TWO significant events took place over the last few days which could and should prove seminal in the delivery of independence.
The first was the Scottish Currency Group Conference which just showed that, if it were necessary, we have adults in the room well able to turn currency and regulation into positive reasons to chose independence over the Union and also how to deliver them quickly. Who would have believed such topics could inspire? They did!
The second was the request by George Boyne, the principal of Aberdeen University, to the Scottish Government to consider whether free tuition fees for tertiary education can be sustained. I understand that his comments follow similar ones from the principals of Edinburgh and Queen Margaret Universities.
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Your readers may recall that on the September 13 2024, writing in The National, I pointed out that the social contract between the Scottish Government and the Scottish people for our middle class to pay more tax in exchange for universal benefits was under threat from the removal of Winter Fuel Payment from most of our senior citizens.
The call to end universal free tuition fees is another attempt to undermine that social contract.
There is no doubt in my mind that the UK Government through its agents and fellow travellers has a strategy to dismantle the infrastructure of benefits which the Scottish Government has painstakingly constructed since 2007. In so doing it will heap the blame on the SNP.
Surely this is a line in the sand, whether we have benefitted directly from free tuition or believe it is an essential part of our commitment to the public good.
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If ever there was a time to prosecute and deliver independence it is now , as the very fabric of what we hold dear, free education, is being stripped from us. Only independence will save us from this incessant pounding of our values but the Scottish Government must demonstrate a sense of urgency in its resolve.
It is time for John Swinney to call on our universities and other institutions which depend on public funds to declare for independence as the only sustainable means to provide free education to all who wish to learn regardless of their wealth.
With those endorsements, civic Scotland will open the door to independence in 2026.
Graeme McCormick
Arden
IN recent speeches from Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer at the Labour Party conference, it was noticeable that neither mentioned the Acorn carbon capture project in Scotland.
The initial carbon capture project at Peterhead was strongly backed by Alex Salmond back in 2007. Shell did detailed work on it and were due to go ahead with it in 2017 when the UK Treasury pulled the plug on it after spending £100 million on it.
Once again, Scotland could have been well ahead with this technology, which has been revived as part of the “cluster project”, now called the Acorn project, based at the St Fergus terminal but still using the Goldeneye pipeline to take carbon from a wider range of sources in Scotland such as Peterhead, Mossmorran and supposedly Grangemouth out to aquifers in the North Sea. John Swinney visited in July and promised £2 million to the project.
If Scotland had been able to take its own decisions, we could have been world leaders in carbon capture by now. Norway of course has had such a scheme running out to the Sleipner Vest gas field since 1996.
Susan Grant
Tain
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