RUTH Wishart’s Seven Days piece in the Sunday National (From GERS scam to electricity highway – Scots are being duped) was a very good read, as usual, and seriously adds fuel to the fire on this whole contentious GERS issue that is irritatingly covered by Unionist press/media on an annual basis with the same old repeat criticisms/comments year after year after year ... ad nauseum.
My simple suggestion to the Scottish Government is “Stop publishing these GERS figures once and for all and be done with it!” Show some political courage and leadership by dismissing this nonsense out of hand and stop playing the political game by formally commenting on these bogus figures as though they have some kind of great relevance to the future economy of Scotland.
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I’m guessing that the devolved Scottish Government is legally obliged to publish this drivel. My response to that is “who cares!” Scottish Government disruption/disobedience is long overdue in the eyes of many critics like myself. Do it and condemn this whole process that has been dismissed as fantasy by many economic experts like Richard Murphy and experts within Common Weal. Stop playing the political game!
Indeed, present the case that an alternative “realistic” economic document will be researched and eventually presented/published on a post-independence Scottish economy.
As Ruth Wishart commented at the end of her article – Scotland is a “land”, a proud and ancient nation, that deserves a government that won’t roll over to the English bully. The Scottish Government cannot continue in this vein any more – time to get tough and stop being passive against a bullish English enemy that definitely views our current political representatives as vulnerable and a soft touch. Kowtowing to English government diktat was never in my school of thought when voting for the SNP in any Scottish election. Hence, I demand a far more combative form of political engagement/devolved governance of Scotland against a Britnat-Brexit government from England that disrespects Bella Caledonia beyond belief and will continue to do so ad infinitum unless we change the rules of the political game.
Bernie Japs
Edinburgh
LEAH Gunn Barrett’s letter on GERs left out one important point: it was Harold Wilson who put the McCrone report on the secret list. This was when we were the sick man of Europe, so there was no way Scotland could be seen as a success.
We could be now be like Norway, with £1 trillion in the bank, and have a chronic surplus; instead we are tied into the great Westminster with more than £2tr of debt. Does anyone know what the Labour Party has done FOR Scotland?
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They gave us a voting system meant for an independent country and, of course, The Vow. Nor do we need another nuclear power station; in another few years we will have four de-commissioned power stations. What does that mean, exactly?
Now we are going to get a “super highway”: even more of our energy going south, all our oil and water going south, not to mention money. This will not be any kind of super highway, it will be another one-way street. That is the way the system works, it always will, because it has to work for them and only them.
How can it be we export electricity cheaper than it costs us? That is not good economics.
Tom Nicholson
via email
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