Letters / These dangerous times
Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon will continue to say anything, true or not, to blame the UK parliament for everything which is wrong in Scotland, hoping to convince voters to believe them and to vote against the No vote in the forthcoming referendum.
The SNP, and their minority government, are so good at doling out misinformation and twisting facts to suit themselves, including putting the blame for their own errors of judgement and miscalculations over the past seven years onto others, blaming the UK government for the worldwide recession, poverty, banking crisis, and anything else they can think of, playing up to the “hate the English” brigade.
They are so quick to claim credit for achievements which don’t actually exist; they claim that they can use the pound sterling, when they can’t; they say that Scotland will be a member of the EU and NATO, when that is by no means secured; Alex Salmond made the outrageous assertion that his talks with the queen led to her agreement to remain as queen of Scotland, when she didn’t. What a chancer.
The United Kingdom’s tax payers, the Bank of England and the UK’s parliament bailed out the Royal Bank of Scotland by £billions – Scotland, as a small independent country, would not have been able to do that, and would have gone bankrupt. An independent Scotland would start off bankrupt if it reneges on its payment of its part of the UK’s national debt; there is no mention from Salmond about any of this. Who would want to live in a country which is not only bankrupt, but in debt, with no currency of its own?
Nicola Sturgeon blamed the recent sharp drop in UK share prices on the UK government, saying that if they had agreed to a currency union with the SNP, with Scotland, this would not have happened.
If the SNP had done their preparations for devolution properly, they would have had arrangements for Scotland’s own currency in place, rather than leaving it to the last minute without knowing how anyone north of the border will receive their wages, pensions, pay their bills, mortgages, or protect their savings.
It is the SNP who are clamouring for separation, it is they who need to sort out their own problems, which could become our insurmountable problems. And we need to know how they plan to protect our country against an influx of immigrants (illegal or not) terrorists, and other threats to our national security. And to those who scoff at the idea, of course there is a real threat to our security – who can forget the attempt to blow up Glasgow Airport a few short years ago.
During the second TV referendum debate Salmond continually battered Alistair Darling with the question “name three new job opportunities for Scotland”. If Salmond can’t think of any new ideas himself, why should anyone else come up with some for him?
They, the SNP, jeer at the UK’s top ministers, including our Prime Minister, leaving their visit to Scotland until the last minute. Perhaps Salmond and co., whilst they were electioneering and posing for photo-shoots with all and sundry over the past few weeks, did not notice that in the meantime those UK ministers were having talks with other world leaders on the Syria crisis, terrorism, to secure the safety of our realm, doing the job they are paid to do.
We will all suffer in different ways if the SNP’s plan goes ahead and Scotland will find it very difficult in these dangerous times as a small independent country to operate alone, rather than as a part of a Great Britain – is this the right price to pay for Salmond and co.’s arrogance?
Kathy Greaves
Scatness, Virkie
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