TEN REASONS TO SAY YES TO INDEPENDENCE

I make no excuses for shamelessly copying this from Dark Lochnagar. It's a great post and heart warmingly cheering now that the UK has slipped even further into recession with the loonie Osborne at the financial helm.


Life doesn't have to be like this. Things really don't have to be this awful... We have the opportunity to opt from independence, and it could be like this:

1 Scotland would officially be one of the world's richest countries - ranked 6th in the OECD compared to the UK's 16th place. We have 24billion barrels of oil remaining in the North Sea, according to industry body Oil and Gas UK. That's £1.5trillion in today's prices - half as much in value as has been taken out.

2 We also have around 25 per cent of Europe's potential offshore wind and tidal energy - and a tenth of Europe's wave power. An extra 45 per cent of renewable energy was generated in Scotland last year, according to the UK Department of Energy. It's more than we need and can be exported for cash.

3 Other countries want to invest here. The recent Ernst & Young UK Attractiveness Survey highlighted Scotland's leading position in the UK for job creation from international investment. With independence, we can make the country even more attractive to these employers.

4 Independence will allow us to keep services such as the NHS and the welfare state. In England they are being privatised and cut. Benefits are being taken from the needy and the Scottish Parliament can't stop that under present powers.

5 Scotland has five of the top 200 universities in the world. We also punch well above our weight in the number of research papers they produce. It means our historic reputation as a well educated nation is flourishing. We give our universities one of the best packages of support in Europe, with no fees for students from Scotland. With independence we can do even more.

6 We'll have more money in our pockets. If we got back what we sent south in tax, official figures show every Scot would have £510 more a year. The only tax the Scottish Government controls just now is council tax, and it's frozen under the SNP. Imagine if we controlled fuel duty, national insurance, VAT and income tax.

7 Our government would be more streamlined. Scotland, like Denmark, New Zealand, Norway and Finland, is a goldilocks country - not too big and not too small. The UK wastes money on bloated institutions bogged down by bureaucracy - look at HMRC, the tax authority. It's gone from one calamity to another. The rich get away with evasion while the rest are overcharged.

8 Mobiles would work and we'd all get high-speed broadband. Telecommunications are controlled in London. Westminster auctions licences to phone companies but only demands 90 per cent coverage of the UK. This means "notspots" in much of Scotland. Broadband is patchy too, and it doesn't help that Scotland's capital budget has been cut by a third by the Tories.

9 Our culture would get a boost. We'd have control over broadcasting and more high-quality programmes could be made here. Our news would no longer look hand-knitted compared with well funded UK offerings. We could export high-quality drama and our young bands would have a platform on the radio.

10 Imagine the goodwill. Scotland is held in high regard around the world - by those who know us. But being buried in brand Britain means sometimes we don't get to shine as we should. Independence would generate global interest. We would be the new kid on the block - young, modern, and happening.

RECESSION? WHAT RECESSION?

Lord Young showed yesterday what the people at the top of the Government really feel about the recession and the cuts which they are imposing. “Oh stuff and nonsense. What cuts, what recession?” OK, he didn’t say these words but he might as well have. That is what they think. It hasn’t hit them, so it hasn’t happened.

Oh yes, there are people who have had a not bad time, up to now at least. Those in government jobs with steady incomes and mortgages have found that their mortgage cost have fallen dramatically whilst the bargains that desperate retailers are creating have reduced the cost of the weekly shop, But of course those in the private sector have had to put up with reduced hours, pay freezes and in some cases pay reductions or unpaid holidays, and of course redundancies.

Many who have lost good, well paid work have found part time, badly paid work to replace it. They haven’t had a good recession Mr Young. Oh no.

And now the public sector is in for huge redundancies, which will spill into the private sector, and they will start to suffer as their jobs go. Their recession won’t feel so good for them then Mr Young!

And as for the old, and the poor, they have found that their housing benefits are about to be reduced, because “We must reduce the amount of money which is spent on Housing Benefits”.

Yes, regardless of how much it hurts the very poorest, the people sitting with coats, scarves and gloves on in their own houses, too old and sick to go out, and too poor to eat and heat properly, we must cut the cost of Housing Benefit.

In countries where they pay a living retirement pension they don’t have to subsidise people’s rents and council tax. Clearly that’s not the case in Britain.

How out of touch are people like David Bow Tie Young? Millionaires may have lost some money, but I don’t see David Young, like some others at 78, sitting with his coat on to keep warm.

And while we are on the subject of incompetences from the Coalition, what on Earth was David Cameron doing yesterday when he told the chairmen of the Common’s committees that he thought it would be a good idea to have a bank holiday on the day of the wedding of William and Kate, then hurriedly said that of course it was a matter for the royal family.

Well, talk about boxing someone into a corner. So the Queen, whose decision it is, can’t really say no now, can she? I wouldn’t like to be Cameron at the next audience.



Pics: Lord Bowtie, Mr Botox (nah, it's just airbrushed by his own personal photographer: doesn't he look odd, a bit like Cher really), and some posh bloke everyone's talking about.

And it was on the Monday Morning that the Gas Man FAILED to Call!

It never rains but it pours for Gordon. First the civil servants, then the BA staff, then the railways and now the gas men.

The British Gas dispute is over working conditions of engineers, boilers fitters and general electrical repairers. The union (GMB) also claims the company has a "bullying culture".

British Gas wants to make the engineers work longer hours. Many of the engineers apparently get away with working a four-day week, even though they are paid for a full week's work, which seems like a weird situation to me. Of course you might ask how the management (so called) allowed this situation to come about in the first place.

The GMB claim their members are subject to bullying and that engineers are pressured to sell extra services to customers whilst mending or fitting a boiler. According to the union the average amount of time an engineer is allowed to fix a boiler or other appliance had been cut by 22 per cent, in an effort to ensure workers completed more jobs in a given week. So.... they only work four days a week, but they have to do 5 days work in the four days..... Hello, is there anyone in?

Of course British Gas denies all of this. According to them they are model employers and no pressure or bullying is ever exerted on anyone at any time ever....

A whole article can be read here, and various people may analyse it the way that they will. However, I suggest that this is just the start of a lot of action over the next months and possibly years, regardless of who wins the election.

This recession was caused by greedy and incompetent people at the top. Banks and Financial organizations wanted more and more money; governments failed to regulate companies who were behaving outrageously madly. Even financial illiterates like me could see that if incomes rose at 2-4% on average and house prices rose at 10 12%, there would shortly come a time when no one could afford to buy a house except the Queen (and maybe Lard Ashcroft).

Inevitably it all crashed... just because it was bound to sometime... and one day someone started a whisper that it had started, and so people started calling in debts upon which the world depended for its very existence, and ....BANG! It was over. (Of course it started in America and spread around the world.... tra la)

Even in Britian where the Wizard of Arse had abolished Boom and Bust, the bottom fell out of the economy. (Obviously it was everyone else’s fault)

Now we have to pay. But it’s not the people who caused all this strife who are paying. Oh no. It is BA cabin staff; it’s engineers; it’s transport workers, and civil servant. It’s soldiers and pensioners, and it will be all manner of other people.

Amazingly the bonuses for the morons in the banks go on, because if they don’t get big bonuses they will throw their toys out of the pram and go somewhere else. It’s not Ministers and it’s not MPs who have just pocketed £1,000 a year increase, as pensioners are getting a decrease.

British Gas have mismanaged their way into this, and because “everyone” has to tighten their belts they are trying to force their fitters to do more for less. (Despite the fact that British Gas have been coining it in!)

So, if anyone thinks that these strikes are anything other than the beginning of unrest ...then they should probably think again. It seems like Brits have may grown a back bone.

British Banking System No Longer Stable and Low Risk: Standard and Poor

We have been lectured till our ears hurt by Gordon Brown telling us how he saved the banking system, saved the world, put us in the best possible position to lead the world out of recession. We in Scotland have had our neighbours insulted by the fourth rate Secretary of State for Scotland telling us that Ireland and Iceland were backward looking basket cases, and that that is how Scotland would have been if it hadn’t had the blessed United Kingdom to bail it out.

So sure enough, when it came, 3 months after the rest of the G20 countries of course, we were somewhat surprised to find that our “leading” was being done from the rear, and our growth figure was in fact only 0.1%. The Chancellor was obliged to say that even this pathetic little figure could be a blip, and that the figures by next month might be negative again.

A further blow came yesterday when the alarm was raised over the Government’s ballooning debt crisis. International credit rating agency Standard & Poor warned in a report that Britain’s banking industry was no longer stable. It was seen as a further sign that the massive deficit that Britain is running might leave the country close to bankruptcy. And it came amid new warnings of a Bank of England interest rate rise. Standard & Poor’ statement said: “We no longer classify the United Kingdom among the most stable and low-risk banking systems globally.”

It seems to me that we are likely to hit the second leg of the recession in the next few months. A growth figure of 0.1% over the period that included the rush to spend that typifies every British Christmas, is hardly a ringing endorsement of the economy. The fact that unemployment reduced slightly over this period is also not terribly surprising. As anyone who has worked in the employment business could tell you, it happens every year.

But January and February are always hard months for businesses. As well as the credit card bills landing on the mat, there will be the yearly pay offs in shops and restaurants, bars and clubs that mark the end of the spending spree and return to normal.

I wonder how long it will be before the inflation that the quantitative easing is bound to set in train, will start to hit us and add to the misery?
........

GORDON PRUDENCE BLOODY BROWN.... THANKS A LOT.

First he said that Britain wasn’t in recession. (Lies of course!) Then, when he admitted that it was, it was only because every other country in the world was in recession. (Lies of course!) Then he said that it was the best placed nation to lead the world out of recession because of his prudent management of the economy. (Lies, of course...unless by leading he means from behind, and after everyone else!)

Britain is the last of the G7 economies to emerge from economic decline. The slump, lasting six consecutive quarters, represents the UK’s worst recession since comparable records began in 1955. It is also a ridiculously slight emergence at an estimated growth rate of 0.1%.

So much for the financial genius of Mr Gordon “I’ve ended boom and bust” Brown.

According to the Times: There are growing fears that Britain could tip back into recession after figures showing that the economy staggered to growth at the end of last year. The tiny 0.1 per cent uplift achieved from October to December, far worse than most City economists expected, threw Labour and Conservative election tactics into confusion. Gordon Brown’s hopes of hailing a lasting recovery were dashed amid signs that the next three months could be as difficult as the last.

Conservative plans to promise immediate spending cuts also looked questionable as analysts suggested a double-dip recession, in which the economy moves out of negative growth briefly only to go back into a second downturn soon afterwards.

So it’s back to the drawing board for both of the major parties. (The SNP doesn’t count remember: Mr Murphy says so.)

But worse still: Sterling fell on foreign exchanges and fresh concerns were expressed over the government’s ability to tackle Britain’s budget deficit.

Bill Gross, co-founder of Pimco, which runs the world’s largest bond fund, urged investors to steer clear of UK government bonds. He wrote on his website: “Gilts are resting on a bed of nitroglycerine. High debt with the potential to devalue its currency present high risks for bond investors.”

Given that the finances of the UK have been in the hands of the same man for the last 13 years, is it not something of which he should be heartily ashamed? Has he not completely and utterly cocked up our whole financial situation and subjected us, and our children, to a hitherto unimagined debt?

Is he not a complete and utter failure, and the worst Prime Minister this country has ever had, bar none?

IRELAND OUT OF RECESSION, UNLIKE, ERM, THE UK

Gordon Brown faced further embarrassment today over Britain’s recovery after it emerged that Ireland's beleaguered economy has emerged from recession.

Irish economic output rose by 0.3 per cent between July and September compared to the second quarter, official figures showed today, leaving the UK as one of the few Western economies still mired in an economic downturn.

The technical definition of a recession is two or more consecutive quarters of falling gross domestic product. A number of countries emerged from recession in the third quarter, including America, Japan, China, Germany and France.
However, Britain’s economy continued to shrink, falling by 0.3 per cent in the third quarter according to the most recent estimates from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Perhaps Mr Murphy would like to address his apologies to the Irish President and the people of Ireland. A letter from Dover House maybe, or a television appearance?

If there are any Irish readers here, I’d like to apologise on behalf of Scotland. On the several occasions when Murphy came out with his ill-thought-out, rude, rubbish about how backward looking and sad Ireland was, I cringed. Please believe me, we’re not all like him.