THE plight of the McVitie’s biscuit factory in Glasgow and of the workforce there who now face mass redundancies is a good illustration of the economic insecurity which comes with allowing overseas companies to own production capacity in Scotland.
In a recent series of articles in The National, the Scottish Banking & Finance Group (SBFG) have been making the case for reform of Scotland’s financial system so that it provides capital to support the production of the goods and services people need. The McVitie’s story is an example of what happens when capital is not available for domestic companies to develop their business.
READ MORE: Glasgow McVitie's workers gather to fight factory closure
McVitie’s has been a successful business, producing a popular product, for 200 years. I do not know the history of its transfer of ownership to Pladis, a Turkish-owned multinational company, but if the investment that McVitie’s needed in the past had been made available from the Scottish financial sector then it never have needed to be taken over by a foreign company.
Food production is a strategic national priority. If Scotland cannot feed itself and has to rely on imports, our national food security is at risk, as is our trade balance and the value of our currency. Post-independence, Scotland cannot afford to keep making the mistake of permitting foreign ownership of companies in such strategic sectors of the economy. We are going to need an industrial strategy based on the prioritisation of domestic ownership of companies in strategic sectors such as food production, energy and construction materials.
READ MORE: Why Scotland MUST have its own currency immediately after independence
Permitting foreign investment in our economy will be necessary but should only be permitted where we lack our own expertise and/or technology and then overseas companies operating in Scotland should be subject to rigorous standards of corporate governance, tax compliance and employment and environmental standards. Importing will be necessary too but should be the last resort.
This is for the future – but right now we need our domestic banks and our pension funds as well as the Scottish Government to step up to the mark and provide the investment this long-successful company needs to continue, under new domestic ownership, to produce in Glasgow and to maintain the valuable employment that it provides.
Jim Osborne
Convenor, Scottish Banking & Finance Group
THE UK Government has neither the interest not the ability to treat Scotland’s industries in any way differently from those of the UK as a whole. We have seen the Scottish fishing industry abandoned to a future under the terms and conditions laid down by the EU and Scottish farming is now heading for a tariff-free future under the terms and conditions laid down by Australia, while harvesting Scotland’s vast resources of green energy is under the control of multinational companies governed only by their profit motives.
The revelation by Michel Barnier that Boris Johnson’s knowledge of borders was on a par with that of the Downing Street cat along, with Liz Truss’s team’s record as international trade negotiators, now makes it absolutely essential for Scotland to set up a full international border for its own protection as soon as possible.
John Jamieson
South Queensferry
I READ with interest Roxanne Sorooshian’s article on littering in the Sunday National (A novel approach to the growing scourge of litter, May 23).
I applaud the armies of volunteers who go out to pick up litter. I also applaud initiatives like the entrepreneur in Tyndrum who rewards such volunteers with free equipment and food. But sadly these things do nothing to change the attitude of someone who lazily opens the vehicle window to throw out litter, or the smart-ass who secretly hunts down a quiet back road to dump anything from garden rubbish to a three-piece suite.
READ MORE: How one Scottish cafe is tackling the scourge of littering
I honestly believe that the Scottish Government has now got to formulate a powerful, overarching plan to combat this disease – for that is what it is when people throw their litter out of their vehicles or dump their rubbish at the side of our roads.
The perpetrators are giving out a signal that abusing our environment doesn’t matter – aesthetically, or for the safety of wildlife, or for the safety of litter-pickers, or for the cost of subsequent local authority roadside collections.
I don’t know how our society got into this state of affairs, but I do know that it has reached a point when top-down educational and legislative action to change attitudes have to be massively geared up to address this problem.
Dennis White
Blackwood
THE litter in this country is a national disgrace. Glasgow must be the filthiest city I have ever been in. Totally embarrassing when I have friends visiting from other countries. It’s not just the mindless idiots who think nothing (AT ALL) of dropping their litter, it seems to me that the council don’t care at all either.
James Brown
via thenational.scot
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