HERE in Edinburgh the proposed tourist tax has become quite a talking point, with everyone making a claim on the money raised; arts groups want it spent on festivals etc while the tourist industry reckons it has first dibs. If, instead, the extra revenue is spent on local infrastucture and public services it might make a small improvement, but this is all a bit of a distraction from the bigger picture.

Edinburgh is the richest city in Scotland – witness 25% of the city’s children in private education among other factors. It is also probably the country’s most economically divided – witness nearly a quarter of Edinburgh children officially living in poverty, most of them in working families.

Poverty is of course a nationwide problem for Scotland. Officially there are a million Scots living in poverty, again most of them working – that’s one in five of the population! This is a major reason why the Scottish Socialist Party has from its formation supported Scottish independence.

Our support for independence is also why we totally reject the recently published Growth Commission Report, a report which promises “more of the same” after independence. More tax cuts for the rich, more cuts to public services and more wage cuts and zero-hours contracts for the worst-off.

We believe that to win independence next time we need to convince Scotland’s working-class majority that it will seriously improve their material conditions by such measures as introducing a Living Wage of at least £10 per hour regardless of age and an end to zero-hours contracts, replacing these with a minimum of 16 hours per week with an opt-out for the worker, but no such opt-out for the employer. This latter measure would give greater security to the workers along with a greater degree of control over their own lives. These measures along with public ownership of transport, energy and oil could radically transform the lives of millions of Scots.

To win next time, the Yes movement needs to convince the working-class majority that independence is about more than a change of flags.

Scottish independence must be about transformation, not transition.

Michael Davidson

Scottish Socialist Party

THE sight of a front page banner headline “Hands Off Our Whisky!”can be notched up as a spin job well done by the Scottish Whisky Association.

The word “our” implies ownership, or at least a stake in ownership. In Scotland today the vast majority of the Scottish whisky industry is owned by foreign business – only a fraction of the distilleries are truly Scottish small and medium-sized businesses. Both brands and distilleries are “owned” in foreign tax havens like the Netherlands.

Profit, as I pointed out in my letter of last week, flows abroad on a scale that is quite breathtaking. The average declared export price of a bottle of Scotch, according to HMRC, is £3.33 per bottle. When did you last see a a bottle of blended Scotch in the duty-free shop in a foreign airport at less than £17 or a bottle of single malt at less than £40? So the question is how does the Scottish Whisky Association account for the missing revenues? Someone on the minimum wage in a bottling plant might be interested in the answer.

Regarding the duty “burden”, it only applies to the 9% of whisky production that is sold in the UK. They key point is that 91% of whisky production is exported overseas without any duty being charged. Talk about the UK duty “burden” is simply a diversionary tactic to mask the huge profits being made by the dominant export business.

Regarding employment and the figure of 40,000 that the Scottish Whisky Association is so fond of, the number directly employed is less than 11,000, though many other businesses in the Scottish and wider UK logistical sector benefit, in part, from whisky industry contracts.

However, the real scandal is the chronic relative underperformance of Scotland’s “big” “success story”. Over the past 40 years the growth rate of Scotch whisky volumes (that’s bottles to you and me) has averaged around half of one percent (0.5%). Compare this other spirits like vodka, which has grown six times faster at 3.1%, in line with many other products which pretty much track overall global economic growth generally. If Scotch whisky was the “success story” that it’s spun to be, indigenous employment in the industry would be more than 60,000 rather than a mere 11,000 or so.

Bill Ramsay

Glasgow

ANENT Joanna Blythman’s review in Sunday’s Scottish Life magazine of 83 Hanover Street, she says at one point “correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t these premises used to be the old Laigh Bakehouse ?” Well, she’s half-right. They used to be the Laigh Coffee House (started by my late father, Moultrie Kelsall, in 1956), at the time the first such establishment in Hanover Street! The Laigh Bakehouse (which he opened some time later to relieve pressure on the Coffee House part) was in the premises further down Hanover Street now occupied by Urban Angel – which she has previously reviewed.

Robin Kelsall

Edinburgh