Better Together? Scotland is Better Than This!

It really baffles me how anyone in this country actually believes that we are Better Together. I can't get my head around it. The best of both worlds they say. I don't think we have the best of any worlds. 

We are one of the most unequal countries in the western world; we have 1 in 3 children born in Glasgow living in poverty; we have one of the lowest life expectancies; we have increasing numbers of people relying on food banks just to feed themselves from week to week, we have western Europe’s biggest nuclear weapons arsenal situated about 30 miles for our largest city, and for 27 of the first 65 years of the post WW2 years we have been ruled by Westminster Governments Scotland didn’t vote for. But we have best of both worlds they say. 

Waken up! Is there anybody actually voting No in September? Why would that be?

 

All I’d say is if you’re planning to vote No and you’re NOT a billionaire businessman, a UK government minister or a Scottish Labour MP (who doesn't really give a **** about his constituents), it might be worth wondering why that is.

IF SCOTLAND WERE CURRENTLY INDEPENDENT AND WE WERE BEING SOLD THE UNION?

If Scotland had remained independent for the last 300 years how would the pro-union campaign be selling us their proposals?

1. Your Parliament will move hundreds of miles away and your MPs will become a tiny minority in this new Parliament. By extension therefore you will often get a Government which you did not vote for. 
2. The Scottish Government’s oil and gas revenues will now be handed over to this new London Parliament to be spent as they see fit. Scotland will then become one of the few countries in the World to have discovered oil and actually got poorer! 
3. The biggest nuclear weapons facility in Europe will be built 30 miles from your largest city. 
4. You will be joining a new country whose health and education services are rapidly being privatised. 
5.  Occasionally you may get dragged into an illegal foreign war. 
6. An austerity budget will be imposed from this new Parliament cutting jobs and threatening public services. 
7. The financial regulation system will be so lax that this new country will be brought to the brink of collapse. 
8. The weakest and most vulnerable in your country, instead of getting the protection and assistance they deserve, will instead be interrogated and humiliated to get them off the meagre levels of support to which they are entitled.

However it is a brief summary of the current situation with Scotland being in the UK.

I am left wondering why polling evidence suggests that this what the Scots are actually going to vote for!

One could argue that the Scots could have had independence over and over at each and every general election since the SNP came into being and particularly since the 1970s, so they must actually want the above even although they nearly always vote against most of it!

5P SCOTTISH PLASTIC BAG TAX

I feel I must comment on the recent news that if you want a plastic bag in Scotland when you are shopping you are going to require to contribute 5p for each one to charity.

On the face of it this is being done with the best of intentions.

It is after all designed to reduce the amount of plastic bags used and therefore reduce landfill and improve the environment, and few if anyone could argue with that (and I am certainly not).

Firstly I should state that I very rarely take plastic bags in any shop having been brought up by parents who lived through the Second World War, when everything was recycled, and therefore I nearly always take my own canvas ones.

However I am strongly and idealogically against the 5p charge for plastic bags.

I am sure the fact that the 5p charge will go to charity was designed to remove the label of it being a tax.  However the definition of charity according to Google is ‘the voluntary giving of help, typically money, to those in need’. Given that the 5p charge will be mandatory and therefore not voluntary it is a tax.

 the 5p charge will be mandatory and therefore not voluntary it is a tax

I am currently having to existing on benefits because I am ill. I frequently do not even have enough money to allow me to buy food (if it wasn’t for family and friends on many cases I would go hungry and freeze in the winter). I frequently get off transport a stop early to save 20p or a similar small amount. The World has gone completely bonkers as now getting plastic bags whilst shopping will be considered living it up (as is going to a public lavatory is when I am out and about, as you are often charged 20p or 30p entry)!

Thirdly the same thing could be achieved without charging by…

1. Ensuring all bags are made from biodegradable plastic (yes it is possible nowadays).
2. Making it a rule that bags should not be offered, they must be requested.
3. A specified percentage reduction in shopping cost if the shopper brings their own bags or boxes to take their shopping home, perhaps varied according to the number of brought bags used. 
4. In the 1970s I can recall going to the supermarket where discarded cardboard boxes in which the articles on the shelves had been delivered were made available to customers for carrying their shopping. They also had recycled paper bags available (although these were not much use on wet days which are all too frequent in Scotland, particularly in the west). 
5. Education so that people know why they should reduce their use of plastic bags.

Education not compulsion

Education not compulsion is the best way in most things. After all why educate if you are going to compel? Choosing is no longer required.

I'm all for people reusing more sustainable bags as I do it myself, but my view is people who do should be handed incentives, rather than bringing punishment financial or otherwise to those who do not.

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Does everyone have a car in Aberdeen? I think not!

As someone from the central belt of Scotland who doesn’t know Aberdeen well I found the coverage of the Aberdeen Donside by-election virtually non-existent, and as usual STV did better than the BBC (until its results coverage that is which was very poor indeed). Hopefully it was much better locally to the granite city.

I found the campaign very odd. It seemed to consist of everyone sitting in TV studios talking about a roundabout, roads and being left out in the cold by the Scottish Government investment wise.

The transport question was particularly odd as not one participant talked about anything other than roads. Does everyone have a car in Aberdeen? I think not!

As someone looking in the priorities for transport in Aberdeen and Inverness would be as follows…

1. Aberdeen road bypass. 
2. Extending the dual carriageway sections of the A9 to make it continuous from Perth to Inverness. 
3. Improvement of train services to every half hour between Aberdeen and Inverness and reopening of stations to improve rates of usage. 1 train per hour to be express, second to be stopping. 
4. Doubling of single train line between Stirling and Aberdeen, and/or reopening of Angus link from Perth via Forfar to Aberdeen with resultant improvements to train services which are badly needed so there are half hourly services from both Glasgow and Edinburgh. 
5. Replacement of semaphore signals with coloured light signalling equipment north of Perth and Dundee at least as far as Inverness. 
6. Reopening of Deeside railway line at least as far as Banchory, with a view to reopening remaining line to Aboyne and then Ballater. 
7. Reopening of rail line to Peterhead.
8. Reopening of rail line to Fraserburgh. 

As far as I am aware 1 and 2 and at least part of 3 is all ready planned, but I would strongly agree that is odd that Aberdeen as Europe’s oil capital city has been left out of major transport projects until now.

Perhaps however this is partly due to the preoccupation of the local political parties with roads that seemed to come across from the recent media coverage (what there was of it anyway).

If the Scottish Government was permitted by its own people to gain control of all the economic levers available to it I believe the above would become of greater importance than they are now. Vote Yes in next years independence referendum!