And we see how dangerous that is. What exactly are the SNP hiding in the Alex Salmond legal enquiry.
Much worse. How do we allow them to get away with it. Where, oh where, is democratic accountability?
If there is nothing to hide, well and good. Just let everyone see all the documents and information.
Scotland. Dependence and Poverty Beckon
Consider this. Scotland spends 9% more than it earns (it has a 9% negative GDP). That’s before the coronavirus.
How does we balance the books then? Right now we arebanked by the UK Treasury. Quite right. The union was a Scottish project (King James). We survive in lockdown because the UK can borrow at very low interest rates. And subsidises Scotland to the tune of £2,000 per person through the Barnet formula.
OK then. So 58% of Scots apparently want to unhitch themselves from this onerous arrangement. We are told by our SNP government that “it’ll be all right on the night”. How?What are the options?
First – become a member of the EU. With a 9% negative GDP? We’d have to first endure the pain of getting under 3% negative GPD. A bigger shock than that to Ireland after the financial crash. And, we’d be doing this our own. We’d have to endure a period of poverty and isolation first. Without the helping hand of the RUK (rest of the UK). The people we’vejust abandoned.
Second – be completely on our own. A small country with an independent currency. Oh and the 9% negative GDP. Doesn’t this add up to a quick road to the bankruptcy? It was of course Scotland’s bankruptcy (caused by the Darien Crisis) that led the Scots to petition for union in 1707. (Incidentally fiercely resisted by much of the English parliament). I don’t see this as “independence” in any proper sense. It would more likely lead to increased dependence on England. This time without representation.
Third – retain the pound and continue to live within the shelter of our common currency. But without representationwe would be “takers” of the rules of that currency and peoples.
I truly don’t get it. You have to ask – independence from what? To do what?
Right now we have a Scottish national government, with local decision making on everything significant, except a shared foreign policy, treasury and defence. We combine this with over-representation within the UK parliament which determines those matters. Don’t believe that? Just wait for the next parliament when Labour and SNP together have a majority and can forge a new fairer social Britain.
There is a religious wing of the SNP. I say religious. Independence, damn the consequences for the people. What’sthat then? It is this wing who are pressing for another referendum. They want to take advantage Coronavirus, blind the people to facts; and most of all get the thing done before Britain throws out the Tories in 2024.
This is a reprint from the Spectator this week…
Scotland’s deficit is higher than the UK average — an estimated 7 per cent of GDP, as opposed to the UK’s 2 per cent. It’s not hard to work out why. In 2018-19, Scottish public spending was 13.6 per cent higher per head than the UK average and revenue collected was 2.6 per cent lower. Scotland accounts for about a tenth of the UK’s population and a tenth of its economic output — but more than half of the increase in total annual government borrowing in cash terms.
How could the Scottish government possibly sustain that level of expenditure in the absence of the UK subsidy (about £10 billion a year)? It would have to go, tam o’ shanter in hand, to the bond market, but with the size of Scotland’s deficit, as well as the share of the UK’s debt it would inherit, the interest rates would be far more onerous than those currently available to the UK.
Bankruptcy would soon follow.
Would the IMF come to Scotland’s rescue, as it came to the UK’s in 1976? Maybe, but only at the cost of a huge reduction in spending on public services such as education, already a complete basket case under the SNP’s stewardship.
But let’s suppose the Spanish government waives its objection to Scotland joining. That wouldn’t exactly save the day. For starters, there would be the small matter of the hard border with the rest of the UK, not something conducive to trade with Scotland’s largest export market.
Then there’s the fact that Scotland would have to adopt the euro and become part of Schengen, both of which are non-negotiables for any new member states. But crucially, Scotland’s annual deficit of 7 per cent of GDP puts it over the 3 per cent threshold that automatically triggers the EU’s ‘excessive deficit procedure’, i.e. the
EU would insist on an eye-watering austerity programme as a condition of joining.
And if the people of Scotland want to know what that would involve, I’m sure plenty of Greeks would be happy to tell them. (Youth unemployment of 40 per cent? Not sure that will go down well in Glasgow.) It would make the levels of austerity imposed by George Osborne and Philip Hammond — which the SNP ceaselessly complained about — look like a mosquito bite compared to full-blown malaria.
.. its not my preference, but if the majority will it – fair enough. First though – we need to fix the economy. Or we’ll be seriously poor.
Scotland has 7.2% negative GDP, and getting worse. And we spend 20% more than revenue on a cash basis.. And getting worse. This, despite middle class Scots families paying £1500 more tax than English. The books balance because of the UK block grant and the skewed Barnet formula.
How about we build new revenues. Before we kick the UK in the teeth?
Join the EU? They wouldn’t have us. Can we please get real. How long can the SNP keep blaming everyone else, rather than getting on with good government?
Brexit. There was an interesting poll conducted by The Observer. When asked “Do you think leaving the European Union will ultimately be good or bad for the UK?” – the answer was 34%/39% Good/Bad – for the next few years but 51%/25% Good/Bad in 10-20 years time. Also that there is little appetite for a second referendum or remaining in the EU now. I resonate with this. Actually the way the EU has acted toward the UK since the referendum has turned me from a Remainer into a Leaver. The EU can, no doubt, take a revenge on the citizens of this country which makes the leaving process nasty. I suspect this wouldn’t be forgotten and would leave a profound and bitter anti European sentiment in the UK. In any event, lets remind ourselves that – we have a negative trade deficit of c £70bn per annum with the EU and contribute a net £20bn for the privilege. We just couldn’t continue like that anyway. It only benefits the City of London with it’s mobile super-rich. .. and for these continuing payments, what have we received?Though we have always obeyed the EU rules (unlike for instance many mediterranean countries) we have been castigated over decades as “un-European” (whatever that means).
What seems to me more important than the fact that we are leaving, is what kind of country will we become. What is our vision? Please, Lord, can it be something different from a see-saw between bankrupting Labour nonsense and venal Conservativism.
Do you know how the EU works? Watch Jeremy Paxman’s BBC documentary. So..
Laws are framed and developed by the Council and Commission. In each of these the UK has one vote out of 28 (by the way Luxembourg has the same status in voting). That means that UK has something like a 3% voice (we are around 12% of EU population). The Parliament ratifies these laws (yes, it always does). We have 73 out of 750 MEP’s, around 10% (we are around 12% of EU population). These laws are then simply instructed to our (democratic) parliament as Directives or simply written into UK law by the EU as Regulations. Around 59% of our laws are imposed like that.
Yup, Britain is ruled by unelected Europeans.
By the way, the European Court of Justice is the supreme arbiter of these laws (not any kind of UK court). And guess what – these judges are appointed not elected.
For those of you who believe that the EU is always going to be a socialist institution, so in some way moderating elected conservative UK governments, consider this; only 70 years ago the European trend was fascism (Italy, Germany, Spain as small examples). Austria is about to elect a hard right president. So for you Guardian readers, imagine it’s fascist laws imposed on us. Still ok with letting democracy go?
Those voices, like mine, who want us to consider these issues are castigated as somehow “little England”, prejudiced. This reminds me of the attempt to join us up to the Euro. Remember how the same people (the European elite who have their snouts in our trough) played out the same slur. By the way the same people back then told warned us of armaggedon if we failed to join the Euro.
Seem familiar?
Wonder Full. The Australian reaction to the terrible attack by a self-styled Islamic extremist was just that – wonderful. At the moment of grief – they deliberately reached out to all in their society, particularly in fact to peaceful Muslims. Peace is surely the anti-dote to terror. We knew that “an eye for an eye” failed over two thousand years ago.
The bearded men (men, funny that..) who machine gun children in Pakistan, hack soldiers in London and behead and sell women in Iraq – aren’t religious – Islamic or any other type; any more than were the IRA Christian Catholics when they bombed civilians indiscriminately.
Vladimir Soloviev put it like this (contemporary for him was the 1870’s):
“ I shall not dispute those who maintain a negative attitude toward the religious principle. I shall not argue with the contemporary opponents of religion, because they are right. I say that those who reject religion are right because the contemporary state of religion calls for rejection.. Speaking generally and abstractly, religion is the connection of humanity and the world with the absolute principle and focus of all that exists. Contemporary religion is a pitiful thing. Strictly speaking, religion does not exist as the dominant principle, as the centre of spiritual attraction. Instead, our so-called religiosity is a personal mood, a personal taste. Some people have this taste, others do no, just as some people like music and others do not…” Vladimir Soloviev. Lectures on Divine Humanity. St Petersburg 1878.
His point of course, is that true connection to the Divine is quite different from a self-styling religiosity. It’s easy to tell one from the other. Peace or war. Tolerance or dictatorship. Social justice or division. Joy or hatred.
As Christ said: “by their fruits shall you know them”. As Teilhard de Chardin said “Joy is the unmistakable sign of the presence of God”.
So – glory to Australia – for their wonderful reaction. Peace, compassion and social cohesion in the face of terror. Thank you. We’re not even on seven – never mind seventy times seven.
Wilfred Bion believed that societies operate according to one of three basic assumptions. These are – dependent – broadly where society looks to a leader to depend upon; flight- flight – where there is a perceived external threat where the leader galvanises and curdles (my word) society; and the pairing group – where there are two leaders (archetypal parents). In this latter group system there is a hopeful expectation because the true leader, the future leader, is yet to be born. Bion termed this the messianic idea.
Bion observed that we are each as humans essentially social animals. We have these group structural tendencies within us, even before we are operating within a group.
“Our individual psychic make-up is intimately related to others, both the tendency to form constructively working groups and the potential for forming any of the basic assumption mental states when in a physical group setting with others”.
Societies do seem to me, practically to group as Bion suggests. It also seems to me that there is a tendency for dependent societies to flip to fight-flight and back, and that pairing groups emerge only after a period of stability. A quick personal review:
Russia (now) – under Putin. Dependent, but he introduces external enemies because he is failing to provide (the basic function of a dependent leader) – therefore moving toward fight-flight. This is also reflected across many middle-eastern countries, the difference being the “religious” archetype that their leaders draw upon, introducing a twisted and unreconstructed medieval view of Islam to create an enemy (all of the rest of the world). In Britain I would suggest we had a dependent/fight-fight society right through to Margaret Thatcher, but that this moved with Blair-Brown and now Cameron-Clegg toward a pairing group society. (Who will the future Messiah be for British politics, we sure are looking for one!). The USA was perhaps set up in the first place as a pairing group society (checks and balances!). It’s why it doesn’t (it seems to me) work so well when either the Democrats or Republicans have ALL the levers of power – Senate, President, Supreme Court, Congress – and why this happens so seldom. The leaders in Scotland, most recently of course attempted to carve out a new fiefdom by drawing on the dependent and fight-flight models. We are now moving back to a pairing group structure between Salmond-Sturgeon – which reflects the reality of the fundamental pairing group of Scotland-England. (Salmond as a UK MP, Sturgeon as First Minister of Scotland).
Foundational to Bion’s view is that humans are interdependent, part of one-whole.
The chapter on Bion’s study of groups in Symington’s review of Bion’s work has a quote from Vladimir Soloviev (Russian 19th century Christian mystic and philosopher), which sums up this basic tenet.
“The self-deception in virtue of which a human individual regards himself as real in his separateness from all things, and presupposes this fictitious isolation to be the true ground and only starting-point for all his relations – this self-deception of abstract subjectivisim plays terrible havoc not only in the domain of metaphysics – which, indeed, it abolishes altogether – but also in the domain of the moral and political life”.
Soloviev, though, goes much further, and prefigures Teilhard de Chardin with his observation that all is connected and interdependent, all part of one.
Let us fight for the idea of Europe. Let it though be a Europe as a democracy.
The current path is toward a politicracy – rule by and in the interests of the chattering and political elite. What we need, and will happen peacefully or violently – is to get back to rule by hoi poloi.. An Old concept that we seem to be forgetting. Invented in Greece not Brussels. Democracy.
Odd isn’t it that Britain is reviled by the continental political classes as being “uneuropean” . Yet we are the peoples who actually obey the club rules, we are the biggest per capita net contributor 11.3 BIllion euros in 2013 and rising.. And we fought for European freedoms last century.
Britons won’t stand for ever for this nonsense. But. It’s the cosy smoke filled room decision making that must be swept away. Not the concept of cooperation and peaceful non nationalistic communion. Europe as a USA style federal democracy.. not oh NOT rule by Brussels fat cat insiders …
If Europe is not reformed so that the people are re-empowered then I’m rather afraid we’ll have to go through the nasty taste of nationalism again with all of its attendant division and ultimately of violence.
So, let us fight for the ideal of a democratic Europe.