Salmond and Unionist politicians both talk as though theirs is the risk free option that will eliminate uncertainty about the future for Scots. Risks and uncertainty can only be reduced by recognising we can’t know for certain what the outcome of any choice will be and making plans for various possible outcomes

The SNP leadership and unionist politicians both talk as though if we just adopt the option they favour, Scots will face no uncertainties about the future and no risks. Salmond and Osborne are both stubbornly sticking with their own plan, with no plans on what to do if it doesn’t lead to the results they expect.

After the financial crisis, the Iraq war and the floods, continuing with no plans for different possible outcomes and just sticking to old assumptions will not do fine.

Eliminating risk and uncertainty is impossible, but by having plans prepared for various possibilities we can reduce both.

Scotland and the pound – Or the Euro?
Or its own currency?
Or staying in the UK? Every option brings risks

It’s true that the UK government couldn’t stop an independent Scotland using the pound, but that’s only half the truth. An independent Scotland would inherit its share of the UK’s assets and liabilities. That means it would inherit a share of the UK’s national debt – i.e an independent Scotland would be in debt. True, it would be at most no higher a debt as a percentage of GDP than the UK has.

However the UK has its own currency. If an independent, indebted Scotland didn’t have its own currency it would risk being in the same position as Ireland and Greece were after the financial crisis – forced to beg other governments or the IMF to provide them with pounds.  We might face the same harsh terms imposed on Ireland and Greece. If it joined the Euro it might have exactly the same problem.

Scotland could issue its own currency, but if it issued its own currency immediately on independence it would increase the risk of being targeted by currency speculators. There are other options though.

First, keeping using the pound for a few years after independence, before issuing our own currency. We could issue our own currency once the recession caused by the financial crisis has ended, and after uncertainty among businesses and investors over how independence would affect them has become less intense.

Ireland kept using the British pound for many years after independence before issuing its own Irish pound.

Of course lacking our own currency for several years while in debt would restrict what the Scottish government could do until it issued its own currency.

Another option would be to issue our own currency (e.g Scottish Pound) pegged in value to equal to the British pound. We could ban international currency trading of it and large transfers of it outside the country for the first 5 years.

During the Asian financial crisis in the late 90s the IMF advised Asian countries to keep their currency markets open, continue deregulated markets etcetera. The result was disaster for most of them.

Malaysia managed to make the crisis much less bad for it by pegging its currency to the dollar, banning all international currency trading of it and imposing limits on the amount of currency Malaysians could take abroad to stop the run on its currency which was fuelled by speculators.

As with the US and European financial crises the cause was deregulation empowering fraud and speculation.

Some might ask, so why not stick with the pound and stay in the UK to avoid these risks? The pound is no guarantee for economic stability for Scotland or even England though. We had the pound and were in the union and suffered the banking crisis and the recession since it.

In the 1980s an economic boom in the city of London financial sector led the UK government to increase interest rates to double figures during a recession in Scotland and the North of England, whose economies were devastated as a result.

With a government led by a party which gets more than half its donations from banks and hedge funds, UK economic policy continues to be made for the benefit of the banks and hedge funds, not the whole country. So the status quo carries its own risks. Another crisis as bad as the banking crisis could happen at any time.

Independence would provide a chance of regulating Scotland’s financial sector properly, which would be an example UK governments would find it difficult to ignore.

A country’s size doesn’t make it safer from economic crises
Regulation and having its own currency do
So staying in theUK doesn’t guarantee our economic future

Unionists politicians often claim Scotland couldn’t have survived the financial crisis as an independent country, pointing to Iceland, Greece and Ireland as supposed evidence that small countries can’t make it.

This is confusing the causes of the crisis, which was nothing to do with the size of the countries and everything to do with deregulation and in Greece and Ireland’s cases with not having their own currencies.

Norway, which has a population of 5 million – similar to Ireland’s and less than Scotland’s – regulated its banks properly and has its own currency. As a result it didn’t suffer the financial crisis suffered by the UK with over 10 times its population or the US with over 40 times its population, nor did it suffer any recession as a result.

Safe and secure with small government, welfare cuts,
personal debt crises and deregulation?

Welfare cuts and public sector job cuts by successive UK governments of both parties have eroded the welfare state on the false assumption that the market, left to its own devices, will provide employment to all who want it.

The  Conservatives in the Coalition government have gone far further than Labour did with this, but most of the “reforms” being carried out under the Conservatives were already being planned under Brown and Blair, even if they might not have taken them to the same extremes.

As a result the number of people reliant on food banks has increased by a factor of 10 in the first 3 years of the Coalition government, many genuinely disabled people are denied enough money to survive. Is that certainty, security and lack of risk?

Neither unionist parties nor the SNP have put forward any plan to deal with the personal debt crisis facing millions of people in the Scotland and the UK, which could also lead to an economic crisis affecting even those who are not in debt as millions go bankrupt and default on their debts.

Neither have either side put forward any serious plan to reverse the growing inequality which, if it’s not changed, will make any economic growth irrelevant as only a tiny minority will benefit from it.

So the unionist claims that staying part of the UK automatically makes Scotland (or any of the rest of the UK’s population) safe and secure is ridiculous.

To even significantly reduce the risks and uncertainties most people live with we need several things. Proper regulation of the financial sector. An end to allowing banks and hedge funds to buy political influence through donations to political parties. Enforcement of anti-monopoly and oligopoly laws. A guaranteed comprehensive welfare state.

The floods in England again show how the minimal government neo-liberal theory backfires. Man-made climate change, cuts to the Environment Agency’s budget and relaxing of planning processes (especially on building on flood plains) led to disaster for thousands - and a government left impotent by its own small government agenda.

Acknowledging Uncertainty,
Planning for various possibilities

Yes and No campaigns, unionists and nationalists, alike, need to start acknowledging that they can’t be certain what the results of the choices they advocate would be - and providing a set of various plans to deal with each major possibility.

Politicians are frequently successful by telling people what they want to hear – and we all often convince ourselves that what we want to believe is the truth. But that often backfires with severe consequences for everyone. Better to face up to the facts, including the fact that there are many questions which we can’t be 100% certain of the answers to – and that it’s better to have planned various options to deal with various possible outcomes.

Salmond and Grampian police should be ashamed for aiding Trump’s illegal campaign against the people of the Menie Estate ; but it doesn’t show Scotland is too small to be independent – the same happens in the US and UK regularly

Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond, The Telegraph and Grampian police should be ashamed for allowing and aiding Trump’s use of illegal methods to try to force people out of their homes and farms on the Menie Estate in Scotland but the main cause of the problem isn’t Scotland being too small to stand up to big money, similar things happen in the UK and US all the time. The cause of the problem is allowing big banks, firms and billionaires to make political donations and allowing revolving doors between jobs with them and with government departments giving contracts to them and regulating them. (If you just want to know what you can do rather than read the rest, scroll down to the ‘what you can do’ bolded sub-heading)

I'd thought Donald Trump was the obvious contender for balloon self-inflated by his own arrogance. Maybe Neil Midgely, deputy editor of the Telegraph newspaper is a contender too. He has a review of the documentary ‘You’ve been Trumped,’ which is Anthony Baxter’s film showing Trump’s SNP government and Grampian police backed campaign to try to force out people out of homes and farms they’ve lived on all their lives, by illegal methods including letting Trump’s employees cut off their water and electricity supplies, build earth berms round their houses and many other intrusions on to and damages to their property (1).

Midgely writes " But the …documentary…was so biased in favour of the protesters that it was hard not to end up rooting for Trump and his monolithic capitalist plans. There were endless sympathetic chats with the locals who wouldn’t sell their eyesore properties to Trump….When Trump’s men infuriated the locals – by apparently cutting off their water supply, or building mounds of earth outside their windows – the film’s implicit suggestion was that it was all done out of spite. And if spite was the motive, it was spite so bracing as to be a rare and precious thing. It was also cheering to see the busybody film-maker, Anthony Baxter, at one point carted off by the local constabulary. " (2).

First off Neil, they’re not “protesters”. The word you’re looking for is “residents” – people who’ve lived (and in some cases farmed) there for all their lives. They had considerable sympathy and support from many people and there were a few protests in favour of them, which get brief coverage in the documentary – but most of it is interviews with the residents, with police, with Trumps’ spokespeople (who unsurprisingly didn’t have much to say other than threats of getting the documentary makers arrested and charged), clips of Trump making his own case and film of what Trump’s employees and the police were doing, along with interviews with legal experts and experts on the likely impact on jobs from the development (which found, in opposition to Trump’s claims that local people would get a lot of jobs on it, most of the jobs would be likely to go to Polish and other EU migrant workers).

I thought that Conservatives were all for property rights, Neil ;  Seems not in your case. Seems you're quite happy for billionaires who've bought political influence to come in and take peoples' property and try to force them out of their homes to make way for another frigging golf course (because of course there's a massive shortage of them in Scotland - e.g St Andrews for instance has none, obviously), so long as they're oiks and not your golfing buddies.

I thought Conservatives were for upholding the law. Seems not in Neil’s case. He’s fine with money trumping the law; fine with Trump's money, or the promise of some jobs, getting police to let him illegally cut off peoples’ water and electricity supplies and steal parts of their land from them and even build earth berms round their houses.

I thought Conservatives were meant to be for civil liberties. In Mr Midgely’s case, seems not. He enjoys seeing people arrested on trumped up charges of 'breach of the peace' and handcuffed for merely interviewing the people involved.

I very much hope that you are a victim of similar injustices in future Neil – that your property is stolen by developers, that your electricity and water are cut off to try to force you out of your home – and that the police and government similarly either aid the developers or look the other way as your property  and rights and civil liberties are ridden roughshod over by big money. Then you might understand what you got wrong here.

On top of that Trump was determined he should get to build not just on 90% of the site he wanted, but that it had to include destroying an SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest) containing rare species too. We don’t exactly have a shortage of golf courses in Scotland. St Andrews alone has more than you could count and there are huge numbers of others all over the country. If we lost a golf course we could replace it. If we lose rare species to extinction there is no getting them back though. They are gone forever.

The smartest political calculations can go wrong when they leave out right and wrong

SNP First Minister Alec Salmond decided to over-rule the elected local council’s planning committee – and it’s SNP chairman in 2009 – to give Trump exactly the planning permission he wanted. His government must have either looked the other way or else seen to it that the then SNP headed Aberdeenshire local council got the police to do a mixture of looking the other way as Trump’s employees broke the law on other peoples’ property, guarding the law breakers as they did so; and harassing and arresting the documentary makers (including by arresting them and putting them in a cell for four hours by mis-using the catch-all ‘breach of the peace’ charge).

Salmond calculated that he would gain more votes by the jobs created and sports coverage of the new golf course than he would lose by allowing an arrogant billionaire to over-rule the local council, destroy habitat for rare species and force people out of their homes. Even the most charismatic and intelligent politician can get his sums wrong where he doesn't factor in right and wrong though. In a case of poetic justice he’s suffered negative media coverage (largely due to Anthony Baxter’s work) combined with a feud with Trump over plans for offshore wind turbines off the coast of his golf course development. The recession created by the financial crisis has also reduced investment and demand for Trump’s development, which might fail yet.

Next time Salmond is engaging his brain purely as a vote calculating machine he should remember this and take right and wrong into account too.

Why it’s not caused by Scotland being a small country – and not an argument against independence

However those arguing that this shameful episode is due to Scotland being too small to resist big money’s influence and using it as an argument against independence have it wrong too.

The British and US governments cave in to big firms, banks and billionaires constantly. Just look at the NHS contracts going to Circle Healthcare whose shareholders lobbied for privatisation and donate to the Conservative party ; or US military aid of over $1bn a year to Egypt, openly given to subsidise US arms firms that make political donations to Presidential and congressional campaigns, particularly Lockheed Martin (3) – (9).

That’s not to mention all the white-washing of the pollution of water and air by fracking and on land oil drilling in the US due to the big oil and gas companies buying up political influence and even funding biased scientific studies (thankfully countered by neutral ones).

So the problem isn’t the size of the country, but big money buying influence through private donations to election campaigns and political parties; revolving door syndrome allowing people to go between jobs in those firms and the government departments giving contracts to and regulating them ; and governments’  choosing jobs from multinationals, which may go overseas as quickly as they arrived, over backing smaller businesses based in their own country. (the last problem being the relevant one with Trump and the SNP – though it’s possible Salmond also hoped to get donations for his party, though I’ve found no evidence he got any) (10) – (11).

The solution is to make it a criminal offence to give or receive private political donations,   or to go from a job in a government department to a company given contracts or regulated by it, or vice-versa, for 5 or 10 years; and provide limited, equal, public funding to all candidates in elections.

What you can do

Sign the petition against Trump’s illegal campaign to drive people out of their homes .

Join and/or donate to the Tripping Up Trump campaign group against forced compulsory purchase orders being issued purely for the benefit of big developers.

 

 

Sources

(1) = Independent blogs 18 Oct 2012 ‘You’ve Been Trumped! Director Anthony Baxter speaks about his new documentary’, http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/10/18/you%E2%80%99ve-been-trumped-director-anthony-baxter-speaks-about-his-new-documentary/

(2) = Telegraph 21 Oct 2012 ‘You've Been Trumped, BBC Two, review’,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9621334/Youve-Been-Trumped-BBC-Two-review.html

(3) = Herald letters 23 Oct 2012 ‘Trump documentary highlights the vulnerability of smaller economies’ http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/letters/trump-documentary-highlights-the-vulnerability-of-smaller-economies.19214235

(4) = Conservative Home website ‘Big cash donors to the Conservative party, by ‘donor group’ January 2001 to June 2010’, https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?authkey=CM2egqgB&key=0AtAQVk3Qj4FYdEJKVTg3aTZteV9pcnFZbXBvN3lRcUE&hl=en&authkey=CM2egqgB#gid=0

(5) = Observer 05 Jun 2011 ‘Questions grow over private care firm Circle Health ahead of flotation’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jun/05/questions-grow-over-circle-health

(6) = guardian.co.uk 05 Nov 2011 ‘Private firm to run NHS hospital’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/nov/10/private-firm-run-nhs-hospital

(7) = NYT 23 Mar 2012 ‘Once Imperiled, U.S. Aid to Egypt Is Restored’,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/24/world/middleeast/once-imperiled-united-states-aid-to-egypt-is-restored.html?_r=0 ; ‘An intense debate within the Obama administration over resuming military assistance to Egypt, which in the end was approved Friday by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, turned in part on a question that had nothing to do with democratic progress in Egypt but rather with American jobs at home…. The companies involved include Lockheed Martin, which is scheduled to ship the first of a batch of 20 new F-16 fighter jets next month’

(8) = Center for Responsive Politics – Organisation Profiles – Lockheed Martin,
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000104 (shows Lockheed Martin executives and PAC committees donated over $2 million to candidates in the 2012 election cycle including Obama and Romney and members of congressional committees on defense spending)

(9) Center for Responsive Politics - Lockheed Martin: All Recipients ; Among Federal Candidates, 2008 Cycle, http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recips.php?id=D000000104&type=P&state=&sort=A&cycle=2008 (shows similar donations including to Obama and McCain’s campaigns in 2008)

(10) = Guardian 15 Oct 2012 ‘MoD staff and thousands of military officers join arms firms’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/oct/15/mod-military-arms-firms

(11) = Guardian 22 Oct 2012 ‘Blurred boundaries between public service and private interest’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/healthcare-network/2012/oct/22/public-service-private-blurred-boundaries ; ‘the resignation from the NHS Commissioning Board of Jim Easton to become managing director of the private provider Care UK…Previous senior officials in the Department of Health transferring their wallets to the private sector include Matthew Swindells, chief information officer at the DH who joined KPMG, along with Mark Britnell and Gary Belfield, who had run the DH commissioning programme; Simon Stevens, Tony Blair's senior health advisor from 1997-2004 became a vice-president for United Health; and Penny Dash, formerly DH director of strategy, left for McKinsey.

The price of NATO membership for an independent Scotland would be being involved in unwinnable wars like Afghanistan ; and continuing to pay for Trident nuclear weapons and upgrades which we wouldn't need any more than Norway does ‏‏

First Minister Alex Salmond, writing in the Sunday Herald (‘Why we can ban nuclear weapons and stay in Nato’ Sunday Herald 14^th October) gives welcome assurances that an independent Scotland in NATO wouldn’t take military action without UN authorisation and a Scottish parliament vote, mentioning Iraq (1). He doesn’t mention NATO’s UN backed war in Afghanistan though. NATO membership could draw an independent Scotland into similar unwinnable wars, fought for dubious motives and with dubious methods, in future.

Nor does he explain how we could persuade the UK government, let alone the US, the most influential member of NATO, to allow us full membership while costing the UK a fortune to move it’s submarine bases, especially when Trident contracts are going to English and US based firms with (excessively) close links to the British and American governments.

Even UK Ministry of Defence base maintenance and submarine refit contract work on Trident submarines has gone to a British subsidiary of the US Defence firm Lockheed Martin, the English based company Babcock and AWE plc (based in Reading, England and two-thirds owned by US based Lockheed Martin and Jacobs Engineering, with the rest owned by the UK government and English based firm Serco (2) – (3).  The first £350 million of Trident upgrade contracts went to Lockheed Martin, English based Rolls-Royce and English based firm BAE, which also has a large arm in the US (4).  BAE is expected to get most of the rest of the upgrade contracts too (5).

The Campaign Against the Arms Trade in the UK has also shown dozens of instances of the revolving door between these arms manufacturers and the MoD, the British government and senior positions in the British military (6).

According to the MoD building another base suitable for the UK’s nuclear submarine fleet in England, Wales or Northern Ireland could take up to a decade (7).

So why would the remaining UK government support NATO membership for an Independent Scotland except on the condition that we allowed it to keep its nuclear submarine fleet and it’s only base capable of repairing, maintaining and refitting that fleet in Scotland?

A nuclear free independent Scotland might even result in the UK dropping it’s Trident upgrade altogether and going for a joint nuclear deterrent, or at the least temporary base sharing, with France, preliminary negotiations on which took place both under the last Labour government and under the current Conservative-Lib Dem Coalition (though the French government seems keener than the British) (8) – (9).

That would mean the UK’s military co-operation with France would become closer, reducing US influence with the UK. US firms would be likely to lose out even if this didn’t happen. Either way the US government would not be happy.

So a nuclear free Independent Scotland and NATO membership are simply not compatible with each other. We need to choose one or the other ; and if we want to avoid paying for maintenance , running costs and upgrades of the UK nuclear deterrent, we need to choose being nuclear weapons free.

Why NATO or Partnership for Peace membership could draw an Independent Scotland into more wars like Afghanistan
– and why the war is as ineffective in achieving it’s stated aims as it is morally dubious and unwinnable

Nor does the First Minister offer any guarantee of a referendum on any decision to go to war that would give the Scottish people the final decision on an issue of many lives and deaths ; nor any guarantee that backbenchers or the opposition in an independent Scottish parliament could  initiate a vote (or a vote to have a referendum) on withdrawing our troops from a war they had previously voted to approve sending troops to.

The Afghanistan war has pulled in the UK as a NATO member; and even those members of NATO (e.g Canada and Poland and even Norway which sent special forces to the initial US led invasion and then over 500 troops to the ISAF force which are only now leaving) and its joint-training associated arm Partnership for Peace (e.g Ukraine), ended up sending significant numbers of troops either to the initial invasion or as part of the UN approved but NATO (and effectively US) led ISAF force, or both.

Hundreds of British troops, including Scots, have been killed in the war, which has lasted over 11 years and counting, twice as long as World War One, coming up twice as long as World War Two; and over half way to being as long as the Vietnam war (10).

It has also involved not only the notorious killings and suicide bombing attacks on civilians by the Taliban, but also torture of Afghans by US, NATO and Afghan government forces, including civilians with no involvement in terrorism, sometimes to death; and many thousands of civilians killed by air strikes under Bush, as well as by air strikes and night raids (often targeting teenagers who turn out to be innocent) under Obama. Civilian deaths from US air strikes actually increased under Obama compared to under Bush and torture has continued at secret ‘black sites’ in Afghanistan under Obama (11) – (19).  

US intelligence estimate 90% of Afghan insurgents are neither Taliban nor motivated by religion, but by opposing foreign military presence, or revenge for the injury or deaths of members of their family, village or tribe by NATO forces (20). So this is not primarily a war against the Taliban at all, but one which turns the majority of Afghans against NATO countries and the Afghan government.

NATO says Pakistan’s military intelligence continue aiding the Afghan Taliban , despite now being at war with the Pakistani Taliban (21). Yet the US continues to provide financial aid to Pakistan, some of which will be passed on to the Taliban, because the shortest supply route for NATO forces in Afghanistan is through Pakistan (22) – (24). So NATO has to indirectly fund the Taliban in order to supply it’s troops in Afghanistan – a hopeless situation.

Wars are not effective against Al Qa’ida, a global terrorist organisation which can operate in any country in the world, the 9-11 hijackers having trained in the US and Germany (25) – (27). Intelligence, policing and Special Forces can be.

There are also ulterior motives for the war. The main ulterior motive was to try and get a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan pipeline to export oil and gas from former Soviet republics like Kazakhstan (which has vast oil and gas reserves and where BP, Exxon, Halliburton have had contracts since the 1990s) , Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (both have significant proven gas reserves). The advantage of this pipeline route would be that it would avoid passing through countries where Russia has significant influence and might be able to cut off exports at will (e.g Georgia – which is on the route of the western oil company AIOC group’s Baku-Ceyhan pipeline route – especially after the Russian-Georgian War in which Russia allowed a secessionist movement to succeed) and Iran. The pipeline route was the reason the US gave political backing to the Taliban at first and quietly approved the Saudis and Pakistanis funding, training and arming them. They couldn't get a deal between UNOCAL and the Taliban at a transit price per barrel that oil firms were willing to pay. (28) – (32)

After the invasionin 2002 the Presidents of Turkmenistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan signed a deal on the pipeline route and in 2010 a deal was made planning to extend it to India (33) – (34)

Salmond’s smooth moves to convince Scottish voters that Independence wouldn’t be a big change ignore the  high costs and risk of much of the Status Quo, including NATO membership

Would backbenchers in the Scottish parliament have the power to initiate a vote on withdrawing troops from wars parliament had previously approved by majority vote? Shouldn’t a referendum also be required before going to war to give everyone a say in a matter of life or death for thousands.

Alec Salmond is certainly making smooth moves by trying to make voters see independence as less of a big risk, by reassuring them that lots of things will remain unchanged – NATO membership, EU membership, our currency, the Queen as head of state, an open border with England etc.

However the status quo carries its own risks. In the case of continued NATO membership the risks are not only that we might be required to keep nuclear weapons on Scottish territory and continue to pay a proportion of the costs of running, maintaining, refitting and upgrading them as a condition of continued membership (despite the fact an independent Scotland would have no more need for a nuclear deterrent than Norway does), but also that we could be drawn by the alliance into more long, bloody, unwinnable wars fought mostly for the benefit of US and British oil and arms companies.

Sign the No to NATO Scotland statement and follow the campaign

You can sign an online statement opposing NATO membership for an independent Scotland on the No to NATO Scotland Coalition website on this link (scroll down the page till you see an orange button with 'Sign the Statement' on it on the right - click it, fill in details and enter them). There's also news and information, including on protests by the campaign that you can take part in, on the website.

Sources

 (1) = Sunday Herald 14^th October 2012 ‘Why we can ban nuclear weapons and stay in Nato’,
http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/referendum-news/why-we-can-ban-nuclear-weapons-and-stay-in-nato.19134185

(2) = Ministry of Defence 27 Jul 2012 ‘MOD signs Trident support contract’,
http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/DefencePolicyAndBusiness/ModSignsTridentSupportContract.htm

(3) = guardian.co.uk Trident 30 Jul 2012 ‘bases to be run by private companies’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jul/30/trident-bases-run-private-companies

(4) = BBC News 22 May 2012 ‘Trident contracts worth £350m unveiled by MoD’,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18155835

(5) = CAAT Revolving Door Log, http://www.caat.org.uk/issues/influence/revolving-door.php

(6) = Independent 22 May 2012 ‘Government awards contracts worth £350m for new Trident submarines’, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/government-awards-contracts-worth-350m-for-new-trident-submarines-7778161.html

(7) = Telegraph 26 Jan 2012 ‘Nuclear subs will stay in Scotland, Royal Navy chiefs decide’,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/9043092/Nuclear-subs-will-stay-in-Scotland-Royal-Navy-chiefs-decide.html

(8) = guardian.co.uk 19 Mar 2010 ‘France offers to join forces with UK's nuclear submarine fleet’ , http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/19/france-britain-shared-nuclear-deterrent

(9) = Independent 30 Sep 2010 ‘Britain and France may share nuclear deterrent’,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/britain-and-france-may-share-nuclear-deterrent-2093539.html

(10) = BBC News 24 Sep 2012 ‘UK military deaths in Afghanistan’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10629358 , (433 as of 24^th September, around 24 Scottish)

(11) Human Rights Watch World Report 2006 ‘Torture and Inhumane Treatment: A Deliberate U.S. Policy’, http://www.hrw.org/legacy/wr2k6/introduction/2.htm#_Toc121910421 ; ‘the abuse at Abu Ghraib paralleled similar if not worse abuse in Afghanistan, Guantánamo, elsewhere in Iraq, and in the chain of secret detention facilities where the U.S. government holds its “high value” detainees’

(12) = Human Rights Watch 20 May 2005 - ‘Afghanistan: Killing and Torture by U.S. Predate Abu Ghraib ' - http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/05/20/afghan10992.htm

(13) = NYT 20 May 2005 ‘In U.S. Report, Brutal Details of 2 Afghan Inmates' Deaths’,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international/asia/20abuse.html?ei=5088&en=4579c146cb14cfd6&ex=1274241600&pagewanted=all

(14) =  Wikipedia Civilian casualties in the War in Afghanistan (2001–present) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_in_the_War_in_Afghanistan_%282001%E2%80%93present%29#Aggregation_of_estimates (This provides estimates of civilian casualties caused by the various forces involved by various sources including Professor Marc Herold of the University of New Hampshire , the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan  (UNAMA) , Human Rights Watch and The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission – whichever estimates you take, thousands have been killed by NATO forces before counting the thousands also killed by Taliban and other insurgents. The reports by the sources are also listed and linked to)

(15) = according to The Afghanistan Conflict Monitor of Simon Fraser University in Australia in 2011: “Estimates of the number of civilians killed vary widely and must be treated with caution. Systematic collection of civilian fatality data only began in 2007. The United Nations is creating a civilian casualty database, but is not publicly accessible. Periodic updates can be found in Reports of the Secretary-General on peace and security in Afghanistan. The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) is also collecting data, but the efforts of both agencies are hampered by insecurity and a lack of resources. As a result, figures released by these agencies likely represent a substantial undercount.”

(16) = See this blog post , scrolling down to sub-headings ‘‘Civilian and military deaths caused by both sides in the war – is it necessary or worth it?’ and ‘Night Raids and the El Salvador Option moving from Iraq to Afghanistan’ – as well as the sources listed for each section under the same headings further down the post (they include Human Rights Watch and Afghan Independent Human Rights Watch reports as well as BBC and Times newspaper reports among others ) http://inplaceoffear.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/one-more-push-for-what-in-afghanistan.html

(17) = See this blog post ‘Have NATO airstrikes killed fewer civilians in Afghanistan under Obama? And have they fallen under McChrystal?’ which is fully sourced with mainstream sources ; http://inplaceoffear.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/have-nato-airstrikes-killed-less.html

(18) = For more details and sources on torture by US forces in Afghanistan under Bush see the page on this link  ; for torture under both Bush and Obama in Afghanistan see the blog post on this link, scrolling down to the bolded sub-heading ‘Guantanamo to Bagram : extra-ordinary rendition  (kidnapping) and torture’

(19) = Jennifer K Harbury (2005) ‘Truth, Torture and the American Way’, Beacon Press, Boston, 2005 ; Harbury, whose Guatemalan husband Everardo was tortured and then disappeared during CIA led operations by the Guatemalan military, provides masses of evidence that torture by US intelligence and military forces has always happened, even when it was illegal under US law, casting doubt on whether Obama’s formal ban on most forms of torture (except psychological torture and sleep deprivation) will be enough to end it

(20) = Boston Globe 09 Oct 2009 ‘Taliban not main Afghan enemy’, http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2009/10/09/most_insurgents_in_afghanistan_not_religiously_motivated_military_reports_say/?page=1

(21) = BBC News 01 Feb 2012 ‘Pakistan helping Afghan Taliban - Nato’,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16821218 , ‘The Taliban in Afghanistan are being directly assisted by Pakistani security services, according to a secret Nato report seen by the BBC… the report… exposes…the relationship between the ISI and the Taliban…. based on material from 27,000 interrogations with more than 4,000 captured Taliban, al-Qaeda and other foreign fighters and civilians.’

(22) = Reuters 22 May 2012 ‘U.S. senators vote to tie Pakistan aid to supply routes’,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/23/us-pakistan-usa-aid-idUSBRE84M03Y20120523

(23) = CNN 04 Jul 2012 ‘Pakistan reopens NATO supply routes to Afghanistan’,
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/07/03/world/asia/us-pakistan-border-routes/index.html ,
‘Meanwhile, the U.S. military will now pay Pakistan $1.1 billion it owes as part of the deal struck to reopen the NATO supply lines …The money is part of a U.S. military program …which reimburses the Pakistani military for counterterrorism efforts.’

(24) = BBC 03 Jul 2012 ‘Pakistan to reopen supply lines to Nato Afghan forces’,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18691691 , ‘US officials say the existing charge of $250 (£160) per truck will not change - Washington had baulked at a Pakistani demand for $5,000 per container to let supplies flow again.’

(25) = Minneapolis Star Tribune 20 Dec 2001 ‘Eagan Flight Trainer Wouldn't Let Unease About Moussaoui Rest’, http://www.startribune.com/templates/Print_This_Story?sid=11642646

(26) = USA Today 28 May 2002 ‘Letter shifts heat to FBI’,
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/05/28/letter-fbi.htm

(27) = NYT 24 Feb 2004 ‘C.I.A. Was Given Data on Hijacker Long Before 9/11’, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/politics/24TERR.html?ex=1225252800&en=ce51b8f44bd6a30c&ei=5070

(28) =  Also see this page on my website and sources in it

(29) = Rashid , Ahmed(2001) Taliban Tauris, London , paperback, 2001 – p167, 173

(30) = Guardian 24 Oct 2001, ‘Route to riches’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,579401,00.html (Afghanistan has huge strategic importance for the west as a corridor to the untapped fuel reserves in central Asia, reports Andy Rowell)

(31) = U.S. INTEREST IN CENTRAL ASIA:JOHN J. MARESCA , TESTIMONY BY JOHN J. MARESCA VICE PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS UNOCAL CORPORATION TO HOUSE COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE ON ASIA AND THE PACIFIC , FEBRUARY 12, 1998 WASHINGTON, D.C., http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa48119.000/hfa48119_0f.htm

(32) = Coll, Steve (2004) 'Ghost Wars : The secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden' , Penguin paperback, London, 2004, pages 308, 313

(33) = BBC News 27 Dec 2002 , ‘Central Asia pipeline deal signed’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/2608713.stm

(34) = BBC News 11 Dec 2010 ‘Turkmen natural gas pipeline Tapi to cross Afghanistan’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11977744

Independence for Scotland will be pointless if we destroy our country with incinerators, fracking, deregulation and government acting in the interests of billionaires and big firms who only want short term profits at everyone else's expense

Unfortunately I didn't get enough votes to be elected ( I got 246 first preference votes and 353 votes - about 6% of those cast , including 2nd and 3rd and 4th preferences before I was eliminated). Not bad on 3 weeks campaigning and a budget of £600. (I was standing as a candidate to be a councillor in the Clydesdale West ward of South Lanarkshire Council).

I'd like to thank everyone who voted for me and campaigned for me and everyone who took the time to talk to me while I was canvassing. I will pass on all the issues you raised to the four candidates who were elected Councillors for the ward - Eileen Logan (Labour) , Lynsey Hamilton (Labour), David Shearer (SNP) and Pat Lee (SNP).

I want to thank retiring SNP Councillor Ian Gray for leading opposition to the incinerator on the planning committee and all the other councillors who voted against it, plus the AGADI organisers and volunteers and objectors and the Lanarkshire Green Party who also continue to campaign hard against it.

Though I was against Conservative councillor Alex Allison's vote in favour of the incinerator and have little time for his party or it's policies, residents in Crossford told me he worked hard for them on other issues, before losing his seat in this ward in the recent election.

I'd also like to congratulate Independent candidate Ed Archer, who was elected a councillor in neighbouring Clydesdale North ward, centred on Lanark; and who is also opposed to the incinerator and to the wind farm at Cartland.

I will be among many people launching campaigns to demand to know why the SNP Scottish Government, led by Alec Salmond, are not using the huge powers they have over council decisions, through control of around 80% of councils' budgets, to get Dovesdale and other wasteful, expensive, toxic, incinerators closed down and replaced with recycling and anaerobic digestion plants - and ditto on stopping fracking and on opening old railway stations (including in Law, where many residents asked for this).

The Scottish Government have demanded a Council Tax freeze from local councils in return for granting them funding (unwisely in my view) and could use the same kind of pressure to get Dovesdale and other Incinerators closed.

They have stepped in to over-rule local council planning decisions on Donald Trump's white elephant golf course (built over an SSSI full of endangered species and also including attempts to force people out of their homes by bully-boy tactics).

Residents in Kilncadzow tell me the Scottish Government also granted appeals to allow wind farms to be built at Kilncadzow and Cartland within 500 metres of peoples' houses, after the local council for once listened to residents and refused planning applications in each case. (Like the residents i'm in favour of turbines sited correctly - but not that close to houses.)

So Salmond and the SNP Scottish Government will intervene to help billionaires and big firms do things that are wrong and harmful, but not to cut funding to South Lanarkshire Council until it closes a toxic, over-priced incinerator? If so what's the difference between them and the other big party leaders?

I love my country and it's people. Alec Salmond and the other big party leaders say they love them too (whether they define them as Scotland or Britain). If you love your country and it's people why would you expose them to over-priced, deadly, wasteful incinerators ; to fracking which will poison our fresh water supplies (an increasingly valuable commodity worldwide with shortages growing in much of the worldwide) and our air and people ; and why would you over-rule local residents and councillors to let arrogant, incompetent billionaires like Trump get their way?

If you really love your country Alec, prove it. Close down the incinerators. Stop the fracking. Open the old railway stations. Regulate the banks. Listen to the people, not to big firms and billionaires who only want short term profit for themselves.

I'll also campaign for independence for Scotland when the referendum comes - i'm all for it to keep us out of Iraq, Afghanistan and maybe more Falklands and Iran wars and financial crises caused by deregulation in which ordinary people die or suffer for the profits of arms and oil firms and banks, and the careers of politicians; plus getting rid of tax havens that impoverish the majority to avoid the wealthiest and big firms paying their share.

But independence will change nothing if we become an independent Scotland destroyed for it's people, because it's run for big business and billionaires' short term profits at the expense of suffering for the vast majority. That would be no better than being part of a UK which is being destroyed in the same way.

Independents, Greens and socialists may not have been able to beat the big parties yet, but by god, if you big party leaders are in office and keep behaving like you are now we'll point up your hypocrisy constantly enough in one campaign after another (at elections and between them) that you'll have to change to more decent policies or else risk losing to one of the other big parties- and then do the same to whichever big party is in next until we get decent policies from them or else win ourselves and bring decent policies in ourselves.

I'll leave the last word to Dougie Maclean.

A non-binding consultative referendum on independence or increased devolution for Scotland would still have democratic legitimacy

David Cameron and the UK government can certainly refuse to make the results of any referendum including increased devolution legally binding under UK law, but they can’t prevent the Scottish government holding a consultative, non-binding, referendum. It would be impossible to deny the democratic legitimacy of the result.

 The only questionable part of the SNP’s plan is allowing 16 and 17 year olds to participate. This would give the Unionist parties an open goal to say the results of the referendum weren’t valid, since 16 and 17 year olds can’t vote in UK General elections.

Labour and the Lib Dems have joined with the Conservatives in insisting any referendum must be a straight choice between the status quo or independence, yet both parties supported devolution in the 1997 referendum. How can they argue that Scottish voters be entitled to choose to devolve some domestic powers, but not others, especially when polls show 67% want more powers devolved to the Scottish government including full powers to decide how taxes raised in Scotland are spent? (1) – (2)

Devolving more powers could reduce the amount of taxpayers’ money that Westminster parties could hand to billionaire and corporate patrons. If Scottish governments gained the powers to issue bonds, borrow money, or spend a higher share of taxes raised in Scotland, PFI gravy trains here might end.

If Scots are refused the increased devolution option, more will vote for independence. This would lose the UK revenues from oil and gas off Aberdeen and Shetland. UK governments fiddle the figures to pretend an independent Scotland would be bankrupt, by assuming oil revenues would be split proportionally to population. In fact under international law they would be split by proximity, giving Scotland far more than it’s 10% of the UK population.

An independent Scotland would be a small neutral country on the North-Western edge of Europe, so would not need a nuclear deterrent any more than Norway or Sweden, and would avoid the costs in money and lives of involvement in US-led wars. These costs would then be paid solely by the rest of the UK. So Scotland would be better off and the UK (unless it gets a much better government with better policies) much worse off.

We might even avoid future financial crises. Both Norway and Sweden avoided any crisis or recession and both of their economies are still growing, as they never de-regulated their financial sector to the degree that the Conservatives (from Thatcher’s 1986 ‘Big Bang’ on) or Labour governments in the UK have.

Is Cameron trying to provoke Scots into independence in the hope the Coalition will have a permanent majority if 50 Scottish Labour MPs are gone?

If so this is unlikely to work.

Labour’s last three majorities exceeded the number of Labour MPs elected in Scotland (3) – (8). Three quarters of Lib Dem voters surveyed at the time of the last election and again recently no longer support the party (9). Cameron should realise that independence will hurt his party far more than increased devolution would.

 (1) = The Politics Wire / British Future 10 Jan 2012 ‘Support for devolution across Britain is growing as ‘national’ identity outweighs feelings of ‘Britishness’ ’, http://www.ipsos-mori.com/newsevents/blogs/thepoliticswire/985/Support-for-devolution-across-Britain-is-growing-as-national-identity-outweighs-feelings-of-Britishness.aspx , ‘During this period, support for independence in Scotland has grown. This is illustrated in recent Ipsos MORI polls and is reinforced by our latest survey for British Future, which shows around a third of Scots now backing a breakaway from the UK….At the moment, however, a majority of Scots prefer to remain part of the UK, albeit favouring substantial new powers for the Scottish Parliament. Ipsos MORI polling in Scotland shows that over two-thirds would vote in favour of giving Holyrood further legislative and tax-raising powers.’

(2) = STV News 21 Dec 2011 ‘Most Scots back complete revenue raising powers for Holyrood’,http://news.stv.tv/politics/291223-most-scots-back-complete-revenue-raising-powers-for-holyrood/

(3) = BBC News Last updated Sep 2005 ‘Blair win historic third term – majority of 66’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/constituencies/default.stm

(4) = BBC News 23 May 2005 ‘Election 2005 – results: Scotland’,http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/vote2005/html/region_7.stm (shows 41 Labour MPs elected in Scotland)

(5) = BBC News ‘Vote2001: Results & Constituencies’http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/vote2001/results_constituencies/default.stm ; Labour majority 167

(6) = BBC News ‘Vote 2001 : Results & Constituencies UK Breakdown – Scotland’ http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/vote2001/results_constituencies/uk_breakdown/scotland_full_1.stm , – shows 56 Labour MPs elected in Scotland in 2001 General Election

(7) = BBC News ‘Vote 2001: Election battles 1945-1997’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/vote2001/in_depth/election_battles/1997_over.stm , ‘In 1997 Labour…Tony Blair's New Labour had gained a staggering 179-seat overall majority.’

(8) = Denver, David (1997) ‘THE 1997 GENERAL ELECTION IN SCOTLAND:AN ANALYSIS OF THE RESULTS’ in Scottish Affairs, no.20, summer 1997 (table 1 on page 2 shows 56 Labour MPs were elected in Scotland in 1997), http://www.scottishaffairs.org/backiss/pdfs/sa20/SA20_Denver.pdf

(9) = Independent 06 Jan 2012 ‘Lib Dems lose three out of four of their voters ’, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/lib-dems-lose-three-out-of-four-of-their-voters-6285640.html