Independence is about democracy, dignity, and direction. It is about deciding together what kind of country we want to be. And for that decision to mean anything, the power to create and allocate money must belong, through capital controls, to Scotland and to the people who call it home.
Who are the fascists?
“the power to create and allocate money must belong, through capital controls, to Scotland and to the people who call it home”. Is he including the Barnett Formula in his little calculation, which as far as I am aware, is a Westminster creation and Treasury allocation?
‘That is why independence requires political courage. And that courage must challenge our banking system.
A truly independent country must be able to direct credit into the productive economy, and into the places and activities that create real value, real work, and real security. It must ensure that lending supports national priorities rather than undermining them. It must protect communities from abandonment by distant decision-makers. It must have a banking system that is accountable to the people and not the other way around.
This does not mean hostility to private banks. It means insisting they meet obligations that justify the extraordinary privilege they currently enjoy – the privilege of creating money. That privilege must come with responsibilities, and those responsibilities must be enforced by a sovereign Scottish state.
The institutions that stand most in the way of Scottish prosperity are not politicians in London. They are the financial corporations that treat Scotland as a mere branch office of global financial capitalism.
We can talk of taking control in constitutional terms but there can be no real control, and no real independence, unless Scotland has authority over the creation and direction of its own money.’
Sounds like the equivalent of Belarus although that might be being hard on Lukashenka.
What’s the game here – is he so ignorant that he fails to realize that the SNP don’t send people to the Lords? Is he angling for a Holyrood position while being based in Ely? Is he just an imbecile? The possibilities are boundless
A different spirit guide today I assume. If only one of them was sane.
Yes, he is that ignorant.
100% of his problems is that he insists on pontificating on subjects he knows nothing about, and taking positions * 2 minute look on Wikipedia* would provide information on why its a bad position.
100% of his problems is that he insists on pontificating on subjects he knows nothing about,
Has a subject he knows anything about been identified?
Model trains? Mind you, I bet my old boss Peter Waterman could wipe the floor with him. Waterman had a Sidewinder missile in his studio, too.
There has to be an interesting story to the Sidewinder, do tell.
FIFY
There’s that ‘we’ stuff again.
Because of good, good, good. Great way to start a new government. Hopefully, their divorce will be nasty enough that the English don’t come to their rescue. Maybe South Africa will help them.
Tell me, does the lunatic claim to be a practising Quaker? I mean, does he claim to believe in God and so on? I ask out of ignorance.
Quakers don’t, necessarily, believe in God.
Thanks. In the face of whom do they quake, then?
Does this mean they meet together to celebrate their ambivalence?
Anyhoo I think I can answer my own question. Google AI tells me that Quakers should subscribe to:
That rules that old sod out, then.
Except pubs, presumably.
“Does this mean they meet together to celebrate their ambivalence?”
That’s Unitarians.
What’s aUnitarian’s favourite Christmas movie? “Coincidence on 34th Street.”
It’s hard being a Unitarian. Who do you call out to during orgasm?
Indeed. Few Quakers now believe in God, and George Fox would be appalled. Yet this is what happens to sects in a secular environment. The Church of Rome will probably survive (for a while) because it has a methodology for deciding on doctrine.
A quarter of my family were Quakers: my cousins were educated at a Quaker school, and I was married in the Kirkbymoorside Meeting House on the North Yorkshire Moors. Now the Quakers are the Lib Dems at prayer, and beyond my contempt.
Kirbymoorside isn’t on the moors, the clue is in the name.
Nice place though and before pub hours were changed the pubs there used to be open all day on market day, which was Wednesdays.
The majority of Quakers (Friends) believe in Jesus…but the majority of Quakers (Friends) today live in Kenya. That said, your point about secular Quakers in the West is probably accurate.
Quakers are supposed to not force their beliefs and compel lifestyles on other people.
Could be just me… But the truly independent and democratic do not need, nor should wish for, listen to, or accept ….”direction”….
The commie dick doesn’t believe in custodial government.
Not a people with a government; rather, government with a people.
I thought the idea of Scotland’s independence was so that they could join the EU?
When did the plan change to them becoming a financial Autarky, because if they have capital controls on the way out nobody is going to invest in an independent Scotland?
You take the high road and I’ll take the low road and I’ll be in vermine before ye.
In a rational universe the sane people who call Scotland home do not include a self-proclaimed Irishman living in Ely.
How much longer before he’s calling for a wall – that England will pay for – and guns on the wall, pointed inwards?
Parts of the Wall are still standing after nearly two millennia and when it is restored the English won’t need guns, just a supply of boulders to roll down on the approaching Scots fleeing starvation under the Murphyist economic policies of his dreams for the SNP
Whichever economic policies an independent Scotland follows, the result is almost certain to be beggary (at the very least a reduction in living standards that would make the effects of lockdown look benign). I don’t think we’d want to put the border along Hadrian’s wall (entirely within England), the Antonine Wall might be better, but the majority of those north of it hate the SNP anyway.
Most of the Scots live south of the Antonine Wall
A quarter of UK food and drinks exports by value are Scottish Whisky
Scotland is a wealth generator.
Add in the oil, and renewable energy. Northern Scotland is rich.
Why do you need the fucking Barnett Formula then? You should be paying us money.
Funny how it was crickets about the Barnett formula for the 40 years revenue was firehosing into the exchequer from the N Sea, yet now that Millibacon is determined to shut it all down, all of a sudden the complaint about the prosperous SE subsidising the other 75% of the zUK is resurrected.
(The complaint would be more credible if it hadnt been preceded by a 40 year deafening silence.)
For the record- im personally opposed to the Barnett formula and most other forms of wealth transfer to less successful areas, preference being for coooncils to raise revenue for 75% of spend locally( some transfer probably unavoidable)
The North Sea boom started with gas fields being found off the east coast of England. There are more oilfields offshore Scotland than offshore England and Wales but Alex Salmond’s claim that all oil & gas revenue would/should flow to an independent Scotland is snake oil rather than anything like reality.
True but not complete and I dont believe I said anything about Fat Alexs assertions.
Lions share of revenue came from where most of the fields are.
Dont wish to give the grievance mongers of the scottish nasties & pedos any credibility but my point about crickets from when the revenue was hosing in still stands.
Do you have an iq of 10?
The government collects taxes from Scotland, then some of that needs to be spent in Scotland for public services.
Just because we are rich does not mean the government should not spend Scottish taxes in Scotland.
London is rich, does that mean it should get no public services?
Differ on the unreliables.
Evwrywhere theyve been tried, they’re a wealth sink.
But England exports gin. London dry gin. You lose.
BWTM: No true Scotsman would call Scotch “Scottish Whisky.”
No Scot calls it Scotch either. It’s whisky. Ignore all imitations.
(The Frogs make an imitation out of grape juice: can you believe it?)
The North of Scotland Hydroelectricity Board was set up by Attlee as a job-creation scheme, much more sensible than the windfarms that are set up hundreds of miles from Glasgow so waste a lot of energy in transmission when the wind blows but produce too little power to supply their neighbours when the wind drops so will leave the locals to freeze every winter if Scotland closes down its fossil fuel generators. The UK is a significant net importer of food and drink so saying Scotch is a quarter of a relatively small amount is grasping at straws.
Nonsense.
What is nonsense?
I merely stated verifiable facts.
Gamecock believes it just as likely the walls were built to keep the Romans in, not the Scots out. Romans trading with the Scots pissed off the Roman leaders.
Scotland is a rich country. Oil, whisky, and renewable energy from the Shetlands to Gretna.
I don’t support independence, but Scotland has potential to be very rich.
Then why isn’t it? Even with a massive money transfer from England?
Keyword: potential. I wouldn’t disagree but my dictionary defines potential as ‘having or showing the capacity to develop into something in the future.’ That doesn’t mean it necessarily will, and it’s unlikely to the way it’s carrying on at the moment.
Even accepting this framing, the politicians are worse than North Korea and are taking advice from the most incompetent and most evil man extant in the blogosphere- not the surest foundation on which to build.
Steve’s knicker fumes have got to you again.
I’ll confiscate that oil, whisky and water and can still give you 5 territories with less natural resources than Scotland has now, which are richer than Scotland.
Can you say Singapore?
Long term – best thing for UK woukd be for all wealth transfers from thr prosperous SE to stop, wean some of the socialist areas off the bottle when everything has to be self funded.
Obverse also applies- when N Sea & fracking starts up again – all revenues to stay local – none to SE or national govt.
Nonsense.
You cant just confiscate the oil, whisky, and renewable energy.
and renewable energy from the Shetlands to Gretna.
Can Jockistan use all that energy? Because nobody in England wants the fucking stuff. Maybe they could bottle it like the whisky? Sell it to Nig-Nogs.
If Scotland went independent it would look like Zimbabwe within 5 years. The main part of me thinks fuck ’em, let’s sit back and watch. But the reality is we couldn’t insulate ourselves against it and would have a far worse illegal immigrant problem than the one we’ve already got.
I do not support independance. But Scotland brings wealth and resources to the UK.
Scotland would be like Ireland if it did go independent.
What wealth & resources?
Renewable energy, water, oil, whisky.
Water is incredibly valuable. If only it rained occasionally in England.
What renewable energy is in Scottland?
What part of the UK is short of water?
You keep banging on about ‘whisky’ but not even the Russians drink enough for their alcohol industries to make the country rich – chavs and Pakistanis don’t drink whisky.
But it wouldn’t benefit from the EU subsidies Ireland has received in the past. Also there is no way, even before Moldovan and Albanian accession, that the EU would match the Barnett formula. More fantasies from a latter day Ayatollah.
The Barnett Formula si.ply gives to Scotland what it puts in.
Why did the Barnett Formula only.come in once oil was found?
I do not support independence
But Scotland is rich.
That is blatantly untrue – the Barnett formula gives to Scotland more than Scotland pays into the national Exchequer. Read the end of the Wikipedia entry – “the Barnett squeeze” is intended to use the effect of inflation to bring spending per head in Scotland gradually down towards spending per head in England, although it does nothing about tax revenue per head being higher in England than Scotland.
I heard a radio 4 documentary that said the government lied about Scotland being subsidised to limit auppprt for Scottish indepeence. For people suspicious of government you seem to support believing the government when you want to believe it.
I saw a North Korean documentary that told me North Korea invented civilisation as we know it. I’d probably put more credence in it than what comes off Radio 4….
So you really think with the oil, whisky, water, renewable energy, that Scotland is subsidised. You really fall for the con trick.
Radio four did a documentary that showed Scotland was lied to. Scotland is not subsidised at all.
Scotland only got the Barnett Forumula when the oil arrived.
I do not support Scottish independence, but I do not fall for the lie thay Scotland is subsidised.
For people who distrust government, you seem very gullible.
Well, the GERS which answers to the SNP government in Edinburgh states that Scotland is running a deficit of 10.4% of GDP before transfers from Westminster.
I don’t know what *you* mean by subsidised but taking money from the UK government to cover spending 10.4% more of GDP than Scotland (plus offshore oilfields) generates in tax revenues looks like “subsidised” according to the definition in my dictionary.
You mean dependent on EU subsidies for your agriculture and collecting taxes from amoral multinationals as a tax haven? How does the latter square with the socialist “principles” of the SNP?
So if I live in Scotland and call it home, then *I* am the one that allocates my capital? Thanks, that’s nicely cleared up.