A fair Scotland?

Cooperation, democracy, fairness, internationalism, choice. Scotland's future after the 2014 referendum HERE

One reason why I support Independence...

By Neil Scott, Campsie Branch.

How do I explain my want for an independent Scotland? Ok. Lets do that using one example. Excess.

It's clear I am a socialist, so surplus in my independent Scotland would be used to ensure those with little access to something they need, get it. Excess or surplus or profit would not bolster the bank accounts of those who have so much they will never use it.

In Scotland, over 2000 people MORE die in the four winter months than they do in the previous four and the following four. A lot of those deaths are because of hypothermia in the home. This is in a country in which we have an excess of oil and an excess of electricity produced. This surplus is not given to our pensioners and poor to ensure they live through these harsh Scottish months. Both are sold in London or through a majority of London based companies for the profit boosting of the top six power companies who make more than £30 billion a year to cushion billionaires from the harsh winters on their yachts in the Carribean or at the most local, their well heated second, third or forth homes they keep in Scotland for the Grouse shoot or a wee visit at Hogmanay.

£30 billion a year that is mostly generated in Scotland through our excess of power. And this figure does not factor in the oil drained from our shores to bolster those bank accounts of the millionaires and billionaires who can afford to invest in the oil companies. Money they will in all probability never spend, while the lives of the poor and old are sacrificed.

Fighting this greed and fighting to share out our plentiful resources to ensure people have better, longer and more productive lives has not happened with Scotland in the UK. The UK is not OK for Scotand's vulnerable.

Scotland has voted continuously and decisively for a more socially just system since the days of Thatcher and before. But what have we had? Our budgets and welfare controlled by the Tories, Liberal Democrats and New Labour- all who have deep relationships with the power and oil profiteers.

None of the above really want to ensure our pensioners and vulnerable are safe and warm. In fact all of the above support welfare cuts and bleeding more money from the most vulnerable of our people in order to boost profits and pay off bankers.

Can staying in the UK change this? The evidence of the past forty years is evidence itself.

Can an Independent Scotland change this? I believe so, as the people of Scotland have been proven to vote for fairness and increasingly so, from election to election.

My reasons why Scotland should be independent

Mark Callaghan, Lennoxtown.

 

Due to the slavish following of neo-liberal economy policies over the last 30 years by governments of all shades, the British economy is now over-dependent on one very precarious and inefficient sector. The powers that be seem unwilling to prevent this.  By its very nature free-market capitalism is a reactive rather than pro-active system, short term with no contingency for long or even mid-term planning, so we are doomed to be adrift and to be engulfed by any tsunamis that come our way if we stay part of the union. We will get steadily worse and worse off - even those at the top of the tree due to this seeming blindness to the fact that the system that they espouse is based on a premise which is disastrous on any reckoning.

In an independent Scotland we will have the foresight to introduce some sort of planning into the economy, so as to help us diversify the economic base that we have to cope with the waves of terror-filled scenarios dreamed up by those who are opposed to this idea.

 

Secondly, our historic system of society were very different, i.e the feudal system was a very top-down one whereas the clan system was much more communal in basis.

Why I am voting Yes

Workers for independence 

By Richie Venton, shop stewards convenor & SSP national workplace organiser


Low paid workers often ask me 'would we be any better off under independence'? That's the kind of issue we need to convince people on if we are to win a Yes vote.

The 'Bitter' Together's poster boy, Alistair Darling, has issued dire warnings that those of us supporting independence threaten our children with a very uncertain future. 

The vast army of workers struggling to survive on or around the pathetic £6.19 minimum wage are guaranteed the certainty of more of the same exploitation and in-work poverty under Westminster's dictatorship of the rich...which guarantees children a very certain future of cruel, crushing poverty.

And that's the case regardless of whether it's Tory, LibDem or Labour in charge.
Low pay is the single biggest cause of poverty. The SSP's fight for a national minimum wage calculated as two-thirds average male earnings - over £9 an hour in current figures - for all over 16, with equal pay for women, requires the powers that go with independence. 

Likewise if workers are to escape the most repressive workplace laws in western Europe - ushered in by Thatcher's Tories, retained by New Labour, made even worse by Cameron and Clegg's millionaire regime, and left unchallenged by Miliband's Labour - we need the independent powers to scrap them and set an international example of decent rights at work.

Tackling poverty pay, fuel poverty, job insecurity, public service cuts and the brutal assault on benefits all require powers for change that only independence offers - such as the powers to tax the rich and big business; take banks, big enterprises, energy and transport into democratic public ownership, and radically redistribute wealth. 

But merely swapping flags and emblems; switching from rule by the Bank of England to rule by the Bank of Scotland (or both!); swapping being exploited by tax-dodging, profiteering British bosses for their tartan-clad and multinational capitalist counterparts inspires nobody. 

That's why socialism and independence are inseparable. The goal of an independent socialist Scotland which the SSP has fought for since our formation 14years ago will attract workers to voting Yes - where the SNP leadership's "nothing will really change" message is a downright put-off. 

And a Yes vote will greatly speed up the prospects of socialism in Scotland. Workers need independence and socialism.