"Gordon Brown has left the UK in a complete mess and some of the burden of restraint has to be borne by Scotland as a whole."
adding:
"There needs to be restraint. Britain, Scotland needs to live within its means, the party's over."
So the SNP should stop their whinging as it will appear to fall on deaf ears from both the Labour and Tory camps and get on with doing things, and doing them more efficiently. Osbourne has also echoed the call of Tavish Scott the Lib Dem leader to get over the idea of independence just now and focus on the economy saying, "the SNP's obsession with independence needs to be put on one side while we all deal with Gordon Brown's recession".
Seeing as how interdependent all the global economies are right now on each other this is not the time to go messing with the status quo. Throwing in further uncertainty to the mix at the moment will only have one effect, that would an accelerated negative effect on the Scottish economy. Alex Salmond is obsessing about the rather precise number of 8,664 jobs (heaven knows how he came up with that detailed a number) rather than looking at the bigger picture. It is a time for macroeconomics not microeconomics. Especially at Government level who should get too bogged down in that sort of minutiae in the first place.
3 comments:
Over on Facebook one of my Livi supporting Nat friends has left the following comment:
"So because of the present economic mess (created by Brown) Scotland shouldn't rock the UK boat? Had we been in charge of our own affairs and holding complete control over our fiscal resources I'd suggest we wouldn't be in this present mess. A perfect advert for independence!
No wonder all you Union Jack huggers are doing your level best to hide the benefits from the Scottish electorate. I often wonder if there's a single other country on this planet which so downplays itself to its own people..."
As I'll not be able to reply on Facebook until after work, I'll reply here for now.
If we had complete control over our Fiscal resources we would have had three banks to rely on RBS, HBOS and Clydesdale. Add on the Dunfermline Building Society.
We would as a country have had responsibility for about £30bn of the debts accrued by RBS and BOS share of HBOS, been looking to prop up close to a £1 trillon of their toxic debt. Whether we had full fiscal autonomy or not the Banks without regulation would have been just as greedy. As only party was pointing out that the banks were heading this way, the Nats would not have made a better job of this than Labour (as witnessed by the little that Alex was prepared to do which he couldn't have anyway as he'd made no provision for it)
I take it your response is a scenario of Scotland having gained her independence on October 10, 2008 stephen or anytime since?
Scotland, when it becomes independent, has to accept its fair share of debt accrued by the UK, the emphasis being on 'fair'.
Yes it will take a couple of generations for Scotland to recover from the many years of the union, but the Scots are waking up to the fact that independence can't we a worse situation that we presently have in the UK.
No Subrosa my response was to the scenario "had we been in charge of our own affairs and holding complete control over our fiscal resources" as of some point in time before the 10 October 2008.
As has been shown Alex Salmond had no plans for a Scottish Central Bank. We would have had to pick up the coverage of the RBS and (our share) HBOS toxic loans. Which if my maths is currect would result a higher per capita debt than currently undertaken as part of the Union. We may well have joined Iceland and Ireland as a result. So therefore Alex's Arc may well have been letting in water.
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