Scotland’s Referendum – Yes or Not-Yes? is that the answer

Come the 18th September you must decide how to answer the question in Scotland’s Referendum:  Should Scotland be an independent country?  You must tick the box, YES or NOT-YES.  I’m sure that’s right!  I have been watching the debates and these seem to be the two options?

When I published my first blog I was determine to present both sides of the debate. In fact, I will also publish any argument that presents the NO campaign.  However, offering a NOT-YES argument is an insult to Scots.   As a child, my mum would give me a telling off for saying all the things I did not want and insisted I tell her what I did want – of course I didn’t get it, but it just felt more grown up.

Probably the best way to describe NOT-YES is to define it as an obstacle.  Someone want to do something.  You don’t want that but you can’t come up with a better alternative so you simple look for obstacle to put in their way.

So let’s have a poke at some of the NOT-YES rhetoric.  You can also watch a short video that scotches (no pun intended) the top ten myths out there about an independent Scotland.

1.  The UK Labour and Liberal parties are promising Scotland a whole goody bag containing greater tax raising powers, more autonomy, scrap the bedroom tax, jam – tomorrow etc.  First of all, they have to get into power in 2015?  After Con – Dem the Liberals will never see power again and that’s a slam dunk.  After the last budget the Conservatives caught Labour (in a race to the bottom – apologies for any sexual connotations here).  If the opposition can only manage level pegging at this stage, they are not a great bet for government in 2015.  If the best we can hope for in a No vote is that Liberals or Labour will be in power in 2015, buy a lottery ticket and give yourself at least a fighting chance.

2.   When exiting his post after the 2010 election, Liam Byrne left David Laws a letter to say all the money was spent.  Ha,Ha, Ha.  The UK Energy Secretary RH Michael Fallon MP will no doubt leave Alex Salmond a letter to say ‘sorry, we used up all your oil’.   Oil is important, but anyone naive enough to believe that it is the key that unlocks an Independent Scotland is in cloud cuckoo land and has an extremely low opinion of Scots.  Here’s a wee thought.  In England you can go almost anywhere on a motorway, right?  The centre of the North Sea Oil and Gas industry is Aberdeen – what motorway do we get to Aberdeen?  We can get to Glasgow, then Edinburgh, then Perth by motorway then do the last 100 miles on our bikes?  Almost £1.5 Trillion revenue in 40 years and we don’t even get a motorway.  Pity they didn’t find oil at Brighton or Blackpool?

3.  I have been critical of Alex Salmond and the SNP’s policy to remove Trident from my bedroom window, or Fastlane, same thing.  It’s not that I have a problem waking up to see a couple of US sailors water skiing behind a Trident sub in the firth.  My problem is giving away the best bargaining chip ever – I said this in one of my first blogs.  First of all, Trident simply cannot be re-homed somewhere else in the UK – that place does not exist.  If there was an effort to removed Trident before its sell-buy date, Westminster would partition/annex Fastlane for sure.  Of course, wee Eck knows that, but I suspect he is playing a crafty game.  This morning a senior Minister has suggested Trident could be a bargaining point to secure a shared currency.  Immediately, the two amigos, George and Danny (Did they wed just after midnight?)  vehemently denied this – so it must be true.

But here’s the thing.  Trident for a shared currency?  that’s not a good deal.  How about Trident for everything we want, and some!  Can you imagine the EU telling Scotland they must apply for membership.  Well, hurry up and decide guys because we have your nuclear defenses.  You may not just lose Crimea – Mr Putin has probably got planning permission for the rebuild of the Berlin Wall … and that’s not a Putin that’s a ‘Tapin’.  With Trident, Scotland gets everything it wants – and probably some decent rent for Fastlane – that’ll buy a lot of childcare.  Crikey, we could even introduce a new NHS scheme in Scotland when you take in your prescription, its free, but also they give you tenner because you’r not well! – Aye, it’s politics for me!

I read a great letter in the local paper, The Trident Weekly Advertiser, so I thought I’d share it with you:

‘Struan Stevenson MEP and his ilk are long on words but short on practice as his scaremongering on Scots being denied their EU citizenship post Independence demonstrates (the Advertiser March 20).  No country has ever been expelled from the EU.  The only country to leave was Greenland of its own accord and by agreement.  England Wales and Northern Ireland may use that precedent if they vote to leave the EU in 2017.  Let Mr Stevenson and his Unionist allies, Jackie Baillie MSP and Alan Reid MP, spell out how the EU can in practice remove 5 million Scots from its citizenship; how the EU will pay for the tuition fees of thousands of EU students in Scotland which are currently free; how the EU calculates and repays Scotland’s net contribution to the EU Budget, which budget has not had an auditor’s certificate for many years; how the EU protects the interests and entitlements of over 1M citizens from other EU countries presently resident in Scotland to welfare rights they currently enjoy; how the EU negotiates the continued fishing in our territorial waters by other countries’ fleets; and all when the country it is seeking to remove, Scotland, refuses to negotiate the withdrawal but instead challenges the Council of Ministers’ decision to treat rUK as the successor state in the Scottish courts but also the European Court of Justice?  Once it ends up in court it will take years to obtain a determination.  It is a basic principal of law in UK and Continental legal systems that the status quo applies until the matter is resolved.  what that means is that the EU will continue to treat Scotland and the rUK as one state and leave it up to the Scottish and rUK to negotiate between themselves the current UK’s rights and obligations under the current EU treaties.  Trading by Scottish and all other EU companies will continue as normal.  There is no practical way to force Scotland out of the EU against its will.  Graeme McCormick, Convener YES Helensburgh and Lomond