THERE has been much concern about the choice of a banker to author the SNP’s Growth Commission report, but the more fundamental question should be, why persist in equating growth with success?
Our current capitalist system depends on creating more and more demand so as to stimulate constant growth, but in a world of finite resources this is not sustainable. Nor is it a recipe for a happy society.
Instead, we need organisational forms based not on growth but on creating a better society in tune with our environment, where development follows democratically decided needs and choices, and primary resources are commonly owned and run.
This will be dismissed as idealistic because it is not what we have become used to, but it is the focus on economic growth that is unrealistic and a recipe for long-term disaster.
Sarah Glynn
Dundee
GOVERNOR of the Bank of England Mark Carney has said “it would be economically possible for an independent Scotland to have a currency union with the rest of the UK”.
This announcement from the Governor was welcomed and adds strength to a second independence referendum which is surely inevitable, with current events and the elephant in the room – Brexit, something Scotland did not vote for, yet the Unionists jump up and down continually highlighting the 2014 referendum result while ignoring the 2016 referendum result in Scotland.
Scotland’s future needs to be in the EU for economic reasons and free movement of people, which is crucial to our infrastructure and employment needs.
The only way to secure this, in light of the complete contempt for Scotland’s wishes in the 2016 referendum, is for Scotland to become an independent country and this can only come about with a second Scottish referendum.
Catriona C Clark
Falkirk
MARK Carney is basically repeating what he said in 2014. It is “possible” to have a currency union between rUK and iScotland, but both sides have to agree on economic policy, taxation, fiscal redistribution and have a common approach to regulating the banking sector.
In other words, it would look like the current situation, except that instead of Westminster, we would need some other forum for both sides to agree. The question is whether either side would agree to it.
If Scottish independence means anything, then it surely must be about making different economic and fiscal policies to England. And would England want to constrain its freedom to act by the need to consult Scotland?
In 2014, George Osborne argued that England would not wish to be in a currency union with iScotland – I suspect the same argument would be used if there were an indyref2.
It is also worth pointing out that the oil industry makes up around 2% of overall UK GDP (which is why a collapse in oil prices made very little difference to the value of the pound).
Therefore, England might be prepared to walk away from the currency union and accept a small reduction in the value of the pound. From the sound of it the “sustainable growth” paper will probably recommend a separate Scottish currency, simply to avoid falling into this debate again.
There is every reason to believe England would not want to be in a currency union with iScotland – particularly given the problems that can occur in a currency union if the rules of the union are no longer appropriate for the economic conditions of one of the members (many people think that the rules governing the euro are not suitable for Greece any more, for example).
Genie McGene
via thenational.scot
NOT only is Alan Hinnrichs right as usual in his dissection of Brexit as being nothing else but a ploy to put Britain into the hands of US plutocrats (Letters, May 24), but he points to the terrible loss of democratic power that we in this island outpost of Europe will suffer when Theresa May’s Westminster government casts us adrift from our continental neighbours.
Overnight from Brexit, hard or not-so-hard so-called, we will find that the long time oncoming Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has taken over not only our trade but near enough our entire lives.
Bang will go any institutions such as our beloved NHS, tax-funded public services that the Brits have fought fiercely hard to bring into being, trade union entitlements etc, and these will be replaced by political priorities that serve big business, ie the global corporations whose products are today’s household names in our shopping bags.
Not that such corporations are wholly or necessarily bad, but we still matter and not only need to but should want to have some control over our own lives. Such power helps at the very least to make us feel better.
Free health prescriptions will most certainly disappear and as for this kind of “feeling better”, just forget it! We will in fact be returned to Victorian times.
Remember those “good old days” when the length of the working day was unlimited, five-in-a-bed slum accommodation was standard and military might controlled half the world in the name of the British Empire?
Except this time around it will be America that rules the roost. Is it simply a coincidence or is there a higher power hinting something ominous for us in that US President Trump is scheduled to visit Britain on July 13, on what we superstitiously call a Black Friday?
Ian Johnstone
Peterhead
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