by Christine Grahame MSP
I’m always a bit gobsmacked when I hear someone saying that they don’t know if they would be better off if Scotland were independent.
Take a listen to Danny Alexander. He has pronounced that austerity – that means “cuts” to you and me – will last until 2020.
Now just let me tweak my brain cells. Scotland is overflowing with oil, gas, whisky – well not literally which would be a waste of good whisky – with natural renewable energy in wind, hydro power, deep sea turbines. We grow enough food for ourselves and export quality produce – and my goodness we will never run short of drinking water.
With something like 6 million people, we have space to spare. Yet we are “better together” with UK rule and another 7 years at least of “austerity”.
And remember Labour (quite apart from the fact that Ed Miliband is the best asset to a return of Cameron and Clegg) have said they would have made cuts that were “deeper”. Banks bust, Bedroom tax, privatisation of Royal Mail and recession. Some track record.
Well call me naive, but hardly a clarion call to stay with a defunct and failing Union. As for scare stories about the “dangers” of Independence, job losses, cuts to the welfare system, “Yi’ll no get yir pension grannie” – give me strength. The Labour Government with Gordie and Darling Alistair at the helm presided over the banking collapse partly based on funding unregulated borrowing. The Tories with their poodles (I malign poodles) the Lib/Dems look to another housing “boom” to take us out of it, or at least paper over the cracks until another Westminster election. Nae lessons for canny Scots – excepting one from Kirkcaldy – needed.
For the past 13 years we at Holyrood have, on a fixed budget, I repeat, a fixed budget, run all our own domestic affairs and have Free Personal care, no tuition fees for students, frozen the council tax for years and brought in free prescriptions. Nae sneaky privatisation of our health service. Sounds good to me.
So we have the nous to run our domestic affairs, we certainly have the assets to provide the funds to have a just and fair society, and we need no lessons from any London based politicians on running an economy.
Could it be that the Unionist parties desperately need to cling onto Scotland to keep the Union afloat? Just a thought.
Christine Grahame is SNP MSP for Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale. You will find all her contact details by clicking here.
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
