WELL, IF THIS IS TRUE...

I don't think there is much competition.

PENSIONS ARE ONLY SAFE IN "OUR" UNITED KINGDOM... OH YEAH?

But don't worry, trusty Munguin readers, as my Twitter friend @dtaylor5633 points out, Cameron and Blair McDougal's broad shoulders will have this covered.  

They told us that our pensions, state or private, would be safe in their United Kingdom. Indeed, there were people who knocked on old people's doors and told them their state pension would stop on Independence Day.

So much so that even the unionist Department of Work and Pensions were forced to issue a statement reassuring people that it was not so.

Likewise with private pensions, we were told that they wouldn't be able to cope with the financial uncertainty of an independent Scotland. That our investments would only be safe if we stayed together and pooled and shared, the UKOK way, in our good old, stable, United Kingdom.

So, the question is, were they lying about this, as they were about so much else, or are the likes of Cameron and McDonut on it?

ROLL UP, ROLL UP, ALL ABOARD FOR ANAS'S MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR

Wherever it goes, Labour's bus is drawing huge crowds.
Sadly, though, it's always the same people in the crowds.
Maybe that explains why a bus travelling round one of Europe's
most scenic countries  has blacked out windows.

WHAT? ... JUST WHAT?

FAIR AND BALANCED HEADLINE WRITING

One of the Daily Telegraph featured stories today (as at 22.42) was headlined:

RBS 'could quit an independent Scotland'

The under heading in large type read:

Royal Bank of Scotland's chairman has suggested the lender could consider moving from its Edinburgh headquarters if Scottish independence brought "extra difficulties".

The story actually is:

Asked whether the bank would look at where it is domiciled if Scotland voted for independence in 2014, he (Sir Philip Hampton) said: "The overriding requirement is to serve our customers and through that to produce the best value we can for shareholders. We have no intention or plan to relocate from Scotland."

He continued: "We are very happy and Scotland is a very effective place at the moment to do business.

"If, as a result of a vote for independence, we found extra difficulties or cost pressures or whatever arising from that, then we would have to think about alternatives.

"But we don't expect at the moment, we don't identify any clear rationale for making major domicile changes."

In short RBS could quit and independent Scotland (we can't quite see why the heading had quotes). At the same time the USA and Canada could become one country or Japan could kick out its emperor or Burma could declare war on Peru or Tris could be the next Prince of Monaco.

Each of these is possible; but none of them is likely. (Except the last one, which I am waiting to hear about any day!) 

The good old Daily Telegraph. Tabloid journalism with multi syllabic words.

WHERE WOULD LAMONT'S LABOUR TAKE US?

There are, I suppose, many reasons that people want independence for their country.

The fact that independence is the natural state for a country is probably first among these. And even if it is not articulated, it’s at the back of everyone’s mind.

Others may cite, in the case of Scotland, that a relatively poor backwater of the UK, where comparatively little has been spent could, in fact, be one of the richest countries in Europe, if not the world. And that our way of life could be completely transformed by being masters of our own money.

One of my personal thoughts about remaining in Britain (the political rather than geographical Britain, that is), as a relatively left leaning person, has been the move of the UK to the right. For me, I suppose, it must have started under Mrs Thatcher where services were routinely sold off at rock bottom prices so that we could all become part of a “shareholding society" (or so that her friends in the city could make a killing, whichever you think more appropriate). [Surely Mrs Thatcher couldn't have been so stupid that she did not realise that soon after people had bought shares, they would sell them off for profit to big organisations which, in the end would control our Gas, Electricity, Telecommunications, Airports, Steel, Oil (and in England, Water) to mention only a few. And that in many cases these companies would be based in abroad.] 

Then we were all to become property owners as she sold off council housing at amazingly low prices... tempting even relatively hard line socialists with the notion of owning their own house, and all for only a few thousand pounds.

If you add that to the fact that she smashed the unions and shut down the kind of industries where they thrived, you can see that by the time she was stabbed in the back (metaphorically) by the Tory Party, she had completely changed the face of the UK. Major carried the programme forward with one of the most audacious, expensive (and disastrous) of all privatisations: Railways. 

And because Scotland was ruled directly from London, nearly all of these privatisations affected us too, wherther or not we wanted them.

Any hope we might have had of a move back to the left, as might have been expected when, after 18 years of Tory rule, England voted the Tories out and Scotland got its beloved Labour Party as rulers, was very soon knocked on the head, as Tony Blair set about the business of 'de-socialisting' Labour. Fortunately he was forced by the Council of Europe to set up a separate Scottish parliament, which he hoped to control from London. (A parish council, he called it).

Happily, despite his wishes, and a great deal of coming and going of Mandelson’s men (Lance Price used to arrive in Edinburgh ‘capuchoné’) and possibly because Labour needed the Liberals to form a Scottish government (or executive as we were told to call it) Blair failed to control his parish council, at least to the extent that he would have liked and Scotland retained some vestiges of the pre-Thatcher days.

Now Britain has a new Thatcher, who has taken on the privatisation of the health service in England; there is a Labour party in England that will not reverse these changes if it gets into power, and we have a Labour Party in Scotland that seems to be, despite protestations to the contrary, taking orders from London.

So, where would this leave us on the health front if we were to reject independence and then elect a Labour government for a devolved Scotland?

Would they bring in a private health service and would there be any advantages in that? I'll rephrase that...would there be any advantage for us in that. Because, as Craig Murray points out, Dr Éoin Clark has done an analysis of how the current government’s supporters have fared as a result of the privatisations and why would that not equally well for Labour.

Alex Neil says that it won’t happen in Scotland under the SNP, although there is a already a level of privatisation in personal care. But a report for what Labour is pleased to call 'NewsNat Scotland', shows that the costs of operating health services in Manchester are far lower than in Glasgow, and that, at least initially, there seems to be little difference in the level of service. 

But then, to begin with the privatisation of care homes seemed to work well, before big business took a hand in it, greed took a grip, it all went pear shaped and the government had to bale the whole sorry lot out. What will happen when French, American or Chinese companies buy out the current providers, then find that insufficient profit can be made?

And what other right wing Thatcherite policies would a future "Labour" party adopt in Scotland, at the behest of its English parent party to keep the south-east of English on side?

I wonder what your thoughts are...

DOES WESTMINSTER'S APPARENT GENEROSITY HAVE A HIDDEN AGENDA?

There was good news this week when the MOD made a series of long term commitments to Scotland which included the retention of RAF Lossiemouth and the transfer of ex-RAF Kinloss and of RAF Leuchars to the army. Additionally Fort St George is to be retained.

The Army is to have a brand new mobile brigade formed from units returning from Germany. This new brigade will be based in Leuchars when the RAF's Typhoon interceptors move to Lossiemouth. Elements will also be stationed at RM Condor outside Arbroath when the Marines are transferred to England, and at Rosyth and Kirknewton, south of Edinburgh.

But, however welcome the increase in our population, bringing skilled-job salaries to the country and, as the first minister pointed out, bringing children who will be brought up in Scotland, helping to rebalance the ageing population, you do have to consider why the MOD's long term strategy is to more than double the number of regular troops in Scotland from 3,500 to 8,500 in the next five to six years, while in England they are reducing the number of regular troops and relying instead on Territorials.

Could it be that the English government’s seemingly generous act in stationing troops all over Scotland is an attempt to garrison the country? Could it be that they are creating a new brigade with no local allegiances and getting rid of long-established units that might not wish to open fire on a local population?

I find it hard to attribute to Mr Fox and the mandarins at the MOD an altruism that flies in the face of what they are doing everywhere else (i.e. cutting to the bone) without there being a hidden agenda.

Before the election in May we were gearing up for severe cuts and, then the SNP won a majority in Holyrood, an independence referendum is now a certainty, and suddenly we are getting three new army bases in the North East of the country, where the oil is (Leuchars, Kinloss, and Condor), and new mobile units at Rosyth and Kirknewton, handy for the capital. They are not expecting us to kick off if we don’t get our way in the referendum are they? Or are they planning to seize the oil in the event we win?

THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN: A REPUBLIC IT IS

First of all, I’d like to thank everyone who took part in the poll on the head of state for an independent Scotland.

It was an interesting result. Let’s be honest though, we’re not causing Yougov any sleepless nights here. With a sample of 43 on a blog with the word “republic” in its title we’re not going to change the world and I haven’t had the Palace of Holyrood House or Bute House on the phone.... yet!

So, here’s the way our 43 readers voted.....:

Republic the non executive President 30 (69%);

Republic with an executive President 3 (6%);

Monarchy with Elizabeth I as head of state 4 (9%);

Monarchy with another member of the House of Windsor as King/Queen 2 (4%);

Monarchy with invited King/Queen from another royal house 4 (9%).

There were 33 votes (75%) for a republic, and 10 votes (22%) for a monarchy. (Yes, I know, these things never add up properly; that’s only 97 %. It’s the rounding up/down.)

Was I surprised? No. Not much. I think I expected a few fewer votes for the Republic, and a few more for Elizabeth, but the percentages are not far off what I expected. Now, should this feeling be mirrored over the country, I wonder how we would elect, or appoint our President?

Given that (s)he is, according to our poll, to be non-executive and therefore more of an ambassador for our country on state visits, and as a host to other leaders in Edinburgh, does anyone have any ideas about who he or she might be?

Thanks again for taking part.

WHAT A BRILLIANT POST

I just got in and whilst supping on some excellent homemade soup, a gift from a friend (thanks Anya), I had a wee read through some of my bookmarked blogs.

Vox Populi, Vox Scoti is one of my favourites. Math Campbell doesn’t post every day, but when he does it is always good, well thought out, solid common sense.


Today, however, there was more to it. It started off a bit poetic, talking about the “heavy frost on the ground. The cold icy blast of winter, long promised on the winds.” I read on, intrigued.

What followed was stirring and heart warming stuff. Maybe it’s just me of course, but by the end of the piece I too could smell the changes on the wind.

I feel better after reading it. I hope you will too. Thanks Math.

A CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTION AND A POLL

Seat of the Scottish Head of State

Isn’t it about time we began talking about what a future independent Scotland should be like? Math Campbell made the point well in his excellent article:

http://voxpopulivoxscoti.blogspot.com/2009/11/little-chat.html

There are many vexed questions that will need to be considered. Will we use the pound? Will we be in NATO? What voting system will we use? And so on. Perhaps in future polls we will ask some of these questions and others as Math suggests. I thought that, as the name of the blog suggests a republican agenda, it might be an idea to start with the question of whether an independent Scotland should be a republic or a monarchy.

The choices in the poll are:

A republic with a non executive president along the style of India, Ireland, Germany or Iceland, where the incumbent has no political power and acts only in a ceremonial role;

A republic along the French, American, South African, Pakistani, style where the president has executive power;

A monarchy shared with the UK, where Elizabeth I, is head of state, followed by her successors, ie Prince Charles, then William, etc as in other Commonwealth countries;

A monarchy where the King/Queen invited to take the throne is a current member of the UK royal family...eg, Princess Anne, Princess Alexandra, Prince William, etc;

A monarchy with an invited King/Queen from another source, eg, another royal house in Europe or elsewhere, or from amongst the population of Scotland.

Of course there are other possibilities, but not ones likely to be of interest in a modern western society.

So, I’m asking the readers of the blog to give some mature reflection to the question (it is one that we will have to face at some time in the future), and to vote!

(This article, and the accompanying poll is a collaboration between Munguin and Tris.)