Letters / Missed the point
Once again Douglas Young has totally missed the point and tried to mislead the rest of us in his letter What a shock (SN; 24/11/13) about the Doctor Who issue.
At the moment as part of the UK we help to contribute to a kitty of well over £3 billion with our licence fee to run the BBC.
At the present licence fee level, an independent Scotland would have a kitty of only £300 million, so running our own Scottish Broadcasting Corporation would mean something would have to give.
That something would mean either a much higher TV licence fee or a lack of programs like Doctor Who and other much watched BBC programmes.
These programs are watched all over the word but not for free, they have to be paid for.
So we either don’t get all of them or we pay a much higher licence fee to receive them.
Blair Jenkins, the chief executive of the Yes Scotland campaign, has given a 100 per cent guarantee that we will get all our favourite BBC TV programmes, but no guarantee that the cost of a TV licence in an independent Scotland will not rise significantly.
Douglas thinks he knows better than Alex Salmond’s advisers, UK government advisers, the Green Party who support independence, senior bankers, government ministers, and the Welsh First Minister.
They all say that a currency union will not work and would damage the economies of the whole of the UK and an independent Scotland.
He thinks he knows better than the Clyde shipbuilders, their unions, their workers and UK government ministers who all say no Royal Navy warships will be built on the Clyde after a Yes vote.
Then he spuriously claims (with no figures to prove it) that the Yes vote has doubled in Shetland.
I found a rather worrying post by Douglas on the Yes Shetland Facebook page; the last five words really disturb me and not just because of the bad grammar.
“Helping man the Yes Shetland stall in the Toll Clock Centre today, it was interesting to see reactions; Yes voters are positive happy people and totally committed to the cause.
Undecideds will take a leaflet and speak.
A couple of No voters gave bizarre reasons such as “I want the whole cake….”
Crumbs is all you’ll get….”
What do these five words mean for No voters? Maybe you would like to enlighten us Douglas.
Gordon Harmer
Brae
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