Letters / We are the main prize
Hidden in the Budget are measures for HMRC to take money from bank accounts if they think you owe tax over £1,000.
Now, if HMRC officials decide you owe them cash, they can just take it directly from your bank account.
If you haven’t managed to reach agreement with them, then you’ll just wake up one morning, check your bank account, and find your cash is gone. No insolvency proceedings, asset freezes, debt collection agencies or court proceedings. Just the government taking out whatever it believes it is owed.
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2014-04-01/uk-budget-means-bank-accounts-can-now-be-raided.
This is perilously close to what Greece did when its economy collapsed. Is this a UK we want to be a part of?
Both Scotland and the UK desperately want us to believe the myth that we are part of both, but is there anything in it?
The misleadingly named Yes Shetland campaign would like us to think we are part of Scotland and have no future on our own.
I’m right behind Ali Inkster (Sign the petition; SN 2/4/14) when he says Shetland should stand alone. The only place I take issue with him is in signing a petition that seeks independence for Shetland, Orkney and the Western Isles – Shetland and Orkney, yes, but as soon as you include the Western Isles in the mix it’s doomed to failure and is simply a distraction, the same as Our Islands, Our Future.
The petition is open to anyone throughout the world and makes no distinction between Scots living on the mainland of Scotland and ‘Scots’ in the isles. It is meaningless.
This deliberate ploy of getting together as a group of islands and asking for powers on that basis betrays Shetland’s legal position, by which it can demand (not beg for) whatever powers it wishes.
As to whether Shetland is part of Scotland or not, the arguments are over. Until 2011, the matter had never been tested in the courts, so historians and anyone else could argue to their hearts content. Now it’s settled.
The Crown was unable to show proof that Shetland is part of Scotland when required to do so in court. Neither the UK nor Scotland can show a superior claim to the land and seabed of Shetland and when asked in a freedom of information request, neither government could show proof that Shetland is part of Scotland.
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/shetland_as_part_of_the_uk#comment-48515.
Both governments and the Scottish judiciary still maintain the pretence that they have power here, but all they can back it up with is The Word of Brian and a 2012 court case RBS v. Stuart Hill (where no proof of jurisdiction was shown and Lord Pentland constructed an argument on behalf of the pursuers). Excuse my mirth. You could not make it up.
Both sides in the Scottish referendum debate want us to think we are part of Scotland, so that the issue of the oil can be kept under control.If we were allowed to know it’s our oil and nobody else can show otherwise, we might start to get too big for our boots.
It’s time to wake up to the fact that we are the main prize in the debate – but neither side has any say in who wins that prize unless we just roll over and invite ourselves to be raped and pillaged all over again.
Like it or not, Shetland already has independence – it only has to assert it.
Do we want to be part of a UK that seems to be preparing to go down the Greek route of bail-ins, or part of a Scotland that relies on our resources to make its figures work?
Neither seems very attractive compared to standing on our own with an extra £86 million per year in the economy and £131 million per year balance of payments.
Let’s just stand back and watch with interest how our neighbours sort out their problems and once it’s settled we have a £10 billion negotiating position to get what we want after their deal is done.
Meanwhile, keep our noses out of their business.
Stuart Hill
Cunningsburgh
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