{"id":1515,"date":"2016-10-20T16:00:06","date_gmt":"2016-10-20T16:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/?p=1515"},"modified":"2016-10-20T09:32:22","modified_gmt":"2016-10-20T09:32:22","slug":"conference-comment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/?p=1515","title":{"rendered":"Conference comment"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was at the SNP Conference in Glasgow on Friday and Saturday last week and met many old friends and made some new ones.\u00a0 As happened before, I feel the venue is too big, too many offshoots, but then again it is a pleasure to see so many people I do not recognise \u2013 once upon a time you would know most, but now we\u2019re getting somewhere we have thousands of members.\u00a0 It\u2019s great.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Happily, we had no major rows, but then again, we do not wish them, the days when we could have a public dispute are largely gone, our enemies, particularly those in the media, are avid for any disagreement that they can brandish \u2013 shock, horror!\u00a0 Differences will exist, but we should try not to wash dirty linen in public.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nicola gave her usual splendid addresses and party morale is high; we are in a bit of a quandary with pressure for a Referendum from some, and caution expressed by others.\u00a0 I was not enchanted with a long involved resolution linking independence and Europe and hoped it would be remitted back, but I was not a delegate, have not been one for some time.\u00a0 It emanated from Edinburgh Western, a branch I use to belong to, who managed to lose the SNP seat with the largest majority in Edinburgh to the Liberals. I did not go to the debate, but I knew Gerry Fisher had been chastised by the Chair \u2013 not an unusual occurrence \u2013 but then any linkage with Europe is like a red rag to a bull for him.\u00a0 Most times I agree with him, but am too old.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

General impressions \u2013 well we keep reading about comments from the Unionists about \u201cThe day job\u201d in petulance, and I have to say that they must be walking around half asleep.\u00a0 There is a vast among of work being done by our Cabinet Secretaries, and we heard that in \u201cStronger for Scotland\u201d on the Friday afternoon.\u00a0 There was a report from every Cabinet Secretary, brilliantly summed up by Deputy First Minister John Swinney.\u00a0 As one of my friends put it to me after \u201cJohn is a class act\u201d.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I always remember John\u2019s actions when he was the Finance Secretary in 2007.\u00a0 It was a minority government, so we had to get agreement with another party to get the Budget through.\u00a0 In our manifesto, we had specified that we would put 1000 extra police on the beat.\u00a0 In John\u2019s first budget, he put in 500 police!\u00a0\u00a0 I was incensed \u2013 we had promised 1000 police, not 500 \u2013 we broke a promise.\u00a0 In the course of the budget negotiations, the horse trading, the Tories said they could back the budget but they needed something.\u00a0 John thought long and hard, then opened his desk drawer \u201cWould you be interested in 500 police?\u201d\u00a0 So the Tories got a sweetener they could boast about, and we got 1000 police.\u00a0 I was impressed.\u00a0 After getting through 9 years, balancing the budget every time with no over spends, John is now tackling Education \u2013 more power to his elbow.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Odd thoughts<\/strong><\/h2>\n

I read in the Herald on Monday this week a comment from Secretary of State for Scotland, David Mundell \u201cI am willing to look at any proposal to take forward Scotland\u2019s interests.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Mr Mundell is the sole Tory in Scotland, with a majority of 798, and owes his advancement to that, the only entrant in the one horse race; as the Prime Minister has not included him in her Brexit delivery group I think he may be suffering delusions of grandeur, or his perception of himself is not matched by Mrs May.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Incidentally, there are 330 Tory MPs in the House of Commons, or perhaps 329, until the by election to replace David Cameron, and 318 of them are English.\u00a0 The Tory majority is only 12 – \u00a011 Welsh and Mr Mundell.<\/p>\n

Odd coincidence?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One other fact has struck me; in all the furore about the unfair treatment of women\u2019s pensions I wonder if we are highlighting the fact that while Westminster makes life more difficult, the Scottish Government will keep giving out bus passes to women at 60.\u00a0 Perhaps I missed that.\u00a0 Men get them at 60 too.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Referendum addenda<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Two things in particular are standing out from the 2014 Referendum.\u00a0 The first is that the much talked about and hotly disputed right for Scotland to be in the EU is now defunct.\u00a0 England and Wales decided to leave the EU, making that Unionist prop redundant.\u00a0 In fact, their decision betters the case for independence, and even so frees us up to seek other alliances, with Norway in EFTA for example\u2013 this would help us to reclaim fishing rights.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The other issue is currency.\u00a0 In February or March this year I saw Colin Mackay on STV interviewing Mervyn King asking him about the currency issue during the Referendum campaign and he said that there had been a simple solution.\u00a0 When I asked Colin afterwards he said he had bought Meryn King\u2019s book \u201cThe End of Alchemy\u201d and turned to the chapter on Scotland.\u00a0 Lord King had been interviewed a number of times about his book, but no interviewer had actually read it!\u00a0 Colin had.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On the last Tuesday in March I went to Waterstone\u2019s in Livingston and bought the book.\u00a0 I never got around to reading it because on the Saturday of that week I was rushed into the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.\u00a0 For some strange reason I was not able to do much reading while in hospital.\u00a0 So after I got home I started reading it, only five pages at a time because I am not good at reading non-fiction J\u00a0 There was no desperate hurry, I just wanted to read it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the chapter entitled \u201cMarriage and Divorce \u2013 Money and Nations\u201d which I have just reached, he wrote \u201cWhen the referendum took place, the currency question was unresolved.\u00a0 But there was an answer.\u00a0 The simple\u00a0 and straightforward solution was\u00a0 \u201csterlingisation\u201d.\u00a0 Following a \u201cyes\u201d vote , the Scottish Government could have announced the next day that an independent Scotland had no intention of issuing its own currency and that all contracts denominated in sterling would always be legally honoured in sterling.\u00a0 There would be no formal currency union.\u00a0\u00a0 Nothing would change.\u00a0 The Yes campaign could not however, openly advocate such a solution, because it would have made clear that independence would give Scotland no real say over its monetary arrangements- they would be borrowed from England, exactly as they are today, because the relative size of the two economies mean that interest rates are largely unaffected by conditions in Scotland.\u00a0 Politically, sterlingisation would have provided an answer to the currency question, but it would have taken the edge off an independent Scotland.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThe No campaign was also misleading.\u00a0 To admit that there was a simple and straightforward answer to the currency question would have undermined its argument that independence would be an economic disaster.\u00a0 That proposition was always implausible. There are many small and successful countries in the world, and there is no reason Scotland could not have joined them.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Towards the end of the chapter he wrote \u201cIn the General Election of 2015, the Scottish Nationalists won fifty- six out of fifty- nine seats in Scotland.\u00a0 So independence will remain a live issue.\u00a0 If for example, the UK as a whole were to vote to leave the European Union, while in Scotland a majority voted to remain a member, the clamour for independence would be even more difficult to resist than in 2014\u201d.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lord Mervyn King was the Governor of the Bank of England from 2003to 2013, and is currently Professor of Economics and Law at New York University and School Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When I wondered why he had not said this at the time of the Referendum, I postulated that perhaps he was<\/p>\n

bound by his former employer; a friend stated that more probably he had a book to sell.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In any event that was another Better Together prop that has been knocked away.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As to the restriction on an independent Scotland, we can adjust that as we go along \u2013 no independence, no chance.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Stolen Sea<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Until the beginning of this year I was the Editor of the Scots Independent monthly newspaper, a post I held for 10 years.\u00a0 I kept getting letters from readers about the 6000 square miles of sea filched, but I was unable to locate any info.\u00a0 Eventually, I asked Professor Chris Harvie, at that time a Fife Region MSP if he could raise the matter as a Parliamentary Question.\u00a0 His response was to go to his PC, and he then produced the co-ordinates of the area involved.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"the-case-for-independence\"The list was as clear to me as if it had been written in Greek; after it had been burning a hole on my desk for a few weeks, I approached a friend, Alistair Kidd,\u00a0 an SNP member, and a retired Merchant Navy Captain.\u00a0 He went to the Royal Forth Yacht Club and purchased the Admiralty chart of the North Sea, including all the oil and gas installations.\u00a0 He then plotted the co-ordinates, and the result showed 6 oilfields in that patch of sea; they were Fulmar, Auk, Clyde, Janice, Angus and Fife.\u00a0 The chart, dated 21 Aug 2003, was massive, the size of a door, so the SI Secretary, Denholm Christie, a retired architect, painstakingly reduced it to a size suitable for printing in the paper.\u00a0 At the then Wee County News, the printer, Bryan Watson, added the colour, including The St George\u2019s Cross for emphasis.\u00a0 The map was published in the Scots Independent 2010 Summer Special.\u00a0 It was also put on the cover of a book, The Case for Independence a collection of articles for the Scots Independent by the late Ian Goldie.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In a letter to The National a couple of weeks ago concerning the movement of the sea boundary between Scotland and England Ms Beverley Burns from Dundee commented about the Argyll Field;\u00a0 this intrigued me as that was not marked on the map;\u00a0 Argyll was the first field to produce oil, but a brief search showed that it had been closed down so no rig there!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This started a chain of thought:\u00a0 Transocean Rig aground on Lewis, en route to be broken up in Turkey, thousands of highly skilled jobs lost to the industry, out of use rigs parked at Invergordon and other places (including the one from the Argyll field), and in the last few weeks Dalyell Steel Mill re-opening, shipbuilding on the Clyde and cruise liners to build, and with fishing hopefully being repatriated we could do with a few Fisheries cruisers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And at the moment it looks as if the Ministry of Defence\u2019s promised\u00a0 Type 26 frigates will never be built.\u00a0 Nae money.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Join the dots, another industrial revolution in recycling.\u00a0 With independence we can do so much \u2013 the bits are all there.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And no restrictions on state aid to shipbuilding if we are not allowed in the EU.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was at the SNP Conference in Glasgow on Friday and Saturday last week and met many old friends and made some new ones.\u00a0 As happened before, I feel the venue is too big, too many offshoots, but then again it is a pleasure to see so many people I do not recognise \u2013 once upon a time you would know most, but now we\u2019re getting somewhere we have thousands of members.\u00a0 It\u2019s great.   Happily, we had no major rows, but then again, we do not wish them, the days when we could have a public dispute are largely gone, our enemies, particularly thoseRead More →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1515"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1520,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515\/revisions\/1520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}