We’ve kept you waiting for this (at least, if you follow our Twitter account), but it’s worth it. An alert reader sent it to us last night, and it’s NOT one of our always-popular spoofs. To the best of our knowledge it’s 100% genuine.
That’s right – the latest desperate plea for cash from the No camp is a chain letter.
Credit ratings agencies are not, on the whole, noted for a reckless, devil-may-care approach to either personal or national finances. It’s not too often that you hear one say “Well, we don’t exactly know what’s coming in the future but what the heck, it’ll probably all work out fine in the end”.
So we were naturally more than a little curious to see the analysis released by Standard & Poor’s, one of the world’s key ratings agencies, of the likely state of an independent Scotland’s economy today.
Let me first declare my interests. I’m a Yorkshireman, so I suppose that technically makes me English. I wish my beautiful region had more autonomy from Westminster, because perhaps if we had our local representatives would have fought to protect our vital industries (steel, coal, fishing, transport), rather than letting Westminster ruin them as part of their ideological experiment in turning the UK into a “post-industrial society” built around the London financial sector. (We all know how that turned out.)
I know there’s no chance of Yorkshire achieving regional autonomy from London in my lifetime, but that doesn’t mean I begrudge the people of Scotland their opportunity to end London rule – in fact I’m delighted for them.
The only concern I have is the possibility that the people of Scotland will decline this magnificent chance to assert their autonomy. Come September the 18th, I hope we’ll be celebrating the rebirth of the Scottish nation. I hope I’ll be drinking a toast to “Scotland the brave”, not mournfully lamenting for “Scotland the servile”.
We already know that Scottish Labour consider any government of Scotland that isn’t themselves to be a “dictatorship”. So in context this comment from South Scotland list MSP Graeme Pearson in the Holyrood chamber yesterday is actually quite restrained:
It’s no accident that Labour so regularly call the democratically-elected SNP “fascists” and compare Alex Salmond to a whole cornucopia of murderous genocidal dictators. But we suppose that regarding the Nats as an invading foreign army, deploying Police Scotland as occupying troops, makes a bit more sense of both Labour’s dogged defence of the UK, and their oft-expressed distaste for foreigners.
We’ve got a lot to do tonight, readers, so this is just a quick passing thought. We’re constantly told, among the endlessly contradictory stories about oil, that the biggest problem with it is that it’s running out. Production is declining, they say, and what’s left is harder and more expensive to get to and might not be worth all the bother.
We can’t be independent, then, because while we might be fine for 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 years, after that we’ll be knackered and bankrupt. (Which assumes we don’t find any more oil west of Shetland, or in the Clyde Basin, and that we’re too incompetent to build a lucrative renewables sector in four decades, and that we weren’t able to budget for an oil fund. But let’s go with it for now.)
There’s one question nobody asks, though.
The Scottish Conservatives have put out a properly disgraceful press release today:
No they wouldn’t. That’s a complete and utter lie.
From the Scotsman today:
Firstly, of course, the assertion fundamentally isn’t true. We know from official figures that an independent Scotland even WITHOUT oil would have a GVA of 99% of the UK average, and an independent Scotland wouldn’t have to follow UK spending plans, like blowing public cash on a vastly inflated military. But that’s not even the point.
A story from Reuters tonight:
Ooft. How big is this majority of the chairmen of the 100 leading companies, then?
Woah there! 65% of 32? Isn’t that, um, 21? That’s not really a “majority” of 100, is it? And while we’re here, how many of the chairmen of FTSE 100 companies have a vote in the Scottish independence referendum anyway? We have a strong suspicion that the effective sample in this survey might actually have been zero.
A remarkable insight into how Scottish Labour MPs see the people of Scotland, and the future that awaits us after a No vote, from an article posted on Labour Uncut today:
Hear that, people of Scotland? For even considering taking control of your own affairs like adults, Scottish Labour (ironically) thinks you’re behaving like stupid kids too dumb to come in out of the rain. Mm, feel the respect from your representatives.
We’ve written often about the contempt with which both the No campaign and the media regards voters, particularly in respect of their willingness to tell them even the most insultingly transparent lies in the assumption they’ll be swallowed anyway.
Allan Massie in today’s Telegraph may have set a new all-time record, though.
A Radio 4 “Point Of View” programme by the writer and philosopher Roger Scruton on Friday evening attracted quite a lot of social-media ire from nationalists. We can only assume they were so angered by a few crass factual errors (“The Scottish economy is subsidised by the English”) and Dr Scruton’s rather patrician manner that they didn’t bother to listen all the way to the end.
We can’t say we find anything there to disagree with. After some of the cross-border ugliness and bad feeling that’s been whipped up by the actions of Unionists lately, the only outcome of the referendum that will allow the people of Scotland and England to regard each other with dignity and mutual respect in the future is a Yes vote. Crawling pathetically back to London with our tail between our legs won’t do it.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
