WELCOME to Groundhog Day – where the UK Government highlight the GERS figures to try to make us think Scotland’s economy is a basket case. Of course we all know that GERS was conceived as a political and propaganda tool, with figures “adjusted” to give a predetermined result. No oil revenues are counted for Scotland, no Scottish exports that leave the UK via England are counted as Scotland etc while we also get the privilege of paying our share of their infrastructure projects – CrossRail in London, HS2 etc.
GERS is just the latest effort by a UK Government to manipulate economic figures to make independence seem too dangerous to support. For the whole of the time the British state controlled India, that country was told it was in deficit and couldn’t afford to be independent – despite British interests stealing about £44 trillion from that country.
If GERS was to be believed then it would highlight that the UK is rubbish at managing our economy - how can a country rich in natural resources (oil, gas, water etc) still be in deficit? Let’ remember the UK Government won’t subsidise a spare room for those on benefits – do you really think they would subsidise a whole country?
More and more people are seeing through GERS as a propaganda tool and its time we all dismissed it as utter rubbish and a feeble attempt to put down Scotland.
Cllr Kenny MacLaren
Paisley
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