranging postal voting scams from friends or relatives from the United Kingdom, as this poster appears to urge, is illegal.  And this is not some 'by-the-way' comment. Someone designed that poster. Someone put it up on their web page.

I've long thought that we need to invite international observers to scrutinize the  referendum results. Now it seems to me a necessity.

Could we honestly trust the UK authorities to 'out' a programme of (for example) scam postal voting, if ignoring it meant that they kept their hands on our oil, and natural resources, and David Cameron didn't go down in history as the prime minister that lost Scotland?

SNAPS ON SATURDAY

 It was a memorable week. Mrs Thatcher, having died, had to be cremated.  Cameron, somewhat foolishly, set a precedent for prime ministers in the future, by giving his friend what was, in all but name, a state funeral. Now when Minor Major goes he'll have to have one; so too will Loadsamoney Blair, the idiot Brown and Cameron himself. If more than two of them die in the same year, Moodies will have to downgrade the UK to Junk.

BTW...did you know that a suite at the Ritz costs well over £30,000 a month, possibly as much as £50,000. Beats Forebank Nursing Home!¬

Well Dave? Any ideas?

Even through rose coloured spectacles in some places it still looks a muddy brown.

Clearly, Scotland must be one of the parts of England that are less important. What a pompous old fool he is.

I know we already published it, but I just couldn't resist another wee skek at Bubbles Gidiot . Priceless.

In the meantime Eden Court Theatre has been able to let half its staff go as it appears that there's hardly an audience this weekend.

Eden Court theatre with a popular act

Eden Court Theatre with  an unpopular act

CURRENCY IN AN INDEPENDENT SCOTLAND

by Chairman of Fiscal Commission Working Group, Crawford Beveridge taken from the Scottish Government site.

Earlier this year the Fiscal Commission working group, which I chair, set out its thoughts on independence for Scotland, making recommendations on the currency that Scotland should use on independence and the way in which an independent Scotland could run its financial affairs.

The members of the group have made clear that they will remain impartial in the debate on Scotland’s future. However, in preparing the report there was no doubt in the minds of the four world leading economists – including two nobel prize winners – who make up the Commission working group that Scotland is a wealthy and productive country that has “the potential to be a successful independent nation.”

The working group’s report was clear that the best currency option for Scotland – and the UK – would be to retain Sterling and continue with the Bank of England operating across a Sterling Zone as part of a formal monetary union.

Some commentators, such as the House of Lords report last week, have suggested that a currency union may be too complicated whilst it is widely reported that the UK Government will talk down the prospects of a currency union or suggest the constraints on Scotland would be too restrictive.  As someone who has looked at this closely, debated the question with the Commission members and thought carefully about what this means for business, I cannot see how these claims hold particularly in the context of the proposition put forward by the Fiscal Commission.

A currency union is to me, the most sensible option, the simplest option and is clearly best for Scotland’s businesses and households. It could work seamlessly from day 1, would provide a continuing platform for trade and would help the division of assets and liabilities which are denominated in Sterling. With monetary policy determined at the Sterling Zone level, key opportunities for growth and tackling inequalities would flow from greater access to the key economic levers that would flow from such an arrangement. As the recent financial crisis has highlighted, risks also have to be managed – as they do under any macroeconomic framework including remaining in the Union – and in my view, the balance of opportunity and risk is enhanced, not inhibited, by a currency union.

At the most basic level, as the fiscal commission proposition sets out, a vote for independence would see key economic levers transfer to the Scottish Parliament and it would be for people in Scotland to decide how to use them to grow and rebalance the economy , to counter the geographic pull exerted on finance and jobs by London and the South East,to deliver the infrastructure and services reflecting the
choices of the people in Scotland and to provide greater opportunities for all.

With independence all revenues raised would be retained by Scotland for Scotland. At present only 7% is raised and retained locally and whilst this will increase to 15 per cent with further devolution this still reflects a constrained and centralised system.

Alongside this welfare and employment policies would also be the responsibility of the Scottish Parliament under independence with the opportunity to establish a system that reflected the values of the people in Scotland – rewarded work while properly protecting the most vulnerable in Scottish society. There would also be far greater scope to integrate such new responsibilities with our existing powers in skills and education.

At the same time, the Scottish Parliament currently has no influence over the wider economic levers of regulation and competition policy, over markets that affect key areas of every-day life such as the energy market or in determining issues like employment rights or the use of intellectual property and patents to support growth and jobs.  These powers and responsibilities would come to Scotland with independence.

As the Fiscal Commission Working group said in their report, political considerations may cloud pre-referendum comments and policy statements, but these will differ significantly from the actual decisions taken post referendum when it will be clear to the UK, as well as to the Scottish Government, that an agreement would be in their common interests.

A mutual agreement on borrowing and debt levels, something which would underpin a currency union would be good for both economies.  Imagine if we had such effective controls prior to the crisis to stop the build-up of the massive public sector debts we are currently paying for?

Any economist or Chancellor knows that every economy is subject to constraints, either by a formal arrangement such as a Sustainability Agreement or by the power of the markets.  As the Balance Sheet recently published by the Scottish Government sets out, Scotland is in a relatively stronger fiscal position than the rest of the UK and meeting any such realistic targets would currently be easier for Scotland. Ensuring that this remained the case should help focus the minds of policymakers in London and Edinburgh on the importance of growth and ensuring everyone has an opportunity to succeed.

The four economists on the fiscal commission who have designed the currency union have nothing to gain from the decision the people of Scotland take.  In contrast, I fully accept that the UK Government and bodies like the House of Lords have a  very active stake in the debate and are clearly opposed to Scotland becoming independent.

However, I firmly believe that if there is a vote for independence, our proposal for a currency union will be in the best interests of the rest of the UK. This is what particularly disappointed me about the House of Lords report – it lacked objective scrutiny and it’s arguments were not supported by its own data.

As we recommended in our report, the right response to our proposals is for both the Scottish and UK Government’s to engage in technical discussions on the proposals the Commission has made and look at how they would go about delivering them..

My personal support for independence is well recorded.  My experience with the fiscal commission, has made clear to me that independence, alongside a currency union,  will give Scotland the means to strengthen its own economy whilst continuing a cross border market for  both countries and for the people and businesses within them.

(The illustrations are mine)

GOOD ECONOMIC NEWS

No matter how negatively the BBC and the Scottish Press is treating yesterday's unemployment news, the truth of it is that:

Unemployment in Scotland has dropped below 200,000 and stands at 7.3%.

Meanwhile unemployment in the rest of the UK is as follows:

UK:              7.9%
London:      8.9%
England:     8.0%
Wales:        8.2%
N. Ireland: 8.4%

Further good news is that the Scottish economy grew by 0.5% while figures UK wide, due later this month, are expected to show a contraction, meaning the UK economy may have fallen into its third recession in 5 years...the triple dip.

These figures are only a glimpse of the situation, and of course, the real power behind the Scottish economy is still in the hands of the London government. 

But this kind of news gives lie to the notion, so beloved of the Cameron government, and particularly Bubbles, or Greeting Gideon as he's unaffectionately known at Munguin's Republic, that the uncertainty of the future of Scotland due to the referendum, would mean that no company would want to invest here, leading to economic decline and to greater unemployment.

Wrong ...AGAIN.

Imagine if Edinburgh had the power to bring forward the work that our country so desperately needs doing, the "shovel-ready" projects, how many people we could put to work, and how much more companies would flock to Scotland.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

This from the Facebook Page of YES to an Independent Scotland:

I do believe that the "No" campaign might have been trying to mislead us as I recently found some strange anomalies in their argument during a recent trip to Belgium and France.

1) I sailed to Zeebrugge on a ship that was called the "Pride of York". It was built in Govan, but was owned by P&O not the MoD. The NO people told me that Govan can only survive if it gets MoD contracts, but they apparently build ship for other people too.

2) I travelled from Belgium to France on a motorway and there were no border controls, just a sign. The NO people said Scotland and England would have border passport checks. Could they be lying about this too?

3) I visited Brugge which is in a small country called Belgium with a population of ~11 million. They use the Euro for currency, but they seemed to have a vibrant economy and I didn't see any closed shops unlike my hometown of Ayr where they use the Pound and have lots of closed shops.

4) On the way into Brugge I saw lots of Wind Turbines, but the city was full of tourists. The No people tell me that tourists hate wind turbines and that wind turbines destroy tourism. This didn't seem to be the case in Belgium.

5) When in Belgium I visited a WW1 cemetery where the vast majority of graves were of soldiers from Scottish regiments. I read that 1 in 4 Scots soldiers died in WW1 where as 1 in 10 was the average fatality rate for other UK soldiers. This seemed strange as the "No" people tell me we are "Better Together", but it seems that we suffered 60% more fatalities than we should have done if we had the same fatality rate as the rest of the UK.

I am now confused and suspect that I may have been deceived by the "Better Together" campaign and the British media.

++++++++++

According to the Daily Mail: 

"Now, as the shifting sands of UK oil duty settle into place, the industry is expecting several years of lacklustre investment to give way to a mini-boom."

"Barring unforeseen disasters, the life of Britain's most valuable natural resource may yet last decades longer than ever seemed possible."

"Nearly 40 years after production began in 1975, there are about 20bn barrels of oil left under the North Sea. A hefty chunk of Britain's finances will depend on the oil industry's success in finding and extracting them."

Alex Salmond told the Andrew Marr Show that the industry forecast for the next 40 years was for a greater income than the last 40 years. 

Eddy Mair retorted with..."ah, but it won't last forever".

... What can you say to that, except "Good old dependable BBC. They may put you down but they never let you down".

++++++++++

Johann Lamont has been criticised by Labour MPs over her plans for further devolution of powers to the Scottish Parliament.

MPs claim that they were not consulted about the plans and one MP described them as ‘barking’. Scotland on Sunday also claimed that Lamont hadn't  bothered to discuss her proposals with Ed Balls.

Why is it that Johann never seems to manage to pull all the parts of the party, of which she is supposedly leader, together, before she makes monumental changes to Labour Party policy, apparently working from notes made of the back of a fag packet? Who is advising this woman?

IMF DOWNGRADES BRITAIN AGAIN AND TELLS GIDIOT TO LOOK FOR A PLAN B

...as a result of which, the twerp bubbles. And in the meantime Edinburgh turns out in...erm...full...er force.

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM ICELAND?

You'll probably remember Iceland. 

It was the NATO founder member (without nuclear weapons) that Gordon Brown described as terrorists, because his Fundamentally Supine Authority (FSA, now defunct) failed to regulate Icelandic banks in Britain. 

This is the  country of fewer than 400,000 people that Jim Murphy insulted...it was, he said backward-looking. Lord love us. Coming from someone in the London parliament the expression "backward looking" is quite astounding.

Iain Gray liked to rub Alex Salmond's nose in the fact that this little country, part of the "arc of prosperity that the First Minister had suggested that Scotland might join, were it not shackled to the dinosaur of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, had more of less broken itself. 

Well, here's what Iceland did. Instead of pouring billions of its taxpayers money into its banks and allowing its criminally negligent bankers and useless, weak, ineffectual government  to get away with their incompetence, they indicted the Prime Minister and the top bankers, and they helped the PEOPLE. 

Yeah, the people who paid the taxes were helped out. Amazing.

They went through a couple of hard years. No one would deny that. But Iceland is back. Iceland is working and Iceland is growing. No triple dip recessions for backward looking wee Iceland, Jim. The sun is shining on Iceland.

And that's because Iceland used common sense to deal with the financial crisis of 2008. It wasn't scared of its bankers leaving for New York or Mumbai  The top ones wouldn't be working in banking any more, not anywhere in the world. They were in prison in Reykjavik, and one of them in solitary.

Meanwhile in London, they took away one banker's knighthood. Another one who had been criminally negligent, and would have run his bank into the ground, financial crisis or none, offered to have his title taken away, and said that he would be prepared to only take 2/3 of his enormous pension of nearly half a million a year. Lordie, the Brits can be scarily macho.

No one can understand why the top bankers aren't in Wormwood Scrubs, or in the case of Fred the Shred, in Saughton. No one can imagine why, having created £75 billion in quantitative easing (money printing to you and me), no one is any better off...except the banks.

Iceland had all the answers, but they were terrorists, according to Brown, and presumably he never paid any heed to terrorists. It's a pity he didn't take some lessons from them.

What could we learn from Iceland? We could learn how to run the bloody country.  That's what.