The die has been cast: on Tuesday 28th March the Scottish Parliament voted to ask Westminster for the authority to hold a Referendum.<\/p>\n
The SNP had 64 votes and the Greens cast their 5; the other parties had 59 votes.\u00a0 I knew the Greens were going to support the SNP, but\u00a0 there can be many a slip between cup and lip, and the Greens main plank is the environment, not independence.\u00a0 Nevertheless they were \u00a0true to their word.\u00a0 Ruth Davidson bleated protest in a quickfire fashion, I did not see Kezia Dugdale nor Willie Rennie. David Mundell burbled away as Theresa May\u2019s stooge \u2013 nothing unusual there \u2013 but The Scottish Parliament will now make the formal request<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I am becoming increasingly nervous at the direction of travel of the Party.<\/p>\n
We are being bound by a Conference decision made in October 2016, in the heat of Brexit.<\/p>\n
The presence of 38% of the electorate who voted Leave in 2016 is being ignored, and we continue to ignore this at our peril.\u00a0 The shape of the EU is changing as I write and we know not where it will end up.<\/p>\n
I have no argument with the call for a referendum based on the SNP Manifesto, as this was made in\u00a0 good faith, but this has served its time.\u00a0 We will get our referendum- Deus vult- but this was only the opening salvo.\u00a0 It has been traditionally, but correctly, expected that once we get independence, Scotland can decide what policies they wish to promote and implement.\u00a0 This applied to the EU, Royalty or currency, to name but a few, and while individual parties may back different horses present policies are not sacrosanct.<\/p>\n
There is an amount of hubris within the SNP at present that the Scottish public will accept what we decide, and this is not so.<\/p>\n
I liked one letter in The Herald which made the point \u201cBrexit is only the catalyst\u201d.<\/p>\n
So my suggestion is that we amend our policy towards the EU to soften our approach;\u00a0 instead of recommending membership of the EU we should state \u201cWhatever, if any, agreements with other countries we enter into, we reserve the right to whichever is the most appropriate and desirable for Scotland at that time.\u201d\u00a0 Job done.<\/p>\n
I myself have no power to create this resolution;\u00a0 I left the Branch I had been a member of for 45 years and became a Headquarters member, as I was appalled by the branch executive\u2019s decision to deselect a sitting MSP, and ashamed\u00a0 at the methods used.\u00a0 We lost the seat to the Liberals;\u00a0 the SNP also lost its majority\u00a0 At my age, 82, I have no political ambitions?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I have taken the first tentative steps to joining Pensioners for independence; I realise that age and infirmity preclude me from being very active.\u00a0 Many years ago, the late Christie Grahame* attempted to form a Nationalist pensioners\u2019 forum, but did not make much of an advance as pensioners were also being courted by Labour who were very much stronger then.<\/p>\n
*Chris was the father of Christine Grahame MSP, Tony Grahame SI photographer, and Fiona Grahame, of the Orkney Four, so has left a contribution to the cause.<\/p>\n
I am interested in the Pensioners as this is the vote we have to convert.\u00a0 I am of the National Service Generation which left many with a false impression of our place in the world. It was always stated that every infantryman required a support staff of 8;\u00a0 I counted up my friends and acquaintances and came up with the following:\u00a0 1 RASC, 1 RAOC, 2 RAF, 1 RE, 2 REME, 1 Signals, 1 Pay Corps, 1 Medical Corps(he became a Labour Councillor).\u00a0 Quite a few have died, but none of them voted SNP; as a corollary I was an infantryman in a Highland Regiment, The Black Watch, from 1953 to 1955. (I was not a very good soldier).<\/p>\n
There was no choice with National Service. They asked where were you from, and I replied \u201cDundee\u201d\u00a0 = Right \u2013 Black Watch!<\/p>\n
I joined the SNP in 1966.<\/p>\n
My contacts so far are Gordon Smith from Aberdeenshire – Gordon Smith: himself @gordonsmith.scot and Peter Swain from Dunbar, Peter Swain33@yahoo.com<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The website is www.pfi.scot<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Interesting article from Gordon McIntyre-Kemp in The National last Friday (24 March).<\/p>\n Oil prices fell by 55%, but production was up by 16%.\u00a0 Norway has the equivalent resources as the UK, and they were discovered at the same time.\u00a0 UK revenues fell by 99%, but Norway\u2019s only by 40%.\u00a0 George Osborne commented that Norway had done well but she only had 4 million inhabitants whereas Britain had 65 million \u2013 this joke was repeated by David Cameron on the Andrew Marr Show, rather unwisely as Norway\u2019s population is 5.258 million, roughly the same as Scotland\u2019s.<\/p>\n Think tax breaks; in the 24 countries where Shell extracts oil and gas\u00a0 all of them barring Britain, took money from Shell\u00a0 – Britain gave them \u00a380 million in tax rebates, Shell paid Norway \u00a32.7 billion!\u00a0 In BP\u2019s case UK taxpayers shelled out (awful pun) \u00a3202 million in tax rebates \u2013 all of the other 23 countries charged cash to the oil companies.<\/p>\n We don\u2019t know how Shell sells themselves to the UK Treasury \u2013 in 2015 Shell paid \u00a37.9 billion in dividends to shareholders; 2016 it was \u00a311.1 billion \u00a0to the same shareholders.\u00a0 Gordon\u00a0 reminded us that when Aberdeen and that region asked for \u00a32.9 billion for economic support, David Cameron announced that Westminster could only offer \u00a3125 million.\u00a0 Cameron said that Scotland had to rely on the broad shoulders and deep pockets of the UK.<\/p>\n As Gordon McIntyre-Kemp put it \u201cWestminster\u2019s policy was to protect corporations and their shareholders dividends \u2013 but not workers jobs, Scotland\u2019s economy or its revenues.\u201d<\/p>\n WE will remember this little lot when the Referendum comes \u2013 well, some of us will \u2013 \u201cFacts are chiels that winna ding\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The die has been cast: on Tuesday 28th March the Scottish Parliament voted to ask Westminster for the authority to hold a Referendum. The SNP had 64 votes and the Greens cast their 5; the other parties had 59 votes.\u00a0 I knew the Greens were going to support the SNP, but\u00a0 there can be many a slip between cup and lip, and the Greens main plank is the environment, not independence.\u00a0 Nevertheless they were \u00a0true to their word.\u00a0 Ruth Davidson bleated protest in a quickfire fashion, I did not see Kezia Dugdale nor Willie Rennie. David Mundell burbled away as Theresa May\u2019s stooge \u2013 nothingRead 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\/1690"}],"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=1690"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1692,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1690\/revisions\/1692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Only the UK is big-hearted with the oil companies<\/strong><\/h3>\n