I WAS so frustrated and angry after reading Monday’s National (Tory promises of Union of equals turned to dust, June 7).
At Holyrood there are one hundred and twenty odd MSPs who consider themselves intelligent and capable enough to run our country. The people of Scotland obviously thought the same about them because they voted them into power.
Given these two assumptions, why are these people not sufficiently intelligent to understand that, in instructing their Civil Service to disregard the UK consists of four nations and refer to it as one country, the Westminster Tories are not in a state of panic. It’s just the next step in their plan to do away with devolution and draw all control back to Westminster.
The Tories want to make Scotland part of “Greater England”. The plan is, and always has been, to destroy our industries and economy and thereby make us entirely reliant on England so that we will not be able to become independent.
I could go all the way back to the Treaty of Union and work forward from then. However, let’s just consider fairly recent history. We used to have the largest sheet metal rolling plant in Europe. But Maggie Thatcher closed it down and sold it to Taiwan. That was Ravenscraig. I believe most of that site, if not all of it, is still lying vacant.
When we built the Queensferry Crossing, there wasn’t a single Scottish Company able to tender for that contract. Further, we were not even able to supply the metal we would need for its construction because there is no longer a heavy metal producing plant in Scotland. We have an aluminium plant at Fort William but you can’t build a bridge like that out of aluminium. You need sheet steel, like the stuff we used to make at Ravenscraig.
Glasgow used to be a world centre for railway locomotives. Last year the only locomotive repair centre in Scotland was closed down. Now an independent Scotland will be reliant on England for repairs to any of our locomotive stock.
Then there’s Scottish oil which is becoming very profitable for everyone except Scotland.
Just take a look at the London Transport system. They have built hundreds, if not thousands, of miles of underground and overground rail systems. This has been funded almost entirely with the money they took from us for our oil. We’ve struggled to get only some 33 miles of overground rail in Scotland.
France, America, Norway and Belgium all get more from Scottish oil than Scotland does because Westminster has outsourced all the extraction, production and refining of our oil to them. They get the bulk of the profits and we get a pittance in tax. Even England gets 10 times as much tax as Scotland gets from its own oil.
Our former nationalised industries and utilities are all run by foreign countries.
Then there were the promises of the 2014 referendum and the vow. Where is the “equal partnership” at Westminster? What happened to the “stronger international voice”? How many frigates have been built on the Clyde and how many have been farmed out to foreign countries? All of that is seriously affecting what is left of our shipbuilding capabilities.
Then there’s Brexit that Scotland voted against but got lumbered with anyway. So far, Brexit has decimated our fishing industries. It has brought us the Internal Market Bill, which is eroding the powers of the devolved Scottish Government. We are faced with a “free trade agreement” with each of Australia, America and Canada, any one of which is likely to kill off our farming industries. That will also kill off the whisky industry. We need the farmers to grow the barley that makes the whisky. No farmers = no barley = no malt whisky.
The harsh immigration policy that’s reserved to Westminster and doesn’t take into account the needs of Scotland will kill off our soft fruits industry. I saw something on television last week about the farmers of Kent complaining they can’t get enough foreign workers. Well, England voted for Brexit so they sealed their own fate. But we voted against it and our fate is being regulated by Westminster and they don’t care two hoots. This same policy will prevent Scotland from having enough foreign workers to man our hospitality sector and our NHS. That will put an end to tourism in Scotland and open our NHS to a take-over by the American drug companies.
So, no! The Tories are not panicking. They are watching their plan slot nicely into place, and those we voted into power are too blind to see it. We need independence now. Not in 2023 – NOW!
Charlie Kerr
Glenrothes
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