Yes Dunfermline

It’s time.

[The Crossgate Centre #SupportsAlexSalmond @CrossgateCentre]

@AlexSalmond - The Chief was always in command in interviews, and played a laconic blinder in this ace exchange with Jeremy Paxman, which is always entertaining to rewatch. We're so going to miss him speaking for Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 👇

[Christopher McEleny @ChrisMcEleny]

Last week I didn’t know much about the people of North Macedonia. This week I left it with a love and gratitude for their people that is immeasurable. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🇲🇰

[Douglas Chapman 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @DougChapmanSCO]

Alex was never happier than being out campaigning & talking and connecting with the people of Scotland. No airs or graces, compassionate, funny and always genuinely listening and taking them at face value. Learned so much. Hitting home today just how badly he’ll be missed.

[Yes Stirling @YesStirling]

💙Emotional moment on The Sunday Show as Geoff Aberdein delivers heartfelt tribute to Alex Salmond, breaking down in tears😞

#alexsalmond #IndependenceIsNormal #BelieveInScotland #indyref2014 #ScottishIndependence #ScottishIndependence

[Ronnie Cowan @ronniecowan]

I spent 9 years on the select committee for the constitution at Westminster and this comes as no surprise to me. The U.K. government does not know how to engage in any meaningful way with the devolved powers, overseas territories or regions. It’s just window dressing. No respect.

[Douglas Chapman 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @DougChapmanSCO]

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland tagged on to help Labour “fully re-set” its relationship with local government in England. Don’t know what might happen tomorrow at the Council’s first meeting but the term #omnishambles comes to mind.

[Douglas Chapman 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @DougChapmanSCO]

The warning signs were all there at the last Council elections.

[Yes Dunfermline @YesDunfermline]

Even they know this Union is finished. Why bother?

[Yes Dunfermline @YesDunfermline]

While British austerity continues even with a Labour Government, independent Ireland’s budget is in such a surplus that their pensioners keep a very generous Winter Fuel Allowance. #PoorBrits

[WJBoyle @wj_voice]

Love my country & people who live in it. Well done ⁦@ScotParl⁩ and ⁦@scotgov⁩ the past 25yrs and to ⁦@ScotGovFM⁩ for his leadership & speech today. #ScottishIndependence. #unleashthepossibilitiesforscotland. Wee song and dance!

[Yes Dunfermline @YesDunfermline]

@brawday Getting an independence majority in the Scottish Parliament needs to be delivered. The SNP will not achieve that on their own. Take the personalities out of our thinking. Use the regional vote intelligently to secure that pro-indy majority #BothVotesIndy

[Alan Ferrier @alanferrier]

Crowds lining the streets almost one deep to welcome His Majesty the King to the opening of the Holyrood Parliament.

[Yes Dunfermline @YesDunfermline]

@theSNP Has to be asked - where or from whom did @paulhutcheon get the £150m commitment. Was it “made up” at the Daily Record or did he get the information from a Labour source? Surely Hutcheon cannot hide behind “protecting his sources” if it was a downright lie?

[Yes Dunfermline @YesDunfermline]

@kermit_1987 @DougChapmanSNP @Daily_Record @UKLabour From the people who gave us this … 10 years of this tripe.

[Yes Dunfermline @YesDunfermline]

@gazzah01 @DougChapmanSNP You’ll have seen the polls?

[Ronnie Cowan @ronniecowan]

I joined the SNP in 1976 to campaign for independence. Since then it’s less about me and more about my children. Over the last ten years that now includes my grandchildren. Scotland’s independence is about creating a better future for us all.

Yes then, yes now, yes always 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

[Douglas Chapman 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @DougChapmanSCO]

I won’t be the only one trawling through #YES memorabilia today. I hope that we never let down future generations ever again and that today strengthens our resolve to win what is rightfully ours - a country we can call our own #Scotland #IndependenceGeneration

[Yes Dunfermline @YesDunfermline]

@gazzah01 @DougChapmanSNP @Keir_Starmer Grangemouth to be used as an import hub. It’s your Union…own it!

[ScotNews @indyscotnews]

An economics masterclass by @AlexNeilSNP on #ScottishPrism 8/9/24

"The SNP have dug their own hole, because in 2015, on the recommendation of the Smith Commission, they signed a thing called the fiscal framework with the UK government. They've signed a new one just a couple of years ago, and if you read the detail of that, and I don't think Nicola understood what she had signed, quite frankly, that it's a trap. It's an economic suicide note.

I'm not going to go into all the technical details with you just now, but believe you me, nobody, I think, should have signed in any way whatsoever that fiscal framework, either the original one in 2015-16, or the second one that was signed, I think it was last year or the year before, because it puts constraints on what the SNP can do to tackle the economic and social challenges that Scotland faces.

However, I think this is the opportunity the SNP government has to get back on track. Now, I think the budget on the 4th December, which Shona Robison is due to deliver, should do three things. First of all, instead of making cuts and stopping promises... programmes like the free school meals for primary six and seven, we should not make those cuts to vital services.

Instead, we should raise the additional revenue required to fulfil those promises and deliver those services. And there are two candidates for that. First of all, put an emergency land tax on the top 6 or 7 thousand landed estates in Scotland. Let's say £100 pounds an acre a year. And you could do that very quickly because you're talking about a small number of people.

You could probably do it from April next year, October at the latest. So if you put that tax on, it could bring in up to £1.5 billion pounds a year. That would mean you would not need to implement any of these cuts and you could deliver on free school meals and other things besides.

So that's the first thing. And that would be a very popular tax. I would actually use some of that money to reduce the income tax burden on the lowest income, lowest earning people, because they're paying too much proportionately in income tax compared to the richer people.

So that's number one. Number two, if we had properly negotiated the offshore wind farm deals in the way that other countries have done. For example, if you take the European example, Denmark recently announced around, I think it was Denmark, where they took 20% of a government stake in all the offshore wind farms. We didn't take any stake whatsoever.

Now, if we'd done the European average, we would have about £16 billion pounds in the Scottish Government's coffers coming in, had we just followed the example of what's been done elsewhere. Had we charged as much as what the UK Government did for the offshore wind farms off the English coast, we would have had £28 billions over a period of years coming in.

Now, even if you take the lower figure of £16 billion, but particularly if you take the higher figure of £28 billion, then far from having a problem, you put that into a 'National Wealth Fund' for Scotland. You could dual the A9, dual A96, sort the A82, sort a whole host of, you know, housing issues, house-building programmes and all the rest of it, over a period, say of five to ten years. But get started now.

So I would do two things. First of all, I would speed up the next round of offshore licences and this time do a deal that's going to be a benefit, real benefit, to the Scottish people.

There's a review going on of the Crown Estates, I would take over the Crown Estates. If I was the First Minister or Finance Minister, I would haul them in and tell them what they're bloody well going to do in the interests of the Scottish people this time.

And I would also say to the King, I don't think he should be getting a quarter of the profits from the Crown Estates in Scotland, quite frankly, he's got enough to keep them going. And the quarterly piece of the slice that he takes, should come back to the Scottish people. So that would be the first thing.
The second thing is, I would review the current licence that we have issued in far too generous a basis, by the way, because part of the contract and the licence says that they must make a serious effort to manufacture the blades and other materials in Scotland. Now, the evidence is that that's not happening. Most of the blades seem to be getting manufactured in China or elsewhere.

So I would be going to these companies and saying, and I did this as a health minister in PFI contracts. For example, we reviewed the PFI contract at Larbert Hospital. This is 10-12 years ago, and the contractor wasn't keeping to the terms of the contract, so we actually recovered millions of pounds on that contract as a result of their breach. They didn't even challenge us on it. The first instalment was, I think, £7 million pounds back, you know, from them, because they recognised that they had not kept to the contract.

So if they've not kept to the contract, we are entitled to go back to them and see those of you who have not been building your downstream supply chain in Scotland, or enough of it in Scotland, you've breached the contract, therefore the licence is terminated unless you agree not only to keep to that promise to build the supply chains in Scotland. But also, we're changing the contract so that from now we get an annual sum from you that we can spend as a Scottish Government in whatever we want to spend on in Scotland.

And that might bring in only initially £500 million quid, but it's £500 million quid we don't have, and that £500 million quid could, again, prevent cuts. And the third thing I would do is, I would say to the Scottish Government, when it comes to the spending side, it's high time you get your priorities right.

Let me give you an example. In the run-up to last December's Scottish Government budget, the Greens refused to take a penny out of what's called the Active Travel Budget, which is mainly spent on cycling lanes, and said, apparently they threatened to leave the government and resign from the Scottish Government if the Scottish Government took any money off the, I think it was about £200 million at that time, the Active Travel Budget. I personally would have said, well, there's the door.

Because what happened was, they kept - I think it's actually down to £160 million now, - but they kept that level of money in what was a cycle lane fund. I'm not against cycle lanes, but they took £200 million off the housing budget.

Now, if you're getting economic growth, tackle climate change and tackle child poverty, you need a massive investment in housing. And when it comes to priorities, housing is a far, far more important priority than cycle lanes, including for climate change, it's more important. It makes a far bigger contribution to reducing carbon emissions and... carbon efficiency than cycle lanes do, and it does it in a far better way.

So I think that £200 million, which is still off the housing budget, take that money from the cycle lane budget and put it back into the housing budget. It's just one example of where do you get your priorities right.

And the final comment in the budget I'd make is this. There is a call on the press, not just the right-wing press, by the way, to means test Social Security benefits. Why do we not test all the handouts the Scottish Government gives to the big landowners, for example, including, I think, the King, in relation to Balmoral?

I mean, there's a project called the Peatland Restoration Project, subsidising large corporate companies and large landowners for peatland restoration. We should just pass a law saying that it's a statutory duty. They've got to do it. They've got the money in their own pockets to do it. Why are we spending billions over a period of years getting folk to plant trees? Why don't we just tell them and strengthen the land reform bill, so we've got the powers just to tell them that they've got to do with their land what is necessary for the Scottish interest.

Some on the edges might, small farmers and the like, might require a bit of a subsidy, but these people who are mega rich, these corporates, are now buying up the land in Scotland. They don't need the subsidy. So why don't we means test them instead of means testing the poor? And that would be popular in Scotland. So there's three or four measures I would take if I was Shona Robison in December.

I regret to say, Roddy, I don't think any of that will happen, because they don't have the backbone to do it. They don't seem to have the intellectual capacity..."

from #ScottishPrism with @Scotpol1314 and @mickbrick54 @PhilBoswellSNP & special guest @AlexNeilSNP - ++Watch Again++ 🎥 https://t.co/kwxX88wcO1

[Angus B MacNeil 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @AngusBMacNeil]

Even if Scotland had no Labour MPs and even if every Scottish MP voted against it, our pensioners would still have had their Winter Fuel Allowance cut.

That is reality of the UK - are you YES yet?

#StarmerOut