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Letters / Permanent socialist hellhole

Vic Thomas, (Scotlaphobes; SN, 15/11/13) (or was it Scotiaphobes?) you did not set any bait therefore none was taken! You don’t get up early enough for games like that.

It has taken you 17 days to reply to our three letters you should have taken another 17 days to proof read it as it is full of disingenuous rhetoric and holes one could drive a truck through.

Here are two of the biggest holes:

You rightly condemn EU law and regulations and yet you support independence when even Salmond wants to take Scotland back into the EU.

Scotland has been told that it will definitely need to re-apply for membership in the EU if it achieves independence.

Scotland will have to jump the same hurdles as Croatia. The EU has clear expectations on what is required of “new” member states with the rules and regulations embodied in the Lisbon Treaty.

An independent Scotland will need to “toe the line” with respect to what the EU wants and what is written in the Lisbon Treaty with no opt outs and no UK rebate as negotiated by Margaret Thatcher.

Therefore even more EU laws and regulations costing billions, for an independent Scotland to be lumbered with.

Yet you condemn the present UK government despite Cameron’s referendum pledge.

Concerning the UK’s relationship with Brussels, Cameron said he wanted to renegotiate the UK’s relationship with the EU and then give people the “simple choice” between staying in under those new terms, or leaving the EU.

You missquoted Lady Thatcher out of context from all those years ago; now that she has died, you and her detractors on the Left have finally ensured that there really is no such a thing as society.

Back in 1987, Mrs Thatcher was monstered over an interview in which she said: “There is no such thing as society.”

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The Left seized on this remark as you wrongly cherry picked it as evidence of her heartless indifference to the plight of ordinary people.

What she was actually doing was condemning the use of ‘society’ as a convenient shorthand excuse for individual deficiencies, disappointments and delinquency.

Mrs Thatcher was also criticising the automatic tendency of people to look to the state as a cure for all ills.

She was of the firm conviction that society is the sum of its parts; individuals, families, churches, voluntary organisations and businesses.

It was her belief that people expected too much from government, concentrated too much on their ‘rights’ and ‘entitlements’ and not enough on their obligations to themselves and others.

We all have a duty to help ourselves and our neighbours as part of a society; in this debate as part of the UK Union.

Hers was a vision of a liberated, bottom up society, not the bureaucratic top down version favoured by socialists and nationalists.

Socialists favour a system in which the state will provide, even if it traps people in dependency and bankrupts the very hand that feeds them.

If you make idleness a worthwhile career choice, why should anyone look for a job? It’s not their/your fault, is it?

So you embraced the notion of individual ‘rights’ and mix it with a touch of nationalism (any band wagon in a crisis, Vic!) as a way of furthering your socialist agenda.

Shetland is a great place and a great society but, Vic, I’m afraid you are an individual and not one who has integrated very well, especially if you would take Shetland and all who live in her and submit them to the permanent socialist hellhole that will be Scotland in dependence.

Gordon Harmer
Brae

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