New SNP Leader

Big Enough, Smart Enough, Rich Enough.

Hardly, you have been conned by some back street sleezy shysters, your transport system has failed so badly you need emergency military assistance, your children are starving in the streets, you cannot educate your children and your NHS is collapsing.

Thick Enough, Gullible Enough, Unemployed Enough.

Might be more apt don't you think?

Ferries have featured heavily in the Scottish news diet over the last few months. Headlines have screamed about “Ferrygate” – the story of delays and cost overruns to two new dual-fuel vessels commissioned from Ferguson Marine, and other ferry-related issues. The ferries are indeed five years late and millions over budget and thats not good- however we need to look at this single project in context.

We don’t see the same screaming headlines about UK infrastructure projects such as London tube extension Crossrail – also five years late and £4 billion over budget – that was put down to Covid. There are many other examples – from Hinkley Point to a long list of military projects 36 defence projects worth £166 billion are all late and over budget some are even being scrapped. Who could suggest the £120 million spent on the Festival of Brexit or the hideously expensive UK Gov Track and Trace at £37bn was money well spent. HS2 tracking £12o billion cost versus an origin budget of less than half of that and it won’t even reach Scotland.

But clearly the most obvious comparison is the supposedly Brexit busting ferries ordered by the UK Government and then canceled costing £50 million – that’s right the UK Gov wasted £50 million on ferries that will never be built – thats context.

Yes, so what? The highlighted area does not do as you claim but your various responses demonstrate that you lack understanding of what all of this means.

GERS is a reliable indicator of the annual fiscal deficit that an Indy Scotland would inherit - but we could not even consider trying to run with that level of deficit going forward so we would have to address it. Theoretically there would be 3 possible ways that we could deal with this deficit ie.

1. Increase taxes

2. decrease public services

3. increase borrowing.

Given the scale of the UK debt that an Indy Scotland would be lumped with, we would be lucky to find someone to fund enough to allow us to service those debt repayments alone. Even if we did then we would only be able to do so at much higher borrowing rates than we are used to seeing as part of the UK, partly because the UK is a much safer bet than a newly Indy Scotland, and partly because interest rates have moved away from their historically low levels, so borrowing to sustain public services on top of that is pie in the sky thinking.

So, that leaves us with either cutting public services or increasing taxes. We are talking about swingeing cuts if we are going to save £23.4 billion per annum. Just to put this into perspective, £23.4 billion equates to our entire health, education, economic development, tourism and culture budget. Alternatively, we could try to raise another £23.4 billion through taxation etc but the effects of that on our people and our economy would be equally as devastating as the service cuts option. And either of these options, particularly at the scale we are  talking about here, would almost certainly trigger a number of follow-on waves of other issues that we would have to absorb too.

And don’t forget that this would not be a one-off blow but an ongoing situation for an Indy Scotland to deal with, year after year.

Not only that, but it would not be hitting us in isolation. That would be devastating enough, obviously, but on top of that there are all of the other issues that I have drawn your attention to that would be hitting us at the same time that would also have to be budgeted for and dealt with. 

So, of course, GERS does not tell us what the finances of an Indy Scotland would look like if only because an Indy Scotland could not afford to operate a GERS level of budget or anywhere close to one.

Apart from the first 3 words of your post, nothing in what you say is remotely relevant to GERS but just the usual deflection tactics that we routinely see from you.

As if that is not bad enough, the 3 words you said that actually are relevant to GERS are just nonsense. Of course GERS tells us what we would be inheriting. If Scotland is operating with a £23.4 billion notional fiscal deficit scenario the day before independence then an Indy Scotland will inherit a £23.4 billion actual fiscal deficit scenario on Independence Day itself, and all of the problems that would bring.

What truth? The truth of what I described we would be faced with if we go it alone, obviously.

You have really got to a desperate level if the best you can come up with is a series of childish “prove it” responses. 

It is like saying “prove it” to someone who tells you that you will badly injure or kill yourself if you jump off a cliff. They can’t prove it unless you actually do it, but it doesn’t make what they say anything less than the truth - and it doesn’t make them a fool for making a claim that they cannot prove because the outcome that they describe is so inevitable that it is the truth.

The same goes for jumping off the Indy cliff. The issues that I describe will arise, and the deep and long term financial damage resulting from them will be incurred, just as inevitably as personal injury or death will occur from jumping off an actual cliff. And just as the person who tells you what jumping off an actual cliff will result in is not a fool for warning you of the inevitable consequences, then I am not a fool for warning of the inevitable consequences of jumping off the Indy cliff. The only fool in both instances is the idiot who says “prove it”.

And as for your line about you seeing me on various forums, I have previously explained to you that the only other remotely politically orientated forum that I have been on other than this is the same forum that almost all of us on here transferred over from recently, yet it seems that you cannot accept that.  Why do you and your fellow Indy fanatics not accept what I tell you about who I am and what I believe?  Are you all so insecure in your beliefs and opinions that you need to paint everyone who challenges them as a pantomime villain. Are your beliefs so fragile that they will shatter otherwise?