MONDAY’S headline that “Westminster stole Scotland’s future” over oil is only partially true. Yes, the UK assumed control over oil and played down its real value. And it’s the same now, as they stress the importance of Scotland’s renewables to meet “Britain’s energy needs”.
But let’s not forget that Scots voted for these UK parties in spite of the SNP’s rise from obscurity. The pull of Britishness and the fear of independence was too strong to counter the devastating effect of Thatcher’s “reforms”. We were happy to support devolution in 1997 as a halfway house, but most people are still blind to the ways it is being eroded and how our resources are still being stolen.
READ MORE: 'It's Scotland's energy': What would a renewables campaign look like today?
When Kate Forbes says she would push the case for independence as FM, I wonder what she would do if we follow her call. Will more than 50% of MPs make any difference, or even 50% of the vote? Simply asking London to be nice to Scotland flies in the face of centuries of bullying and exploitation. We have to be strong enough to take control of our own destiny.
The SNP was very clear in the 1970s that we would need to build an oil fund, as Norway has done. Their website showing thousands of kroners being added every second is a sobering reminder that this bounty could have been ours too, if we’d made it happen. We have a second chance with wind and wave. Let’s not throw it away.
Robert Fraser
Edinburgh
ON Tuesday The National printed my letter supporting Craig Dalzell’s article regarding the gross under sale of the latest ScotWind licences and the advantages of establishing a national energy company. This is a national scandal which has huge implications for our future prosperity. The three candidates for the leadership of the SNP must give their reaction the following issues:
1) Why were the recent licences sold off so cheaply (for less that £1 billion with a potential market value reputed to be in excess of £16bn)?
2) What is the contract agreement for the ownership of the generating infrastructure following the expiry of the contract period?
READ MORE: How the SNP lack a clear vision for Scotland's renewable future
3) The licences were sold off to private energy companies (recent private investment in Scotland’s renewable energy sector has been rising exponentially, giving future profits increasingly to offshore shareholders) rather that to a newly established national energy company. Would you establish such a nationally owned company (possible under devolution like in Wales, which would build up a fund over time like Norway’s $1.2 trillion one, and could control price rises like France to 4%) or continue like the Tories in Westminster, selling contracts to the private sector?
Campbell Anderson
Edinburgh
OVER the last few days there has been much discussion over the McCrone report and the attempt to hide the vast income being generated by oil. Very little has been mentioned of the biggest pay rises in history awarded to the people paying top rate of tax.
In 1980 Thatcher used oil revenues to reduce the top rate of tax from 83p to 60p and later in her tenure to reduce it to 40p in the pound. If there was ever anything which increased the gap between the rich and the poor it was surely this, and no-one seems to remember.
The Tories always look after their own. Witness Liz Truss’s attempt to award another huge tax cut for higher earners during her short tenure.
Allan Jaap
via email
MAINSTREAM parties as well as some independents in local councils, along with those in Holyrood, pretend to agonise about a 5% or even 10% tax rise. Together with this they are going to impose cuts to services that will punish their poorest residents.
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They forget to at least illustrate that a local tax related to income (so that the richest would pay most) would raise more money and do it more fairly. We have known this in detail for more than ten years. This lack of vision, rather than reinforcing the image of an alternative independent Scotland, undermines the dynamic of a transition to a modern country.
Norman Lockhart
Innerleithen
IF Ash Regan is proposing to inform the UK Government that a 50%+1 vote for independence-supporting parties is a basis for arranging the separation of Scotland from the UK, I hope that the first act of her First Ministership is to tell the world.
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The message is: Scotland intends to resile from the Treaty of Union as Scotland has the right of self-determination under Article 1(ll) of the UN Charter once the vote is achieved that Scotland will obey the prohibitions of the international nuclear weapons law; that Scotland will democratically decide whether or not to apply for membership of the UN, Nato, EU, and rUnited Kingdom (in the sense of continuing acceptance of the monarchy) and Commonwealth etc after the ending of the Treaty of Union.
This information must be to all parties and to all the nations of the world which already enjoy independence.
Iain WD Forde
Scotlandwell
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