the party's over

You know well that the neocon economic era did not start with Thatcher, but with her predecessor Callaghan in 1976. His government swung to bankers' cuts and bankers' rule. In the face of bankers' games with the pound it failed to sustain financial independence even for Britain. Tony Crosland said of underwriting council budgets "The party's over." In the present, how much harder was it supposed to be to sustain financial independence for Scotland, and without it even having its own currency at all? The oil price plummeting.

Now for the SNP the party's over. The end of the council tax freeze won't bite jn time for the election, because it's put off for a year, so you are supposed to think it's never coming. But as you have seen across the front pages today, all except the National of course, the SNP budget has set a bomb of hammering rises beyond inflation, 3%, next year, to hit you like a released spring.

This instead of using Scotland's national tax power redistributively as Labour is standing for, and in a narrower single issue way the Lib Dems are too. SNP position is an embarrassment in contrast to them. So that SNP policy is austerity, and Labour's policy is redistribute and spend on need.

Scotland's much-claimed progressive voters have had a crappy history of taking several elections to make culture shifts when the progressive ground moves away from where their voting habits are. They stayed with Labour throughout the New Labour period then moved away from Labour on grounds of the memory of New Labour but aftet it was actually over. That was absurd. It's time to catch up. There is nothing progressive in voting SNP this time.

frank

Comedian Frank Skinner, in advance of coming up to the festival, has given a muddled view of the ref. Desperate nats could take it as a celeb endorsement of voting Yes, because he has said that from a selfish point of view he would vote Yes if he lived here. He happens to be factually wrong in that, he has listened to all the unevidenced propaganda that life under indy would not be, as it would, just as neocon as British life. But the muddle is, from the point of view of living in England he has also endorsed us to vote No, saying that would be better for them, that seriously telling argument of the fear of rUK being left more right wing by our departure.

A reply to him, as posted under the Herald article:

Mr Skinner esquire, You might not vote Yes if you lived here and had done some digging for yourself into Yes's plans in an are the campaign has not focussed on: citizenship. Being conceived in Scotland would not be enough for your son to get their favour. They intend to make it refusable by the state, not an innate right, for the Scots who were born in the rest of Britain and can't be resident here on indy day to inherit citizenship from their parent. I have often found decent but overfaithful Yes voters shocked to hear of this, and generated a few extra enquiries by it, but always with the same answer. With government, Yes campaigns national and local, including Helensburgh who checked it with a lawyer, and all the yes supporting parties, they won't budge - they won't make this class of citizenship unrefusable. This is a basic assault on family life, against ECHR article 8, and a new clearances, an intention to reject Scots from their country. If the British or European shared travel areas break down, citizenship will affect who can live here - and only last week, totally slipping the mask, we heard Sturgeon's seriously unpleasant threat to throw out all the EU citizens here if we hit any problem with rejoining the EU. The so-called "civic nationalism" they have claimed is wonderfully progressive and non-racist turns out to be so deeply racist and anti-outsider that it even kicks away Scots' extended families - for what it means is only caring about the population who chance to already live here. Even when emigration features in Yes arguments!

Dividing families is a very practical matter preventing them caring for each other or supporting each other against poverty and welfare troubles. Yet a stallholder for Radical Indy kept dodging answering this with the diversion "How far back would you go?" and called it good socialism to subject the exile-born children of our emigrants to the same filtering for skills as Yes proposes for migrants from anywhere with no roots here at all. To reject our children taking no account of life misfortunes, education systems working badly, abuses hushed up by punishment as was revealed in Savile, as causes of not having high value skills.

I have petitioned the EU not to accept the ref process as legitimate or a new state as mandated if the mass of voters were unaware of these sick plans. Now the Yes campaign especially its meetings consists of an ever more raving Project Fear threatening all sorts of lurid right wing prospects if we vote No, without any disproof that they would happen the same under indy too as our major parties are just as neocon inclined as the British ones. Everything they threaten is actually a reason to vote No, in order not to betray branches of our families who have already suffered life misfortunes to also suffer rejection by their country and being abandoned to suffer all the threatened things living in the rest of Britain, cut off also from the help of their families here unless they emigrate too, and shorn of our leftward impact on British elections. While in the union we can vote against right wing horrors instead of having them thrust on us by a big powerful neighbour with no say in it, let's take your endorsement of voting No for that reason.

yes there will be Tory governments under indy!

I went to Common Weal's big day in Glasgow. I was interested to observe where it is heading as a prospect for growing participative democracy, which will be good after a No vote too, but Common Weal is so selective about its content, to fit it to its predecided left wing vision, that it's doubtful it will contribute meaningfully to making democracy more participative, it will just be a lobby for its own point of view. Indeed, another reason for going was, in their too short discussion sessions from which no notes were taken so what will they achieve? to challenge Common Weal's non-use of an item I contributed about our parliament closing ranks to silence an item about pressure in education that I petitioned about, PE5.

As non-SNP lefties they are naturally conscious that the SNP is clearly neocon on corporation tax and selling out Menie to Trump. In the end session on post-Yes prospects, they predicted the SNP will be keen to swing rightwards quickly under international pressure, that the change will be a crisis for both our major parties to adapt to, and that already planned by Murdo Fraser, with a change of name a centre-right party will revive and find a space for its ideas.

This means something big and revealing. It means - lefty Yessers themselves don't think there will be no more Tory governments. The argument of no more Tory governments can have a bit of a moral pull, it can be a wrench to drop that prospect as you see how spivvily unpromissory the SNP's plans are and just as neocon as the British consensus they knock. It is a great relief, and further step in clinching the case for voting No, that the audience at Common Weal heard lefty Yessers themselves totally bury that argument of no more Tory governments. They are totally alert to and expecting every likelihood of an early Tory challenge.

No supporters both left and right retell this story when talking to anyone who has been tempted towards Yes by that argument. It is now demolished! Gone!! Another No supporter has shared with me the telling point that in the 2010 election the Tories got 416 000 votes in Scotland and the SNP got circa 480 000, similar figures!

our polity is just as neocon

Made known by Inclusion Scotland and No supporters around the web.

SNP voted down a bid by Labour to introduce a Scottish Living Wage duty - which would make it mandatory for firms who wanted to win work from the public sector to pay their staff this rate. Totally scotches the claim that voting Yes offers a more caring political culture against neocon economic attitudes and poverty.