Oddquine

I'm sorry, but the one sure and certain thing about Westminster is that either they deliberately lie through their teeth or they are as thick as two short planks who have never lived in the real world or had to balance a budget. You choose! One thing is clear, I'm not going to be watching Monday's debate,as it appears to be going to be a reprise of the previous one with Darling demanding Plan B and Salmond rolling his eyes and thinking "read the White Paper, why don't you?" http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/aug/23/ed-balls-scotland-euro-least-bad-option-independence Ed Balls, Shadow Chancellor, for the love of God, is on record as saying "I fear that an independent Scotland would end up finding that joining the euro would be the least worst of all the bad options," he said. "It's not what I would choose for Scotland. And I am not surprised at all that Alex Salmond doesn't want to admit it now, but joining the euro would likely be his only realistic plan B." Is Ed Balls completely brain dead? Plan B is the pound...when is Westminster going to concede that, whatever they say...they can't fecking stop us using the pound! And we can't join the Euro, even if we got into the EU on 19/9/2014, (which is more than highly unlikely), as there is a requirement to elect to be in the ERM for two years and meet various economic criteria prior to adopting the Euro. If I know that as an ordinary punter, it does make one wonder at the calibre of UK politicians when they appear not to know as much as me......doesn't it? Would any other ordinary punter care to explain to me how using the pound, without the permission of the omnipotent UK, would leave us in a worse situation re control of our economy than we are in now? We technically are in a sterlingisation situation in the Union atm, because we (or at least our issuing banks, have to back every single Scottish pound issued with sterling assets deposited in the Bank of England (which is much the same as a currency board) .and we have no input into the decisions made by the Bank of England...but in the Union, we have no fiscal control of anything, though we do have pocket money distribution rights.....if we were independent we would have full fiscal control of income and expenditure. An aside for DD..........we will have to agree to differ over the definition of privatisation as practised in England in the NHS compared to Scotland...but perhaps you can explain to me the dichotomy between Andy Burnham's media proclamations for English consumption..like....in July “NHS privatisation is now proceeding at pace and scale… if things stay as they are, the competition framework foisted on the NHS will in the end break it up. It won’t survive five more years of this.” He added “five more years of [privatisation] would push the NHS off the cliff‐edge.” Mr Burnham has said that the current reforms represent “The first steps towards an American healthcare system. English hospitals now asking for credit cards before they give care.” If his claim is true, this would see patients paying for services, with private cash replacing public investment. That would automatically mean spending cuts for Scotland." And Mr Burnham is also on record as wanting to harmonise the Scottish and English NHS.....which will not mean all of it becoming a public service, as Scotland would prefer....but will mean Scotland complying with England's competition ethos and aspirations. . Yet during this referendum campaign, the No campaign is saying Scotland’s NHS can’t be damaged by Westminster cuts...so either your Westminster Government is lying to you re NHS privatisation , or the NO campaign is lying to Scotland re NHS privatisation. Care to help me understand which is correct........the English consumption version.......or the Scottish Version being used to bolster the NO campaign? .

Having suffered a pounding on the pound, Alex Salmond will now look to breathe new life into the Yes campaign by exploiting the public's support for the NHS. Oddquine is quite right that Alistair Darling has got some explaining to do on this one and the next televised debate may well see him having some awkward questions to answer. The NHS will surely become a hot topic in the next few weeks. But voting in the referendum should not be based on whether or not Darling has got himself into a bit of bother. As far as the NHS is concerned, the issue is about whether or not independence will make a radical difference to the quality of healthcare in Scotland. No doubt pledges that the NHS will be safe in an independent Scotland will be bandied about but it will be interesting to see whether there is a debate about the real issues rather than the usual shallow sloganising. There must be few things which attract so much ill informed comment as the NHS. We hear people saying we need Independence to keep privatisation out of the NHS. Nonsense! It's here already and it always has been. Do you go to a GP? Do you get NHS prescriptions dispensed at a pharmacy? Do you get NHS dental treatment or NHS eye tests at an optician? If so 99% of the staff who provide those services either are or are employed by private contractors. A variety of other services are contracted out to private contractors and that trend will continue in an independent Scotland. It is true that more services are privatised in England than in Scotland but that is largely due to the fact that the per capita spend on the NHS is higher here and the NHS in England is forced to explore private service provision because it is cheaper. Whether the NHS provides the service itself or whether a private sector contractor provides it, the NHS in England pays for it. Whether you like it or not, healthcare costs are going to rise massively and these rising costs are putting pressure on the service both North and South of the Border. More radical steps to address these pressures have been taken in England than in Scotland because of the more generous public funding in Scotland. But the extra funding and, indeed, any further funding which might come into Scottish public funding as a result of independence, will only delay the inevitable. The fact is the NHS is a victim of its own success and people live much longer only to go on and develop other more expensive conditions. In addition, treatments become more sophisticated and ever more expensive. Any debate on the NHS needs to address how it is going to tackle these massive cost pressures. It is very easy for people to say, as Oddquine concludes by saying "Scotland needs to fully protect its NHS, and that comes only from a Yes", but what does that actually mean? If it means that the NHS needs to continue to be fully funded by the state then there are two choices for the electorate. Either we need to continue year on year to pour an ever increasing percentage of the public purse into the service (and therefore increase taxes and/or cut other public spending to pay for it) or we limit what the NHS provides so that it stays affordable. That latter option may sound draconian but actually we do it already. There are, for instance, a lot of alternative therapies not available on the NHS or you can get better hearing aids etc if you go privately. Indeed, just in terms of general care and advice or screening for early diagnosis, the NHS could do far more than it does now if it had more money. We therefore currently limit what the NHS provides and if individuals feel that is not enough for them, they have the option of getting private treatment if they can afford it. That is true in Scotland today as the existence of various private hospitals and clinics and the number of folk with private healthcare insurance demonstrates. In Scotland, we already have extensive private health care provision funded by the National Health Service and we already have people paying for a variety of treatments, equipment and health services where NHS services don't meet their needs. With the spiraling costs of healthcare associated with an aging population and the development of ever more expensive treatments we are now seeing a shift in England towards greater input from the private sector and greater private purchase of healthcare. That shift is also happening here but is not yet so developed. What we need to hear from the "Yes" campaign is how these challenges will be addressed in an independent Scotland. Cheap sloganising will simply not do. Having suffered a pounding on the pound? In your dreams, DD...we are creeping up in the polls (if you believe them), since that debate....and even Mark Carney said that "It's never a good idea to talk about contingency plans in public"..so if it is sauce for the Westminster goose, it is as much sauce for the Holyrood gander. (and anyway, plan B is the pound....you know it, and I know it..and Alistair Darling knows it.) Funnily enough, in the YES shop, we have had hardly any queries about the currency, and far far more about the effect of Westminster privatisation on the NHS, about fracking, about Trident, about defence, about disability benefits, about the EU etc. Voting on the referendum is not based on whether or not Darling has got himself into a bit of bother....don't be daft.....but it does illustrate what the MSM(and NO voters) refuse to acknowledge....that Westminster politicians will open their mouths and let their bellies rumble regardless of the facts of any matter. Whereas England takes a market-led approach, encouraging private sector involvement, Scotland does not. It has continued with an integrated system without competition or a split between providers and commissioners. For example, Scotland's local health boards are responsible for both commissioning and delivery of services for their local area. The Scottish health boards are strategic and operational bodies. They have commissioned primary care from community health partnerships and secondary care from hospitals, for which they are also responsible. Health boards and health and social care partnerships are the main provider organisations. (so says Wellards Academy, which trains pharma and meditech salesmen to the NHS in the UK.and they would know their customer base.) "Privatisation" and the rules underpinning it, re non-clinical dentistry, non-clinical opticians and pharmacies, and the PFI hospitals which cost us a heckuva lot of money in payments annually and will for years yet, but involve no clinical input, predate the current Scottish Government starting with Thatcher, and employs about 12000 employees out of 160,000 NHS staff. However, only the PFI hospitals are under fixed long term immovable contracts, the others are paid on a more piece work basis according to how much and what work they do for the NHS..... and they do not bid against other dentists, opticians and pharmacies for contracts. England is now privatising clinical interventions, The following links illustrate privatisation and the consequences as is happening in England now. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jul/26/nhs-privatisation-fears-deepen-deal http://http://www.nhsca.org.uk/docs/cliveprivate.pdf https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/allyson-pollock/end-to-bevan%E2%80%99s-dream-of-free-healthcare-for-all-britons http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/30/health-act-means-death-of-nhs http://www.badmed.net/bad-medicine-blog/2011/03/secret-nail-nhs-coffin.html http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/17/nhs-taken-over-wall-street-cameron-health-service-privatisation http://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/Thousands-Derbyshire-patients-lose-doctor/story-20840118-detail/story.html http://http://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/seventeen-gp-surgeries-at-risk-of-closure-from-nightmare-cuts-9266965.html http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jun/21/nhs-control-given-away-tory-minister http://www.buzzfeed.com/anotherangryvoice/12-things-you-should-know-about-the-tories-and-the-wyf2 And the prospects of a NO vote for the Scottish NHS over and above the implications of the previous links http://www.holyrood.com/2013/09/burnham-sets-out-vision-for-whole-person-service/ A quote from one of the above links (the 4th one I think) The experience of the NHS with the private sector so far – whether through private finance initiative (PFI) hospitals, treatment centres or the corporate takeover of out of hours care – has been disastrous. The marketisation of the NHS has driven up costs and produced worse results. The track records of some private providers now entering the NHS, such as UnitedHealth Group, are not impressive. and Competitive tendering fragments healthcare. Patients with chronic diseases will be looked after by multiple providers. The Scottish system is not comparable with the current situation in England yet, however you try to spin it, DD, but it will get like that here with continuing cuts. Currently we in Scotland still have basically an internal and integrated market, while England is moving more and more towards an external competitive one..and an external competiitive market is privatisation. The Health and Social Care Bill 2012 effectively repealed the 1947 act which Bevin brought forward, guaranteeing universal medical care, free at the point of service, even down to removing any ministerial duty to provide health services, and giving the National Commissioning Board and Monitor powers to commercialise and marketise healthcare. What you appear not to be able to accept is that pocket money will only go so far. Currently, the Scottish government has ring-fenced the NHS budget and increased it in real terms, but as Barnett is reduced.....and possibly even scrapped completely, the ability of the Scottish Government to maintain the Scottish NHS at the level it is now, far less improve it, while also meeting all their other obligations, will be reduced..and that may well force privatisation on the same lines as in happening in England now. Can you explain to me why the Scottish NHS will be Better Together in the Union, when post 2015, we will have only the option of reducing the input to free education, free prescriptions etc or reducing the input to the NHS......or alternatively becoming the highest taxed "region" in the UK? Can you explain to me why we should pay more from our personal incomes when we already have enough income per head, with or without oil, to meet our needs, if we were allowed control of it ourselves and had the ability to decide our own priorities, rather than paying for the lifestyles of 1350 legislators and maintenance and replacement of WMDs, transport links for London etc, for example. http://burdzeyeview.wordpress.com/2014/08/18/why-voting-no-threatens-scotlands-nhs/ Also from the already quoted link...Aneurin Bevan was once asked how long the NHS would survive. He replied: "As long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it." England is losing the fight, despite the large numbers of people with faith who are fighting, as Scotland in the Union eventually will in our turn, if we stay. Scotland, with Independence, will not, as the NHS will be protected in our Constitution. The threat to the Scottish Health Service within the Union is the way the English Health Service is going.....which is down to political policy. Interesting article here..... http://chpi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/At-what-cost-paying-the-price-for-the-market-in-the-English-NHS-by-Calum-Paton.pdf <Edited to add another link. >

That's pretty selective morality. Caring about one international incident but not about another. Much as I was (and I was) against the war in Iraq and believe Bush and Blair committed war crimes, I would be profoundly disappointed if we let religious minorities and a moderate Muslim society be brutally murdered by an invading force. Be we independent or part of the UK, I would be disgusted if we stood by laughing and washing our hands as such a horror unfolded. As criminal as the war to depose Saddam was, it doesn't approve allowing genocide here. But the thing is, the UK (and USA) are selective, both re legality and morality. Their hypocrisy and double standards start and end with what is best for the UK and USA, regardless of who gets in the firing line between them and their preferred goal. The double standards of the UK/the West is amply illustrated here http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/11/iraq-west-hypocrisy-middle-east-yazidi-people I can't, myself, see a lot of difference between genocide, as in an invading force, from outside a country, trying to take over the country and kill off/subjugate the native populations, as we did in to USA, Australia, New Zealand and Africa, genocide as in one tribe/religion/ethnicity decimating another tribe/religion/ethnicity within a country's own borders, or genocide as in a third party, in the mid 20th century, being invited by a second party to take over the lands and resources of the original inhabitant (the first party). The politicians of our country, which instigated much of the current mayhem in the Middle East is still supporting the third party, which is still fighting the first party to grab it all 65 years later.....65 years for the love of Pete.....and our politicians just sit, watch, pat their friends the Israelis on the back, and rake in the business profits and resulting taxes from the arms manufacturers (if taxes are paid at all), made by selling their products to continue the killing...which would not have been happening without the take-over invitation in the first place. If we vote for Independence, I'd hope that our defence force would be just that, and it would be written into our Consitution.....a force to defend Scotland from real, actual enemies, not a force based on being able to strike perceived enemies first "just in case".....but also a force which will take their part in UN/NATO/EU peacekeeping missions, and where necessary, in missions for humanitarian purposes....if we agree that those missions are genuinely for humanitarian purposes and not for oil or trade or to install "western democracy" or change regimes. Kind of an ethical foreign policy?

And when you're paying for education and paying for health services and still driving over potholes and still complaining about empty shop units in the high street and the high taxes and interest rates and the fascist state we'll be living in dont come greeting to me. It will, at least stop us blaming Westminster for everything, after September 19th, if there is a NO vote....we will blame the NO voters/non-voters who kept us thralled to Westminster. I suspect that in ten years time, there will be nobody who is prepared to admit having voted NO, or not voted, when we become the English region of North Britain; when Scottish Water, Scottish NHS and Scottish education, as they are now, become unaffordable on our pocket money, and we have to go down the privatisation route, thus filling the pockets of those of our legislators with interests in the private companies; when we are being fracked to hell and beyond for the benefit of the UK treasury and the pockets of our legislators with interests in the private companies, despite the fact that we will have enough money kept back from us to contribute to the £1.3 trillion projected cost of upgrading London for the 21st century, the money to pay our share to upgrade the UK's nuclear "willie" so they can flash it at the world, the money to pay towards the UK debt mountain and help pay for the costs of bloated Westminster Government (or Westminster will borrow the money on our behalf, as they have only balanced seven budgets in the last 30 years) and cite that as a reason we can't ever be independent as we have swingeing debt, which was incurred to pay for Westminster's incompetence and profligacy. And when we wake up to the coming reality that we are not considering now, as we draw the security blanket of the known dependency around our shoulders and over our heads, it will be too late to change anything. We should be voting on September 18th for the best option for our children's futures, not just to maintain our own present.....because that present is no more certain than independence. This referendum is not a choice between uncertain Independence and a certain Status Quo, it is a choice between independence, with no certainty as to how it will be accomplished, bar that the aim is to end up with a fairer and more equal society and to provide more opportunities for all of us in Scotland, and a Status Quo which simply means what Westminster decides will keep London and the South booming, and which means there is no certainty there after 2015, bar that we know there will be more austerity and cuts, more daemonisation of those on benefits, who are easily trashed, an increasing "working poor", as zero hours contracts are deemed work to massage the employment figures, and it will provide more opportunities to build an even more unequal society as private companies encroach more and more on provision of public services to give profits to shareholders, and the taxpayer subsidises private companies to pay the kind of wages which produce the "working poor". If we do vote NO, at least I'll get some use from my three YES T-shirts...as I will get added above the YES. "Don't Blame Me, I Voted" . Any suggestions as to how I can alter one which says"HOW NO?" and another which says "Auld Wifies for YES" to give the same message?

No comment by me required. http://www.yesscotland.net/news/yes-scotland-challenges-alistair-darling-nhs-funding-hypocrisy Yes Scotland Chief Executive, Blair Jenkins, has challenged No campaign chief Alistair Darling to explain the difference between claims made about the threat to Scotland’s NHS funding, that helped get him elected as an MP in 2010, and the exact opposite and contradictory claims now being made by the campaign he leads. Mr Jenkins said: "Mr Darling, you were elected saying a Westminster Tory government would 'slash funding for schools and hospitals' in Scotland but now lead a campaign that wants us to believe that Scotland’s funding is safe in Tory hands." The Scottish Labour Party’s 2010 General Election Broadcast makes clear that a Westminster Tory government has and would cut Scotland’s health spending and that this is a ‘risk’ that Scotland faces. The broadcast states: "They [the Tories] starved our schools and hospitals of funding and there’s a real risk they’d do the same again." "They wouldn’t fight for the NHS, they call it a 60 year mistake." "The Tories would . . . slash funding for schools and hospitals . . . The Tories haven’t changed." The official No campaign is now arguing that there would be no impact on Scotland’s schools and hospitals from Westminster Tory policies, including the ongoing privatisation of the English NHS. Commenting, Mr Jenkins said: "Mr Darling has been caught out saying two very different things in two campaigns. He was elected on the back of the claim that a Westminster Tory government poses a threat to Scotland’s NHS, and now leads a campaign that is trying to argue the exact opposite. "Of course, Mr Darling was right back in 2010 when he warned that Westminster Tory cuts could damage Scotland’s schools and hospitals. "Elsewhere in the UK, the Labour Party is warning that the privatisation of the NHS in England could mean cuts. This would have a direct and automatic impact on Scottish spending as a result of the Barnett formula. "Given that Mr Darling’s party identified the threat to Scotland’s NHS in 2010 and his colleagues, including the Welsh Health Minister, are repeating that warning today, it is simply not credible for the No campaign to continue with their assertion that Tory health privatisation won’t have a damaging impact on Scotland’s NHS. "The NHS is Scotland’s most valued public service. We simply can’t risk any knock-on damage to our health service in the future from the Westminster government’s privatisation agenda. Scotland needs to fully protect its NHS, and that comes only from a Yes."

Written in January 2013 by a Unionist (at least he was then).......and the only things that have changed in the intervening 18 or so months, is that the bite of austerity on the easiest marks has become tighter, as the rich, the bankers and big businesses continue to profit...and No Better Together Thanks have upped the cost of Independence from the £1 a person a year (as below), to up to £910 per person per year....or put another way £600 per year per household, .....undoubtedly arrived at using the very same calculator they use to forecast the income from oil, or the cost of setting up a Scottish government machine to rival that of bloated Westminster......or how much Scotland is better off in the Union (£1400 per person was the last figure I saw.) http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/20/scottish-independence-becoming-only-option From the article ......... Unionists, me included, have talked loftily about dangers of break-up and separation in a world that is thirsting for continuity and stability. Yet we conveniently overlook the fact that London has already broken away from the United Kingdom and now exists as a world super-state governed by the greed of unhindered capitalism and recognisable as British only by its taxis and bad service. As the world's most newly minted oligarchs continue to colonise the independent state of London, it becomes almost impossible for families on less than £250k to live decently there. Poor London families made homeless by the coalition benefit cuts are being evacuated as far north as Middlesbrough. Last week, Goldman Sachs, one of the banks with its fingers in the till when global economic meltdown occurred, awarded an average bonus of £250,000 to each of its employees. The gap between the richest in our society and the poorest stretched a little more and we were reminded yet again that the UK government, despite its promises, allows greed, incompetence and corruption to be rewarded. (How many people do you think will go to jail for the Libor rate-fixing scandal?) Meanwhile, Westminster politicians are dividing the poor into categories marked "deserving" and "scum". and Earlier this month, the UK Treasury declared that, following a period of intense and prolonged analysis of the economic numbers, each of us would be £1 a year worse off in an independent Scotland. Put another way, for £1 a year you will never have to endure the economic privations of a Conservative government ever again. You will not be penalised for being poor or old and nor will you suffer the pain of watching your young boys being killed in illegal wars or occupations. As an aside......I am still waiting for something from No Better Together Thanks.or Westminster politicians to tell me what we can't have as an independent country but can only have within the Union and no other possible way. What exactly does make us Better Together....and why is it something they find so difficult to quantify? I can see clearly why the rUK is Better Together with us......but no idea why we are Better Together with them.

That would be because he is trying to work within the Edinburgh Agreement...and Westminster isn't. Plan A is Plan A and will be until, if we vote for Independence, and all Westminster parties refuse to negotiate a currency Union.........we go to Plan B. However, in the end, it won't be Westminster who decides, we all know that.......Westminster doesn't have as much power as big business nowadays.....it will be the money men who decide...those same money men who obliged Westminster to take ownership of all the debt Westminster had run up. They want to guarantee they will get paid, so while we are waiting to see whether Westminster or Salmond will blink first, it will be interesting to see the reaction of investors, shareholders and companies (the market) to the possibility of 10% of the UK balance of payments being wiped off the balance sheet (and Scotland not paying any share of the UK debt).

I'm no expert on these issues and look at them from the perspective of an ordinary confused voter. From that perspective I am very concerned about Salmond's continuing intransigence illustrated here. He has no plan B because he continues to insist that currency union is in the best interest of all concerned. Regardless of the opinions expressed in a report written for the Scottish Government, The Unionist parties continue to be adamant that there will be no currency union. Salmond needs to come to terms with that. It is perfectly reasonable for him to continue to argue that a shared currency is best and to pledge to pursue that option, but he does need to have a fall back position in the likely event that he does not manage to get the Unionist parties to do a u-turn. He also needs to understand that it is not the Scottish pound, it is the UK pound. He walks away from the UK then he walks away from infuence over the pound. What he does not walk away from is the Scottish share of the national debt With the focus on what is best for Scotland, people tend to forget about how this is will all impaact on the rest of the UK. The break up of the union will have a number of practical difficulties for the rUK as a result of a unilateral decision by one partner to leave the union. The rest of the electorate in the UK will have had absolutely no say in this massive constitutional change and will not be inclined to do the Scots any favours. The view that will be taken regarding what Salmond may perceive as shared assets is that if Scotland has walked away from the Union then it relinquishes any right to certain assets. For instance, DVLA provide a very smooth service for Scottish road users and whilst it may be relatively easy for procedures to change to accommodate a service to an Independent Scotland, rUK may take the view that they are not prepared to make any changes and therefore the Scottish Government will need to set up it's own agency. Any area requiring negotiations around what are currently shared assets will be met with the line that these are UK assets and given that Scotland has unilaterally left the UK, Scotland's access to those shared assets will be strictly on the basis of whether or not it suits rUK. I'm no expert either, but he does have a plan B, as far as I understand it. It has been the option I have continually preferred from the start of all this, as a short term option, sterlingisation, as it limits borrowing opportunities and forces balanced budgets, while we get our ducks all in a row, While I knew walking away was a possibility, I didn't expect we would do that. I have always assumed that we would still be paying our share of debt/getting our share of assets, as the Currency Union (I hoped) would not happen as Westminster would put too onerous restrictions on any agreement, like permanency/irreversability, for example, and we would decide not to go along with it. However, once the Westminster Parliament which had said it would not pre-negotiate anything, decided to pre-negotiate/dictate currency options (much on the dictat lines as Netenyahu uses prior to any talks with the Palestinians), I can see from whence Salmond comes. DD, you forget we already have a Scottish Pound, and in order to have that Scottish pound, we already, within the Union, practice defacto sterlingisation, as the issuing banks have to deposit a combination of Bank of England banknotes, UK coin and funds in an interest bearing bank account at the Bank of England, as backing assets, in case of insolvency. Haven't you noticed that, while English notes say "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of X pounds, Scottish notes say X pounds Sterling. Scotland has no debt, the UK does........they have said so. There is a difference between a legal obligation, which Scotland does not have, and a moral one, which I agree it does have. What he does not walk away from is the Scottish share of the national debt sounds much like the Three Westminster Stooges saying "you will not be allowed to use the pound". If we walk away from our share of the debt, it will be a situation brought about solely by the political posturing of "no pre-negotiation" Westminster, not due to a choice made by Alex Salmond. Be interesting to see who blinks first if it comes down to it. DD, and given my personal preferences for sterlingisation and an eventual Scottish Currency , I'm playing Devil's Advocate, here....... the best for both countries is what Alex Salmond is suggesting with a Currency Union. We already cover our note issues..and there is no reason why that should not continue within a Currency Union. Past risky behaviour by investment bankers in London, inadequately supervised by the Bank of England, and under Westminster regulation, somehow disqualifies an independent Scotland from a currency union with England how exactly? I'd have said it would be foolish of Scotland to risk a Currency Union with a country so heavily in thrall to a financial services casino banking Industry, which is still not adequately controlled. I take your point about the DVLA........but then there are UK Government Services, like HMRC, which deal with areas of England from bases in Scotland. Transition works both ways. I always thought one benefit of independence would be actually getting some decent jobs imported into Scotland, and with a bit of luck and citizen lobbying, getting Government Departments, in these days of easy communication, out of Edinburgh/Glasgow and into the sticks.....like Inverness, Elgin or Wick. It is generally the case that fixed assets within a country belong to that country, so we can set up our own HMRC in our share of the buildings already owned by HMRC in Scotland. We already pay our share of the costs, including staffing, of HMRC UK wide, so the only real necessity to spend money would be, given we have to simplify the UK tax (and benefits) system to make it less unwieldy, a new IT system..and we might even, with decent procurement criteria and competent staff undertaking the procurement, pick one which will actually work first time of asking.

Alex Salmond writing in the Sunday Herald about currency choices. Spoilt for choice re currency threads on here.....but it doesn't really fit either of them .so http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/referendum-news/if-the-no-camp-think-telling-ordinary-scots-they-have-zero-entitlement-to-a.25003848 A couple or three quotes from it:- the language of the No campaign on the issue of what currency an independent Scotland should use is perhaps more revealing than they had ever intended. Their obsession with a "Plan B" says it all. Implicit in that formulation is settling for what is second-best, and in this case what would be second-best for Scotland. Having spent my entire political career fighting for what I regard as being in the best interests of Scotland, I am not going to settle for second-best on currency or anything else. and The Scottish Government commissioned a group of eminent economists, with two Nobel laureates - Joseph Stiglitz and James Mirrlees - among their number, to look at the currency options for an independent Scotland, and their detailed report was published last year. It concluded that retaining sterling in a formal currency union is the best option for Scotland. It is also the best option economically for the rest of the UK. As such, the No campaign's tactic of saying no to a currency union makes absolutely no economic sense. plus It is simply impossible for the Westminster establishment to follow through on their campaign rhetoric about blocking Scots using the pound. They can however deny Scotland continued use of the Bank of England, which is a shared asset that Scottish taxpayers have contributed to since it was nationalised in 1946. The Bank of England itself holds the title to over a quarter of the UK's entire national debt of around £1.3 trillion. And it is all that debt which Westminster would be agreeing to take on board in its entirety if Scotland was denied continued use of the central bank. Seems impeccable logic, to me, however much I don't like the idea of a Currency Union, and in the short term, is the sensible way to go, until we can decide for ourselves about our currency choices going forward. Bear in mind that, since 1946, the UK itself has used pretty much all the currency options for Scotland given in the White Paper, up to just stopping short of joining the Euro at the ERM stage. It is only since 2002 (I think) that it has become a fully independent freely traded currency.

Appears that plan B may be no Currency Union, no debt (and I suppose, no other assets bar the fixed assets in Scotland, though that isn't clear.) and using sterling anyway, in the short/medium term at least.. http://www.businessforscotland.co.uk/first-minister-no-currency-deal-no-debt-deal/ A no debt option looks attractive to Scotland but we would rather have a deal that worked for our friends in the rest of the UK as well as for Scotland. Maintaining a common market and single currency is the solution that works best for all parties. Not overly keen on the Currency Union idea.....but less keen on the walking away one, as we are still going to have to live next door to the rUK...thought that idea had died a death a while ago as talk about it had died down..hence my thinking Plan B was just using sterling anyway. So I'm kinda torn, as it would be great to start off debt free...but not so great to have the rUK next door nursing a sense of grievance. Why would we want to swap our long held sense of grievance (chip on our shoulder) for their future new one? It won't help good relations any more than it has in the Union. I'd rather take our share of debt, and our share of assets, (with the cost difference between the assets we can use, and those we can't being deducted from our debt share) and have a friendly co-operative neighbour. We may not have a legal obligation to pay any of the UK's debt, as it doesn't appear that much, if any, of it got spent in Scotland for Scotland's benefit, (else the A9 would have been drastically improved rather than forking out dosh filling London with state of the art transport facilities) and we were certainly not a signatory to the transactions which produced the debt levels. But imo, we do have the same moral obligation as in any marriage breakup, in which the family car, which you can't drive because you have no licence, and an expensive suite which offends your taste, and is so bogging you had to buy sofa and chair covers to hide it from view, were chosen and bought on tick by the husband alone, who included your pay in his income figures when getting that tick, are perceived as goods for the benefit of the household, even if you don't agree that they were...and are a joint responsibility. I'd rather become independent, even if the first few years are hard, being fair, than be left feeling we had shafted the rUk just because we could.

Wings explains it very clearly here http://wingsoverscotland.com/arithmetic-for-thickos/ The Scottish Government’s white paper on independence lists five currency options: 1. The pound in a currency union 2. The pound outside a currency union (so-called “sterlingisation”) 3. A Scottish currency pegged to Sterling 4. A new, fully independent, “floating” Scottish currency 5. The Euro Now let’s look at what the Sun quotes the First Minister saying no fewer than FOUR times at yesterday’s session when asked what his “Plan B” was: “It’s our pound and we’re keeping it.” Seven words, only one of them more than one syllable. It’s not exactly cryptic. “It’s our pound and we’re keeping it” immediately rules out options 3, 4 and 5, because they don’t involve keeping the current pound. Option 1 is “Plan A”. That only leaves one other. 1. The pound in a currency union 2. The pound outside a currency union (so-called “sterlingisation”) 3. A Scottish currency pegged to Sterling 4. A new, fully independent, “floating” Scottish currency 5. The Euro Is it within Mr Salmond’s power to guarantee that? Yes it is. Sterling, everyone freely acknowledges, is a fully-tradeable international currency which any country can use without the agreement of the UK. If an independent Scotland wants to use it, no power on Earth can prevent it doing so. So there we are. That wasn’t complicated, was it? The “eight-year-old child” cited by Alistair Darling repeatedly on Tuesday night could follow it. If you have five things and you rule out four of them, it’s the other one. Whether it’s the right choice or not, or whether that choice will ever have to be made (it won’t), are separate issues. If all you want to know is what Plan B is, there’s your answer. Pretty much what I've been saying from the beginning, though I usually add that it will be better than sterlingisation within the Union, which is what we really have now, as in we have the use of the pound without any control over monetary policy/interest rates to suit our circumstances. We will be Better NOT Together, as we would at least, with sterlingisation after Independence, unlike the actual, if not thus named, sterlingisation we have now, have all the fiscal tools available to try to counteract the effects of the Londoncentric Westminster policies. Fair enough, we have some small effect now, with the ability to move our pocket money around, robbing Peter to pay Paul, but any growth in our economy currently benefits only Westminster, which is a situation which will continue to pertain once the much vaunted Scotland 2012 Act comes into play..and will with any level of devolution we may or may not get after a NO vote. What we can't do, without independence, is legislate on reserved matters, which are all about how much is taken in taxes and where and how it is spent. In the Union, we can distribute our allowed spending to the allowed areas, and nothing else...and even the amount we can spend is being gradually reduced, by the built in reduction in Barnett, the gradual privatisation of much of the public services in England, on whose spending Barnett funding is based, and the ongoing austerity cuts.

http://wingsoverscotland.com/what-does-it-mean-to-be-scottish/ Copied and pasted in full and no comment required from me. What does it mean to be Scottish? Posted on August 03, 2014 by Ryan Miller The above is a deceptively simple question and one to which the answer, of course, is as varied as the people you might ask it of as we approach September’s vote. The debate so far would suggest that at one end of the scale, we’re a nation of poor wee souls, much safer shackled to a United Kingdom that gifts us stability and security in the face of choppy global waters and saves us from the hassle of making crucial political decisions for ourselves. At the other end, we’re a proud nation of untold prosperity, a nirvana of wealth and social justice primed to emerge after our divorce from our oppressors in Westminster. For anyone in between and still grappling with their identity, the Economist helpfully informed us recently that being Scottish means painting a Saltire on your face, wearing a Jimmy hat and shouting at nothing in particular. Glad that’s sorted then. The truth is that very few of us will see ourselves in these broad-brushed caricatures of Scottish identity. I certainly don’t. In fact, the more I force myself to think about it, the clearer it becomes that I don’t have a bloody clue what it means to be Scottish. Or at least I didn’t until last month. For much of last month I watched the news from Ukraine and Gaza unfold with growing horror. I watched families and lives devastated by the actions of people they have never met for reasons they will never understand. I watched worlds blown to smithereens in the shape of aircraft debris raining from the sky and family homes obliterated by mortar shells. And one more thing. I read about a father in Gaza gathering the remains of his two-year old son in a shopping bag. The hours of news coverage I’d watched and images of grief and destruction I’d seen up until I read that tweet were horrific, but there was something otherworldly and unfathomable about them. My world does not involve passenger planes being shot out of the sky and guided missiles annihilating families in their homes. But I do have a two-year-old son. I worry about him a lot. About him banging his head on the table, watching too much television, not eating enough fruit, sticking his finger in electrical sockets and even about him peeing on the couch. I don’t ever worry about having to gather his remains in a shopping bag. The tweet made me feel physically sick, maybe because I have a son the same age, or maybe just because I’m a human being. I watched more news. Rumours emerged that the Malaysian Airlines plane was destroyed by pro-Russian separatists wielding military-issue weapons cataclysmically more sophisticated than the people firing them. Scrolling bars on the screen revealed more children killed by bombs in Gaza for the crime of playing on the beach. Politicians fell over themselves to condemn one side or the other, depending on which dog they backed in the fight. David Cameron lambasted Hamas for their role in the escalating violence in the Gaza strip; Barack Obama took pot shots at Russia for their role in supporting separatists in Ukraine and, less than 24 hours after the fragments of plane smouldered on the ground and the children were bombed on the beach, the world settled back into the familiar rhythm of powerful people in suits blaming each other for the world’s ills. Until I read another tweet. The second in one day to stop me in my tracks and change my perspective; 140 characters that made me realise what it means to be Scottish – or at least what I want it to mean. While Cameron, Obama, Putin and Netanyahu took to our television screens to blame someone else for the bloodshed, Scotland’s government released a statement of its own. Humza Yousaf, Minister for External Affairs and a man I’ve never heard of before and confess to know nothing about, made me feel very proud to be Scottish. In the statement Yousaf spent little time apportioning blame for the bloodshed (and the little he did was cast upon both sides) and focused instead on the victims, offering refuge and sanctuary in Scotland for Palestinians and people displaced as a result of the conflict in Gaza. Approaching the referendum, it would be much easier for the government to take a back seat on this dangerously divisive issue, trot out the expected platitudes and move swiftly on to more parochial matters. Immigration, after all, is a toxic political grenade and the media demonisation of refugees and immigrants across the UK means that the government’s offer to accept refugees from the conflict in Gaza is certain to get a mixed reception at best. But isn’t this what we’re all about as a nation? Isn’t this the social justice I hear people on both sides screaming out for? I have referendum fatigue. I have a craving for knowledge that has been thwarted by claim and counter-claim about the economy, defence, Europe, currency, borders and oil. I have drawn my own conclusions that, on many of these fronts, nothing much will change significantly. Men in suits will still blame each other for the world’s ills, we probably won’t have borders, we probably won’t have nuclear weapons in our waters, we’ll probably still use some version of the pound, we’ll probably stay in the EU. Oil, at some point or another, will definitely run out. All of this matters, of course, but none of it will dictate my reasons for voting Yes in September like what Humza Yousaf and David Cameron have done in the last 24 hours will. Their respective responses to the atrocities in the Gaza strip has solidified in my head what I’ve known in my heart from the outset of this debate – things won’t change until we change them. We can’t vote for the status quo and hope for something new and improved to emerge as a consequence. We can’t expect to have our faith in politicians restored until we take the chance to ensure that the ones that serve us are the ones we voted for. We can’t condemn those who use violence as a means of resolving conflict while we sit with nuclear weapons on our waters. Let England lurch to the right. Let Nigel Farage cosy up to the BBC and disseminate his politics of intolerance. Let England leave the EU and close its borders. We don’t have to be part of that. Let us define what it means to be Scottish as a willingness to welcome and embrace a father who has just had to collect the remains of his son in a shopping bag as a result of a conflict fought by people we don’t know for reasons we’ll never understand.

Yestival was good, wasn't it? Someone gets it.........the whole grass roots thing. For once a pretty decent article.......... .http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/11/third-scotland-referendum-radical-left-politics?commentpage=1 Hope, regardless of outcome, the new political energy we are seeing continues to flourish. Reminds me a lot of the hustings in the 1970s/1980s, before the US version of "doing" politics by advertising and via the media took hold and removed the ability of those not politically active to participate in elections. .Politics used to be reasonably good fun, before it ended up coming down just to the ability of advertising companies, the bias of the media....and the lies of the politicians.

If we stay in the Union, and if it ever exists and works, they probably will, because I don't suppose the mindset which decided that the casualties, in event of a nuclear accident/strike due to Polaris/Trident, would be more acceptable to Westminster in Scotland than in England, has changed one iota...and given a beezer of a big airgun, with a nearly equivalent damage capacity to Trident, would be just as much a first strike candidate in any world power pushing and shoving........we'll get it! Guaranteed! Why else do you think Caithness got Dounreay and Vulcan....it wasn't to help the local economy....but because sure as hell Westminster wasn't going to put a prototype "anything dangerous" in overpopulated England......underpopulated Scotland means less collateral damage if things go wrong....and Scotland is easily ignored by Westminster if they don't vote SNP (which is why we, if there is a NO vote, must vote SNP in large numbers in 2015, if only to force Westminster to actually look at Scottish devolution again....and maybe even the whole broken UK version of "democracy"....though I'll not be holding my breath.) Otherwise, we become North Britain, and all those ProudScotsbut No voters will, along with the rest of us become the inhabitants of just another region of England and we will lose our identity.........because if we vote against independence, we are accepting that Westminster is correct, and Scotland died when the Union was agreed. We may not think that we will be accepting that..but I'll bet £100 I can't afford that, if we vote NO, further devolution will, if it comes at all, never be more than the ability of a Scottish Government (if we even retain Holyrood) to make Scotland the most highly taxed part of the UK, or be obliged to roll back the support for education, the NHS, those hit by Westminster welfare/benefits cuts etc......or go the privatisation route.......because while we may not think that by voting NO, we are bowing down to the subservient position we have held within the Union for the last 307 years.....sure as hell Westminster will assume that! Betcha! I also suspect we will then lose our national teams, as the home nations having separate teams, and therefore separate representation in the likes of football, for example, has always been a problem for some countries in FIFA. (Mentioned because this is a football forum, after all.) .

Punching above our weight, then, without England doing it on our behalf!

We will if we must, Scarlet, but we're not about to let Westminster walk over us just because they think they own us. They don't seem to realise that a Kingdom isn't a country but a Royal realm, and the Union is of two independent Royal realms, one of which was comprised of the Kingdom of Scotland, and the other of which was comprised of the Kingdom of England, plus their conquered adjuncts, Wales and Ireland. Westminster is not the Union, Westminster is the Parliament of the Union....which, to me would indicate that the dissolution of the Union would mean the dissolution of the Westminster Parliament, just as the Scottish Parliament was dissolved in 1707 on the creation of the Union. In that case, there would be no continuing UK, whatever it ended up being called, but two continuing states..which would kinda bugger up Westminster's contention that they could just continue being the UK in all International fora as a right, without the agreement of Scotland. Part of the reason I'd prefer no Currency Union is that any Scottish Government in 2016 will have to balance their budget if we are obliged to go with sterlingisation in the short/medium term, though I suspect an oil fund will not grow very fast in the term of the first iScottish Parliament, if that is the case. Have to say, whatever happens on September 18th, this has all been a lot of fun for those of us who are politically aware...and if we end up with a NO vote, I'll look forward to starting again on the 19th September (or maybe a few days later, after having a good greet and getting thoroughly blitzed) by working to send an SNP majority from Scotland to Westminster in 2015 (even though I'm not politically SNP). We'll get our freedom, if not this time, then next time (though I'd hope for this time, if only because i have been waiting for half a century to get a passport, as I will not have a UK one).

I wouldn't go that far. Without dismissing it altogether, I would point out that: 1) The data was a snapshot 3 years ago, at the height of the recession, debt crisis and Eurozone crisis, and since which time oil revenues have continued their fall. 2) What it shows is that even when oil revenues were higher than they are now, Scotland couldn't remotely balance its books. 3) All this is also before taking into account the massive additional costs that Scotland would instantly face as an independent country, and also before taking into account all the spending plans and promises. You do kinda need to bear in mind that the FT, like all the MSM, bases their articles on GERS, which bases their results on the Government produced figures from the ONS and OBR....and, like the IFS forecasts, assume that an independent Scotland would continue to follow the policies and employ the same bloated administration as Westminster currently does. Most oil price forecasts are upward, with one of the exceptions being the OBR which has a political motivation to underestimate oil revenue. Professor Sir Donald Mackay's report in the Sunday Times http://wingsoverscotland.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/psdm.jpg (link to Times article not to Wings one) says that the Office for Budgetary Responsibility predicts oil prices far lower than even other parts of the UK Government. This OBR figure is used by Westminster to predict lower tax revenues from oil. The OBR claims there will be £15.8 billion tax revenue from oil over three years. The Department for Energy and Climate Change predicts a higher oil price, and therefore £28.1 billion in tax receipts. This huge difference is between two departments within the same government. And the OBR reaction to that report was to readjust their figures even further downwards. Go figure! The Scottish Government in their forecasts tend to use a figure in the mid range of the best figure and the worst one, afaik. Anyone who thinks that we get independence one day and will have Utopia the next day(or ever) is the kind of person who thinks the OBR and the IFS are independent of Government and were not set up specifically to fudge figures and produce results to suit their agendas, while allowing the Government to pretend the results had "nothing to do with us, guv!" At this precise moment, nobody can say massive additional costs that Scotland would instantly face as an independent country, because we won't know until after negotiations, what we will have and what we will have to find. Presently, the figures for start-up costs have a) been drastically exaggerated, if it is the Danny Alexander figures being considered and b) unless rUk does foot stamping and huffing, which would mean disruption to both economies just to teach us a lesson, any start up costs would be spread out over a few years and not be due on day one. I prefer to think that, if we vote YES, Westminster will accept our decision, decide to adhere to the Edinburgh Agreement, and make the transition as pain-free as possible for both countries....after all, they have had plenty practice at releasing countries from their control since WWII, so can do pragmatic if they are faced with the necessity. http://www.investorschronicle.co.uk/2014/07/24/tips-and-ideas/share-tips/tips-of-the-week/north-sea-incentives-to-boost-enquest-MIfvyVzluLyGAzDJtEGrmO/article.html From the above link.......via wings http://wingsoverscotland.com/the-unlikeliest-places/ (as the whole article needs subscription) We think that Westminster has been deliberately downplaying the potential of the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) ahead of September’s referendum on Scottish independence. and According to the report, the UK economy could generate £200bn over the next 20 years through the recovery of only 3-4bn barrels of North Sea oil and gas. Many analysts believe that the potential is much greater.“

Yestival was good, wasn't it?

The view from the Scottish centre-right for YES http://www.wealthynation.org/conversation-piece/ http://www.wealthynation.org/danny-alexander-the-red-queen-and-impossible-things/ http://www.wealthynation.org/the-vexed-question-of-immigration/

Yep! Exactly! http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2014/07/17/dinner-with-no-voters-or-what-i-wanted-to-say-before-the-pudding-hit-the-fan/ It's long......and this is a long quote from it In any case, despite the devout wish of many in the BBC and the Labour Party, to name but two, that this whole question had never been raised,, the status quo, as I’ve said before, may well be on the ballot paper. But it is not on the cards. A wish for a return to normal is a wish for a stability that is already in the past. You can’t go home when it’s not there any more. Indeed, I would argue that a No vote will change the terms of that “stability” quite as radically as a Yes vote. A No vote is just as much of a vote for change. It is not only Yes voters who should be called on to look into a crystal ball and imagine a future that is radically “not the same” Before my No voting friends dismiss that as a paradox, may I ask them to consider the following. Every vile piece of Westminster legislation that has attacked the poor and dismantled the Welfare State, every policy that has ensured that it is only the poor who have paid the price of the recession caused by the greed of the rich, every act of economic and social vandalism – it has been the comfortable posture of the well meaning voters of Scotland that none of these things have been your fault. That you didn’t vote for them. Well, you won’t be able to say that any more. Up until September the 18th, we have all been able to hide behind all that being someone else’s fault. Either way the vote goes, Yes or No, that comfortable position has already been shattered. Either we vote to take responsibility for our own economics , our own wealth distribution, our own decisions to make war or peace…or we are voting to mandate away control over all of these matters to Westminster forever. Either way, we will be responsible. If a Yes voter has to take on board the moral hazard of whatever happens for good or ill in an independent Scotland, a No voter must equally accept moral responsibility for having given Westminster permanent permission to do whatever it likes forever. No questions asked. Moral Hazard works both ways.

Love this.........absolutely love it! Bill Rants AT UK Gov Leaflet on Scottish Independence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HufQ8yWdPKE And his comments in reply to the first posted comment are worth a read.

...whilst you just keep on completely ignoring the arguments of others and making assertions based on no facts or rational argument at all. Without repeating the arguments you chose to ignore, let me just say that I too have an unshakable belief in social healthcare. The difference in our views appears to be that I acknowledge the fact that significant parts of our publicly funded health service are delivered by the private sector whilst you appear to be unwilling to acknowledge that fact. I am not telling anyone what is right. I am simply offering a few facts and giving a few opinions of my own. I am not telling anyone what they should be thinking but I am asking you what you are thinking and you are not rising to the challenge. Let me put it simply; do you think that current private sector service delivery in the NHS should be phased out and replaced with public sector provision? My view is that where private sector service delivery allows public money to be spent more efficiently then the government should make use of the private sector. That is because where the private sector can deliver services more efficiently it releases public money to spend either on other public services or tax cuts. That is a view shared by all the major political parties and, I suspect, by about 99% of the population. Where the parties disgree is whether savings made in this way should be reinvested into other public services or used to cut taxes. What is your view? Do you share the view of the SNP or do you take the view that poorer public services or higher taxes are an acceptable consequence of keeping the private sector out of publicly funded healthcare provision? It's a simple question and I really would appreciate a straight answer. I won't respond to your original response to me, bar to say I am shamelessly using the Fear Factor? I am? Don't you read the guff from No Better Together Thanks and the MSM? I agree that the NHS needs to be made more affordable, but before starting to privatise it wholesale, as is happening in England, putting everything from cancer treatment to old age care out to tender to make profit for the healthcare businesses with which so many of our legislators are financially involved, we should be rethinking what we are actually funding and whether the treatment offered is is to maintain health and/or prolong life....or enhance lifestyles. However, the point I was trying to make was the probable consequences of reductions in the Barnett Consequentials, due to firstly the austerity budgets which are ongoing, regardless of who wins the next election in UK, and the creeping privatisation of the NHS in England, which started with the horrendously expensive PFI, (which we also have in Scotland, thanks to the Scottish Unionist Governments after 1999), but which does not exist for Barnett purposes.......and which is now heading into delegating acute/chronic health care to private health companies by competitive tender......and with the best will in the world, while most expensive is not necessarily the best, as we see with many brand name goods, the cheapest is not necessarily the best either. In Scotland, we already spend £200 a head more than is theoretically spent in England on health care (if you don't, as Westminster doesn't, count the ongoing long term costs of PFI) out of the block grant, but as long as Westminster introduces welfare cuts as they have been doing, and will continue to do, Scotland's reducing income will have to cover more outlay and something has to give..and that probably will be our NHS, as it is expected that by 2020, 50% of the English NHS will be "privatised" and therefore is, theoretically, not spent in England on the NHS..therefore Scotland gets no share, although they will still pay. And into the bargain, if, as we will be, sooner or later, we are forced to privatise as England is doing to maintain the NHS, that then will leave us open to attack by American healthcare companies through the TTIP being instituted by the EU. We are already in a situation in which repaying the money owed on PFI contracts takes precedence over the money going into Clinical Health Services, so that a struggling Health Board has to cut beds/staff etc in order to ensure repayment of PFI contracts, rather than being able to suspend maintenance work and cut ancillary services until the crisis has passed. From http://www.patients4nhs.org.uk/eu-us-free-trade-agreement-or-ttip/ The prospect of being unable to intervene and regulate healthcare in the interests of public health, or to ensure quality services, has led some governments (e.g. Canada) to seek the exemption of health services from FTAs. Not so our current government. Some of those who are promoting TTIP say that health will be exempt from the treaty because it is a public service. This is highly misleading. In the context of FTAs, the term ‘public service’ refers only to those services that are not supplied on a commercial basis, or are not in competition with other service providers. Since the passing of the Health and Social Care Act (2012), the NHS does not conform with this description. In addition, TTIP negotiations are based on what is called ‘negative listing’ – if negotiators don’t specifically list a sector like health as exempt, it will count as being included the treaty. Despite evasive answers to the question of whether the NHS is exempt from TTIP (for example, David Cameron has answered this question in the House of Commons by saying “I am not aware of a specific exemption for any particular area”), the fact is that the UK has listed no exemptions. And that is the biggest threat to the Scottish NHS from remaining in the Union. Outside the Union, we can exempt our NHS from TTIP........inside the Union, as our income reduces, as we know it will, we will be unable to keep it as a public service.

C & P From the Sunday Herald via Wings http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/columnists/forget-the-latest-scare-story-the-real-threat-to-our-health-service-is-a-no-vote.24735142 and http://wingsoverscotland.com/a-war-on-two-fronts/ “The Scottish Parliament is responsible for health in Scotland but funding remains with Westminster through the Barnett Formula, which increases or decreases every year in line with health spending in England. The intention of the UK health reforms is to get private companies to take on more and more of the work of the NHS, reducing the contribution made by the taxpayer. This will inevitably reduce the funding that comes to Scotland, even assuming the Barnett Formula is retained. George Osborne has pencilled in a further £35 billion in cuts to health spending. As consultant surgeon Philippa Whitford has argued, this means the Scottish Government might be forced to go along the same privatisation route to fill the gap. But there is a further threat facing the NHS.” “The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is the fruit of long-running negotiations between the EU and the US over trade liberalisation. One of its fundamental principles is that services, including state services, should be open to private competition from American multinationals. According to Garcia Bercero, the EU Commission official with responsibility for TTIP, health services in Europe will be opened to private competition, but only where privatisation is already established. In other words, where there is an existing state monopoly, foreign companies cannot sue the government in question for unfair competition. But the UK Health and Social Care Act opened the UK system to TTIP because it explicitly introduces a private market in health provision in England. After a No vote, private providers and insurance companies may argue that, since Scotland is not a sovereign state but a region of the UK, it cannot be exempted from competition for health provision. We are a long way from that being tested in law, but what is beyond doubt is that the UK has made the NHS in England TTIP compliant. It seems highly likely that the Scottish system will be seen as an unacceptable anachronism in a unitary state.” In the Record the other day. Phillipa Whitford said By 2020, it is estimated 50 per cent of the English NHS will be run privately unless there is a policy u-turn or the Tories are unseated. If we stay in the Union, Dr Whitford believes privatisation through the back door will inevitably come north too. Control of health is devolved to the Scottish Parliament. But since Scotland gets a share of the Westminster public spending budget, she argues that when that shrinks, there will be no alternative but to bring in the private sector. Now that prospect is a lot more scary than anything I've heard so far from the No Better Together Thanks/Project Fear side.......the distinct possibility that, if we stay in the Union,and even if not legally assumed to be a UK region, if we have to start to privatise in our NHS to compensate for reducing income, we will then be open to having American style private health care, to add to the American attitude to the support for disadvantaged which is so prevalent in the UK Government nowadays.

For those who still think the MSM is not biased, particularly in Scotland, there was a good news story in the Sunday Times last weekend http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/scotland/article1431143.ece which was commented on in Wings, http://wingsoverscotland.com/when-day-doesnt-follow-night/ which found that, The OBR forecast implies that an independent Scotland, on a geographical share (90%) of UK oil and gas revenue in 2016-17 and 2018-19, would receive £15.8bn in tax revenues. ‘Assuming DECC [Department of Energy and Climate Change] prices this would rise to £28.1bn,’ says Mackay. ‘Inserting the Oil & Gas UK production forecast raises this to £31.8bn. If Danny [Alexander] looks at this he might conclude there is no hole in the Scottish government’s oil predictions but there is a mountain of black gold missing from his.’” failed to reach any of the pro-Union media..any of them...nothing in the Sun, the Record, the Scotsman, the Express, the Mail, the Guardian etc all of which preferred to concentrate instead, on 5 businessmen out of 50 feeling there were "implicit" suggestions that they stay out of the referendum debate....... because it was more newsworthy or more pro-Union? Yet, yesterday, http://wingsoverscotland.com/scottish-media-rediscovers-voice/ they did have an oil story..but not the good news one of earlier in the week....just the latest brainfart from the OBR.wjhich appears to have reacted to Professor Sir Donald Mackay's Sunday Times article by revising their forecast downwards.....so, of our "unbiased" media, just one newspaper reported the story which was good news for Scotland......and twelve daily newspapers and both BBC and STV, with great glee, reported the OBR bad news for Scotland forecasts (as if the intelligent believed the OBR anyway, given their track record.) and only two made a passing reference to the Times article.. Quote from Wings.(bolding is mine) You’d think, from the most elementary journalistic perspective, that such remarks would be highly pertinent in the context of a new OBR forecast. Sir Donald is nobody’s idea of a nationalist or a stooge of Alex Salmond, and with an oil-industry background is extremely well qualified to express a view. Yet 12 out of 14 news outlets ignored his opinion as comprehensively as they had done on Sunday. (Indeed, it’s slightly worse than that. Several of the reports were taken from the same Press Association newswire piece, which DID include the reference to Sir Donald’s article made by SNP MSP Jamie Hepburn, but edited it out.)

I'm kicking myself.....because having written in a previous post about pensions, and me being logical......I failed to continue considering the implications to Scottish finances immediately post independence. However, a Wings reader has as discussed in a post here. http://wingsoverscotland.com/the-pensioner-jackpot/ The ramifications of that are that if Scotland becomes independent, every pensioner in Scotland will effectively “emigrate” overnight. They’ll be living in a “foreign” country – as Labour in particular never tires of reminding us – but will still be entitled to their UK pension just like anyone who emigrates to Marbella is. And what that means is that on day 1 of independence, Scotland will, to all intents and purposes, have no pensioners at all. Everyone of pension age will be the responsibility, pension-wise, of the UK government. A real independence bonus of a few billion pounds a year.......reducing over maybe 20 or so years. Can't see it happening myself, tbh.....I'm sure there will be some negotiations and concessions to be made, as the payment of pensions in foreign countries was never intended to be applied to a whole population becoming citizens in a foreign country at one fell swoop......but an interesting idea, none the less.