Scottish Referendum / Independence - Vol 8

[r11co]

Alpacaman said:

Less people from poor backgrounds in further education thanks to the snp.

Good point. As you rightly said - nothing is free, and the removal of tuition fees has led to a massive drop in the number of college and university places available meaning only the best candidates get in. It may have been Lab/Lib that introduced it (who'da thunk they would come up with an idea that is pseudo-socially just but instead just takes money out the system), but the SNP had ample opportunity to withdraw the policy citing that it has been counterproductive to improving access to tertiary education and replaced it with a means-tested grant, but they can't now because that big stone in Heriot Watt University would become a testament to how much bigger a prick Alex Salmond is than everybody already thinks he is. His legacy was to handcuff this policy to his party and damn the consequences.

Edited by r11co on Saturday 16th June 21:57

[technodup]

Uppity said:

3 elections on the trot - must be doing something right. Free tertiary education? Free prescriptions? NHS wages higher than the rest of the UK? Better A&E performance than the rest of the UK? no Bedroom Tax, Carers Allowance, Free At Home Personal Care, world leader in Clean Energy...seems like this 'mismanagement' is striking a chord with voters

All the 'free' stuff strikes a chord with a certain sort of voter. The ones either too thick to understand or who pay little or no tax. Unfortunately there are too many of them in Scotland.

Fortunately *because* there are too many of them, independence can't happen.

What you're also forgetting with your '3 elections on the trot' line is that parties and people have a shelf life. The Tories won four on the trot, Blair three. Nothing lasts forever. People get bored, they fancy a change. Some fresh guy appeals more than the tired incumbent. Sturgeon's almost there (although I'm not sure Richard Leonard is the fresh guy!)

The SNP have to get independence over the line before they/she loses their appeal. But she's got no control over any of it and time is ticking fast.

[hidetheelephants]

Uppity said:

As was widely reported, the Scottish Government imposed a moratorium on fracking licenses pending the outcome of the various assessments underway. That moratorium is still in place and discussions/challenges are ongoing at the Court of Session, primarily from Ineos - you know, the company that Westminster has sold 2 licences to for exploration in Central Scotland where commercial quantities of shale oil and gas are thought to be most likely. And where 3.5 million people rather inconveniently live (but hey, they put up with nukes - what's a little fracking?).

No doubt you're also aware that the description of a 'ban' was used by Ineos and the mainstream press. They were referring to the refusal of planning permission from local authorities for fracking-related construction, as recommended by the Scottish Government, as being an 'effective ban' (incidentally, an eventual ban being something that 99% of the 60,000 members of the public who responded to the consultation endorse. Fuds all, presumably)

Slow death spiral continuing with membership up 7300+ (and a quick twitter check will tell you how many of those are new)

Did you read the submissions for that consultation? I spent some time looking through them; for the most part they're a good argument against wasting money on undirected consultations. Three quarters were bks from lobby groups that the faithful have cut-and-pasted and the majority of the few responses that were actually written by respondents were paraphrased regurgitation of the aforementioned bks. A significant number were clearly sent in by kids told to do so by their parents or teachers. When people start citing that bloody yootoob clip of someone setting alight to their tap and contradict the report(commissioned by the Scottish Government, written by scientists and engineers and paid for by you and I) on fracking using baseless propaganda from Greenpeace, FOTE, etc. it's time to apply some objective thought and perhaps let INEOS do what they've paid for a licence to do, subject to planning, HSE and any other appropriate laws.

Edited by hidetheelephants on Saturday 16th June 23:11

[Kccv23highliftcam]

" That's what more and more people are seeing everyday"

I'll tell you what is REALLY happenning.

From the potting shed on Friday.

Bunch of seasonal workers and the two pernies looking at their wage slips.

Real disappointment and anger that those whose earnings are slightly above the minimum wage have been hit with a tax hike and reduced take home pay.

Not working in some office in front of a PC with a degree in media, but working class who go out and actually labour 8 hours a day in all weathers.

Uppity, [or is it edinburgher?] you have NO IDEA of the ststorm that is brewing for the separatists. Everyone is absolutely sick of the SNP, their lies and what they have done to our country.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/16288646.Winter...

Got a smartass answer for that?

The SNP Government are DIRECTLY responsible for the appalling state of the NHS in Scotland and indirectly have these deaths at their feet, as nicola would say, END OF STORY.

Which is quite Ironic in it's own way.

[Ayahuasca]

Who the fk signed off the design for the Scottish parliament building?

It is a mess - a horrible concrete monstrosity, with giant stone tazers stuck to the outside walls, half obscuring the outwards view from the windows (must be a metaphor for the MSPs' outlook on things), and a weird tiki-hut like arrangement of bamboo sticks sticking out at drunken angles from the wall. I thought the bamboo sticks must be a nod to Mel Gibson's wall of shiltrons in Braveheart, but it just looks like the work of a five year olds making a sort of home made ker-plunk.

How on earth do they expect to get serious government work done when they meet in something from a deprived area's kids' playground Wendy house?

[andy_s]

Ayahuasca said:

Who the fk signed off the design for the Scottish parliament building?

It is a mess - a horrible concrete monstrosity, with giant stone tazers stuck to the outside walls, half obscuring the outwards view from the windows (must be a metaphor for the MSPs' outlook on things), and a weird tiki-hut like arrangement of bamboo sticks sticking out at drunken angles from the wall. I thought the bamboo sticks must be a nod to Mel Gibson's wall of shiltrons in Braveheart, but it just looks like the work of a five year olds making a sort of home made ker-plunk.

How on earth do they expect to get serious government work done when they meet in something from a deprived area's kids' playground Wendy house?

It's the maintenance costs that are more eye-watering...

https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/cheaper-to-...

[technodup]

Ayahuasca said:

How on earth do they expect to get serious government work done

The serious government work gets done in London.

All they do in Edinburgh is add things to the ban list.

[E24man]

andy_s said:

It's the maintenance costs that are more eye-watering...

https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/cheaper-to-...

Dear Lord, if those figures are true then that building will keep giving and giving.... money to building and maintenance companies.

c£2million per year on maintenance!?

[Uppity]

Kccv23highliftcam said:

" That's what more and more people are seeing everyday"

I'll tell you what is REALLY happenning.

From the potting shed on Friday.

Bunch of seasonal workers and the two pernies looking at their wage slips.

Real disappointment and anger that those whose earnings are slightly above the minimum wage have been hit with a tax hike and reduced take home pay.

Leaving your anecdotal analysis aside, smartass answer (or facts, as they are otherwise known) coming up:



So unless your mates from the potting shed are on more than £33,000 per annum, they are better off under the Scottish tax system. And that's before you take into account that they and their families do not have to pay for:

University tuition (approx £9000 per annum min saving)
Prescription charges
Elderly home care
Free childcare for 3-4 year olds (2-4 year olds for low income households)
Lower Council Tax (approx £460 lower than the average in England)

Kccv23highliftcam said:

Not working in some office in front of a PC with a degree in media, but working class who go out and actually labour 8 hours a day in all weathers.

If there's a point to your disparaging remark on graduates, I've missed it

Kccv23highliftcam said:

Uppity, [or is it edinburgher?] you have NO IDEA of the ststorm that is brewing for the separatists. Everyone is absolutely sick of the SNP, their lies and what they have done to our country.

Election results and increasing membership of the SNP would suggest otherwise. Unless you have anything to support your point?

Kccv23highliftcam said:

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/16288646.Winter...

Got a smartass answer for that?

What the article actually says is that deaths in Scotland have hit a 32 year high for the first 3 months of 2018 due to people being killed by respiratory diseases, fatal flu cases, dementia and strokes. You cannot extrapolate a trend from 3 months of data

What is true - and the article states - is that austerity and cuts in public spending will have played a part in this spike. And it is the Tory policy of austerity that has had a knock-on impact on the Scottish Block Grant - between -3.5% to -9% depending on your source.

Could the Scottish Govt spend more on the NHS? Almost certainly, although on average NHS spending per head in Scotland has been around 15% higher than in England over the last 7 years (Source - British Medical Journal)

Kccv23highliftcam said:

The SNP Government are DIRECTLY responsible for the appalling state of the NHS in Scotland and indirectly have these deaths at their feet, as nicola would say, END OF STORY.

I'll just leave this here

[Alpacaman]

Uppity said:

Election results and increasing membership of the SNP would suggest otherwise. Unless you have anything to support your point?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-40192707

SNP lose 21 seats at general election and are within a few votes of losing many more, bye bye SNP.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2016/scotland

SNP minority only supported by the Greens.

Only nationalists could spin this as a good result.

[Uppity]

r11co said:

Uppity said:

Free tertiary education?

...was introduced by the previous Labour-LibDem coalition. Salmond likes to take credit for it, but it was never his idea and this is just another example of the Nationalists' loose grip on the truth.

No it wasn't.

University tuition fees were reintroduced by Labour government in 1998. After Scotland voted for devolution, the newly-formed Scottish Parliament (Labour/Lib Dem coalition) took over responsibility for education and the fees were scrapped in 2001 and replaced with an annual 'graduate endowment' charge set at £2,000, which was to be paid back once students earned over £10,000. Approx 20,000 paid the 'endowment' before it was cancelled in 2008 by the newly elected SNP-led Scottish government (pesky SNP honouring their manifesto commitment to a return to “free university education”)

r11co said:

Uppity said:

no Bedroom Tax,

'So called' bedroom tax, you mean as there is no such thing...

UK Govt quote: The Welfare Reform Act 2012 determines that the amount of housing benefit paid to a claimant is reduced if the property they are renting is judged to have more bedrooms than necessary.

Good enough for you?

r11co said:

This was just an example of Scottish Goverment using Barnet Formula money to subsidise benefits in order to reverse reforms.

Also known as acting as the first line of defence against the damage being caused by Tory austerity

r11co said:

Uppity said:

but it is dedicated to supporting Scotland

Nope, it is dedicated to achieving independence, and of late has exercised a process of causing harm to Scotland in an attempt to provoke people into supporting independence. " Doing the wrong thing for the right reasons" was how Kenny MacAskill put it.

That's a blog, an opinion piece, from an established pro-UK journalist. Got any actual examples?

[technodup]

Uppity said:

r11co said:

Uppity said:

no Bedroom Tax,

'So called' bedroom tax, you mean as there is no such thing...

UK Govt quote: The Welfare Reform Act 2012 determines that the amount of housing benefit paid to a claimant is reduced if the property they are renting is judged to have more bedrooms than necessary.

Good enough for you?

The bedroom tax is patently not a tax. It's a reduction in the amount of free money we give people to pay for inappropriate housing. Not to mention it's a pretty fair and reasonable solution to a problem. Why should the state be housing people for life in unsuitable and expensive housing? And the people who require said housing to be perpetually disadvantaged?

Uppity said:

Also known as acting as the first line of defence against the damage being caused by Tory austerity

There's not been any austerity. There's been a lot of talk about austerity, to make the hard of thinking believe we were cutting back, but we have spent more every year since the crash.

[Uppity]

Here's what I would genuinely like to understand. Seriously.

All party politics/allegiances aside, what is the benefit to Scotland of being in the United Kingdom?

[r11co]

Uppity said:

University tuition fees were reintroduced by Labour government in 1998. After Scotland voted for devolution, the newly-formed Scottish Parliament (Labour/Lib Dem coalition) took over responsibility for education and the fees were scrapped in 2001 and replaced with an annual 'graduate endowment' charge set at £2,000, which was to be paid back once students earned over £10,000. Approx 20,000 paid the 'endowment' before it was cancelled in 2008 by the newly elected SNP-led Scottish government (pesky SNP honouring their manifesto commitment to a return to “free university education”)

So you agree then that the scrapping of tuition fees was a Lab/Lib thing then? Oh, and WRT to the graduate endowment charge, the SNP also made it a manifesto pledge that they would remove the requirement of those 20,000 to pay it back if and when it became due then reneged on that promise. A colleague of mine will tell anyone who asks that she voted for the SNP back in 2008 for that very reason and will never support them again because they failed to deliver. That's the trouble with lies - people don't forget them.

Uppity said:

r11co said:

This was just an example of Scottish Goverment using Barnet Formula money to subsidise benefits in order to reverse reforms.

Also known as acting as the first line of defence against the damage being caused by Tory austerity.

Technodup covers the alleged 'Tory austerity' thing quite accurately (ie. there is none), but how about the very real SNP austerity imposed on local council services? £1.5billion cut from Scottish council budgets despite the block grant from rUK increasing every year since the SNP came into office (because of that increased rUK spending Technodup was talking about).

But then if the SNP want to lie about Tory austerity they are in the prime position to make it look like it is real. Which leads us to....

Uppity said:

r11co said:

Uppity said:

but it is dedicated to supporting Scotland

Nope, it is dedicated to achieving independence, and of late has exercised a process of causing harm to Scotland in an attempt to provoke people into supporting independence. " Doing the wrong thing for the right reasons" was how Kenny MacAskill put it.

That's a blog, an opinion piece, from an established pro-UK journalist. Got any actual examples?

The quotes in the article are directly attributable to Kenny MacAskill, and as for an example of the SNP creating a dysfunctional Scotland so that their false narrative has an impression of truth I have just cited a major one. The problem though with their 'it is all the Tories/Westminster's fault' defence has worn thin to the point that it is a joke.

Edited by r11co on Sunday 17th June 14:12

[r11co]

Uppity said:

All party politics/allegiances aside, what is the benefit to Scotland of being in the United Kingdom?

Before answering this, what is your position on Scotland as a member of the EU?

[technodup]

Uppity said:

Here's what I would genuinely like to understand. Seriously.

All party politics/allegiances aside, what is the benefit to Scotland of being in the United Kingdom?

I'll leave it for others to make the list, but for me it boils down to what you think Scotland is. I think of Scotland as a constituent part of a larger entity, not a wannabe self determining area desperate to free itself from the shackles of a foreign power.

What I'm trying to say is I don't and can't even countenance Scotland not being in the UK.

What I find staggering is the independence army who want to join the EU. Do they seriously think that is an improvement over the UK? Go and ask Greece about austerity. Or Ireland. Or check what happens when small countries say "no more EU" in a referendum. If you think Scotland is hard done by now, by being the wee guy, imagine what could lie ahead. Especially the way the EU wants to go.

[frankenstein12]

Uppity said:

Here's what I would genuinely like to understand. Seriously.

All party politics/allegiances aside, what is the benefit to Scotland of being in the United Kingdom?

Being hugely financially and economically subsidised. Without the UK Scotland would go bust unless they stopped behaving like socialists. That would mean for the most part large across the board tax increases and reduced social spending on NHS etc.

[andy_s]

Uppity said:

Here's what I would genuinely like to understand. Seriously.

All party politics/allegiances aside, what is the benefit to Scotland of being in the United Kingdom?

Economies of scale - in Scotland's favour - in terms of trade, civil structure, economic stability/volatility risk, employment migration ease/job market, defence, currency, welfare, pensions, energy, in fact almost all 'big government' aspects of life plus a healthy injection under Barnett so regional inequalities are cushioned and of course Scotland has representation in Westminster to influence these aspects to their benefit as well as...

...Those powers and institutions that are already devolved give enough wriggle room (in my opinion) for bespoked national governance without the rupture of all of the above benefits - national parliament, tax [variance], police, criminal and civil law, education, social, housing, transport, environment, agriculture etc.

From a purely objective view, Scotland has their cake and can indeed eat most of it - and I don't have a problem with that, I think it's a mutually beneficial arrangement on the whole.

---

A few of the aspects that struck me during the vote was the SNP's complete lack of preparedness and thought on how to do it viably, they've had over 70 years to figure it out and in the end it was all basically underpinned by oil revenue - contentious anyway but as events showed, completely erroneous albeit completely predictable if you peg your nations wealth on a volatile product. The second aspect was there wasn't an objective positive push - 'we will all be better off because of x, y and z, let's leave' but a negative one of 'Wasteminster, Bloody English, let's leave' - or that's how it appeared to me.

At the end of the day I asked myself whether it would be a positive or negative thing for me and my family and immediate community - anything beyond that was becoming an increasingly nebulous and lofty politic which, while fine in some academic journal or poster in the club, wouldn't translate to anything tangibly beneficial in reality and would have probably led to everyone being worse off in my view.

On the campaign - adherence to political theory in spite of pragmatic reality [If they'd wanted to generate cash maybe reduce corp tax to 10% and become the Monaco of N Europe but that isn't a popular socialist view...], the will to power transcending principal and sense [i.e. this was more about keeping the SNP afloat than really benefiting Scottish people; this was 'hearts and minds' not 'facts and figures'], the divisive effect on the population [that generated increasingly polarised views where the noise generated increased inversely proportionally to the distance from the centre ground] and the lack of vision for me forestalled all support, confidence and credibility in the SNP and by extension their ideas on independence.

As a final caveat - don't worry - the SNP certainly don't hold the monopoly on stupidity in politics and I think have done some good things in certain areas, but as I said at the time - if they hold all the good ideas then let them implement them as best they can and show in reality that they're better in practise than their Westminster peers and have a credible and tangibly beneficial plan I may have another look, but till then...

[Alpacaman]

Uppity said:

Here's what I would genuinely like to understand. Seriously.

All party politics/allegiances aside, what is the benefit to Scotland of being in the United Kingdom?

Did we not go through all that in the two years running up to September 2014? Or did you miss that?

To many of us it goes far beyond the stability and financial strength we get as part of the Union, we are British, it is who we are. I don't identify as English, where I was born, or Scottish where I choose to live, or Welsh or Irish where many of my ancestors are from, I am British. We are a family and we stick together through good times and bad. The anger and hate driven by nationalism is the one thing that would make me leave Scotland. I think Scotland would be a far poorer nation, and not just financially, outside the Union.

[Uppity]

r11co said:

Before answering this, what is your position on Scotland as a member of the EU?

My view is that Scotland should be a member of the EU, pretty much as we are now.