Letters / Hopes and possibilities
One sentence in Douglas Young’s letter (No has nowhere to go; SN, 01/02/14) sums up everything he has to say or has ever said.
“To inform, with facts, information, hopes and possibilities, yes has in place the possibility of a win, a substantial win”.
“To inform, with facts”? OK, Douglas, go ahead inform us, and with facts, please, tell us what independence has to offer everyone in Shetland and Scotland.
“Hopes and possibilities”. This is what the entire yes campaign is built on, hopes and possibilities, with a good dose of Alex Salmond’s assertion, when what we actually need is the truth, answers, facts and figures.
So far all you have given us is hypocritical, alarmist paranoia with a massive dose of conspiracy theory, wrapped up in a tiresome dose of yes Scotland negative rhetoric.
Douglas in his letter accuses the no campaign of attacking Salmond and the SNP; yet in the first few sentences of his letter he attacks Alistair Carmichael, Alistair Darling, David Cameron and Tory Unionist supporters.
Somewhat hypocritical to say the least, and that is without mentioning his hypocritical statement that Westminster have issued ten expensive and factual papers on why we should stay in the union. Yet he conveniently forgets to mention the half a million pounds of Scottish taxpayers’ cash to publish the SNPs uncosted manifesto for independence.
I don’t know whether in the next part of Douglas’s letter he is offering a paranoid conspiracy theory or he is congratulating the Better Together campaign. He seems to be saying that we have won over the mainstream media including the BBC, to the Better Together way of thinking.
Something no political or otherwise organisation has ever managed before. I tend to believe that the British media can sniff out the wheat from the chaff for themselves, very much like the Scottish voter.
Leaders of yes Scotland have been severely criticised for refusing to reveal the names of those who are bankrolling their pro-independence yes campaign. Sir Alistair Graham, the former Chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, said it was not democratic to keep from voters the names of those who are paying for the campaign.
Douglas has revealed who is bankrolling the no campaign and this is public knowledge; Unionists, some wealthy and some ordinary working folk like myself, we have nothing to hide, unlike the yes campaign.
Anyone who is on the no side of the fence is not only demonised by the yes brigade but are denationalised.
What he really says in his statement “it is too late for them to realise you will never ever scare a Scot”, is that only the yes brigade are Scots.
This is a favourite chant of the yes brigade as well as claiming the Scottish flag as theirs. What they forget is this vote is about all Scots, yes and no, and about their future and the future of the Scottish nation.
One of many reasons to stay in the union is governmental economy of scale.
Government costs money; buying in bulk is always cheaper than buying in small amounts, paying for civil service staff is no exception, all the functions that are currently carried out UK wide will need to replicate their own miniature Scottish governmental departments: from vehicle licensing to passports, health and safety and the UK National Savings and Investments bank to the post office and the BBC.
By contributing to our share of all these services and institutions, which are run on a UK wide basis, we get better value for our taxpayer’s money.
Separatists claim we can be like Norway, presumably this means we can have higher taxes, we will need to pay for doing everything ourselves that used to be paid for by the UK as a whole.
Since the SNP have stated that they will not raise oil taxes but will lower corporation tax along with raising spending on services they have no option but to raise income tax for the working man.
This is only one positive reason to stay in the union. There are many more and I publicly challenge Douglas Young to give us his reasons for wanting us to vote yes.
Douglas’s ad hominem style of attacks on the Tories, Better Together and individual government ministers does not constitute a positive reason to vote yes.
So please let us have some facts about our future in an independent Scotland, Douglas.
Gordon Harmer,
Brae.
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