Letters / Kick in the pants
Douglas, in your letter (Fear Not; SN, 08/10/13) there are a lot of ‘we could do’s’ but not one ‘we can do’; you seem to have caught on to Salmond’s ‘buy one get one free’ empty promises.
You haven’t said how we will manage to pay for all your, “we could do’s”.
When you think about it and the sums are done, they show that interest on that £140bn inherited debt alone would almost wipe out a fairly generous expectation of annual income from oil revenues, leaving Scotland’s high welfare costs to be met from other means; i.e. higher taxes.
A report from the independent National Institute of Economic and Social Research stated that an independent Scotland would start life not with £140billion but with £150 billion of inherited national debt.
It calculated that the inclusion of future liabilities, as with pensions, would take that debt to £183 billion. This equates to 123% of Scotland’s GDP.
Funnily enough the EU guidance on the maximum percentage of debt to GDP is around 60%, thus giving the SNP’s desire to re-join the EU a bit of a kick in the pants.
The above debt figures do not include any estimate of the set up costs of an independent Scotland which would be considerable and which would have to be met by borrowing.
Neither you nor the YESNP have made any reference at all to the essential fragility of earnings from the oil and gas assets an independent Scotland would inherit.
Neither the UK nor an independent Scotland ‘owns’ these assets; they are leased under contract to the oil and gas companies.
Scotland accordingly would ‘own’, not the oil but only the right to impose tax on the profits from gas and oil production.
Alex Salmond is committed to lowering corporation tax to stimulate business development in an independent Scotland.
Ironically it is corporation tax that brings in the revenues from the oil and gas sector, when they are producing profit, which is erratic and governed by outside forces.
So an independent Scotland would at the very beginning be looking at earning less from the oil industry than the UK government does at present.
Then, a few weeks ago, Mr Salmond was forced to assure the oil and gas sector companies during a visit to Aberdeen, that an independent Scotland would ‘help’ them with decommissioning costs for the well past its sell by date North Sea infrastructure.
Infrastructure well past its sell by date that will need massive investment and tax breaks to complete the extraction of the estimated reserves remaining in the North Sea.
Salmond had no choice but to equal an unannounced agreement recently made with the industry by Westminster, to give relief on corporation tax as a contribution towards the costs of North Sea decommissioning.
The agreement Salmond made means that an independent Scotland would see much reduced revenue from oil and gas for a considerable time.
Set this serious reduction of potential earnings from oil against a debt burden much higher than we had assumed, against a much more reduced ability to pay than we had assumed.
In public the SNP tell us that an independent Scotland could have not one but two oil funds without the need for tax rises, spending cuts or extra borrowing to fund this.
Yet a confidential Scottish Government paper, which has been published, makes clear that in private SNP ministers are being advised by their own impartial civil servants that our taxes WOULD have to go up, public spending WOULD have to be cut or borrowing WOULD have to rise to pay for an oil fund.
In fact, it could mean a combination of all three. The lack of awareness of the financial realities amongst almost all members of the Yes brigade is of real concern; and the lack of any real interest in having such information is mind numbing.
A Progressive Scottish Opinion poll quoted in the press, showing 27 per cent supporting independence and 59 per cent supporting the Union, also showed that two thirds of the 18-24 age brackets intended to vote ‘No’.
This is borne out by a recent mock referendum conducted by students in Aberdeenshire schools who will be old enough to vote next year returning a 75.3 per cent No vote.
This proves that most 16 year old’s do have a better grasp of what a yes vote will mean to their future in an independent Scotland.
Another reminder that Douglas and the separatists will say and do just about anything to get your vote.
Last year, after claiming for months that they had legal advice to back up their EU claims, the SNP government was exposed; no such legal advice had ever been sought.
It has now been revealed that the legal bill to keep the truth from coming to light cost the Scottish taxpayer £20k.
If Alex Salmond was willing to mislead people about this important issue, what else is he willing to mislead us on?
Douglas, there is no wonder you want to distance yourself from Alex Salmond and the SNP, their empty promises and lies must be an unbearable embarrassment to you.
Finally, Douglas, you say Salmond has “never” told Cameron to butt out of the independence debate. Wrong again, and here is a link to prove it: www.heraldscotland.com/politics/political-news/salmond-butt-out-cameron.15551868
Gordon Harmer,
Brae
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