How the Union benefits Scotland and the Scots.

So you don't go whinging at Highlander when he talks about the Tory poitical system below the border. Just when I point out the Tory system above.

Seems like only those who don't agree with you can be off topic.

Nationalists, the same the world over.

 

Unfortunately what he says and what he does are two different things.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics-news/2011/12/26/labour-blast-snp-scrooge-alex-neil-for-cutting-fuel-poverty-payments-86908-23659947/

 

You are being dishonest. I gave you the links but your credibility has reached such a low it makes no difference.

 

You make off-topic posts, you can hardly whine when others do it as well. Well, yes you can, but you really shouldn't.

However, it seems somewhat ostrich like to think that it is possible to discuss either the benefits to Scotland of the Union or the benefits to Scotland of no Union without mentioning the Tories at some stage.

If you then care to run with the mention of the Tories and make yet another pointless post using that mention as justification, that is your choice......but the fact remains, as highlander said, that you would prefer to live in a right wing (Tory) UK, which is unlikely on current performance by the almost as Tory Nulabour party to mean that the UK is going to be sidling to the left any time soon,..so he legitimately assumed you had at least Tory tendencies.

In fact that gives you more Tory tendencies than the SNP has, by the way!

 

What credibility?

 

Not only to you chose an unbeatable source for bias, you didn't even read it all

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/p...cutting-fuel-poverty-payments-86908-23659947/

This is the very situation Oddquine speaks of here

http://www.politicalforum.com/weste...enefits-scotland-scots-10.html#post1060936399

 

Actually I'm not a Tory, I don't support any parties, silly to let political affiliations interfere with your reasoning. Election night I go to bed early.

I would put the U turn on the buses more down to the SNP getting half their funding from Brian Souter actually. A bit worried about where the other half comes from too.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/1999/jan/08/uk.politicalnews1

A nice list of benefits Scotland derives from being in the Union there though. Thanks to the Union Scottish pensioners get free prescriptions, as they do in the rest of Britain, funded by central government.

Then the Council Tax Freeze, the pensioners won't be the only thing frozen in Scotland next year Council Tax will be frozen too. As it will be in the rest of Britain, funded by Central Government.

http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/localgovernment/pdf/2000149.pdf

Can you think of any more benefits the people of Scotland are getting from being part of the Union?

 

I think you have just blown your cover about living in Scotland. Prescriptions in Scotland have been free to everyone for some time now.

 

Try reading http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/scotland/

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2011/11/03110247

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefingsAndFactsheets/S4/SB_12-07.pdf

 

Ah yes, pensioners get free travel in Scotland, just as they do in the rest of Britain. Hardly see anyone below sixty on a bus these days. A billion pounds a year it costs.

Another benefit of being in the Union is the £250.00 a year grand children's Christmas present grant pensioners receive.

 

Scraping now, are you, fredc....a newspaper report from 1999......and anyway, foreign donations were allowed until the bill went through stopping them sometime in 1999. Surprised that part of a UK Bill was solely aimed at the SNP, though.(or am I?)

http://www.public-standards.org.uk/Library/Party_Funding___E60___SNP.pdf

But just think what Scotland could do if it was independent, fredc?

It mightn't have to ignore Pauline and rob Peter to pay Paul...which is the situation when the UK allows Scotland limited funds, and restricts its ability to do much to improve its financial lot. The Scottish Government has to disburse what it gets as best it can to satisfy as many of the needs of Scotland and its people as it can...but it doesn't do as much as it could if we had independence.

Can't see how you can say that's a benefit of the Union..it is one of the reasons Scotland would be better out of the Union.

 

That was introduced in Scotland 2 years before it was in England. It was a choice made as to how to use our limited income...which is the only choice Scotland has, provided, of course the spending is within the area delineated as not restricted to a UK Government.

The £billion refers to the cost in England, btw! Though I do agree that many people take the proverbial.

Surely you're not one of those Tories who want to dictate how people spend what they are given? You'll have us all on food stamps next. How do I think you aren't yet a pensioner and entitled to the perks....and just a wee bit jealous?

Heating allowance? I'd means test it...and cold weather payments if I had anything to do with it. You have no idea how many people I know holiday abroad on the heating allowance and accumulated cold weather payments, after a north winter. As well I amn't in charge of anything!

Btw...Hint.......best way to save a heating allowance received in November, imo is to use it to pay what you'd otherwise have to take out of savings....given the fuel bill generally doesn't arrive to be paid until April.....or at least it doesn't up here.

Just think, if you live in Scotland as you say you do, and if Scotland was independent... the pension age might come back down to free up jobs for the unemployed..and you'd not have to wait an extra two years (currently) to get it.

Lots of mights regarding how an independent Scotland would deal with the issues you claim as benefits of the Union. But I kinda think that if they do as well as they do with what they get now.....they will do better when Scotland is in charge.

For sure they could hardly do worse.

 

Yes it could, look back over the history of Scotland, this is as good as it gets.

 

You have no faith in the people you share a country with, sad.

 

Is there a time in history you would rather have lived in?

 

As good as it gets when we're lumbered with the UK.

 

Fred, you live here????



What an outrage....

 

Nope....it is as good as the Unionist government in Westminster will let it be. That doesn't mean this is as good as it gets..that means it's as good as they allow it to get.

Not the same thing at all...and certainly not a reason for more of the same for the next 305 years.

Still not found anything for the Union or against Independence, I note.

 

Rubbish, Scotland is a disadvantaged country, disadvantaged geographically and in terms of resources and they have always been their own worst enemy and always will be for as long as their elite can blame everything on the English and for so long as their people are stupid enough to believe them. Just heap the blame on the English like Hitler heaped the blame on the Jews.

As of March last year Scotland had 40,000 millionaires, more per head of population than any area of Britain outside the South East, up from 34,000 in 2008.

http://www.scotsman.com/news/that_s_rich_scots_millionaires_club_hits_40_000_1_1533198

 

Nice to see Scotland win a bit of kudos with our tennis player Andy " I love London" Murray dumping the Serb , Djokovic , on the ground .
Well done , the All England Tennis Club .

 

How are we disadvantaged in terms of any resources bar people, fredc? We have most of the oil, at least half of the gas, a chunk of the rUK's military training areas, the rUks nuclear deterrent..we export electricity down south.....and, if down south has its way, we'll be exporting our drinking water as well. Infrastructure isn't great, admittedly, especially north of Perth..but that is more down to the neglect of UK governments since 1707 than Scottish governments since 1999, or SNP governments since 2007..isn't it? Alll we are short of is the money we send down South to pay for waging war, making tax concessions to the very rich and paying Lords and MPs upwards of £300 a day for turning up and signing in, even if they don't stay long enough to vote.

I don't blame the English, per se, bar I recognise the fact that they have much superior numbers in Westminster when it comes to dictating to us (which makes their West Lothian Question rather moot)...the problem is not the English...the problem is the Unionists from all parts if the UK. Shame you can't accept that the Union is nothing of the sort, but more of a dictatorship by the biggest player in it, little different to any relationship with the satellite countries under the communist regime in the old USSR...and look what happened to that.

Re the 40,000 millionaires.....just how many are Scots living in Scotland as opposed to Englishmen like Christopher Moran, who owns a magnificent 15th-century 30-room townhouse on the banks of the Thames in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, and a 48,000-acre sporting estate in Scotland.

40000 millionaires? That is about 0.72% of the Scottish population, even assuming their main home is in Scotland, which means there are nearly £5 and a half million non millionaires, and around 20% of those non-millionaires are living in what the UK classes as poverty.

Just goes to show that an economic system controlled by Westminster will always favour the rich, and let the rest manage with as little as the Government can get away with. How many of those millionaires are bankers, out of interest?

The pay gap between the richest 10% and the rest is at the highest level since the 1940s. It was reducing until Thatcher got in on the act..but since then it has been heading skywards again. By 2005, 10% of the UK population took home 42% of the UK's income. Fair? I think not.

So, that's not a reason to stay in the Union, fredc......it is much more of a reason to get the hell out of it, particularly if it means getting shot of right wing governments who favour the already rich....don't you think?

 

It has been established time and time again that the English are not exploiting the Scots and with two out of the last three Prime Ministers being Scots they are getting their say at Westminster. With Scottish MPs deciding the fate of the English but English MPs having no say in Scotland. Deal with the facts not your anti English propaganda.

It's the SNP proposing cutting Corporation Tax and making the rich richer, it's the con man Salmond who wants to do that. He's no more a Socialist than Blair was. He'll just use Socialism to grab power and once he's got it work for his palls like Goodwin and Souter. That was the 79 Group manifesto all along.

 

Oddquine made a point of saying she was not blaming 'the English'. It is that Westminster Government which has always been the problem. The North of England has frequently suffered much the same as Scotland.

attending Fettes College now makes you Scottish does it, like I imagine attending Eton makes you English. He was I agree born in Scotland but he spent most of his childhood in Durham. Gordon Brown in is indeed a Unionist Scot. You have problems with Scottish people being able to become PM do you? Independence will suit you fine.

Like London MP's deciding the fate of the North of England. Do not forget the South Kensington Problem. In this you should be supporting the SNP as they never vote on England only issues.

Now have you found anywhere where the Union is of benefit to Scotland and the Scottish people yet?

 

But the MPs at Westminster go there from all over Britain.

Blair was born and educated in Scotland to an English family, Cameron was born and educated in England to a Scottish family, take your pick.

It's called democracy, that is how it works, in a close vote even the smallest minorities decide the fate of the entire country, that's how the SNP saddled us wit Thatcher.

Yes, several, which you keep ignoring and carrying on with your Monty Python imitation.

Here's another one, if Scotland becomes independent then BAE will pull out of Clydesdale leaving an awful lot of unemployed Scots behind them.

 

Yes, but it is the English Parliament made into the UK Parliament but nonetheless the English Parliament. It isn't just people in Scotland who complain about it and see it's focus on London. Go to the North of England - go down to Manchester and you will hear people talk of 'London' just like they do in Scotland.

Now at the Union Scotland wanted a federal union because they knew what would happen is what happened. Scotland was not treated as she would have been had there been a federal UK. Instead come the 80's where do we see the redundancies and people having to leave and go overseas? Where did she try out the 'poll tax'? That is right, Scotland. Although Northern England is stuck with Westminster as well, we chose devolution and we are a sovereign country in our own right. We will do much better free of the Union and not wasting money in invading this country and then the next and paying for the upkeep of WMD's. Scotland has done better with devolution and she will do even better once she is herself again.

Blair had English Grandparents on his father's side and on his Mum's a returned Orange Man. He spent only about his first three years of his life in Scotland apart from a brief time when the family returned from Australia. Then they moved to Durham. He attended a boarding school similar to Eton in Edinburgh but he lived in Durham.

All politicians seem to like to claim they are Scottish.

You know if I get some time I might go back and make some links to all the allegations you have made which have then been refuted. You never recognise your mistakes/ deliberate falsehoods, stay quiet for a day or two and come on with more. You haven't yet produced one advantage.

Personally I am getting a hankering after debt free banking or possibly on the lines of North Dakota banking. Once we get our Independence we will be able to do all kinds of things unthought of now to improve our lives.