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The truths they don't want you to read....

Monday, October 19, 2009

Geographic illiteracy

The country is on the move again.....
"We are a Nordic, European country, currently part of a debt-laden sub-prime toxic assent currency we don't want to be part of and which is not serving our interests well."
Said John Swinney, Finance Minister, and thankfully not Minister with Responsibility for Knowing Where we Are.

Until recently we were a 'Celtic Tiger' until the Eurozone went into meltdown and that analogy was binned.

If we are going to move again, can I request that we become a Mediterranean country, or perhaps a sub-tropical Caribbean paradise and international banking haven. That would solve many of the problems in one fell swoop.

A Lewis summer
Coll Beach in the New Scotland

But the statement deserves closer examination, especially in terms of the context in which it was uttered.

This was during a debate about whether Scotland should hold a referendum on joining the Euro, and see us become "part of a debt-laden sub-prime toxic assent currency we don't want to be part of and which is not serving our interests well".

The ironies were glossed over, not least those from the National Secretary who said that a referendum was:
"the politics of moral failure"
Sorry? Are you saying that assessing the will of the people is some kind of weakness? What next: the abolition of elections to show your moral superiority?

All in all, it was a pretty poor showing, with only some minor headline grabbing and little of substance.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So if the National Secretary thinks that a referendum is the "politics of moral failure", I guess that means he doesn't want a referendum on devolution. Ooops. Foot meet pistol, pistol meet foot.

Captain Swing said...

Surely a debate about whether an independent Scotland uses the Euro is a little premature, it is not a given that an independent Scotland will be in, or allowed to be in, the European Union.

Anonymous said...

What a load of plonkers!