There is always going to be a problem with the
predictability of the future. I think it is for this reason that the SNP can
essentially say what it likes about Scottish independence. It will give us each
an extra £500 pounds assuming we don’t have to join the Euro. It will give us
free travel throughout the former UK and the EU assuming there are no eh
international borders. It will make us rich even though exactly the same firms
and workers will be in Scotland as before only they will make greater profits
and have bigger salaries because we eh no longer send MPs to Westminster.
Those who want independence anyway for emotional
reasons, hatred of Tories and because they are Scottish and not British, will
believe anything about the future, because after all the future is uncertain.
But the present is different. We can be quite sure of the present.
But that means that it is no longer necessary to argue
rather abstractly that if the SNP ever was granted and won a second
independence referendum, or if it won a de facto referendum/General Election or
if it unilaterally declared independence that this would make Scots poorer. We
don’t have to rely on making predictions about things that are at most a long
way in the future. Instead, we need merely point out that the Scottish
Government wants to make us poorer now.
Everything is more expensive this year. A packet of
oatcakes that used to cost a pound now cost a pound fifty. But don’t worry the
SNP wants to make everything else more expensive too. Scot cannot live on oats
alone.
Some time ago the SNP made us pay 50 p per unit of alcohol.
But despite some worries at the time, it turned out to make little difference unless
you wanted to drink ultra strong cheap cider. A can of beer might be 2 and bit
units, which means that while it cost £1.50 before, but it still cost around £1.50.
Only if your can was 12% would it cost substantially more. The same goes for
wine and spirits. So long as you weren’t buying something ultra cheap and
strong, you hardly noticed minimum pricing.
But now the SNP wants us to pay 80 p per unit and not
only that it wants us to pay 20 p on top for the pleasure of having to take the
bottle back. But that means the can of beer will cost an extra 30 p per unit,
which takes it to around £2.20 or £2.30. The extra 20 p will take it to £2.50. So,
a pack of four beers that already looks expensive at £6 will cost £10.
The weekly shopping basket at Tesco which has already
been getting so expensive for ordinary Scots who drink regularly, but not excessively
will suddenly because of the dear SNP and its Green friends cost an extra £40
or £50 each week. You don’t need to buy many packs of lager for your husband or
bottles of prosecco or heaven forbid a bottle of whisky to find yourself
checking your bank account to see if you can afford it.
People like drinking alcohol. I can remember when
going to the pub and smoking cigarettes was a normal part of Scottish life. But
drinks in a pub are already too expensive for many of us and you would need to
be either a millionaire or unemployed to be able to afford fags.
Well Scots are not suddenly going to give up drinking.
We will buy it on Amazon or else we will drive to Carlisle if we live near
enough and put enough bottles in the back seat to last a year. Or people will
find other ways to smuggle unless the SNP puts border controls between Gretna
and the Solway Firth. Not that there would be any border controls after
independence, just before it.
One unit of alcohol would go from 50 p to a pound 80 p
plus 20 p for the bottle, but that isn’t enough for the Scottish Government. It
is now trying to force us all to buy a heat pump for our house.
Electricity has been exceptionally expensive this year
so much so that some of us have preferred wearing extra layers to putting the
heating on. But a gas boiler is massively cheaper than a heat pump.
Scottish houses even reasonably new ones are usually a
bit draughty and don’t have Scandinavian levels of insulation. Our weather is
cold and damp and windy and gets through the walls. The result is that if I
spend up to £15,000 for a heat pump, my house will be colder, and it will still
cost me a huge amount to run the heat pump. So, I could spend another huge amount
trying to add extra insulation to the walls. I can upgrade the double glazing
and the doors and most likely still shiver in my tepid bath while wondering is
that it as I touch the lukewarm radiators, while reflecting how much being
colder has cost?
Worse still let’s say I get a new job, or I want to downsize,
or I inherit a property. Before being able to sell a house the Scottish Government
wants to force me to reach an arbitrary energy rating which in many cases will
require me to spend £15,000 pounds for the heat pump and whatever cost for the
insulation. In some cases that could be £30,000.
But many older Scottish homes are simply unsuitable
for heat pumps given the present technology making them unsellable. Many Scots would
struggle to afford the cost of adding the heat pump plus new insulation. So,
who would pay? Would it be added to the price of the house, or would homeowners
be expected to take the hit? In the former case it would make buying a home
still more unaffordable for young couples, in the latter it would bring misery
to pensioners trying to sell a home to afford care.
There is no need to predict that Scottish independence
would make us poorer, because we know that the Scottish Government if it gets
its way wants to make us poorer beforehand.
Scotland contributes almost nothing to climate change
and if there is global warming, we experience little of it here. But we still
have enough people who vote to make themselves poorer because they hate Tories and
long to ditch their British passport for a Scottish one. You may get a warm
glow when you pass border controls at Carlisle, but you won’t be able to eat
your passport with a thistle on it anymore than you will be able to eat
thistles.
Perhaps when Scottish nationalists find themselves
unable to pay their grocery bill and unable to sell their house because they
can’t afford to buy a heat pump, they will realise that if the SNP and friends
make you poorer now, it would certainly make you poorer still if it ever won
independence.
It’s all very well looking at thistles, but only a
drunk man or a Scottish nationalist would try to eat one.
