This is why the time for new parties is after an independence referendum

Kevin presents the case that the new emerging independence parties, who intend to stand at the May election for the list MSP vote, is a good thing. It raises the begging question of “whose side in he on?”

From his previous articles it would appear that someone in the SNP may have “stood on his toes”, but that is a subject for probably another day. It is no secret, as Kevin expresses it often, that he is a socialist. Let me firstly clarify that his socialist credentials are no greater than mine (and I am 74). I have a number of older friends whose socialist credentials are in their DNA, but they are committed to supporting the SNP to win a majority in the May election as the only route to independence, anything other than that is wasted vote.

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Whatever kind of Scotland we have after independence, and it has to be better, is a matter for the democratic process of an independent Scotland – we have to get there first.

This now brings me to the questions of arithmetic, probability and logic of having a further four independence parties, in addition to the SNP, proposing to stand in the election.

Let us look firstly at the arithmetic and the probability of the other four indy parties being successful in the May election. It is generally accepted that for any party to gain a list MSP that they need to obtain at least 6% of the vote. Four unknown (to the electorate) parties overnight getting 6% each, totalling 24% of the vote is highly improbable – I would go as far as to say that it has never been done.

If these four indy parties are to get any votes they are not going to come from the three Unionist parties, fundamentally as they and their supporters, by definition, are against independence. So where are their votes going to come from? The answer is obvious, the SNP.

As is highly probable the four indy parties fail to get List MSPs but manage to get some % of the vote swinging from the SNP, was is the effect on the drive for independence? Let’s assume that the four indy parties each get 3% of the vote, highly improbable, which is a total of 12% of the votes taken from the SNP – that amounts to the loss of a number of SNP MSPs.

What has that achieved ? Answer, less than nothing – there would now be fewer MSPs than the SNP currently have (presently 63 and not an overall majority). We need 65 SNP MSPs to have and overall majority (ignoring the Greens which are a likely unknown number in May) to drive the case for independence.

Bearing in mind that the SNP already have an established List Vote then even as little as a 2% increase in their List Vote from 2016 could add a number of SNP MSPs.

Therefore, the four indy parties by taking any votes from the SNP will have defeated their independence cause rather than enhance it !

The Unionist parties would “just love it”! You could just imagine the the news headlines “Indy Parties kill off SNP Independence Dream”.

There are two ways for the Unionist parties to increase their number of MSPs. (1) Get more votes – significant numbers are highly unlikely based on the past elections. (2) Encourage more Indy parties to take votes from the SNP which reduces the SNP % share of the vote. Without the Unionist parties having to gain any more votes their % share of the votes, by the automatic see-saw effect, one MSP down/one MSP up, goes up and they gain more List MSPs. Who wins? Not the Independence movement – the indy parties beware or you will kill your dream.

I suggest that, as a sensible compromise, the four new Indy parties build up their individual causes for after independence. In the meantime they should get behind the SNP, the only party that can deliver independence, to win an overall majority in the May election and then deliver an independence Referendum.

After independence they can follow their own agendas in our renewed democratic independent country. Anything else will kill the independence cause they claim to support.

Now to look at this in a logical approach. Surveys have shown that there are a significant number of Don’t Knows for independence. Don’t Knows don’t know the unknown parties. Don’t Knows are inclined towards parties that are Known. If you are a Don’t Know, if you are trying to find out why or what you don’t know you won’t find the answer to why or what you don’t know from the unknown. The SNP are the Known party of Government then they are natural choice to answer the Don’t Know question and convince them to a Know YES.

Only independence can give the Scottish People the power to put the governance of the Scottish People fully into the hands of the Scottish People - the recent announcement that the Scottish Government will Nationalise Scotland’s Railways is a case in point.

Therefore, I say to Kevin “taking votes from the SNP to give to the other four indy parties will kill the dream of independence, not enhance it”.

Stewart Dickson,
Skirling, By Biggar

TEMPTING for new parties to hitch a ride on the indy bandwagon, but the prospects of Restore Scotland, the new Yes party launched this week, look less than bright going by what its chief said in The National on Wednesday.

Interim leader David McHutchon made clear the party’s resolve to stay out of the EU, but was pretty vague on other aims. Plenty of values floated: individual liberty, family, the sanctity of human life, health, wellbeing. In general the party was “against the authoritarianism” of recent hate crime legislation. It wanted too to “counter policies that had failed vulnerable drug users” but didn’t hint at how.

But Restore’s interim deputy leader Donald Morrison seems even less likely to hook floating votes in casting into fresh air a daft question mouthed interminably by opponents of independence. He actually asks: “What is the point of gaining independence from Westminster only to surrender it to Brussels?”

The point seems screamingly obvious. Someone should tell Donald: the two unions are chalk and cheese. All 27 EU member states retain two priceless national rights Scotland is deprived of, independence and democracy. And they can leave the EU whenever.

John Melrose
Peebles

RICHARD Walker talks of the crimes “all men” have committed and how “all men” are guilty of misogyny and indecent behaviour towards women.

I have to say, I find this rather worrying. His behaviour seems to have been so bad and his crimes so widespread and casual that he seems to believe every other man shares his guilt. I for one have never in my life ridiculed a female colleague on the basis of gender much less assaulted one! I have never committed any crime whatsoever against any woman certainly never raised a hand to one.

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I have been assaulted by several women though. Usually drunk and arguing with their boyfriends, I have been randomly punched and spat on in bars and nightclubs by women I have never seen before as they attempt to drag their boyfriend into a fight. I have been groped by women in bars and clubs, particularly when wearing the kilt as a younger man, this being seen as “a laugh” which it isn’t.

Perhaps Richard Walker instead of tarring all men with his own brush he might try to understand that his behaviour, poor by his own admission, speaks for him and him alone. Furthermore it may be helpful to list his crimes for surely if his behaviour has been as reprehensible as he claims the police may wish to have a word with him.

It is sad that a man of such advanced age wishes to paint even young boys as beasts simply because he cannot see past his own hatred for either gender.

RB
Glasgow

I WONDER if any of your readers could enlighten me about the allocation of grant funding to Scotland by the Treasury, commonly known as the “Barnett Formula”. As I understand it this convention is based on the amount of spending by Government departments in England, and adjusted according to the population size of each nation and which powers are devolved. It doesn’t however appear to take account of land mass.

Given that people can move and populations rise and fall, but each nation is, in effect, the size of its land, which is finite, should land mass not be a major factor in the calculations. Not only does land dictate what is available for farming and forestry and the amount of surrounding sea and its resources eg oil, fish, marine energy, etc, but it introduces economies of scale.

It is likely that building a mile of roadway in Surrey is cheaper than its counterpart in Sutherland for a number of reasons, and regardless of the number who use it, it is a public resource for the benefit of all. Similarly, schools, hospitals and public facilities are more expensive pro-rata to build and run in more remote areas, yet will receive less capital funding because they serve fewer people. That doesn’t seem fair.

In 2009, the House of Lords Select Committee on the Barnett Formula concluded that “the Barnett Formula should no longer be used to determine annual increases in the block grant for the United Kingdom’s devolved administrations... A new system which allocates resources to the devolved administrations based on an explicit assessment of their relative needs should be introduced”.

Surely land should be one of the factors to take into account in allocating grant funding between equal partners in a union; so much per head of population and so much per hectare. Under the present system it would appear that Scotland is being seriously short-changed.

David McGill
Edinburgh

AN independent Scotland would of course be a congenial neighbour for England, but on a different basis financially, because suppose another bank was to fail within the existing UK scheme. Chances are others would be in trouble, so a domino effect could start.

The government £85k guarantee for depositors would kick in, but the government does not have any money as it runs a deficit every year, and is already £2.3 trillion in debt to the banking system, and can’t even pay the £60 billion a year of interest to the banks, who are also lending it that interest by means of more computer magic money from thin air, to add to and compound with their existing capital debt.

So government asks the banks to lend it the money needed to repay depositors, but they can’t of course. Or they perhaps won’t create it, for fear that interest will no longer be forthcoming.

At last the chips are down, and the truth is out that there is actually no money left, and all we have been doing for years is managing debt in the form of digital entries in cyberspace.

What happens then? Does UK government at long last start to issue its own interest free new national currency?

Probably not, but an independent Scottish Central Bank would do that from the start, so that Scotland would be free from the risks inherent in the existing banking scenario.

Malcolm Parkin
Kinross