An Examination and Definition of the Principal Issues Surrounding Independence

These are a political party free analyses of the issues facing independence and a transition to a successful independent Scotland.

It is not a book but rather a collected series of brief articles on the most important issues. As a result interrelated ideas sometimes appear in passing in more than one article.

The analysis seeks to clarify issues and offer solutions to show that it is easily possible for an Independent Scotland to rapidly come to exist, and to soon become one of the EU’s influential and economically thriving members, and even to gain an important role in world statesmanship via its energy resources, geographical location and English speaking emissarial importance to major global powers such as EU, USA and NATO.

It also seeks to put into perspective the influence and propagandistic intentions of Westminster governments past and present on the subject of Scotland’s impossible independence and imaginary weak economic viability as an independent nation.

Also to make clear Westminster’s enormous financial motives for continuing to hold an unequal Union together.

With an 82% to 8% ratio of national representations in the Westminster government, Scotland is by any practical or legal definition, a colony of England with an insignificant governmental authority.

The factual statistics and misleading consequences of this situation are normally kept highly secret by Westminster. Instead slanted statistics and propagandistic spin are widely publicised by UK government influenced media as deliberate disinformation.

This is a decades long campaign which has been wildly successful and has thus far produced a £500 billion profit on £5-7 trillion of North Sea Oil revenue for England. Norway has used the same amount of oil revenues to make itself the richest country in the world per capita.

Here in this document the genuine statistics and analysis of independence issues are accurately presented for authentic democratic discussion.

How To Repair The Scottish Economy

There is only one way to repair the Scottish Economy and Scottish NHS, and the Scottish Housing and General Poverty Crisis. That is to join the EU and enjoy their economic advantages and social supports.

Westminster does not wish to repair the Scottish economy and lacks the competence and financing to do so, even if it had the will.

A weak Scotland is in Westminster’s interest in keeping authority over Scotland’s massive natural energy resources. It is Scotland’s oil and Scotland’s gas and Scotland’s wind energy that subsidises England and keeps it from bankruptcy. In the past and even more so in the future.

The only means of repairing the Scottish economy is by rejoining the EU single market and retaining Scotland’s own wealth inside Scotland. This can only be done by an Independent Scotland.

And it can best be done with Scottish wealth being fairly distributed among the entire Scottish population under a political system of Social Democracy.

Social Democracy has always been the favoured political system of all of Scotland’s independence parties.

It has for decades been very successfully practiced by Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland. All these are countries in which happiness, financial security, and the well being of their citizens lead the annual world rankings.

What Can Independence Do?

Independence is the only means of rejoining the EU and repairing Scotland’s economy, its damaged NHS and its Housing and Poverty crisis.

Independence can do this by keeping inside Scotland its own massive revenues generated by its natural resources. These natural resources, (oil, gas, wind energy, tourism, luxury foods and whisky etc), are subsidising London and England and the wealthy there, while Scotland is experiencing 25-40% childhood poverty.

To give away these massive income resources to another country is a total madness.

This situation has been perpetuated by a decades long stream of economic misinformation and Westminster propaganda regarding failing Scottish revenues. In reality Scotland is worth as much as £10 billion annually to Westminster. Which is why they are holding on to their last colony so strenuously.

With almost exactly the same amount of oil and population, North Sea Oil has made Norway the richest country in the world per capita. It holds a trillion dollars in a national public sovereign wealth fund which has been established to protect the welfare of all their citizens, both now and for several generations into the future.

Meanwhile in the same period Scotland has risen to the top of European drug deaths due to poverty and underprivilege.

An Independence Timeline

Independence is inevitably coming. Westminster knows this and is already urgently asset stripping Scotland before it leaves the Union and is able to keep its own natural resources. This makes Scottish Independence more urgent than ever.

What is Asset Stripping?

Asset stripping is the deliberate sale at discount prices of anything of value in a company or a nation before it is sold off or rendered bankrupt and abandoned. Westminster has been accelerating this process recently as Scottish Independence becomes clearly inevitable.

SNP strategy of waiting for Scottish demographic changes to eventually bring about independence naturally is a strategy which will lead to a far more difficult independence transition following this asset stripping.

Westminster has already taken £500 billion of Scotland’s North Sea Oil resources. With this same amount of oil production Norway has become the richest country in the world, while the UK has become the most lawless, backward and corrupt country in the first world.

The UK has essentially become a failed state with homelessness, drug addiction, crime and undemocratic citizen abuses which are not tolerated in other first world countries. That only the rich have any effective access to the law is a fundamental sign of an undemocratic state.

The earlier Scotland becomes independent, the easier the independence will be because Scotland will not have been deliberately asset stripped by Westminster.

As soon as possible is by far the best timeline.

This Westminster asset stripping is why there has been a rush to sell Scottish Oil reserves into the future at discount rates to foreign oil companies. This is why undersea electricity cables from the Scottish North Sea are being constructed to bypass Scotland completely and only run south into England. There was never any discussion of HS2 coming north to Scotland’s capitals.

This is also why Scotland’s only oil refinery is being closed, despite making a £100M profit annually. Scotland will now become the only major oil producing nation in the world without an oil refinery. If this refinery is allowed to be closed, Scotland’s own oil will have to be exported to England for refining and then re-imported back to Scotland for use.

None of this is accidental. Westminster is moving quickly to asset strip Scotland before independence, in the full knowledge that the poorer Scotland is, the harder independence will become for it. England has never been a generous imperial power.

To delay for even a moment on Scottish Independence is foolish and unnecessary, Scotland has the constitutional means and the legal right to declare immediate independence. And there are strong economic reasons for doing so, before the country is asset stripped.

Under a new Scottish Law of a new independent Scotland, all of UK’s existing heavily discounted cronyist oil contracts can be legally renegotiated, and new, superior, revenue producing contracts drawn up.

New contracts which emulate the Norwegian model which has made Norway the richest country in the world.

All Scotland needs to act quickly is the courage to defy Westminster law.

Westminster Law is not the same as Scottish Law. In Scotland, Scottish Law takes precedence from the moment the Scottish government declare it does.

The world is waiting for Scotland to dare to do this and all World Institutions will accept it immediately. Unlike Scotland, England is not a well liked nation internationally and no longer has any real global influence to exercise. If anything it has engendered global ill will.

How Was the 2014 Independence Referendum lost?

The Scottish Independence referendum of 2014 was lost by the incredible naivete of the Scottish government in allowing foreign born EU and English residents to vote on an issue which does not concern them. This foreign resident population was then 17% of the Scottish population, only 83% of voters were Scottish born.

Independence is a Scottish heritage issue and has been for four centuries in the past and in the future too. The resultant outcome of the referendum did not reflect the wishes of the Scots born themselves. Only native born Scots residents should have been allowed to vote and no-one else.

It is not up to an English or EU or Asian person to decide whether Scotland is a country or not. All these foreign residents have countries of their own and citizenship of them. It is only Scots who have no nationhood and no citizenship of their own country.

The mathematics of the 2014 referendum result indicate that if only Scots born had been allowed to vote, the referendum would have returned a YES win by 5.4% according to calculations by the University of Edinburgh.

Now in 2024 that number is substantially higher, it is never polled but estimates are that 60-75% of native born Scots favour independence, many strongly.

This is easily more than enough in the eyes of world institutions like UN, EU, NATO, World Court of Justice. Westminster’s opinion and laws would simply no longer matter on the issue.

Westminster itself was not this naïve in the Brexit referendum in which it denied EU citizens and foreign residents a vote, without complaint from any quarter. The reason the UK government did this is that EU citizens would obviously vote to remain in the EU. Just as they did in the Scottish Independence referendum, and just as the English living in Scotland voted to have their own English government continue to rule Scotland.

In practice this amounted effectively to a 17% advantage to the NO vote, an advantage completely impossible to overcome since anything less than 67-33% brings a loss to YES for independence.

It is hard to conceive why the Scottish government agreed to this astoundingly short sighted ground rule. It is an obvious recipe for failure when 17% of the population is English, EU and other foreign residents. It is in virtually all of these people’s interests to vote against independence, and avoid the disruption of changing their residency and financial situations.

These foreign residents should have been offered not a vote but a citizenship and a passport in an Independent Scotland. They should never have been given the opportunity to decide IF Scotland is a country or not. This is a matter only for Scots to decide. This was a spectacular governmental error and led directly to the failure of the referendum on independence for Scotland to reflect the true democratic desire of Scots born nationals.

Such a politically naive error should never again be repeated under any circumstances. It indicates a mathematical illiteracy which Westminster has repeatedly exploited in Scottish referenda and elsewhere.

This disastrous error of 2014 still indicates a new solution to the currently Westminster blocked constitutional path to Scottish Independence. Westminster have no intention of ever again granting a legal Scottish Independence referendum.

See A New Path To Independence 2024 below for discussion of this issue.

Devolution

Devolution is a system under which certain carefully selected powers are passed to the Scottish Government while the more substantial, and particularly financial and constitutional, powers remain in Westminster with an 82% English government majority.

The devolved powers given to Scotland are partial and include certain areas of Law, Education, Health and Welfare and Housing. Also other lesser areas.

It should be clearly understood that all of this has to be financed by The Scottish Government on a limited budget which is allocated to Scotland by Westminster under the Barnett Formula, and cannot either be appealed or even have its calculation made transparent.

The Scottish Government takes what it is given and does what it can with it. It is deliberately never enough to solve Scotland’s problems, but rather specifically to keep Scotland weak and dependent on England rather than its own massive North Sea energy revenues, of which England takes 92%.

It has often been the case in which the Scottish Government has been blamed for things over which it has no control, either no devolved powers in an area or no economic grant from Westminster to fulfil a particular Scottish need.

There was never any discussion of HS2 extending to Scotland’s capital cities.

Generally Scottish Governments have chosen socially caring policies and have invested in free healthcare, free dentistry, free prescriptions, free University Education, Social Housing, broad support for pensioner and the disadvantaged poverty, particularly for underprivileged children.

The Scottish Government have behaved with compassion towards the poor, which in dependent Scotland is now most people.

Although the economy of Scotland is not going that well, it should be clearly understood that the economy of England is a good deal worse. None of the listed free benefits are available in England.

England has a housing crisis which is now beyond crisis, and deep into a dangerous disaster. It also has flooding and enormous poverty and transportation problems. There is virtually nothing that the Westminster government has done in the last 20 years that can be considered a success, other than a surprise Brexit that is a disaster, and the enrichment of themselves and their wealthy cronies.

A fully independent Scottish Government with the economic power of Scotland’s own industries and its massive North Sea revenues would immediately invest in a better NHS and far more Social Housing. It would change the country into a caring social democracy, instead of the American model of unregulated capitalism which has been followed to remarkably constant failure since the coming to power in England of Margaret Thatcher.

The English at Westminster now claim specifically under Section 30 that Devolution excludes the legal right for The Scottish Government to have a referendum among its own people.

This is a denial of rights that is strictly against international law regarding the right of self determination of any nation.

Under International Law Scotland is, by legal definition, an unrecognised colony of Imperial England.

Since World War II England has used its wartime goodwill and full diplomatic power to have this imperialistic situation accepted internationally without comment on its international illegality.

The Contemporary Asset Stripping Of Scotland by Westminster

What is Asset Stripping?

Asset stripping is the deliberate sale at discount prices of anything of value in a company or a nation before it is sold off or rendered bankrupt and abandoned. Westminster has been accelerating this process in these last years as Scottish Independence becomes clearly inevitable.

The SNP strategy of waiting for Scottish demographic changes to eventually bring about independence naturally is a strategy which will lead to a far more difficult independence transition following this asset stripping.

Westminster has already taken £500 billion of Scotland’s North Sea Oil resources. With this same amount of oil production Norway has become the richest country in the world, while the UK has become the most lawless, backward and corrupt country in the first world.

Due to corruption and looting by a privileged elite, the UK has essentially become a failed state, with homelessness, drug addiction, crime and undemocratic citizen abuses which are not tolerated in other first world countries.

That only the rich have real access to the law is a fundamental sign of an undemocratic state.

Scotland’s Oil and Gas Reserves Still Remaining in 2024

Westminster goes to very great pains to keep the true revenue value and disbursement of annual North Sea oil extraction and revenues secret. Witness the 30 years it took for even the SNP to uncover a single copy of the McCrone Report of 1974. (See elsewhere in this document for more on the Westminster all party report detailing the extreme wealth and power that Scotland would accrue if it was permitted to be independent and keep its North Sea Oil revenues.)

Nevertheless it is understood that the amount of oil and gas still remaining in Scottish territorial waters, given the recent gigantic new discoveries of Cambo and Rosebank off Shetland), is roughly equal to what has already been extracted. Credible experts have estimated that current reserves are worth as much as £4 trillion.

What has already been extracted, (£5 trillion approx), has been a value enough for Norway to generate a current oil profit of $500 billion to date for its sovereign wealth fund. Enough to make it the richest country per capita in the world.

Scotland’s oil and gas resources can therefore be used to complete its transition to a wealthy independence with the building of infrastructure and housing and social welfare and a strong NHS. All the fundamentals of a Nordic Social Democracy.

These resources can also be used to fund Scotland’s transition into a major supplier of EU energy and particularly clean energy from wind generation, an industry in which it already leads the world but for which it has the wind, island and sea territory to ramp up 50-100 fold.

It should be noted that imported (Russian etc) oil is 5x as ‘dirty’ as Scottish oil due to its manufacturing process. The transition to a new clean energy economy cannot be done in the dark and cold and Scotland’s oil can pay for Scotland’s independence and reconstruction. It can also free the EU from Russian influence. This alone would make EU membership automatic and unprecedentedly rapid.

What North Sea Oil remains is therefore sufficient to underwrite Scotland’s transition to an independent nation of wealth and EU influence. Provided it is retained by an independent Scotland before it can be sold off by Westminster in a desperate asset stripping.

Westminster is extremely secretive regarding the actual revenues it receives from North Sea oil, using this revenue in a sleight of hand accounting dodge to make Scotland appear to be running such a huge deficit that it cannot possibly afford to be independent, without being subsidised by England.

In actual fact Scotland is being subsidised with its own North Sea Oil money, and in actual fact by only 8.5% of the total amount of oil revenue Scotland produces.

It should be noted here for the record that 92% of North Sea Oil and Gas lies in Scottish territorial waters and only 8% in English waters. This is true even after the East and West coast marine borders were deliberately moved north by Westminster in order to bring more oil into English territory following the discovery of oil in early1970s.

Westminster proclaims that it subsidises Scotland by paying them 8.5% of all UK revenue from all sources. This includes all North Sea Oil revenue. Westminster is paying Scotland by returning 8.5% of Scotland’s own oil revenue to it.

For the last 40 years Westminster has been taking £10-£20 billion annually in oil revenue. Unlike in Norway, all of this money has been squandered by successive UK governments to cover up their bad economic governance.

Westminster never includes in its calculations of Scotland’s insuperable deficit the fact that an independent Scotland would not be giving away its oil revenue to a ruling neighbouring country.

Thus independent Scotland is not at all a poor country with a huge deficit, rather it is a wealthy country with a surplus of up to 10% of its total economy, (£87 billion), one of the highest percentage financial surpluses in the world.

Needless to say Westminster prefers to use deceptive accounting practices when they generate £10-£20 billion for them annually, and has done so for the last 40 years.

The Border with England After Independence

It is in the interests of neither Scotland or England to have a difficult border crossing. It is important for trade for both countries and particularly so now that Brexit is in force.

Without Scotland, England has virtually nobody left to trade with now. England already has medicine shortages and empty store shelves due to Brexit. Scotland is joining an EU/EFTA market which is ten times as large as England and is also maintaining the existing UK global trade deals.

And Scotland is hosting the US European theatre nuclear arsenal. A US-Scotland trade deal will be very fast in arriving for the sake of good relations from US. The US needs Scotland as an EU base and emissary far more than Scotland needs the US.

English border crossing for people and goods will therefore be made as simple and efficient as is possible. Border checks will probably exist on goods, but be computerised for resident citizens simply to drive through, avoiding all personal passport controls and using some kind of computerised Wi-Fi ID.

Negotiations on a border will also be easy as Scotland will become England’s main port of entry into the EU and they will wish to maintain good relations. As will Scotland.

Furthermore England will always need to import oil and electricity and food and water from Scotland, which has a substantial excess of all these in comparison to England’s shortages.

England will also require access to US nuclear weapons at Faslane, it will not be able to afford an acrimonious negotiation. Scotland has a legal claim on both £500 billion of previously confiscated oil revenues, and a probable legal right to refuse to pay 8.5% of England’s national debt.

England will have little to offer Scotland – to attempt to damage Scotland’s trade with England will only cause that trade to move to the EU and not return, including energy and freshwater trading. England cannot afford to lose still another major trading partner after the disaster of Brexit and its failure to produce any real alternative trade deals, even with the US.

It is even possible that England will be forced to rejoin the EU after Scotland’s independence isolates England even more. As an EU member Scotland will have a veto over England’s re-entry into the EU. England cannot afford bad relations with Scotland. And in any case other than a few right wing Conservative extremists nobody on either side wishes an acrimonious relationship.

If a complex border remains, gradually Scotland’s trade with EU and Scandinavia and Canada/USA would simply increase and its trade with England would decrease, to England’s economic detriment. Scotland has a number of good deep water container ports for export to EU and the entire world, and will have more of them as it prospers and builds infrastructure and manufacturing export with independence. Scotland does not need England when it has the EU. It is England which lacks trading partners.

For functional comparison, the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland has twice as many minor road crossings as the border between Scotland and England. The Irish EU border functions without difficulty.

An efficient and smooth EU Scotland-England border is not a difficult issue to solve.

Pensions After Independence

People have asked Prof Robert Burns to comment on this due to fear of English pension theft. Generally these are older people who rely on their pension and worry a lot, making them susceptible to fear mongering.

So here is the answer to the question of what happens to Pensions in Independent Scotland:

Nothing happens.

When Scotland separates from England it will take approx 8.5% of the total UK national wealth with it. This will be the proportion due by population ratios. This will include all pensions of every type. It will include everything, even navy ships.

There will be absolutely no change in pensions or their reliability, apart from the address from which it will arrive in your bank account.

In fact your pension is far more likely to rise under a caring Independent Scottish Social Democracy than it has been under decades of Westminster governments. We saw this already with the far more generous Scottish energy and various poverty payments during the recent covid/economic crisis.

These Westminster governments have consciously made British pensioners have the lowest level of old age pension in all of first world Europe.

The UK deliberately has the poorest pensioners in Europe. Scotland will not.

So be certain that Westminster cannot steal Scottish pension money due, much as it would love to. This is what World Courts and EU/UN sanctions are for.

England dare not risk facing these as a weak and isolated country accused of attempting to be an imperial power. It is already facing disaster on all sides both internally in spreading poverty, and globally in lack of trade.

The Westminster McCrone Report of 1974

In January 1974, the Conservative government had commissioned the McCrone report, written by Professor Gavin McCrone, a leading government economist, to report to the Wesminster government on the viability of an independent Scotland. He concluded that the discovery of North Sea Oil would give an independent Scotland one of the strongest currencies and economies in Europe. This event has subsequently taken place in Norway which had a similar population and a similar amount of North Sea Oil to Scotland.

The McCrone report went on to say that officials advised government ministers that they should act covertly against Scotland and the independence movement in order to prevent a wealthy Scotland succeeding from the UK and taking its oil wealth with it.

The McCrone Report was handed over to the incoming Labour government and classified as top secret because of Labour fears over the surge in Scottish National Party popularity.

The McCrone Report remained completely secret for 30 years, only coming to light in 2005, when the SNP obtained the report under the Freedom of Information Act of 2000.

The McCrone Report specifically analysed the potential impact of North Sea oil revenues on the Scottish economy, and suggested that Scotland would become one of the wealthiest countries in Europe if it had control over its own natural resources.

The McCrone Report was handed over to the Labour government by the departing Conservative government, and designated top secret as a matter of national interest, although apparently not Scotland’s national interest.

It was 30 years before the report finally came to light in 2005 following a Freedom of Information demand by the SNP.

By then all the economic predictions of economic wealth had proven true for Norway and none of them for dependent Scotland. Westminster had been successful in deliberately preventing Scotland’s Oil from bringing Scotland independence and great wealth.

Scotland receives only 8.5% of the revenues from North Sea Oil. England keeps 92% of the oil revenue from Scottish territorial waters.

The McCrone Report of 1974 was prescient. And it could be written the same again today in precisely the same terms regarding the future of Scotland if it fails to claim its independence while it still has massive oil and gas resources in its territorial waters now in 2024.

Rejoining The European Union

62% of Scotland voted against Brexit. Now that the dimensions of the Brexit disaster have become clear that figure could be as high as 80-90%.

Independence is Scotland’s only route back to EU membership.

European Union membership would deliver Scotland its own seat at the European and global table. It would return to Scotland the EU right to work, travel and study across Europe.

As an independent oil gas and wind energy producing nation Scotland would have the powers and potential to be a technology energy leader around the world.

There has never been a better time to join the EU. The EU is consciously expanding, the EU is bitter about Brexit, England no longer has any influence over the EU to prevent Scotland joining. Scotland is well liked and popular across the EU in a way that England never has been.

The EU has a desperate need of a new and reliable supplier of clean energy, in which Scotland is a world leader.

Furthermore with massive oil and gas resources as collateral, Scotland is immediately viable economically, to the point of it being strongly in EU interests to provide Scotland with economic support, immediate energy delivery contracts, and exceptional entry waivers to its former member of 47 years. The EU desperately needs a reliable new supplier of massive amounts of energy and Scotland is the only nearby country which has this, apart from Russia, which has broken its contracts and deeply embarrassed the EU.

Small countries do well inside the EU where they receive the advantages of support from much larger partners such as Germany and France. Scotland would only be the 11^th smallest country of the 27 currently in the EU. Numbers 12 and 13 also have very similar populations to Scotland.

Of all the smaller EU countries Scotland’s economic prospects are by far the brightest. It is sitting on £500-1,000 billion pounds of immediate future profit on oil, gas and wind energy. Scotland’s natural resources have never been exhausted in the way of other European nations. Scotland has never been overpopulated.

Scotland’s laws and systems are still kept aligned with the EU, the Scottish Government have taken care to ensure this in preparation for an easy return to full EU membership.

The EU have repeatedly made clear that Scotland would be welcomed back as an independent country.

Having Scotland join the EU would be in additional EU interest as it would greatly weaken England and gradually force it to rejoin the EU once again, on far less favourable and influential terms than previously. This would be seen across the EU as a triumph and a very suitable retribution for Brexit.

Not least in EU motivation to welcome Scotland quickly is the fact that Scotland houses 40% of the entire European nuclear arsenal that protects all Europe.

The EU knows this and is much too politically sophisticated to leave itself militarily unprotected over the minor bureaucratic details of Scotland’s returning membership, an unprecedented situation allowing for unprecedented dispensations and assistance.

Furthermore the USA would never allow this military exposure to occur. It would pressure the EU to act quickly and may even intercede if Scotland required economic borrowing or underwriting to assist in the establishment of a currency.

Scotland has always been a strong ally of America and in fact most Americans have Scottish and Irish heritage and not English heritage, as is normally believed. Historically The English did not emigrate to America because England was already by far the richest country in the world. It was the Scots and Irish who emigrated to America out of poverty.

And so the EU has extremely good motive to assist Scotland in joining again. It is not pleased with England over Brexit, it knows Scotland was forced out of the EU involuntarily and the EU is desperately in need of a new reliable energy supplier to replace Russia. The EU wishes to be using 50% clean energy as soon as it can be.

Scotland is the world leader in wind energy and can supply a very large proportion of EU needs directly via undersea cable to Europe. Scotland has the capability and potential for being a very important, secure and reliable EU energy supplier, so much so that the EU will go out of its way to speed up Scotland’s entry and probably even have the European Central Bank underwrite the transition of Scotland’s economy to the Euro and the establishment of a Scottish Central Bank.

ECB could easily justify this on the basis of Scotland’s enormous oil and gas natural reserves as collateral, (approx £5 trillion), and especially upon EU’s urgent need for a reliable new energy supplier. Delaying Scotland’s EU entry would delay the construction of undersea electricity cables to directly supply Europe. Neither side wants this.

Without Westminster influence acting covertly inside the EU to diplomatically oppose Scotland’s membership any longer, EU membership could come unprecedentedly quickly.

The EU has always had Scotland’s support and Scotland was considered a good and valuable member for 47 years. A number of countries have become completely new members in only 15 months (Austria, Finland, Sweden).

None of these countries were previously EU members in good standing for 47 years. And the EU feels it let Scotland down by being unable to keep it as a member when it desired to remain inside the EU rather than leave.

It is entirely likely that Scotland will be able to become an EU member well within 2 years and may even receive a special waiver dispensation to join almost immediately. The EU would love to see England punished for its arrogant behaviour during Brexit negotiations and subsequently.

A Currency For Independent Scotland.

To become an EU member it is necessary for Scotland to have its own currency. The SNP previously imagined that this should be the pound sterling initially – presumably this was out of sheer nostalgia and fear of unsettling the financially conservative Scottish population. In truth this is the worst possible strategy since it leaves Scottish fiscal policy at the mercy of English fiscal policy. It is independence without the capability of independent action on the primary economic lever. By far the best approach, and the SNP have now agreed with this, is to create a new currency immediately. (Perhaps ‘The Scot’ ? Then simply use S1 instead of £1.) This will allow Scotland the necessary control over its own economy whilst it is establishing and building a new nation. Scotland needs to be able to control its own interest rates and borrowing. Creating a new currency is not very difficult for a country as rich and financially experienced as Scotland. The Czech Republic and Slovakia did it easily enough when they split from being a single country. As did all seven of the former Communist Yugoslavian Republics when they became small independent countries and EU applicants and members. None of these former communist countries had any, far less hundreds of years, of capital and financial expertise, as does Edinburgh. Neither did they have huge amounts of oil collateral and cash reserves, as does Scotland. By some expert estimates Scotland will have as much as £50 billion in cash reserves when Scotland’s cash is transferred out of Sterling, where it now sits. It will also have enormous North Sea Oil reserves. Additionally Scotland will possibly have little or no national debt, giving it immediate access to massive international borrowing. According to the independent European economic expert organisation the OECD, (The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), Scotland’s already existing energy resources, cash reserves and lack of debt immediately makes Scotland the 15th richest country in the world per capita. This is well above the UK and England. Virtually no country, including England, has this kind of actively available economic strength. This economic strength would immediately allow Scotland to borrow up to $100+ billion in debt, to simply bring it into line with the normal current national debt of other countries (e.g.: UK). From this massive amount of capital investment an entirely new Scotland can be built. Scotland already has an operating Scottish Investment Bank. It is a relatively simple matter to expand this agency into a Scottish Central Bank which would regulate the economy similarly to all national central banks. It is also theoretically possible to lock a new Scottish currency exchange rate to the Euro (as Denmark has done with the Krone), or even move immediately to the Euro. These are simpler but less good solutions than to be in full economic control of Scotland’s own new currency, which can be quite easily established given Scotland’s financial reserves and banking/financial experience. With such cash reserves, no debt, and massive oil and wind energy resources, it is possible to ask the EU and the European Central Bank to underwrite Scotland’s currency transition using North Sea Oil and Gas and Wind Energy as collateral. This would allow Scotland to immediately re-join the EU and begin supplying it with huge amounts of clean energy more quickly, allowing the EU to escape from its disastrous reliance on Russian oil and gas. The ECB would support this move very strongly. Russian energy contracts have damaged the entire EU, and the EU would be very keen to move to a reliable EU member as an alternative supplier of clean energy. The EU has pledged to have 50% of its energy be clean energy as soon as it possibly can. Scotland has the wind energy and world leading expertise to supply much of this. It also has huge amounts of windy open sea areas suitable for offshore windfarms inside its territorial waters. Currently Scotland is awaiting the final go ahead to begin building the world’s largest offshore wind farm off East Lothian. Scotland can build an oil and gas pipeline and mainline electricity cable straight into mainland Europe under the North Sea. And it can start building as soon as it has a long term contract with the EU. The ECB would probably make arrangements to underwrite such an important and necessary EU contract. Europe needs Scottish energy immediately and will finance and facilitate Scotland’s independence transition in order to get it. Scotland is already a former EU member with 47 years good standing and trust. The EU will make all membership problems disappear because it is in their interests to do so. Even if Scotland did not house 40% of all the US nuclear weapons in Europe which keeps Europe secure. USA, NATO and the EU need and want independent Scotland to be a stable, friendly and reliable ally. As it always has been and will remain. And they will all help facilitate this.

A New Constitutional Path To Scottish Independence

How can Independence be achieved? – Simply a majority of Scots people must declare for it.

Independence is never given by an imperial power, it must always be taken from them.

This has been true through all history and throughout the world.

And never more true than when involving England and its imperial power.

Despite the fact that the Westminster government has broken the Treaty of Union of 1707 and refused Scotland the right to hold its own referendum among its own people, proving that this is not a voluntary Union of equal nations, but an imperial colonisation of Scotland by England, there remains a clear and simple path to independence for the Scottish people.

Provided that the Scottish government have the moral courage and will for a perfectly legal and constitutional defiance in service of Scottish Independence.

A new independence referendum is currently being denied Scotland under a Westminster declaration that a Section 30 order is legally necessary for this to occur, and such a referendum can only be permitted by Westminster.

This has been upheld under UK law by English courts empowered by a Westminster government which is 82% English and only 9% Scottish.

Scotland however has its own Law and a denial of its own right to self determination is not part of Scots Law. The Scottish government can simply pass a new law stating that it has the right to poll its electorate’s opinion on matters of Scotland’s future.

This is necessary for good governance, that a government knows the opinion of its electorate. This need not specifically be a constitutional referendum on independence, but merely a consultative opinion poll on the subject, executed under Scottish Law at the ballot box as an additional voluntary ballot paper issued to voters at Holyrood or Westminster elections.

This voluntary opinion ballot should only be valid when filled in by native born Scottish people who divulge their name, date and place of birth at their ballot. This can be authenticated by immediate passport inspection, or by later examining existing official records of birth.

This would now put Scotland in a position to present to the world a single, legally authenticated percentage figure of native born Scots who desire that Scotland be an independent nation.

This percentage, which is likely to be 60-75%, and possibly even higher, is an immediate legal ground for Scotland to declare itself as having left the UK Union, and to apply to the UN, EU, NATO and if necessary the International Court of Justice for recognition as an independent nation.

All of these organisations will accept Scotland’s nationhood under their own rules and precedents. Westminster’s opinion on the matter is utterly irrelevant.

Every one of these global organisations recognise the reluctance of an imperial power to give up a colony, and every imperialist’s ready use of deceptive local laws to thwart all independence.

World governing bodies would immediately recognise Scotland as an independent country and pressure England /Westminster to accept and recognise it. England no longer has the world influence to prevent this diplomatically.

An isolated, non EU, England would not risk the loss of its generous UN veto power by being accused of being an antidemocratic imperialist tyrant. International forces are already mustering against this unwarranted UN veto.

In addition, for various reasons (see below), Scotland is in a powerful negotiating position with the EU, the US and NATO. And also in fact with England.

All three of these global powers would recognise Scottish independence immediately and go out of their way to override English objections.

Scotland could be established internationally as an EU and NATO member and major US ally and US emissary to the EU inside two years.

The EU will welcome and assist in Scotland rejoining their union. England no longer has diplomatic influence with the EU to delay Scotland’s membership, as it did during the referendum of 2014, when it forced the EU to remain silent on Scotland’s future easy joining.

The EU has not appreciated Brexit’s hostility and deceit, nor their own failure to prevent Scotland’s involuntary departure from EU membership.

The EU is now expanding again and three new members achieved membership in only 15 months. This without having previously been members for 47 years.

The EU desperately needs a reliable energy supplier to replace Russia following their gas pipeline debacle. The EU is committed to using 50% clean energy as soon as possible, Scotland leads the world in clean wind energy.

In fact the EU wants Scotland as a member enough to give it special entry dispensations and European Central Bank currency support to facilitate an unprecedentedly speedy membership to its former member and allow a much earlier new energy supply via a direct undersea electricity cable and oil pipeline from Scotland to mainland Europe. ECB would probably even underwrite Scotland’s currency on the basis of its estimated £5 trillion of oil reserves alone.

Regarding US recognition, Scotland has the geographical location the US needs for trade and military transport as the future global Northern Ocean trade route opens up free of ice.

Scotland currently holds 40% of Europe’s nuclear arms stationed at Faslane. These are US owned and Faslane is a major US resupply base and staging area, just as the Northern Shetlands will be when the Northern Ocean becomes a major military and trade route.

The US needs Scotland as an ally and will diplomatically pressure Westminster in the matter of independence negotiations. The US does not need England now that it is outside the EU. America does not even bother to discuss a trade agreement with England.

America will use Scotland as its ally and its main emissary into the EU once it becomes an independent member. It will politically sponsor Independent Scotland in order to achieve this.

Furthermore most Americans have a Scots-Irish heritage and not an English heritage as is commonly assumed.

The UN will recognise Scotland under its own rules and precedents for the self determination of a nation. It will do this as a legal obligation but also under the diplomatic encouragement of the US and NATO. Westminster will be pressured to accept Scotland’s nationhood under threat of international boycott and losing its UN Council veto which it still holds without reason. The former Commonwealth remembers its own struggles for independence from London, and not without resentment.

NATO would immediately recognise Scotland a a member because of the nuclear base at Faslane, a major military port for NATO and the US and the centre of European theatre nuclear operations. NATO wishes that Faslane closes as slowly as possible as a nuclear base, and will offer Scotland maximum support in exchange for any delays.

Under powerful International pressure Westminster would be forced to the negotiating table to agree good terms of independence or it would have to declare Scotland a colony of England, with no right of self determination, (a clearly losing legal position in the European Court of Justice (ECJ), and one leading to immediate EU trade sanctions against England.)

Bad faith negotiations would not be possible for Westminster to attempt in the face of the disapproval of the entire world and its global institutions.

Following the humiliation of Brexit, England cannot endure such a further massive blow to its global reputation. It should be remembered that England has never been as internationally weak and uninfluential as it is now. Brexit and economic poverty has ended its soft power and brought forth resentments from former colonies and slighted friends, such as the EU.

Scotland will receive overwhelming support and applause from the world as it breaks away from a much resented England.

With a legitimate, authenticated, native Scots born majority support for Independence, which may even prove to be massively (75+%) in favour, Scotland can confidently and easily petition all world governing bodies to be officially recognised as an independent nation without a legal means of self determination other than this petition.

This is the precise legal definition of a colony under foreign rule in the eyes of all the World governing organisations and the International Court of Justice.

Scotland will be viewed by the world as a heroic underdog which has finally rebelled against its bullying master.

The Delicate Issue of Foreign Voters In Independence Referendums.

How Did Scotland Become The Only Country In History To Ever Vote Itself To Be Ruled Over By Another Country?

When Scotland voted against independence, the entire world was astonished. No country had ever fought against its own independence before, not in all history. And this wasn’t even a bloody battle for freedom, this was making a cross on a piece of paper with a pencil.

Other brave countries have spent a hundred years with guns in their hands to win their independence. Scotland wouldn’t even put a mark on a piece of paper for theirs. How could this possibly happen? Scotland looked cowardly and foolish to the entire world.

Here is the true explanation.

This is the reason Scotland is not independent now and may also lose the next referendum in precisely same manner as in 2014. After waiting for 30 years cap in hand to get itself granted another referendum by Westminster.

Before we go any further you should know I am an applied mathematician. FYI politicians are not mathematicians, as we shall now prove.

I lived inside the EU for a decade, in the Netherlands, probably the most democratic country in the world. I was never allowed to vote there. Even though I was an EU citizen.

But I loved the Social Democratic society and I was grateful to be allowed to live there.

For several decades I also lived in the USA, I was not allowed to vote in any elections of any type there. Legal residents are not allowed to vote, only full American citizens. America promotes democracy around the world and often goes to war in support of it.

I am also not allowed to vote in Australian elections, nor EU elections, nor Indian and Chinese elections.

I am not allowed to vote in these elections because I am a foreigner and the people of these countries do not wish me, a foreigner, to be telling them how to run their country.

They are wise in this because I am a guest there, my stake in their country is not as high, and I do not understand their culture and heritage in the deep way in which they do.

And these countries all especially do not wish me to be telling them if they are countries or not.

It is a simple mathematical fact that the native born Scottish people of Scotland wish to be an independent country and govern their own land and own their own natural resources and wealth.

They voted for this in the 2014 independence referendum and they desire it even more now that they have been forcibly removed from EU membership.

This is a fact that can be backed up with mathematics.

If only there was anybody in the Scottish government who is not mathematically illiterate.

To be clear:

In the 2014 referendum anybody resident in Scotland on that date could vote on whether Scotland is a country or not.

This included foreign students doing brief university courses, EU citizens spending a few years on work assignment in Scotland, English residents who had retired to Scotland to get away from England and buy cheap houses.

Indians and Poles and New Zealanders and Australians and Canadians and anybody at all who was in Scotland for a few months or more could vote on the historical future of Scotland.

One vote per person. One for a Scot and an equal one for an English resident.

The only interested parties who could not vote in the Scottish Independence referendum were Scottish people who were temporarily or permanently abroad. People like me in fact.

This is ah historical diaspora of millions upon millions of Scots whom poverty forced to leave and who built countries like America with their strength and brilliance. They went there because they had too much talent and ambition to remain in a colony of England in which there was no opportunity and no access to a ruling class based in London.

I know this because I did precisely the same for precisely the same reasons. I did not wish to live under the rule of a foreign elite class who excluded me from real participation in a UK nation that was theirs and not mine.

The University of Edinburgh recently calculated that YES would have won the independence referendum by 5.4% if only native born Scots had been allowed to vote.

This percentage excludes native born Scots who happened to be abroad during the referendum.

My own quick calculations done in 2014 indicated a 5.8% victory for independence.

Today’s numbers are never polled but following Brexit and with the austerity/poverty events of the last decade and the changing demographic of Scotland, this Scots born percentage in favour of independence must now be somewhere between 65% and perhaps even as high as 75% of native born Scots. This excludes those who are native Scots born but living abroad.

Either one of these percentage figures are easily enough for Scotland to declare independence and be immediately and automatically recognised by the UN, EU, NATO, USA as an independent country.

The opinion of Westminster in this is utterly irrelevant. Westminster do not make International Law.

In fact Westminster would not dare to oppose the entire world and declare Scotland an English imperial colony.

After Brexit it is already weak and isolated and in danger of losing its UN veto.

Naturally this subject is a delicate issue, who precisely should be permitted to vote in a country. To even begin to open a discussion on it is to become vulnerable to accusations of racism. But let us also remember that Westminster had little problem in refusing to allow EU and other foreign residents from voting in the Brexit referendum. And no complaint was raised in any quarter.

Whether Scotland becomes a free independent nation is not a matter for English people to decide, nor for the foreigners of any nation who happen to be in Scotland at the time of a referendum.

It is a matter only for the Scots born to decide.

These foreign resident people already have countries of their own and citizenship of them. They have passports and national rights and a homeland. It is only the Scots who do not have citizenship of their own country. Because Scots’ own country does not exist.

These foreign citizens in Scotland should have been welcomed to stay, offered a passport and citizenship of a new independent Scotland, but they should never have been allowed to decide whether Scotland could exist as a free nation.

And especially not when actual real Scots living abroad were not allowed a postal vote on the issue, apparently due to the inconvenience of opening envelopes and checking eligibility.

If Australia and New Zealand decide to have a referendum on whether to become one country it is absurd that I, as a foreigner, have a vote on the issue. It is not my heritage and it is not my business. Scotland is my business, and it is not their business.

According to the 2011 census, in the 2014 referendum, 17% of the Scottish population were not Scottish. By far the largest part (10+%) of these foreigners were English.

Yes, English people were actually asked to vote on whether England should continue to rule Scotland.

This is way too much generous hospitality.

This is far beyond hospitality and deep into stupidity. No sensible country asks its colonisers if they want to continue ruling them.

The English voted to have England continue to rule over Scotland, and the EU residents voted to remain in the EU, (since the EU disgraced itself by agreeing to Westminster’s demands that they refuse to declare that Scotland would easily become an EU member.)

And if I was English or an EU foreign resident in Scotland, I would have voted exactly the same as they. I would have voted NO to avoid the unnecessary upheaval in my financial and residency situation. By voting NO I would avoid having to do anything at all.

And it is easy for me to vote NO because I have no emotional heritage stake in the issue.

This is transparently obvious to anyone, that these people had nothing at stake for Scotland and a strong motive to vote NO, and that as a result the NO campaign had a 17% advantage in the voting.

To actually win independence in 2014 the Scottish government accidentally made it necessary for the YES campaign to achieve a 67% – 33% positive result among actual Scots. By giving NO a 17% start, anything less than this would result in a loss for independence. And it did.

The 2014 referendum was lost because of the naïve mathematical illiteracy of the Scottish government. It offered too much hospitality to its visitors and now as a result Scotland has no homeland to offer these foreigners citizenship of.

And no homeland to call its own Scotland.

By chance around 2015 I had the opportunity to have this discussion with one of the first minister’s advisers. I explained the mathematical naivete problem to him, just as I have to you. I also explained to him that the Westminster government had only agreed to all the past Scottish referendums on mathematically impossible terms, that this was a deliberate Westminster strategy that Scotland had repeatedly fallen for, and should not fall for again.

This man was an MP and a professor at a major university. He was a smart man and a good MP and one day he may be a good First Minister. Our conversation took place soon after the lost referendum and I was deeply concerned that the Scottish government be informed of the mathematics of the inevitable loss, and especially avoid repeating the same error in what was then expected to be a soon coming second referendum following a forced Brexit. He shrugged at me blankly, a man so sure of himself that he didn’t even recognise a position of naïve stupidity when he took a stand on it.

‘We’ll just have to agree to differ on that,’ he said.

This was a man differing on mathematics without any mathematical training. Somehow he imagined that mathematics is a matter of opinion. Clearly I had wasted my breath in advising him.

‘A 5.8% victory we threw away,’ I said, ‘We can’t afford to lose a second referendum..’

‘No we can’t,’ he said firmly. That much he did know.

But we are still waiting for that second referendum ten years later. Westminster are determined to disseminate the lie that a generation of waiting was agreed upon.

And if another referendum ever comes we will lose it again if people who have no business in voting on whether Scotland is a country are given a vote in it. The percentage of English people resident in Scotland is growing daily as they flee a crumbling England.

Eventually Scotland will be so fully colonised that a majority of votes for independence is forever impossible. Westminster are perfectly happy to encourage this.

Foreign residents in Scotland should be given a passport, a citizenship, an apology, even a big hug. They are welcome here, we need them and we want them. But they must wait until they are Scots before they can vote as Scots in a referendum on the very existence of Scotland.

The Scottish government needs to finally take the one poll they have never taken; the percentage of Scots born people who desire independence for Scotland. And they then need to act upon the outcome.

This percentage is the only figure that matters and the result will be high enough for Scotland to immediately declare itself independent of the UK Union and be recognised by all world bodies as an independent country and not a colony of England.

Scotland can be independent the moment it finds the courage to act with the authority of a nation.

(See also a New Path To Independence 2024 for more on this.)

Scotland’s Imaginary Annual Economic Deficit.

And How It Is Manufactured.

Westminster claims annually that Scotland is subsidised by England. This makes Scotland the only substantial oil producing nation in history which operates at a loss.

How can this possibly be? On the same amount of oil reserves and population Norway has become the richest country in the world per capita. Is Scotland somehow selling its oil and gas at a loss? Will this continue even when Scotland is independent and owns all its own energy reserves?

Westminster keeps the actual North Sea revenue figures extremely secret to avoid public scrutiny of the accounting, And especially public scrutiny in Scotland. (See The McCrone Report of 1974 elsewhere on the site for the deceitful reasons for this 50 year old longstanding policy.)

This budget deficit is mysterious until it is understood that it is used to calculate the Block Grant given to Scotland annually by Westminster under the Barnett Formula.

If Scotland operates at a loss then it is owed less money by Westminster, and England can claim to be subsidising a Scotland which cannot afford to be independent, despite being one of the most resource rich countries in Europe. Scotland is drowning in oil, gas, wind energy, marine resources, agriculture, tourism and whisky industries.

So Westminster has to resort to cooking the accounts in order to make Scotland appear to be economically weak and in need of a rescuing English subsidy.

Here is how the trick is done:

Scotland owns 8.4% of everything in the UK. This is the relative proportional population of Scotland and is used in the Barnett Formula.

England therefore claims that it owns 91.6% of all the oil and gas produced in Scotland. It takes the revenue for all this as its own.

However it also practices false and misleading accounting by saying that ALL of this oil and gas is UK production and not Scottish production.

Westminster can now both claim 100% of the economic gain while simultaneously excluding a further £9 billion a year from Scottish fiscal balances. This makes Scotland appear to be an extra £9 billion in deficit. This practice deducts £18 billion from Scotland’s true budget balance, which is actually a substantial surplus.

Westminster goes to extremely great pains to conceal the true income received from North Sea Oil. It managed to keep The McCrone Report completely secret for 30 years.

Under UK Law Westminster takes 91.6% of all North Sea Revenues. Scotland receives 8.4%. These are calculated based on the relative population ratios of the countries, as is the Westminster MP seat ratio.

This permanently makes the UK government 82% English and 8% Scots. Therefore the UK government is entirely controlled by England. Scotland’s opinion on any matter is insignificant. Including its own referendum.

Clearly an independent Scotland would not be giving 91% of its oil revenue to another country. This gigantic amount of revenue would therefore remain in Scotland – amounting to a massive annual financial surplus, probably larger by budget percentage than any other EU country has.

Calculations indicate that with all the oil and gas revenue remaining in Scotland, the country will have an immediate additional income of £8-£9 billion. This amounts to almost a 10% surplus on Scotland’s £87 billion economy, not a deficit at all.

This is an virtually unprecedented surplus anywhere in the developed world. And it can ramp up from there.

Immediately it is enough new finance to begin rebuilding the NHS and housing and social systems of a new independent country.

If you are in any doubt about the reality of this secretive and deceitful accounting practice simply ask yourself:

If Scotland needs such gigantic annual subsidies then why is England holding on to it so very tightly?

England has never been a generous coloniser, the British Empire was always run for profit.

Inside the UK it still is.

United Nations, European Union and World Court Recognition of an Independent Scotland

Recognition of independence by world institutions is fundamentally based on the Montevideo Convention criteria of 1933. These were establish under the auspices of the US and accepted at a world body convention in Montevideo, Argentina. These criteria are now settled law and established practice in the recognition of new states internationally. These criteria have been used to ratify the existence of an estimated 30-60 new countries following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, (Yugoslavia and Balkans), Africa and the British Commonwealth.

The Article 1 fundamental Montevideo Criteria are:

A nation state should meet the following criteria.

1. A settled permanent population.

2. A defined territory.

3. A government

4. The capacity to conduct international relations.

Scotland can easily meet all of these conditions and would therefore immediately be recognised by all world organisations, (UN, EU, US, NATO, World Court), as a lawfully legitimate nation state.

Westminster opinion in the matter would have absolutely no weight. And particularly since England is the imperial power from which independence is being taken.

Scotland can be independent the moment it chooses to be so. Simply by establishing a majority desire for independence exists among its native born citizens i.e.: among the Scottish.

Union Separation Negotiations With England.

These negotiations are likely to be quite simple, unlike the Brexit negotiations in which neither side had much negotiating leverage due to the deliberate stubbornness and stupidity of the UK negotiating position.

Imagine that the UK is a pie, Scotland will simply take a piece of that pie in proportion to the relative populations of Scotland and the rest of the remaining UK.

Scotland has a strong negotiating position in this because legally it is probably not liable for UK national debt, although Scotland is likely to voluntarily accept some share smaller than its approx 8.5% share by population. Although probably not the 30% of total debt which the UK government owes to the Bank of England, that is to itself. Scotland already pays an exploitative interest of approx £2.5 billion a year on this fake UK debt.

Following Brexit a voluntarily trade isolated England will need Scotland’s friendship for the supply of energy and drinking water during increasing summer droughts.

Furthermore England needs a Scottish agreement for time to remove its nuclear weapons from Scottish territory, and both the USA and NATO will heavily pressure England to achieve this.

Independent Scotland will be England’s principal trade route into the EU, good relations are essential for this. England cannot afford another discredited negotiation after the reputational damage it suffered in its dishonest Brexit negotiations.

Furthermore if Scotland is unfairly treated during separation negotiations Scotland will, as a member of the EU, be in a position to enforce powerful future sanctions against England. The EU will certainly support new member Scotland over impolitely departed member England.

Scotland will also have the option of going to the European Court of Justice with an economic reparations claim for £500 billion of oil revenue taken by Westminster since 1975. This is not a claim that England can afford to lose or even risk losing.

With Scotland back in the EU, England will almost certainly be forced to eventually rejoin the EU also, particularly when the era of extremist Westminster government ends. England would be very foolish to make an enemy of Scotland, an EU member with a veto over England’s membership and the ability to enforce sanctions via the powerful EU.

As Scotland becomes an economic force on the basis of North sea oil, gas and wind energy, and its many other industries (tourism, food and alcohol, space and manufacturing), an economically weakened and struggling England lacking the resources of energy and water would be extremely foolish to seek make a trade enemy of Scotland, as it has already done with Europe.

Scotland’s Political Landscape After Independence

After Scottish Independence is achieved the SNP will no longer be the party of Independence. Instead it will be the party of Social Democracy, since independence will no longer be an issue.

The SNP will oversee the transition to independence and new membership of the EU, UN and NATO. Also the all party establishment of a Scottish Constitution, overseen by academic experts in the subject.

After a couple of years the normal election cycle will bring elections in which the SNP will have to run against new, independent and genuinely Scottish political parties. Reformed Scottish Labour, Scottish Tory and Scottish Lib-Dem parties will be established no longer controlled by Westminster. Alba and the Greens will run with the great advantage of having supported the fight for independence.

Political parties based in foreign countries will not be permitted to run in Scottish elections. This would mean the current Westminster Conservative Party, the Labour Party, The Lib-Dem Party and also include the Chinese Communist Party and similar.

Scotland’s politics will be exclusively Scottish.

Most likely this broad political landscape will result in a coalition government led by a party without a majority, just as almost all other democratic states in the world are governed, with the bizarre exception of the UK.

The important thing to realise here is that Independent Scotland will never be a one party SNP state.

Instead it will be an authentic proportional representation democracy, unlike the Westminster UK which is the only state in Europe apart from the Belarus dictatorship which uses First Past The Post to elect extreme minority governments which then act as a ruling class.

Better yet, independent Scotland will be a Social Democracy based on the wildly successful Nordic Model.

After Independence democracy will be far more assured than it is currently, when Scotland is ruled by a distant foreign parliament situated in a separate nation and controlled by people who are not Scottish and show no allegiance to the country of Scotland.

NATO Membership in Independent Scotland.

It is perfectly possible to remain inside NATO without housing nuclear weapons in Scotland. Other countries do this.

NATO would accept Scotland as an independent member immediately because Faslane currently houses 40% of all nuclear weapons in the European military theatre. These are NATO/US weapons and also UK’s submarine fleet. All of them.

The US uses Faslane as an important European staging and resupply base, diplomatically it would heavily pressure both NATO and Westminster to support Scotland’s independence.

It is in USA, NATO and England’s interests that Faslane closes as slowly as possible. The threat of Scotland closing access to it would generate panic across the entire West, including the European Union. Even Russia would be unsettled at the shift in the balance of power.

All of these organisations will respond favourably to Scotland in order to maintain good will, which they all already possess and can expect to continue indefinitely from Scotland.

NATO and the US are aware that Scotland has always been a strong and reliable partner and intends to remain so. Scotland is a highly valued NATO member, far higher than UK due to Faslane, and this will be even truer as the Arctic ice melts and the Northern Ocean trade and military route across the world opens and passes directly past Scotland’s hundreds of uninhabited northern ocean islands, which offer a suitable European supply and military base located in the strategic territory of a stable long term ally and NATO member.

NATO will offer independent Scotland membership with great speed. And no matter how fast the offer comes, the US will be pressuring NATO to go even faster.

England’s opinion in this will not matter to US or EU.

It is in England’s interests in all respects to keep its submarines at Faslane, and it will negotiate for this across all areas of Union separation negotiations. It will certainly not be threatening to move its nuclear weapons to London.

What is the Section 30 Order?

A Section 30 Order is a claim by Westminster that Scotland is a nation in a voluntary Union with England but which does not have the right to leave or even allow its people to vote constitutionally on the issue of independence.

The refusal of a Section 30 Order in 2022 by Westminster allowed Westminster to deny Scotland the independence referendum it requested after it was forced involuntarily to give up membership in the EU under the terms of Brexit, despite Scotland having voted against Brexit by a substantial majority.

England claims it is not an imperialist coloniser of Scotland, but that Scotland may not leave the Union without England’s permission. This is both illegal under international law and transparently deceptive.

England’s claim of legal authority over Scotland was upheld in November 2022 by the UK Supreme Court in Westminster, London, despite its democratic failings, which neither the European Court of Justice nor the UN would allow if they were to be consulted.

Scotland is in a voluntary union or it is not.

If Scotland cannot leave the Union without England’s permission then the Union is not voluntary.

Rather it is a colonisation that is illegal in the eyes of World institutional bodies. (UN, EU, ECJ, NATO).

The Section 30 law does not apply in international law under European/International Courts of Justice in matters of independence. It is always expected and anticipated that the colonising power will not agree to grant independence to the colony.

The Scottish Parliament can simply pass a law declaring Section 30 invalid in Scotland and proceed with a legal Scottish referendum of its own population. England need not recognise this Scottish law but their legal opinion is of no consequence under accepted international law regarding self determination of peoples and states.

Scotland is being denied the right of self determination and this alone makes it legally possible for it to immediately declare itself independent and be recognised as a legal nation by world bodies such as UN and EU, regardless of the opinion and statutes of UK (English) law.

International bodies such as the UN, EU and ECJ, have precedentedly and repeatedly recognised that independence from an imperialist power is never given to a colony. It must be taken.

It is the Section 30 Order itself that is internationally illegal, not the holding of a referendum of the population of a nation that is not a colony.

Pros and Cons of Scottish Independence

The Advantages of Scottish Independence

PRO LIST

1 Scotland can make its own laws and policies and control its own fate.

2 Scotland can build the kind of society it wants that suits its own needs and social humanitarianism.

The Social Democracy model of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland has been a very great success for the average citizen there, the SNP intend that Scotland should follow this model rather than the Westminster model of unregulated capitalism modelled on the failed American system which deeply lacks social caring and personal security.

3 Scotland has the massive natural resources to be a very wealthy and powerful country. It has oil, gas, wind, water, open land. It leads the world in clean energy production. It has a major tourist industry and is a luxury international brand in whisky, foods, tourism and other products. It also has a history of skilled manufacturing.

As a brand Scotland is famous and well liked all around the world. This is not true of the UK.

4 Scotland has a highly educated population and a University system with 3 major world universities including the best in the UK. Higher education is a major Scottish global industry. Scotland attracts students from around the world.

5 Scotland speaks English which makes it an advantageous entry point into the EU for world corporations and especially American ones. It is this advantage which has allowed Ireland to become a Celtic Tiger and by far the richest country in the former UK.

6 Scotland can quickly rejoin the EU – the largest trading block in the world which offers untold advantages to small countries. Small countries thrive inside the EU where they enjoy the protection and influence of much larger countries such as Germany and France. Scotland would only be the

11th smallest country in the EU, roughly in the middle of all the member’s populations’.

7 An Independent Scotland would keep its own revenue from its own oil and gas and wind energy. This alone will make Scotland a wealthy country, able to pay for establishing a new nation.

Since the 1970s, 92% of Scotland’s oil revenue is taken by England annually as a right.

Norway has become the richest country in the world on the same amount of oil and population as Scotland. Scotland now in 2024 still has reserves equal to those already used up, currently estimated at £4 trillion in value.

CONS LIST

1 Scotland will have no-one to give the wealth generated by its enormous natural resources away to.

2 Scotland will no longer be ‘Better Together’. Instead it will have to give up the generous support it has always received from the English Parliament which has made Scottish cities have the shortest expected lifespan (58) in Europe, including Russia, and be ‘Better Alone’.

This Cons list is a pretty paltry list and so we are offering the opportunity for anyone to complete it for us, especially someone from Oxford or Cambridge, (Eton is optional). Experts are welcomed.

Especially from the Home Office or Westminster. If there are any there.

Prof Robert Burns AI is a super genius so you should try to be one also. This means don’t bother boasting about how grand Brexit is.

You should be able to back up all your claims with credible reference. Be aware that propaganda from the UK government does not count as credible reference. Westminster is reputed to have lied to the world on previous occasions regarding its Empire.

Also it is an interested party, for the last 40 years earning £10-20 billion a year in oil revenue from Scotland.

So make your references independent and ideally from a neutral foreign organisation which does its own research. We already know the credibility of Westminster’s oil and energy statistics from reading the McCrone Report.

Your article will then go RIGHT HERE. Making the fairy tale case against Scottish Independence without mentioning the English advantages.

A special invitation is extended to JK Rowling, an Englishwoman who lives in Scotland and disrespects it so much that she donated a million pounds to the 2014 NO referendum campaign in order to ensure that her Scottish children never have a country of their own.

Apparently she writes so suitably for children because she thinks like one.

In any case JK, this space is yours if you can take some time off from running Scotland and vetoing its law making process.

Yes we know, money talks. But it doesn’t always talk sense.

Here’s your chance. Speak up for England.

We won’t remind you of the Scottish Arts grant and Scots’ generosity that kept you alive while you were struggling to learn to write.

But just make sure you say nothing about the Hobbits in the Scottish forests!

Until we get a good article from an expert here is a brief commentary on the cons of Scottish Independence written by a premier league footballer who wishes to remain anonymous in case people find out how much he is earning for 90 minutes work a week.

Benefits Of Scotland Being Ruled by Westminster

We are no longer in the horrible EU and Brexit has been a fantastic success. Who wants foreigners telling them what to do and forcing them to have legal rights for housing and employment and health and things like that? Human rights are for sissy foreigners with no stiffness in their lips.

Who needs food on supermarket shelves and medicines in chemists or easy foreign holidays? Not the Scotchers.

Who wouldn’t want to own Scotland when it has that amount of oil and gas and wind energy and drinking water and open land and tourism. They even have freakin* Hobbits I heard!

Any real English person would have to be out of their mind to give all that away for nothing! Look what happened with America and how all that turned out.

They even got a better flag than us.

And Scotland has better drinks than we do. England has overcrowding and no resources left and no money and not even any drinking water for gardening with. We’re drowning in freakin* sewage because we lied so much.

And the EU hates us after it accidentally found out what we’re really like after trying to negotiate Brexit with us.

And where exactly are we going to keep our American nuclear weapons? In freakin* England? I don’t think so. Those things are dangerous and the Russians like to blow them up first thing they get upset.

It’s really lucky the Scotters volunteered to get nukular blown up instead of us. We should move all our nucular power factories up there too just in case.

Without Scotland to own we are in some deep trouble down here, I’m telling you.

Hello from London.

PS: Better Together! I think I forgot to say that.

What Is Social Democracy?

The independence parties of Scotland, SNP, Alba and The Scottish Greens have all agreed that an Independent Scotland should be a Social Democracy. What is this political system and how will it differ from the existing system under the Westminster model?

Social Democracy is a political system that has been thoroughly tested for many decades in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, The Netherlands, Iceland. This is known as The Nordic Model.

In these countries it has been highly successful in producing rich and compassionate societies with very strong capitalistic economies and extremely high levels of social well being and citizen happiness. These countries always score as the top 5 nations in the annual Global Happiness Survey.

The primary effective reason for this is that the society is founded on compassion, and wealth inequality is the lowest in the world. The wealth of the nation is shared among all the citizens of the nation. As a result the infrastructure and health care and social systems are well upkept and everyone is able to live a secure and relaxed life from birth until death.

In contrast the UK political system is modelled on the American system of ruthless capitalism and the preservation of a wealthy elite. This is an oligarchy rather than a democracy. UK is more socially concerned than the US but UK is pursuing the US model and moving further away from social safety nets. The reason for this is that the wealthy ruling elite are not in need of social safety nets.

Characteristics of Social Democracy

Social Democracy can readily be described as ‘Capitalism with a compassionate heart.’ It is a system designed to benefit a whole population, and especially the poor and average citizenry over a wealthy ruling class or a corporate governance.

Here is how Wikipedia defines its main aspects:

• A capitalist market system

• An elaborate social safety net, in addition to public services such as free education and healthcare

  under a tax funded system.

• Very strong social housing policy

• Strong property rights, contract enforcement and overall ease of doing business.

• Universal public pension plans.

• Strong human rights, workers’ rights, tenants’ rights.

• Public utilities and some industries are state-run or state owned.

  This includes, nationalised healthcare, electricity and gas, water, mail, national railways and bus transportation, free television and radio, national airlines.

• Corporations are taxed rather than avoiding it by manipulating government policy via lobbying and the financial corruption of politicians. There are low levels of general corruption and corporate lobbying generally under Social Democracy.

• High levels of democracy.

• Very low income inequality.

• Low crime due to general widespread economic security

• Free trade economic openness combined with little product market regulation.

  Nordic countries rank very high in product market freedom according to OECD rankings.

• Very high public spending on public matters (health, housing, pensions, social infrastructure), with Sweden at 56.6% of GDP, Denmark at 51.7%, and Finland at 48.6%.

  Public expenditure for health and education is significantly higher in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden in comparison to the OECD average.

• Tax rates of 40-46%. This pays for very high quality public infrastructure, roads and health and social care and provides high quality, secure public administrative jobs.

  any of these nations are already wealthy enough to be moving to a 4 day work week.

• Government by Proportional Representation. This leads to coalition governments in which all of a population has parliamentary representation. Unlike in Westminster no individual party therefore ever has a sufficient majority to push through an extremist policy (such as Brexit). Countries are therefore well governed and able to plan for a long term future rather than merely the next election.

• The United Nations World Happiness Reports show that the happiest nations are Social Democracies concentrated in Northern Europe.

  The Nordics ranked highest on the metrics of real GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, social connection, perceived freedom to make life choices, generosity and freedom from corruption. The Nordic countries place in the top 10 of the United Nations World Happiness Reports with Finland and Norway taking the top two spots in most years.

Scottish and UK Electoral Systems and the British Democratic Deficit at Westminster

Scotland uses a strongly democratic political system called Proportional Representation. Westminster (England) uses a barely democratic system called First Past The Post in which the person with the most votes is then awarded ALL the votes, no matter how small a population minority has voted for the candidate. The result of this is governments for which a dangerously low percentage of the population have voted. By definition this is not a democratic government.

Proportional Representation is a democratic system which is used by virtually every country in the world other than UK. Its primary intention is to create a government which is a mirror of the spectrum of political opinions of the entire voting electorate.

It automatically leads to coalition governments with a number of parties in power governing together, including the smaller political parties. It therefore offers government representation to a far higher percentage of an electorate.

It is generally agreed that it is a more democratic system in all its variations and better allows for long term national planning which is not politically partisan in nature.

Scotland uses this system today in Holyrood elections and will continue using it after Scottish Independence.

Westminster does not use it.

First Past the Post is a democratic system which in Europe it is used only by the UK and Belarus. Generally it is considered to be insufficiently democratic to meet the needs of a modern society. It leads to a large percentage of an electorate being unrepresented in government.

In the 2005 Westminster general election a comfortable majority government was elected in the UK by only 21.6% of the total electorate.

First Past the Post inevitably leads to governments governing by partisan policies. This prevents long term planning of direction for a nation as changes in government lack continuity and often lead to changes in policy direction and the dismantling of what has been begun by the previous government.

Even though it has been discredited by the Council of Europe and widely recognised as weakly democratic, FPTP is a system which is very difficult to remove once installed, since it requires the agreement of the winning side to voluntarily give up a large advantage.

Happiness and Well-Being Survey by Country, March 2024

These are the world’s happiest countries in 2024

CNN Tue March 19, 2024

1. Finland

2. Denmark

3. Iceland

4. Sweden

5. Israel (before war)

6. The Netherlands

7. Norway

All of these countries are Social Democracy models. This is the model the SNP intends to follow in an Independent Scotland.

All of these Nordic countries (not Israel ) are at the top of the rankings every year. Finland has been at number one for seven years. The reason for this is that they have a political system that works for the average citizen. This is Social Democracy in action.

The UK is currently ranked 20 and the US 23. Both are sinking through the rankings as income inequality crushes their populations and causes dissent.

How Scotland Lost Independence in 1707.

About the loss of Scotland’s nationhood Rabbie Burns famously stated:

‘Bought and sold for English gold, such a parcel of rogues in a nation.’

He really wasn’t wrong. Percentages of opinion against the Union with England were reportedly as high as 75-100% among the general population. But it was the aristocrats and parliamentarians who were the only ones to vote on the matter, and they were being well paid to vote for a colonisation under the guise of Union.

Even more pertinently, these ruling elite had all lost most of their wealth in a madcap imperialist adventure, The Darien Scheme, in Panama, in which 20% of Scotland’s wealth had been invested by the rich and lost attempting to seize and establish a colony and create a land route through the dense jungle joining the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, exactly where the Panama Canal now runs.

The English offered to refund all this lost investment money to Scottish aristocratic investors in exchange for a vote for a Union, and added a 5% profit on top for each man. Many others in governmental power were offered titles and bribes and personal rewards.

In the end the Scottish Parliament dissolved itself for personal gain, against the wishes of the vast majority of Scots who were against it despite having just come through 7 years of famine in the seven ill years, in which 5-15% of the Scots population died of starvation.

Scotland’s rulers were well paid to agree to a Union in which England was so dominant that it had 92% of the parliamentary votes. This was not a union of equals and just equity. It was a colonisation done with gold rather than an army.

But the people of Scotland were not asked their opinion, just as they are not permitted to be asked today.

And so Burns was quite correct, Scotland was indeed bought and sold for English gold.

In 2014 we saw Scottish former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown do it again with his naïve and foolish ‘Vow’ of gifts to be granted by all three English Political Parties if only Scotland voted NO.

His deliberate fear mongering in favour of Westminster won Scotland colonisation and Brexit and nothing else from his worthless ‘Vow’.

Brown secured his own legacy of disgrace in the history of Scotland’s fight for independence.

Here is what the poet Robert Burns wrote on the subject of the Union and how it came about:

Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation

Fareweel to a’ our Scottish fame,

Fareweel our ancient glory;

Fareweel ev’n to the Scottish name,

Sae fam’d in martial story.

Now Sark rins over Solway sands,

An’ Tweed rins to the ocean,

To mark where England’s province stands-

Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

What force or guile could not subdue,

Thro’ many warlike ages,

Is wrought now by a coward few,

For hireling traitor’s wages.

The English steel we could disdain,

Secure in valour’s station;

But English gold has been our bane

Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

O would, ere I had seen the day

That Treason thus could sell us,

My auld grey head had lien in clay,

Wi’ Bruce and loyal Wallace!

But pith and power, till my last hour,

I’ll mak this declaration;

We’re bought and sold for English gold-

Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

An Official Scottish National Anthem

What kind of country doesn’t have a national anthem? Only a country that doesn’t exist and doesn’t know how to come into existence. National pride and emotion really matter at a referendum ballot box. Scotland needs an inspiring National Anthem immediately, it is the only country in the world that doesn’t have one. For the national identity of a country an anthem is as important as a flag.

Everybody in Scotland loves singing Flower of Scotland and it is the envy of the entire world as a moving anthem.

But it has horrible words as an anthem for a new country and is mainly about being defeated, murdered and oppressed by the English. England are featured in it more than Scotland. It should probably be the English national anthem. This is why it has never been adopted by the government as Scotland’s official anthem.

Now somebody has finally written new and perfectly matching lyrics to sing to Flower of Scotland. Inspiring lyrics that are meaningful to Scotland and a perfect fit. They sing exactly the same as Flower of Scotland always sings. Perfect for a huge crowd to sing together.

These lyrics were given as a gift to the people of a new Independent Scotland. The Scottish government already have them for use as a National Anthem for an independent Scotland.

.

Sung exactly to the tune of Flower of Scotland:

Alba Gu Bràth (Alapah g’ brah) (Forever Scotland)

O flower of Scotland

At last we see your bloom again

Frae Lowlands tae Highlands

All through the forests and glens

We rise up singing

Wi voices joyous

Hearts overflowing

Tae be a free nation again

The soul of Alba

Is in the heart of our green land

Frae rivers tae islands

Frae sister tae brother in blood

We grace our Scotland

Frae loch tae mountain

Wi equality, honour

Wi justice and peace

Tae see our hills bloom

Across our land, as it rises again

The spirit of Scotland

Lives deep in the beat of our hearts

We rise up singing

Wi pride and freedom

The great Lion of Scotland

Begins tae roar

BREXIT

Brexit has been a disaster for Scotland. The only way to repair the severe damage done to the Scottish economy is to rejoin the EU. This is only possible via Scottish independence.

In the 2016 Brexit referendum 62% of Scotland voted to remain in the EU. Now that the total disaster of Brexit has become apparent, that figure is probably closer to 80-90%.

Across the entire UK in 2023 only 30% said they would not wish to rejoin the EU and that Brexit was not an error. Those who still supported Brexit were not the most educated 30%.

Never before has a nation deliberately inflicted such economic and political damage on itself. Europeans are still wide-eyed in wonder at the stupidity of it.

The benefits of Brexit are so lacking and the disadvantages so obvious that we are forced to wonder exactly why it was so rabidly encourage by certain Westminster politicians.

In general these people were right wing conservatives and the reason they encourage the economic madness of Brexit is clear: They wanted to be big fish in a small pond rather than have the good social governance of the EU holding any authority over them.

This was the sole advantage of Brexit, an advantage exclusively for a power elite and at the cost of the entire UK economy and general standard of living of the entire population. These uncaring politicians encouraged Brexit with knowingly false promises because they thought they could gain power and money from it.

Against its voted will Scotland lost human rights, employment rights, tenancy rights and every individual freedom other than those imperiously granted by Westminster.

The EU is an institution that is in support of the ordinary citizen, Westminster is fundamentally in support of a ruling elite.

Historically Scotland has always been excluded from this ruling elite and even from its training grounds of Eton, Oxford and Cambridge.

A Scottish Constitution:

Why Scotland Needs A Written Constitution.

Independent Scotland has been solemnly promised that it will have a written constitution.

A constitution is a set of legal rules that guides how a country works. Virtually every country has one. The UK is a glaring exception in this.

A constitution includes; the principles setting out how the country must be governed, what powers and limitations the institutions of the country will have, (citizenry, parliament, government and the law courts), and the relationships between these institutions. It also enshrines into the law the rights and freedoms of the citizens of the country.

Without a national constitution citizens have no rights other than those which the current government decide to allow them. This is the clear signature of an anti-democratic authoritarian state.

Unlike virtually all the countries of the world, the United Kingdom does not have a single constitutional document.

This is a medieval system which has been deliberately maintained for centuries precisely to allow those in power to do whatever they choose, even to close down parliament at critical national moments in order to prevent the public debate of an important issue, (e.g.: the deceitful recent Brexit prorogation of Parliament).

A country without a constitution is not really a democracy, it is an oligarchy, a system of rule by an elitist cadre with unsupervised powers. This is the real reason England’s parliament supported the obvious economic madness of leaving the EU; So that its rulers would no longer have their actions supervised by the EU, a deeply democratic political body which strongly supports individual human rights and citizen wellbeing.

Independent Scotland desires a constitution because it believes in democracy and will have it written down in constitutional laws that protect all Scottish citizens for all time.

A Finance Industry In Independent Scotland

Edinburgh is a substantial financial centre. It has a highly trained and educated base of English speaking banking specialists. It can complete with Dublin which has become the principal US financial entryway into the EU. This Irish banking hub has been the fundamental basis of the rise of

the Celtic Tiger of Ireland.

London has deeply damaged itself as a banking centre with Brexit and its new regulations. There is an opening for a new major English speaking EU member to be a global banking centre to replace London as the global financial entry port into the EU.

Edinburgh is a major international cultural city which can make Scotland rise on a tidal wave of gigantic financial commissions as trillions of dollars pass through it.

Small Nations as European Union Members

Historically small nations have done very well inside the EU because they are protected and if necessary subsidised by the larger states such as Germany and France, in the political interests of unity.

Ireland, with a smaller population than Scotland has gone from being the former UK’s poorest country to by far its richest per capita. It is solely the EU membership that is responsible for this spectacular transition.

By population Scotland would only be the 11th smallest nation in the EU, virtually equal in population with numbers 12 and 13. There would then be 28 member states.

The EU supports and empowers small states.

The 10 smallest EU member states by population are:

Malta – 535,065 Luxembourg – 654,768 Cyprus – 905,000 Estonia – 1,319,041 Latvia – 1,843,181 Slovenia – 2,118,965Croatia – 4,047,200 Lithuania – 2,794,090

Slovakia – 5,795,199

Ireland – 5,123,53

SCOTLAND 5,295,403 (2011)

Denmark – 5,873,420

Finland – 5,545,475

European Union Membership v EFTA Membership.

There has been a good deal of misunderstanding regarding the choices available to an independent Scotland regarding membership in EU v EFTA.

To clarify, EFTA is neither a genuine alternative to the EU nor a route into the EU. EFTA only has 4 member states, two of which have tiny populations and economies, (Liechtenstein,. Iceland, Norway, Switzerland).

Although EFTA members have free trade agreement with the EU, a country cannot be member of both and even to apply for EU membership requires departing from certain EFTA membership requirements.

Therefore joining EFTA on route to joining the EU is not a

great option. Far wiser is to apply for an abnormally rapid acceptance to re-join the EU, which re-joining is an unprecedented situation which will generate unprecedented dispensations and ease on the part of the EU. They are aware they let Scotland down by turning a blind eye to English imperialism and by allowing Scotland to be taken out of the EU against its declared will.

An alternative policy would be to join EFTA for immediate access to the EU single market and then depart EFTA when a rapid full EU membership is granted.

It seems likely that without Westminster influence against Scotland, EU membership will be offered too quickly for temporary membership of EFTA to be a real option.

Land Reform In Scotland

Scotland is the only country in the West which still has the kind of medieval feudal land ownership laws which have allowed 432 people to come to own 42% of Scotland’s rural land between them.

Most of these land owners are foreign landlords who do not live in Scotland but own the land for investment, private luxury recreation, and formerly for extremely generous EU farming subsidies.

These 432 people between them own 4 times as much of rural Scotland as is in total public ownership.

This is deeply exploitative of the entire nation of Scotland. The Scots are refused access to much of their own country, which is in private and foreign hands.

The largest landowner in Scotland is a Danish fashion magnate who cannot by law buy huge estates of land in Denmark, and so now owns enough of Scotland to be able to prevent entire industries from locating in areas he personally controls.

He is the largest landlord in all the UK and owns 220,000 acres of Scottish land. He bought these 12 estates at the bargain basement price of £70 million, an amount of capital that is less than 1% of of his estimated $12 billion in personal wealth. This Danish individual bought a very substantial amount of all Scotland for a smaller personal cost than when you buy a washing machine or a fridge.

That this is possible is a disgrace and an embarrassment that can only happen to a heavily oppressed nation of people who do not control their own laws. Wealthy foreigners take their land and their country away from them and they are too weak to prevent it. Independent Scotland will not be this weak.

Scottish land reform is hundreds of years overdue. All of these absentee and generationally inherited aristocratic landlords would be removed by law and the land of Scotland would be again owned by the Scots public.

This would immediately open up enormous areas of empty land for the construction of new towns and industries and road infrastructure. We would have fewer private golf courses and a lot more social housing.

Currently these 400 private landlords are controlling the towns and villages and industries of the Highlands and Islands by using their wealth to bully local councils regarding spaceports, exclusive luxury private resorts and Trump golf courses and spa hotels.

These landlords do not give a second thought to the residents of these rural areas, preferring to cater to the foreign rich and their expensive recreation. The local people are there only to provide servant staff.

Land reform in an Independent Scotland will end all of this immediately and forever. Local residents will control their local environments and its ability to generate industries.

The Barnett Formula

The Barnett formula is the mechanism used by the UK government to determine the annual block grants for the devolved administrations of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

The formula uses population based proportions to determine the share of UK public wealth that goes to each devolved administration. Scotland currently gets approx 8.5% of UK revenues and debts.

The figures used to execute The Barnett Formula are kept extremely opaque, secretive and very open to manipulation. This is precisely why it is used.

It allows England to claim it is subsidising Scotland, despite the fact that having a similar amount of North Sea Oil and Gas to Scotland has made Norway the richest country per capita in the world and secured its future generations. Norway currently has a sovereign fund of surplus cash of a trillion dollars from its oil revenue to date.

Since the 1970s this oil revenue has been taken from Scotland by Westminster and then manipulated via the Barnett Formula and GERS calculations (See below), before being return to Scotland in the guise of a generous grant of 8.5%.

This is the true purpose of the Barnett formula, to disguise Scotland’s massive oil wealth and balance of payments so that Independence seems financially risky, and Scotland’s natural resources can remain being exploited by England rather than Scotland.

If Scotland is so expensively subsidised by England, as the Barnett Formula is manipulated to make it appear, then why is England holding on so desperately to Scotland as a colony?

The English in their long imperial history have never been generous colonisers and the British Empire was always about profiteering.

The GERS Calculations (Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland)

The GERS Financial calculation is an estimate made by Westminster each year which is the basis for the calculation of the Barnett Formula financial support. It is a calculation which results in an estimate of Scotland’s financial contribution to the UK.

Economic aspects excluded from the calculation are specifically chosen by Westminster to make Scotland look economically weaker and appear to be running a deficit instead of a surplus.

Most deceitfully, Scotland is attributed with no oil production, while the UK is attributed with 100%

of North Sea Oil production.

This accounting practice alone saves England £100 million annually in Barnett Formula grant money, and increases Scotland’s annual deficit by the entire amount of North Sea Oil and Gas revenue. Estimated at £9 billion.

This is excluding the other 92% of total oil revenue which Westminster has already confiscated.

Westminster uses this accounting procedure, which would be illegal under company law, as a basis for lowering the annual financial grant to Scotland and to support the argument against Scottish Independence with disinformation.

UK Political Party Positions On Independence

NO to Scottish Independence under all circumstances are the manifesto positions of the Scottish Labour Party, the Scottish Conservative Party, the Scottish Lib-Dem Party.

All three are very strongly against Scottish Independence.

All three have openly refused to allow even a referendum on the matter, claiming against established international law that they have the authority to deny Scotland’s right of self determination.

According to these three Unionist parties, Scotland is in a voluntary Union from which it cannot voluntarily depart.

The reason for these bizarre policies by ‘Scottish’ parties is that Scottish Independence is economically disastrous for England.

England needs Scotland’s wealth to survive and maintain global influence.

Despite the term Scottish in their party names, all three of these parties are not for Scotland.

Remarkably they all three desire that Scotland be governed not in Edinburgh, the Scottish capital, but rather by English people living 400 miles away in London, who have no interest in or knowledge of Scotland’s social problems and aspirations.

These ‘Scottish’ parties are supporters of England, a country that is not Scotland. They all three desire and represent English rule over Scotland.

Why are ‘Scottish’ parties against Scottish Independence? Don’t they wish to govern their own country?

The reason for this is that these parties do not exist except in name. They are merely local branches of their respective English parties. They are powerless to set their own policies, but receive their orders from their head offices in London. This is what they also desire, instructions from a foreign authority. The Scottish in the title of their party names is there only to mislead Scottish voters in who exactly has the party power.

These all three are not Scottish Parties, they are deceptive local branches of English parties. They exclusively follow English policies that they do not have the authority to oppose.

The Westminster Government:

The Westminster government comprises 650 MPs in total. This is its composition:

• England: 82%

• Wales: 6%

• Scotland: 9%

• Northern Ireland: 3%

These proportional representations make it quite clear that England can easily overrule any agreement jointly made between Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland, and by a margin of 64%.

Westminster is ruled by England alone, and the opinions of the other countries in the Union are a trivial matter which can easily be ignored in any parliamentary vote on any subject. Especially the subject of independence in Scotland, Wales or Ireland.

The Positions of the Political Parties of Westminster and Scotland both:

The Scottish Labour Party

The Labour Party are against any form of Scottish Independence and their policy is made by the Westminster party in London. They insist that Scotland is in a voluntary union which they joined in 1707, and which they cannot leave without the express permission of the English Westminster government. Therefore they imagine that Scotland is in a voluntary Union which it is not permitted to leave voluntarily. This is a clear breach of International Law, and in fact is the legal definition of imperialism and colonisation.

The Labour Party policy is that the powers of Scottish devolution be controlled and reduced and Scotland and Wales be weakened as national entities and instead be incorporated into a new confederation of Unionist areas to include a number of large English districts such as Greater Manchester and Northern England, all of these regions, especially Scotland and Wales, to be directly overseen and controlled by Westminster.

The Labour Party policy is to weaken and, as far as possible, dissolve the agreed powers of Devolution using all possible means of political policy, economic grant reduction, and legal enforcement.

They are in complete agreement with the Tory and Lib-Dem Parties.

The Scottish Liberal Democratic Party

Are against any form of Scottish Independence as their policy is made by the Westminster party in London. They believe that Scotland is in a voluntary union which they joined in 1707 and they cannot leave this union without the agreement of all countries in the United Kingdom. In this matter England alone carries 82% of the votes.

The Lib-Dems wish to enforce the Union by policy means and to weaken the established laws and financing of Devolution for Scotland and Wales.

They are in complete agreement with the Tory and Labour Parties.

The Scottish Conservative Party

The Tory Party are against any form of Scottish Independence and their policy is made by the Westminster party in London. The Tories believe that Scotland is in a voluntary union which they joined in 1707, and which they cannot leave without the express permission of the English Westminster government. Therefore they imagine that Scotland is in a voluntary Union which it is not permitted to leave voluntarily. This is a clear breach of International Law, and in fact is the legal definition of imperialism and colonisation.

The Tory Party claim that Scotland does not have the legal authority to hold a referendum of its citizens on the subject of Independence.

It is their openly stated opinion that the independent powers already devolved to Scotland should be greatly reduced and all legal limitations to these powers strictly enforced under Westminster control.

The Tory Party policy is to weaken and dissolve the agreed powers of Devolution using all possible means of political policy, economic disempowerment, asset stripping of resources and strictest legal interpretations of all Union agreements.

The Tory party declare that Scotland can never be independent under any circumstances, even still expressing regret at having ‘lost America’.

A Sample Economic Plan For Independent Scotland’s Industries.

Scotland has such incredible natural resources, (oil, gas, wind energy, tourism, food, marine, water, whisky, finance, manufacturing, education etc etc), that many possible industrial development plans for a future independent Scotland are possible. Here is shown one possible approach, done by Scottish region. All of this plan can be easily financed ten times over by North Sea Oil and gas revenues.

Remember still that Scotland’s future long term economic engine is clean renewable energy. Scotland already leads the world in this and produces more clean wind energy than it uses. Scotland is probably the only country in the world currently capable of doing this.

Scotland’s immediate primary role should be as the energy power house of the EU with the aim to produce 40% of the energy the EU so desperately needs to extricate itself from its disastrous deal with Russia.

Scotland can build an undersea oil pipeline and electricity mainline straight into the EU under the North Sea, bypassing England completely. This capability alone guarantees an easy and very rapid EU membership for an independent Scotland.

An Economic Plan by Scottish Region:

Considering Scotland regionally and what might be done to vitalise local economies in each region.

The regions:

Glasgow and Central Scotland

Edinburgh

The Borders and Lowlands

The North East

The Southern Highlands below the Caledonian Canal

The Highlands and Western and Northern Islands

In all these possible plans remember that Scotland will be an EU member and an English speaking access entryway to the EU for global Asian and American manufacturing, corporations, and financial institutions.

Scotland has a highly educated workforce with a centuries old manufacturing skills base.

It also has some of the highest quality food production in the world. Thanks to the high quality rain.

Scotland is a global luxury brand in almost everything from tourism to whisky.

An Example of An Economic Plan for Independent Scotland by Region

1. Glasgow and the Central Belt.

Glasgow has a long history as an industrial manufacturing base. It has a major deep water port for a container export/import shipping port and the River Clyde for access to the USA, the open oceans, and the EU. It has a major workforce with centuries of industrial experience, which is known for quality manufacturing around the world.

Glasgow can attract foreign car manufacturers and electric car battery plants, in fact any manufacturing industry which desires an English speaking workforce and tariff free entry into the EU market. Which is all of them.

In addition it has several universities which attract enormous numbers of foreign students from all over the world. This supply of international students is only limited by the construction of new student accommodations.

2. Edinburgh

Edinburgh is an important world tourist destination for both historical heritage tourism and the international arts. It already is developing a substantial cruise ship visiting industry.

It is also a major university destination for foreign students, an industry worth billions and only limited by the lack of student accommodations.

Edinburgh is a financial centre which can easily compete with Frankfurt and Paris now that London has abdicated its role as the financial gateway into the EU. Edinburgh has a skilled financial workforce already in place and functioning. It can rapidly compete to be the main English speaking gateway into the EU for American and global capital. It has the English speaking cultural cache to attract the kind of international bankers who do not wish to live in a foreign provincial city like Frankfurt.

3. The North East

Aberdeen has long since been the centre of North Sea energy and its support industries. It can remain so and continue to bring ashore Scotland’s own massive oil and gas resources which will finance independence and the transition to clean energy production, which in turn can also be based in Aberdeen where the energy industry experience is located.

Dundee is already a world leader in video game creation and production, an entertainment industry with a revenue ten times as large as Hollywood’s total revenue.

It is also becoming a substantial tourist destination.

4. Inverness and the NE Highlands

Invergordon is a deep water port which already receives large cruise ships. It can be easily modified to add a major container port which can supply the EU with products such as cars and electric car batteries manufactured locally by the workforce of Inverness and the entire surrounding area.

Work has already begun now near Inverness to repurpose the massive oil platform construction facility into a world centre for wind turbine production and transportation.

Inverness/Invergordon can become a major industrial centre as well as tourist hub giving direct access to the Cairngorms and the Highlands.

5. The Highlands and Islands.

The Highlands and Islands are already a tourist Mecca, unfortunately it is disorganised tourism which is bringing little economic benefit and much inconvenience to local residents.

This tourism should be regulated, controlled and most of all, moved upmarket so that it is actually benefiting all of the residents who are inconvenienced daily by it.

Currently an extremely high percentage of visitors are cruise ship day trippers and drivers in camper vans, both of whom contribute nothing but disruption and pollution for the local economies.

This tourism should be facilitated and brought under regulation to serve and profit the local communities. Scotland is one of the last unspoilt natural areas of the industrial West, these cruise passengers think nothing of paying hundreds of dollars to see a popular show in Las Vegas. Scotland is a better show and will remain with them longer. They should not be seeing it free of charge in such a disruptive manner.

Every cruise ship arriving should be paying a very substantial fee to dock at new specially built docking facilities in the Hebrides and Southern Argyle and the Northern Isles.

Every passenger setting foot in Scotland should be paying an entry fee of at least £20 just to see the beauty that is in these locations. Otherwise they should stay on their ship and not clutter up the streets of Scotland without helping the local economies. Skye should charge extra.

The NC 500 has become nothing more than a scenic racetrack now, and a nightmare for residents living anywhere near it.

Anyone wishing to drive around this road should be forced to pay a transit fee of £150-£200. Campers should probably even be banned completely since they are contributing nothing but litter.

If desired organised professional 3-7 day minibus tours using a network of hotels and B&B’s could become the primary means of visiting the area. Making the NC500 trip into a luxury vacation and reducing the amount of disruption to normal community life while injecting money into their economies.

Thus the Highlands and Islands tourist industry can increase its revenues tenfold while reducing the amount of rogue tourists destroying the peace of the region. These increased revenues can be used to provide infrastructure and facilities for the visiting tourists and genuine tax income for the local residents.

Scotland can, with a well organised tourist industry, become a world class luxury destination. Its arts festivals, golf and distillery tours are already this.

6. The Southern Highlands below the Caledonian Canal.

This country is beautiful and suitable for tourism in the same way as the Northern Highlands. Either travelling out of Perth/Dundee or from a new cruise ship dock in the Argyle islands. This port could also serve Fort William as both a tourist entry to the region and a manufacturing export port.

It is also the SNP intention of locating the navy of an independent Scotland at Faslane. This would generate a large amount of economic activity for the surrounding areas.

Faslane is already suitable for use as a container port for Glasgow and the North, if the nuclear fleet is moved elsewhere, perhaps to a distant remote island in the new Northern Ocean.

7. The Lowlands and Borders

This is a huge expanse of unspoilt nature running from coast to coast. It is eminently suitable for extensive agribusiness and dairy production as well as marine farming on the West coast.

Scottish food is considered a luxury brand around the world. This is an industry in which exports could be increased tenfold in whisky, salmon, cheese and great many other areas.

The borders area is also a suitable location for event tourism, and this is already beginning there with new international automobile racing and coast to coast walking and cycling routes. It would be easy to make this area a location for specialist outdoor events attracting visitors internationally, e.g.; endurance running/ mountain biking or a major annual rock festival like Glastonbury.

Stranraer can also be made into a deep water port for container import/export and cruise ship docking for border and island tourism.

There are very few countries in the world which have the natural beauty, land resources and historical heritage to generate these kinds of possibilities. And especially which also have the oil and gas revenues to finance them.

Independent Scotland can be a world leader in luxury branding and influence across a very broad spectrum

Scotland Without Independence

The Future of the UK

In the Scottish independence debate there is always much discussion regarding the future of Scotland and how everything will work in an independent nation. But nothing is ever said about Scotland’s future if it remains inside the UK. Somehow it is always taken for granted what it will be. But what exactly will be Scotland’s future inside the UK?

What exactly are the UK’s future prospects now that we also have Brexit, and what will Scotland’s part in it be?

The UK is no longer a first world power. The British do not yet realise it but their standard of living is much the lowest in the developed first world. Average incomes in UK are 30% lower than Ireland and equal to that of Poland. Economically the UK belongs with a group like Slovakia, Croatia and other former Eastern European countries. It does not belong as an economic equal with Scandinavia and Germany and France or the Netherlands or Belgium or Switzerland. It has been left behind. These countries now own large former British public industries. UK social systems are decades behind those of these countries. What the UK actually owns is the least democracy and the most wealth inequality of all these nations.

The UK is a state which is run for the benefit of a ruling elite and to the detriment of most of the population. It is a heavily looted country with a deeply flawed electoral system that has been corrupted into a haven for billionaires. The UK has almost as many tax avoiding millionaires as it has food banks.

And following Brexit it would be extremely naïve to imagine that things are going to improve economically. There are no miraculous new global trade deals as promised to replace the foolish abandonment of the EU as UK’s major market. Nor will there be. The UK has already sold everything it has to sell.

Proof of this is visible on every High Street. Shuttered stores and abandoned businesses. Despite Westminster’s claims, other countries are not suffering like this. Other countries have social nets, the Nordic Social Democracies most of all. The UK’s social net has been dismantled in favour of profiteering by wealthy investors, and in time the English NHS will also cease to function. It is already deep in crisis.

Let us not forget that all these other European countries also had a covid epidemic and an economic crisis, just as the UK did and which it now blames every economic disaster on. But these European countries do not need food banks. The poor there are able to live reasonably. The reason for this is that they all have properly functioning democratic systems of proportional representation.

In Europe only the UK and the Belarus dictatorship do not have this kind of democratic government. In these two authoritarian states the governments are not functionally answerable to their electorate. They are even able to starve their citizens without any real consequences.

The UK is on a steeply downward trajectory and Scotland will be taken there with it. And certainly not in the first class seats. Without Scottish oil for England to exploit there will be more Scottish austerity than ever before. Scotland will look like Eastern Europe but without the glamour.

Currently in 2024 Scotland has the highest level of drug addiction deaths in Europe and the lowest life expectancy for men, lower even than in Russia. Child poverty is 25-40%, virtually at third world levels.

All this is caused by deprivation and underprivilege and the only solution to it is money. ` Whilst inside the UK with its natural resource revenue taken by England, Scotland is dependent on the financing given to it by the English government in Westminster. Can that money realistically be expected to rise after North Sea Oil stops flowing? There is no will for this in Westminster. England can’t even afford to save itself. England will not hesitate to ignore Scotland. London ignores it now, and even ignores the poverty in England’s own northern regions.

England uses Scotland as a place to put its nuclear weapons and its nuclear plants. Soon it will begin to export its poor and uneducated too, its crime and homelessness. Scotland is its colony.

England is not a democracy, it has never been and has never wanted to be. England is a country run by and for a ruling elite who freely loot its wealth and privilege. And these people rule the UK too. This is why there is no written UK constitution, so that a British citizen has no rights and the UK parliament is always free to change the rules to suit themselves. It is a feudal system created by aristocrats in the middle ages. Virtually every other civilised country in the world has a written constitution enshrining the rights of its citizens.

This is the true solution to the mystery of Brexit; Why did it happen?

In whose interests was this British economic suicide?

It’s clear enough that the poor and ignorant voted for it out of racism. But why exactly were they told such an incredible array of lies by a small cadre of conservative extremists?

These people knew what it would mean to lose the single EU market.

These conservatives were all members of the ruling class and they all saw personal gain in Brexit and that is precisely why they supported it.

They saw the opportunity to be big fish in a smaller pond. They saw a way to free themselves of the European Union’s democratic instinct and replace it with their own unsupervised power. Unlike the EU leaders, this conservative elite cares nothing for democracy.

In fact they are authoritarians and against democracy. They want to rule, not have people voting against their looting of the British nation. This is why we have seen the privatisation and destruction of almost every public service, from transportation to sewage and flood control, from energy supply to postal services. The UK ruling elite made money from the plundering of all these public services. This is precisely why they were privatised.

Be assured that the future of the UK will not be better, everything is already looted and sold off. There will not be more public housing built nor will there be fewer food banks. And Scotland will not be first in line to get the limited public funds on offer, because Scottish voters carry too little influence in Westminster. In fact they carry none at all, since 82% of the Westminster parliament are English MPs and only 8% are from Scotland.

In a future for Scotland inside the UK, there is only a terrifying prospect of poverty and crime and homelessness. If England is unable to continue exploiting Scotland the financial taps will turn off and Scottish deprivation, drug abuse, crime and social unrest will rise to unimaginable levels.

This will happen in Brexit England and in Scotland even more so. Unless Scotland controls its own resource wealth and uses it to support its struggling population as a whole. Just as all the Scottish independence parties are planning under the new political system of Social Democracy, based on the very successful Scandinavian model.

Only a Scotland inside the European Union is a secure and economically viable Scotland.

The UK is a country which formerly derived its wealth from the exploitation of its empire colonies, and England still does this in regard to Scotland and Wales.

The UK is not a democracy but an oligarchy, run for the benefit of a small ruling elite.

We see the contempt of this ruling elite again now with the Post Office Criminal scandal and the Infected Blood scandal which took 50 years to come to light. The cover ups and delays were not by accident, but to allow time for the victims to die and therefore reduce the amount of compensation due to be paid for infecting 30,000 and killing 3000 UK citizens. The UK is a state which performs medical experiments on its citizens without permission, and then conceals the fact that they have been mortally infected with disease.

This is the contempt the UK government has for its citizens. This is what is taught at Eton and Oxbridge.

The Scots will remain, as they always have been, second class UK citizens after the English. Scotland will be used for the exploitation of its resources and, when the oil and gas stops flowing South, the money flowing North will fall to an absolute minimum. And that minimum will be extremely low as England itself struggles with its own food banks and NHS and housing crisis and growing political unrest.

The collapse of the UK state will take Scotland with it and there will be no cushion of oil and gas and EU subsidies there to soften the landing.

Remaining in the UK means retaining this poisonous class system which has ghettoised most of the UK population.

An independent Scotland could simply walk away from it entirely. Leave it completely behind where it belongs.

Brexit has killed the last saving hope of the UK completely. Britain is a sinking ship and Scotland will go down with it if it does not take control over its own fate and resources by claiming its independence.

Better Together means drowning together.

How To Vote For An Independence Majority In Holyrood Elections

The Scottish Election Proportional Representation electoral process is complicated and always poorly explained. It is specifically designed to generate minority governments, which is generally good for democracy, but not good in the specific case of a new country attempting to begin a democracy by asserting its independence.

This is particularly true while half the political parties in the country are controlled by a foreign state; (Labour, Tory, Lib-Dem Parties), all carrying out Westminster ordered policies and particularly that of destroying Scottish Independence.

How to produce an Independence supporting parliament majority.

You have two voting choices to make. The first vote chooses your elected MSP. The second vote goes to the next leading candidate from a different party. Even if you vote twice for the same party this still happens. In effect a constituency cannot elect two candidates from the same political party.

Therefore to support Independence fully you must vote for 2 different Independence parties of the three available in the two voting slots (constituency and list).

Virtually all of the Unionist party MSPs have been elected to parliament because people who support independence vote SNP 1 and 2 – which is what the SNP ask them to do.

It is a strategic mistake of the SNP to do this, designed to keep rival independence parties from growing and gaining strength. It is a policy which is inadvertently delaying independence, which the Scottish National Party should never be doing.

The one exception to voting for 2 different independence parties is if you live in a constituency in which there is a chance that a Unionist Party, (Labour, Tory, Lib-Dem) will win, then that is the only region to vote 1 & 2 for SNP in order to make sure that an SNP independence MSP is elected as one of the two MSPs.

The reason all this strategic voting is necessary is that the Scottish PR voting system does not allow two MSPs from the same party to be elected in a single constituency. This is specifically to provide proportional representation and to avoid majority governments.

Effectively this means that if an SNP candidate is elected as winner, the second, list vote, is discarded if it is also for SNP and instead the next most preferred candidate via a complex system is given that vote.

This is how most Tory, Labour and Lib-Dem MSPs come to be in the Holyrood parliament. It is not by winning election. It is the same for small parties like the Scottish Greens and Alba.

Proportional Representation is specifically designed to give minority parties a voice in parliament.

So a vote for 2 different independence parties will help ensure a majority Independence Scottish government which will have a strong mandate for international action on independence.

If you have a strong dislike for certain independence parties, it is also possible simply to leave your second vote blank. This will avoid it being automatically given to Unionist candidates against your wishes.