smcc

I listened to the John Beattie Show on Radio Scotland today where a discussion of the BT announcement about more powers for Scotland after a No vote took place. Prof Jim Gallagher, adviser on policy and strategy issues to BT, admitted that no new powers had been proposed, only those announced earlier in the year and a timetable to start setting up these very limited powers. He also admitted that there was still no agreement among the three major parties about the detail of these powers. Angus Robertson MP said that you can almost smell the panic in Westminster now and went on to emphasise that what is being offered is far short of devo-max; only a small percentage of the Scottish tax take might be devolved, leaving the Scottish Parliament as a "pocket money parliament". With respect to the timetable, the only definite stages are discussions among the UK parties to begin on 19th September, a"command paper" to be published by the UK government by the end of October and a draft bill by January. Does anyone really believe that such a Bill will have any hope of being enacted soon, given that all Westminster parties will be concentrating their efforts on the UK General Election in May and a possible EU Referendum in 2017. If Scotland votes No it is likely that any additional powers for the Scottish Government will be pushed to the bottom of a very thick pile.

The pound was at a lower rate against the dollar in October and December last year last year, as well as in February and April this year.

From today's Independent. Appearing on BBC's Andrew Marr show, Chancellor George Osborne said: "You will see in the next few days a plan of action to give more powers to Scotland. More tax powers, more spending powers, more plans for powers over the welfare state. "That will be put into effect - the timetable for delivering that will be put into effect the moment there is a No vote in the referendum. The clock will be ticking for delivering those powers, and then Scotland will have the best of both worlds.” Looks like he is promising more powers, but, as you say, there is no guarantee of Westminster parliamentary approval.

No wonder his wife pulled up sticks!

If you believe everything said by "a Treasury spokesman" you are really naive. The Treasury frequently manipulates figures to suit its own ends. No one denies that oil reserves are not finite, but the piece I quoted suggests that "the remaining value of oil to the economy and to the Treasury could total around the same as the total historic value received to date." You seem not to have noticed this. Just think what an independent Scotland could do with this money rather than waste it on Trident and vain attempts to pretend that the UK/Britain is still a believable world power. The UK government still behaves as if the Empire is extant.

And here is a response from another person who has no affiliation to either camp. Graeme Blackett of BiGGAR Economics responds to comments by Sir Ian Wood Statement from Graeme Blackett of BiGGAR Economics, author of the N-56 report - 'Oil and Gas - A Pivotal Moment', in response to the comments by Sir Ian Wood: "As author of the N-56 report on the future of oil and gas we very much welcome Sir Ian Wood’s confirmation that recoverable oil is far higher than that outlined in the Office for Budget Responsibility figures (OBR). "What we stated in our report is consistent with both Sir Ian Wood and also oil economist, Professor Alex Kemp. We highlight that under a high-production scenario there are 14.9 billion barrels of oil and gas recoverable between now and 2040, and we also considered a medium-production scenario of 12.2 billion barrels and a low-production scenario of 9.5 billion barrels. Sir Ian states there are 15 to16.5 billion barrels and, in evidence to the Scottish Parliament in April, Professor Kemp stated that 14 billion barrels could be produced by 2040 with implementation of the Wood Review recommendations to improve production efficiency. "There are indeed an estimated up to 24 billion barrels in reserves, as acknowledged by Sir Ian in his own review on the future of the industry, but these are not all recoverable as the figures above illustrate although as technology improves these will potentially increase. "The recommendations outlined in our report to maximise recovery include a more competitive tax regime for the North Sea, such as tax incentives to boost growth, a long-term oil and gas industrial development plan to foster economic growth and the co-location of policy and decision makers responsible for oil and gas taxation and regulation to be moved from London to Aberdeen. Some of these are Sir Ian’s own recommendations in his Wood Review. "If Sir Ian is right and there are up to 16.5 billion barrels recoverable, then future oil taxation revenues would be even higher than this, perhaps as high as £400 billion between 2014 and 2040, far higher than the OBR figure of c. £60 billion. This confirms the N-56 analysis that, based on rising oil prices and industry views on recoverable reserves, the remaining value of oil to the economy and to the Treasury could total around the same as the total historic value received to date."

Perhaps, if you read the full statement, you might think differently. Commenting on the Chancellor George Osborne’s announcement today that is likely to rule out an English currency union with an independent Scotland, the Adam Smith Institute’s Research Director Sam Bowman said: “An independent Scotland would not need England’s permission to continue using the pound sterling, and in fact would be better off using the pound without such permission. “There is very little that an English government would actually be able to do to stop Scottish people from continuing to use the pound sterling if they wanted to. “As the American economist George Selgin has pointed out, what the Prime Minister really means is that the Bank of England would not act as a guarantor for Scottish banks or the Scottish government. Lucky Scotland: the implied promise of a bailout from the European Central Bank is exactly what allowed Eurozone banks and governments to borrow cheaply and get themselves into a debt crisis. “Scotland’s position would be closer to that of countries like Panama, Ecuador and El Salvador, which use the US Dollar without American “permission”, and, according to research by the Federal Reserve of Atlanta, consequentially have far more prudent and stable financial systems than if they were part of a formal currency union. “An independent Scotland that used the pound as its base currency without the English government’s permission, with banks continuing to issue notes privately and private citizens free to choose any currency they wanted, would probably have a more stable financial system and economy than England itself. “It’s up to Scots to decide whether they want independence, but the Chancellor’s announcement today should be seen as a feature, not a bug.” I suppose it depends on whom you want to believe.

Another confirmation that the public services England budget is being cut, with a Barnett consequential effect on Scotland. http://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/blog/what-budget-means-nhs-bit-less-now-lot-less-later

No one is suggesting that errors do not occur in the NHS and that it is relatively easy to find accounts of them but, try as I might, I have been totally unable to get figures for the incidence and costs of clinical errors in the private sector. Can you produce these fiures for comparison? Can you produce figures for preventable deaths in the private health care sector? I have been unable to find any; you have to admit that the private health care sector is dealing with a self-selected cadre of relatively healthy people It is worth pointing out that the most recent report of harm in NHS England (there is no such animal as NHS UK) is down to the private firm,Vanguard, which carried out eye surgery on behalf Musgrove Park Hospital in Somerset. The end result is that the affected patients will need further treatment, some including surgery, paid for by the NHS. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-28811077 In addition, funding for NHS England may have increased in numerical terms (0.1% in 2014-15) but the following piece shows just exactly what is happening in NHS England. The knock-on conseqence of this is that, as a result of the Barnett formula, NHS Scotland is likely to become increasingly underfunded if Scotland remains in the UK. http://www.nlmanagedservices.co.uk/massive-shortfall-in-funding-for-nhs-england/

Unfortunately many of the doctors working in NHS England have been seeing the deterioration caused by increasing privatisation for years. Perhaps you might read this piece by Professor Allyson Pollock, professor of public health research and policy at Queen Mary University of London and rethink your comment. NHS privatisation keeps on failing patients – despite a decade of warningsThe UK’s medical professional bodies have repeatedly told governments that marketisation brings problems, yet we are still paying the bill for private healthcare errors. We have learned this week that the NHS is footing the bill for dozens of people left damaged by eye operations provided by private healthcare operations. This comes as no surprise to those of us who have been following the disastrous implications of the privatisation of public health services. Since 2003, government policy in England has been to divert more than £5bn of scarce NHS funds to the for-profit private sector under a policy known as the independent sector treatment centre programme (ISTC). Doctors have been warning about how catastrophic the policy is for the NHS, for quality of care and above all for the safety of patients. For the private sector and their shareholders it is a dream scenario: the NHS trains and educates the junior doctors and nurses at taxpayer expense who, together with NHS consultants, may then moonlight in the private sector; the taxpayer underwrites the risks and costs of care allowing the private sector to cherrypick the profitable patients, ie the healthy ones with no complications; and the NHS takes back the risks when things go wrong as the private sector doesn’t have the intensive care facilities. The NHS also takes on the legal liability when patients sue the facility. The private sector quite simply offloads the revisions, readmissions, emergency treatments and clinical follow-up and law suits to the NHS and the taxpayer. And to crown it all the private sector has a poor record of doing the work it is contracted to do, with the NHS paying for work that the private sector has not performed. However, the multimillion-pound contracts which have been awarded to companies such as Care UK and Ramsey Health Care UK are confidential and rarely audited. There is a great deal of evidence that the NHS is paying for work regardless of whether it is done or not: with one contract, Netcare did not perform nearly 40% of the work it had been contracted to do, receiving £35.1m for patients it never treated. And as for safety, Netcare’s medical director Dr Dinesh Verma resigned (after only six months in October 2004), having “repeatedly raised concerns about on-call cover, continuity of care and access to complete outcome data for audit”, as reported by Hospital Doctor. The diversion of scarce funds out of the NHS destabilises NHS services. This leads to service closure and staff redundancies, undermining the training of juniors and quality of care, and erodes access for all patients. This in turn fuels waiting lists and public discontent. The Royal Colleges and Medical Associations have been sounding the alarm bells about the policy since 2006, when Bernard Ribeiro, president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, told the Health Select Committee: “ISTCs have had a negative effect on existing NHS facilities. ISTCs are leaving NHS facilities under-utilised with a concurrent deleterious effect on fragile NHS Trust financial balances.” The Royal College of Ophthalmologists also told the government back in 2006 that it had evidence of outdated practices with adverse results for patients. They warned that ISTC procedures by overseas visiting teams have had to be raised to UK standards, and that there was also a complete lack of training in any ophthalmic ISTC. The programmes had limited training responsibilities and only accepted the “simplest cases”. The Royal College ended by saying the diversion of funds away from NHS hospital eye services to ISTCs is threatening the provision of comprehensive ophthalmic care for whole communities – emergency care for injuries or retinal detachments, and the management of chronic blinding conditions such as diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, macular degeneration, children’s eye problems and so on. Some NHS eye units are contracting (instead of replacing ophthalmologists who retire) and may become unviable, requiring patients – mainly children, the elderly and visually impaired people – to travel further for care. The local hospital is also accommodating patients who suffer adverse incidents at the ISTCs, often requiring months of ongoing care, and sometimes further surgery to prevent blindness. The Royal College of Surgeons has been equally damning: “Imbalances are occurring with destabilisation of existing NHS facilities. There has been no evidence of innovative technical advance in the ISTCs established in the First Wave programme. Primary Care Trusts have expended significant sums of public money in the advance purchase of surgical procedures which have not been taken up. There is clear evidence from a number of areas that triaging arrangements has diverted patients into ISTCs leaving existing NHS facilities under-utilised with a concurrent deleterious effect on fragile NHS Trust financial balances. There is also evidence to show that training of surgeons in adjacent NHS hospitals has suffered.” The British Orthopaedic Association states categorically that private sector ISTCs have had an adverse effect on NHS services in their areas. For more than a decade governments have been warned repeatedly by medical professional bodies throughout the land of the disastrous effects of its policies of marketisation of NHS care. There are now a number of high-profile deaths in the private sector where the NHS has had to pay out compensation to the families, rather than expose the truth about the policy. So much for the government’s new requirement of a duty of candour.

You obviously have your reasons for wanting to stay in a political union with England but trying to frighten others into to sympathising with you is unproductive. Perhaps if you read these letter from today's Herald as it might give you pause for thought. "Raising my eyes for a moment above the constant scaremongering and nit-picking of the campaign, here is my personal vision of the kind of country an independent Scotland could be in 10 or 15 years. A socially-just country, where there is no longer a widening gap between different levels of society, and where the elderly, the disabled and the disadvantaged are fully provided for by a caring and efficient welfare state, instead of being regarded as a burden by many UK politicians. A politically mature country, where the various parties and their leaders seek to work together for the common good whenever possible, and where the driving force is no longer the greed and complacency of one side and the envy and resentment of the other. A prosperous and economically successful country, enjoying all the benefits of our good fortune in having a plethora of natural resources and many already-established industries capable of greater success if given the proper support and economic conditions. A country which retains all the taxation revenue and economic benefits from its own businesses and economic activities, instead of handing these over to another administration in exchange for a smaller calculated amount being returned. A country which takes all its own decisions on the economy, finance and taxation, defence and foreign affairs, instead of leaving those to another administration which has little interest in Scotland and in which we have only a small minority voice. A country no longer providing a base for Trident nuclear submarines and warheads within its own shores, but instead actively supports the campaign for world-wide nuclear disarmament. A country which has both the right and the confidence to play a full part in international affairs, seeking to maintain peaceful relations with other independent nations while not interfering in their internal affairs and conflicts. Is all this an impossible dream? On the contrary, I believe it is all attainable, but can be realised only if there is a majority Yes vote in next month's referendum. Have we the confidence and courage to finally take charge of our own destiny? I fervently hope so." "We are in danger of reducing our nation to the size of a bank note. It seems that the only thing that matters is our currency. Understanding the complexities of this undoubtedly important subject is something for those advanced and experienced in its study. Most of us are not in this group. We may be ignorant, but we are not stupid. After independence we know the way ahead will be full of difficulties, but if we really do have pride in our nationhood and positively want to deal with the challenges and difficulties that lie ahead, then please let us be clear-headed about what has brought us to this significant time in our history and clear about our objectives. As individuals, many of us will have visited a rich auntie who gave us tea and home baking and treats, and it was lovely, but we were glad to go home to where we really belonged. England is a lovely auntie but let's go home and get on with making it the best it can be." Not all of us think life after independence will be all milk and honey!

Qotas, not quota's; and vetoes, not veto's. If the UK retails(sic) three different types of vetoes, do you think they might sell them to an independent Scotland?

http://bigfrontdoor.com/ Looks like they are website designers. I don't think they will be interested in your problem!

My avatar is one of my favourites.

http://www.mcfc.co.uk/Teams/EDS/Defenders/Adam-Drury

Be sensible! How long do you you think a plywood structure like this would last in Paisley weather. Have you never seen the number of wooden fences laid low by high winds?

Panama does not have a currency union with the USA. Read what the piece says and not what you would like it to say. Edited to add: Panama's population was 3,864,170 people at the end of 2013.

Having read your remarks I looked on the internet and found a long article by the Cato foundation on the experience of Panama which has used the US dollar since 1904 although not part of the USA and with no formal link to the Federal Reserve. "For financial purposes, Panama is like another U.S. state. Nevertheless, the Federal Reserve does not run Panama’s monetary policy or interfere with its sovereignty. Normally, monetary policy is implemented or supported by changes in the money supply, which is endogenous in Panama. The Fed’s actions affect Panama via changes in world interest rates, inflation, and credit flows—and only inasmuch as they affect all countries by altering the global supply of dollars (the international reserve currency) or global interest rates. Panama’s monetary system, with full financial integration, has shown remarkable economic stability, an ability to handle large capital inflows and to adjust to shocks without major disequilibria, and no distortions in macro-prices. It has also shown low interest rates, at levels similar to world market rates, sustained macroeconomic equilibrium, and low operational cost. The economic record contains no policy-induced macroeconomic crisis, no systemic banking crises, and no need for a central bank as a lender of last resort. For nonreserve currency countries, the system performs optimally." This sounds to me as if it could work for Scotland and sterling.

I once left a game at Love Street long after the game had finished, only to find Jimmy Sanderson peering under the bonnet of his car( I seem to remember it was a silver Merc) with a sad look on his face. He had been unable to get the car to start and obviously had not a clue what the problem was. When he sat in the car and tried to turn over the engine it was obvious that his battery was flat as a pancake. A quick look under the bonnet told me that his battery terminals were corroded. It was clear that servicing of his car was very low on his list of priorities. I cleaned the terminals, got the car started by using jump leads, advised him to get his car serviced and he drove away.

If only! I have seen nothing to suggest that Westmonster(keyboard slip, but apposite) is inclined to give up any control, and I seem to remember that, when John Prescott offered greater autonomy to English regions, he was given a resounding "No" by the regions consulted.

The depot in Gordon Street originally belonged to Youngs Buses who were taken over by Western SMT in 1951. The buses I remember were made by Guy, Leyland and Albion. The picture below is of one of Youngs buses in its original colours, although the picture was taken in Australia where a number of Youngs buses ened up.

Who decides whether a bid is "acceptable"?

In the same proramme this morning a resident of the Black Isle said he was quoted ridiculous delivery rates because "he lived on an island"!!! Geography is obviously not a strong point of the delivery firms. The same thing applies to Caithness because it has a Kirkwall post code.

Interestingly, in the same item, a businessman from Orkney or Shetland said that it was cheaper to have his printer toner delivered from Germany than from England. This suggests to me that a lot of the English firms are profiteering at the expense of remote (and not so remote) areas of Scotland!