Letters / Fear not
I do not reply nor debate online with individuals for no other reason that I don’t the time. My commitment in assisting with the Yes campaign in Shetland precludes that.
What I am willing to do however is clarifying where ignorance of facts causes erroneous statements being made through these columns; for example when I wrote that there would be an inevitable (not automatic) linking to the Yes campaign should Alex Salmond be debating the referendum with the prime minister of the UK.
You need only listen to a No debater, or read postings on the Better Together page, to realize that they are unable to construct any positive reason to stay in the union without attacking both the SNP and Alex Salmond.
Most 16 year olds are perfectly able to distinguish between a referendum where no politicians are being voted for, and an election. The fact that many adults cannot is a worry for the entire voting process.
Mr Salmond has frequently requested the prime minister to desist from using huge numbers of civil servants’ time and energy, and therefore our tax monies, in preparing misinformation about the reasons to stay in the union.
Scare tactics such as “mobile phone charges will rise”, “passports will be needed”, “you may not get the pound sterling” are all patently untrue and now routinely laughed at in live debate. And rightly so, as this helps neither side getting the message across.
Mr Salmond has never requested Mr Cameron to “butt out” of debating the referendum, indeed he has written twice requesting the opposite.
I am coming round to the idea, even as a Yes campaigner, that this might prove more positive than negative, and I see the Guardian also putting pressure on the prime minister who said: “I will fight for the Union with every fibre in my body”.
The only person Alistair Darling, the Labour MP for Edinburgh SW, should be debating with as leader of the No campaign is his opposite number in the Yes camp, Blair Jenkins, who was in Shetland recently to launch Yes Shetland.
Mr Darling has problems with telling the truth when it comes to using numbers. He told a conference of oil and gas workers in Aberdeen that there were “two billion barrels of oil left”, when the self same people had just put the figure at 24 billion.
He has also repeatedly told national TV that the largest British bank bailout was a Scottish one, RBS, when in fact it was Barclays, Canary Wharf, in London, which between 2007-2010 received £541 billion.
Not from the Bank of England, which didn’t have the money but from the US Federal Reserve (See P131 of the GAO audit).
Since 1999, and including the 2013 fiscal year, Scotland has paid £42.5 billion more into Westminster than it received back, and this figure is arrived at by HM government’s own data.
This is why Mr Cameron stated at his party’s conference last week: “The rest of the UK would be socially and economically worse off without Scotland in it”.
We could re-nationalise the Scottish Post Office, we could take back energy from the cartel it is presently operated under, we could fund free education and NHS care, we could set up and pay for our own defence, based at Faslane when rid of Trident, we could and will bin the vile bedroom tax, we could continue to subsidise the air and sea journeys to and from these isles.
And do you know the best bit? We could do the lot and more without even taking into account the oil revenues nor raising taxes: pensions costed, welfare costed, education costed – you name it, we can and already do pay for it!
Nothing scares me about Scotland’s future after a Yes vote; my only worry is that some people might be scared into voting No by misinformation, lies and hidden truths.
I, and many others in Shetland and Scotland, are here to make sure that does not happen.
There is nothing more gratifying than knowing some people read your every word, every letter.
When I wrote a letter to Shetland News on 13 September and received a reply referring to me no less than 13 times, I realised that even those with opposing views are willing to read my points of view; and I can only thank your contributor.
Thanks are also due to this publication for publishing letters from both sides of the debate allowing people to make up their minds in the run-up to the 18 September 2014 referendum.
Douglas Young
Sumburgh
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