Urrrrgghhhhhhh. The SHITE that comes from the SNP is maddening. I’m reading their manifesto (which, by the way, features a full-length portrait of the reluctant politician Alex Salmond on the cover), and my main question when I’ve read all the party’s manifestos is, Where are you going to get the money from?
They say they will deliver more efficiency. Perhaps they could give me an example where they would find efficiency savings. Which departments and using what processes. They say Scotland has all this income potential, but they’re basing it on prices that they cannot control (oil). They want to be independent of the Union, but are still planning on using money from the UK budget (I would like to see their plans for true financial and economic independence, and that includes NOT using the pound sterling). The most infuriating thing is that bloody local income tax. Business reliefs. WHERE WILL THEY GET THE MONEY FROM?
Independence, or the real possibility of independence, will bring uncertainty into the economic equation. Businesses don’t like uncertainty.
I hate these manifestos that promise the world AND lower tax for all. Do people realise, or do politicians count on people being so simple that we don’t understand that in order for one group to have more money, one group will have less (multiply by whatever factor of magnitude you like)?
Comments
24 April 2007
22:45
Ron
Why dont you go to http://www.snp.org and download the FULL manifesto and the Let Scotland Flourish document. maybe if you were in possession of the full facts you would be able to make a more balanced opinion instead of clogging up my google alerts with your B.S.
While you are at it check out all the other parties and tell us who has the most comprehensive and most compelling argument, I think you will find its the SNP by a country mile, Take off the blinkers and get real.£100b efficiency saving on trident would only be a start.
25 April 2007
07:59
andrea
Er, why am I on your Google alerts?
I was actually reading the full SNP manifesto (all 76 pages), and it prompted my outburst (did you not notice that I mentioned it in the first paragraph?). I have made it a point to read as many party manifestos as possible, and have covered Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrats, SNP, and the Greens. How about yourself?
If and when Trident goes, what does the SNP propose to do with the lost livelihoods in the area? The people who work at Faslane, the local businesses that survive on these workers? If they have a realistic alternative that’s good. If they don’t, it’s fucked up.
Anyway, having read those manifestos, I know who I would vote for, based on all the blather and promises. And it’s not the SNP. Because I live in the real world.
26 April 2007
19:25
Tom R
Hi Andrea,
You seemed to have moved a long way from your (almost) neutral position relative to the SNP-which naturally I think is a pity.
Blair is portraying today the analysis in the Financial Times this week that an independent Scotland might be in trouble in 10 years time if the North Sea oil price fell, as a negative for the SNP economic analysis. Well, with a scarce commodity that fall is not the likeliest outcome.
The most significant point in the FT article was the full acceptance that at the current time the Scottish economy is not running (pro rata) as large a deficit as the UK.
My point is that this is a million miles away from the Labour analysis of the current position. Therefore the FT analysis is supportive of the SNP position on the actual current facts and is only negative in the future on the assumption that oil prices will fall.
Remember the preposterous nonsense of the 1970s when Labour lied on a sickening and premeditated scale about the value of Scottish oil. Something similar is happening now.
Let the SNP have their chance at Holyrood. If they are wrong, so be it. Scotland will not be independent-no great damage will be done.
I still hear Donald Dewar in the 70s, with the full knowledge of the value of the oil, saying that Scotland independent would be as poor as Bangladesh (at that time the poorest nation in the word).
The SNP deserve the benefit of the doubt-Labour do not.
27 April 2007
08:39
andrea
Tom,
Actually, I don’t think I’ve been neutral on the SNP. I have no quarrel with an argument that Scotland could potentially do well if it leaves the Union, what I have a problem with is the tendency of people to believe the transition and potential success would be relatively painless, especially economically.
I don’t remember things from the 1970s because 1) I was born in the mid-1970s, and 2) I’m Singaporean, and Singapore went independent in 1965.
I am, however, extremely cautious about pinning one’s economic hopes on oil. Eggs and baskets and all that. I do believe that you get the government you deserve, so if the voters decide to put the SNP in power, that’s the government the people of Scotland deserve. If it goes well, good. If it goes badly, don’t blame someone else for your bad decision.
(I do not plan to vote Labour anyway.)
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