YOU DIDN’T MENTION THE PRESCRIPTION CHARGES…

Of course, there are many more advantages to living in Scotland than the ones listed above.

The health service is measurably better than in the UK on most counts; Council tax is lower in general; trains run more efficiently; there are more police per capita; the prison service hasn’t been privatised and ruined; likewise the probation service; water charges are lower because we don’t have to pay for fat cat salaries on top of paying to catch, store and distribute water… and deal with waste; government committed to reducing greenhouse gases more quickly than the English/UK government, so fresher air, and so on.

Additionally, some of the worst of the Tories’ evil social security excesses have been mitigated.

Of course, off the top of my head, I can’t think of all of the benefits… please feel free to add some if you can. A full list is a useful tool for discussion with doubters.

++++++++

PS Murdo is a right twerp, isn’t he?

41 thoughts on “YOU DIDN’T MENTION THE PRESCRIPTION CHARGES…”

  1. Derek Bateman
    ‏

    @DerekBateman2
    Following Following @DerekBateman2
    More Derek Bateman Retweeted Wings Over Scotland
    We are now seeing the folly of tax cuts in crumbling infrastructure, degrading defence, higher crime in England, an NHS they say is failing, and a disenfranchised North of England which embraced Brexit. Result: a world looking on in horror.

    Liked by 4 people

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  3. Please, calm yourself. There is no-one around here that would disagree with you. Lower crime statistics, check, excetera, excetera. It will soon come to the point where we should have fewer police because we are more disciplined.

    Quite astonished that Derek Bateman has anything to say. His web-site has been silent for months and months and months. Perhaps the mere idea that the media was corrupt led to his silence. As a journalist and as an influencer, perhaps Derek Bateman could start writing again? It would be ‘interesting’ to read a new post on his web site, or, then again, perhaps not. Our Derek has some explaining for his absence when things were ‘hotting’ up.

    Perhaps he could answer here? Perhaps not.

    Liked by 2 people

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    1. Bateman was very ill, Douglas. I think I’d want some time off too after a kidney transplant. I’m pretty sure that’s what he had – I wasn’t right for a good long time after I had a kidney removed myself, and having a new one put in must be worse – all those immunity-suppressing drugs and so on.

      I’ll be glad to see Bateman back in regular action, although, like you, I disagreed with his continued devotion to the BBC (in particular) in the face of the blatant censorship by omission and other in-your-face propaganda tropes that the Great British Meeja Machine unceasingly spews out at us. Once you see them for what they are, you can’t unsee’em – that’s my experience, anyway.

      In effect, we are paying the BBC through the nose to make propaganda against us, and may theoretically go to prison if we refuse to pay their BBC tax. This is an extraordinary situation. Westminster reserves all powers over broadcasting. Perhaps Munguinites can tell me if an analogous situation occurs anywhere else in the developed world.

      Worse than that, home-grown TV and broadcasting talent, dramatis personæ, camerapersons, video editors and so on don’t get an equal chance of making home-grown media content, because BBC HQ spends only about half of its BBC tax income from Scotland in Scotland – and it manages that only by classifying programmes such as Question Time as Scottish. Just think what could be achieved by more than doubling the home-grown media output of our public-service broadcaster… I say “more than doubling” because I am damn sure that an independent Scottish public service broadcaster would not be spending money buying in a lot of the content which the Corporation makes outwith Scotland to rebroadcast on the Scottish broadcaster’s own channels.

      I am assuming that Scots would continue to be able to receive BBC content anyway – as you can throughout the Republic of Ireland – although, as I understand it, the Irish pay peanuts for it compared to what it costs us now.

      Another little benefit of independence.

      Liked by 3 people

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      2. I didn’t know that Derek had been ill, Ed. I just guessed it might be a reason.

        I wish him a speedy recovery.

        Stuart did an investigation into the costs of receiving the BBC as an independent country.

        Unless they gave special treatment to the Scots, it would cost far less than it does now.

        Liked by 1 person

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  4. I admire Mr Bateman. Personally, I would like to see him back on form. He has been on the substitutes bench for far too long. But that incredibly long silence, perhaps over Brexit, does not fill me with confidence. Perhaps the reason Derek Bateman has shut up is because he know’s he is on the wrong side of the arguement.?

    I, and I am not alone, in thinking that a person that argued for Scottish Independence – that would be Derek Bateman – cannot suddenly silence themselves, without explaining themselves.

    It is quite an extraordinary flip.

    It does not compute.

    So, Mr Bateman, assuming you are reading this, what say you?

    Liked by 1 person

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      1. Oh, I’m sure you do, Douglas, I wasn’t trying to suggest otherwise. I wish him well too … maybe that sort of operation isn’t quite as traumatic as it was when I had mine over 40 years ago, not least because the anaesthetics they use have improved immensely since then, but he was both a lot older and in a really poor state of health when he had his. If I could remember where the article was about his illness, I’d tell you, but I can’t.

        I often feel kinda wrung out myself these days. I’m concentrating on staying alive long enough to witness my country regain its independence, and at that point I shall concentrate on either letting go gracefully, or on hanging around like a bad smell in order to chuck my pearls of wisdom under as many feet as possible so they maker their owners slip up and land on their bahookies with egg on their faces.

        Liked by 4 people

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        2. I’d imagine that that sort of operation is still pretty traumatic. I apologise, because it didn’t even occur to me that he had a life threatening illness. I just assumed he walked away.

          Mea culpa.

          I am quite delighted that you, eddjasfreeman and Derek Bateman have both survived what I can only describe as ‘near-death’ experiences.

          We need both of you!

          Stay srong!

          Liked by 2 people

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        3. I’d imagine that that sort of operation is still pretty traumatic. I apologise, because it didn’t even occur to me that he had a life threatening illness. I just assumed he walked away.

          Mea culpa.

          I am quite delighted that you,

          eddjasfreeman and Derek Bateman have both survived what I can only describe as ‘near-death’ experiences.

          We need both of you!

          Stay srong!

          Liked by 1 person

          Reply

        4. I’d imagine that that sort of operation is still pretty traumatic. I apologise, because it didn’t even occur to me that he had a life threatening illness. I just assumed he walked away. Message to self, don’t assume shit.

          Mea culpa.

          I am quite delighted that you,

          eddjasfreeman and Derek Bateman have both survived what I can only describe as ‘near-death’ experiences.

          We need both of you!

          Stay srong!

          Like

          Reply

      2. Douglas

        He had a donated kidney from his wife. He had been very quiet about his illness but posted on twitter post transplant.

        I’m sure when he’s fit he’ll be fighting the cause again.

        Liked by 3 people

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      3. Douglas Clark, I have friends who are strong supporters of independence and who have worked in the media who have similar attitudes to Mr Bateman’s about former colleagues within the media.

        While I get infuriated by the regular bias shown by much of the media, I try – and it is difficult – to avoid the ad hominem attacks.

        What this site is trying to do in the article is to point out the misrepresentation of the Scottish Governments proposed taxation plans by the Tories, which has been echoed by SOME sections of the media, such as the BBC Scotland phone-in on Wednesday. However, despite part of the introduction and some of the initial callers parroting the Tory line, several callers made spirited rebuttals, along the lines of the tweet from the SNP.

        I am pleased to se that someone within the New Statesman (which, if you recall, gave a fairly strong hint that people should vote for Mrs May in the 2017 GE) has defended the Scottish Government. It was not their usual hatchet-anything-Scottish columnist Julia Rampen. (See, I have fallen into the ad hominem habit!!!???)

        Liked by 2 people

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  5. Just spotted in the Independent: https://is.gd/d0bsJ7. “Brexit latest: EU leaders scrap plans to help Theresa May pass deal after disastrous meeting in Brussels”.

    She turned up to the Summit with nothing in writing, no written proposals of any kind, no suggestions for wording, nothing – again. Yet again Merkel asked her what the hell she wanted exactly, she blathered about a firm commitment from them to end the “backstop” in 2021 or something (why?), and instead the Europeans firmed up their position and said that it must end only when superseded by some future agreement – period. Typical case of Westminster demanding something that They really ought to know they cannot, cannot have because the Europeans cannot, cannot give Them it without infringing on the rights of a sovereign State, the Republic of Ireland, to have the Good Friday Agreement – which is in the form of a treaty – remain unbreached.

    You know, I could have told My that’s what would happen if she approached them that way. What a fool she is compared to Sturgeon, who very obviously would have told her the same. That’s what you get when you don’t consult with anyone who might have a better perception of reality outside the Westminster Tory Party and Little England.

    Westminster Tories and Westminster Labour – a plague on both their houses. Holyrood Torybour and Labotory – ditto.

    Liked by 5 people

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    1. Ed:

      I can’t help thinking that all along the Brits have taken the attitude that whilst all these treaties and things are supposed to bind other countries, they obviously don’t apply when it’s her majesty’s government that is in the firing line.

      British exceptionalism might have worked 100 years ago.

      It is laughable now.

      The backstop cannot go until a solution is found that meets WTO rules and the terms of the Belfast Treaty.

      I’ve heard from day 1 that May, and most of her lieutenants are incapable of listening to anyone who disagrees with them. So they won’t hear advice from people who actually know about this stuff.

      Treaties and trade regulations. If they had listened they might have learned.

      But nope. Everything will be fine becasue we are British; we hold all the cards and look, there’s the cake we ate earlier.

      Within the Tory party they can always do that. Witness two people who were allowed back into the party the other night, so they could vote for her, despite being accused of crimes. One of them quite clearly a pervert that want to beat up some of his female constituents (according to the question in parliament brought by an opposition MP to the Lothesome woman. Another high tailing it from a court in his constituency where the magistrates had retired to consider a verdict on election fraud.

      In the UK they can often do that, witness the backdating of legislation taking power away from the Scottish Parliament so that their bill would become incompetent. And doing it in the House of Bloody Lords. Utterly disgraceful behaviour, anti democratic (and Fluffy did nothing but put extra milk in May’s tea).

      But when it comes to dealing with people in Europe, they are told to get back into their 19th century box. People like Merkel don’t get cowed by the likes on a third rater like May.

      Hell mend them.

      Liked by 3 people

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      1. I’ve been exasperated by the coverage in that I cannot work out whether the Supreme Court found anything at all wrong with the Continuity Bill at the point when it was passed. Some of the reporting mentions a problem even back then with §17, but no one says what the problem was.

        To avoid having to try to get hold of the full text of the ruling and go through it myself, which would tax my brain excessively, is there a Munguinite out there who’s picked up on what that problem actually was?

        I read also that the Scottish Government has decided to accept the judgment in full – at least there is someone out there in Official Circles who is not inclined to lash out ££££ of public moneys on legal actions, even when they might succeed, when the Supreme Court has made the main point that Westminster is sovereign and Holyrood is not.

        With the overwhelming majority of Scottish MPs and MSPs opposed to the Brexit Bill, indeed to the whole idea of Brexit, and opposed to the subsequent legislation that cunningly voided the Continuity Bill – with, of course, zero consultation, and a walk-out by our SNP MPs because of the really vile treatment they had received and their exclusion from the debate – there really is only one solution now.

        Westminster is not sovereign in Scotland. It never has been. That has never stopped the English Parliament doing whatever the hell it wants – including, now, not only preventing Scottish MPs from voting on English matters, but in an obvious breach of equal treatment, also overruling their votes, and the will of their constituents, when English MPs vote on Scottish matters and overrule both them and our own Scottish Parliament – which They undertook, in 2014, not to do. Just one more of Mundell’s more egregious lies, that one.

        The battle lines have been very clearly drawn now, and God know we have not just one casus belli, we have them up the wazoo…

        … so please, oh please, let there be an official announcement in the next couple of days from our Government about how they intend to counter this. It seems obvious to me that our MPs should bend every effort towards toppling that disgusting Tory regime – because, although the whole Westminster Parliament just recently recognized our Claim of Right (by acclamation, because They realized, grudgingly, that to refuse would be to provoke a Union-threatening constitutional crisis), the regime has effectively said that that was only de jure, and de facto we can just f*uck off and die – because the regime recognizes and abides by law and treaties only when it suits it to do so.

        Never mind quibbles about §17 of the Continuity Bill from Holyrood – the whole bloody executive branch at Westminster is seriously out of control, is repeatedly violating constitutional, parliamentary and legal norms, and the Tory Party in general has somehow transmogrified itself from the party of Laura Norder into a mass of more and less rank gammon led by a bunch of snollygostrous scofflaws.

        If this isn’t the tipping point, I don’t know what is.

        (The word “snollygoster” cheers me up a bit, which I need right now, so that’s why I used it.)

        Liked by 4 people

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          1. Thanks for that, PP!

            So – the Supreme Court in effect relied on its earlier ruling that the Sewel Convention is no more than a “self-denying ordinance”, i.e., that Westminster can ride roughshod over the devolution settlement any time it bloody well pleases.

            I forget which obnoxious Minister it was who said it first, but when she said it she was simply restating the regime’s position: Holyrood is no more significant than Lincolnshire County Council – a statement whose corollary is that Scotland is of no more significance than an English county.

            There really is only one solution to the problem, and it becomes more and more obvious what it is. We can allow ourselves to hope – we’re still breathing, after all – that increasing numbers of our compatriots are as outraged as we are by this latest proof of the Westminster regime’s overweening arrogance, its disrespect for our democratic institutions, and its contempt for the will and wishes of us Scots.

            Liked by 3 people

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        2. Well, lets see what they do. Johanna Cherry has asked for a debate. Andrea Lukewarm made some stupid remark about asking a law officer (clearly unaware that giving debates is HER bloody job, and then finished up with a stupid remark about Scotland being a part of the the united (that’s a bloody joke) kingdom.

          Liked by 1 person

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          1. (following from your post that ends with “(that’s a bloody joke) kingdom”.)

            That remark of Leadsom’s may not have been so much a stupid remark as the Party Line, whereby Scotland is not a partner in the United Kingdom, it is a part of it, i.e., that Scotland is (the equivalent of) an English region. That fires up the English / British punters to dismiss us Jockanese as always wanting Special Treatment which our status does not merit, Special Treatment being what powerful and prejudiced majorities always call it when anyone a bit downtrodden asks to be treated equally. The message and the truth that Scotland is a country not a region is drowned out and hidden under a pile jingoistic dreck in the knee-jerk noise generated by the false equivalence in the English / British / Proud Scots But psyche.

            For the Proud Scots Buts among our compatriots, it reinforces the Cringe by denying and devaluing what makes us who we are as Scots – we are just the loyal subjects of Her Majesty in what is now just another English / British region among all the others. Ho-hum. Let’s not get above ourselves. Those vile cybernats and thatniklasturgeon and thatalicksalmon before her, shameful, anti-English, ungrateful for all that our beneficent big brother has done for us – we PSBs are fed up having to apologize to our English friends for them and having to explain that we’re not like those appalling SNP separatists…

            Loathsome’s line was the same one Mundell spins, i.e., that Scotland was “extinguished” in 1707. It’s a Big Lie in the propaganda sense – the propagandizers may even believe it themselves, which is a nice but common little irony – and it is constantly pressed into service to portray us independentistas as rebellious Scots, and fitting objects for proper, right-thinking English / British people’s hatred.

            Well, let hell slap it intae them. We’re not just English people with funny accents and a bad attitude.

            The Supreme Court could not have found against §17 of the Continuity Bill if the Unionists had meant what they said back in 2014. The Scottish Government may have decided to accept the Supreme Court’s judgment on the Continuity Bill in its entirety, but I hope it doesn’t stop them skewering Mundell over it.

            Liked by 1 person

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            1. True, they say one thing “lead us don’t leave us”, then they say “you’re really only a country, like Yorkshire”.

              The most devolved government in the world? Greenland? Faroes?

              Oh well, with a bit of luck the whole thing is going to come to a grinding halt soon.

              Liked by 1 person

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  6. That weel kent firm of Scottish lawyers,Grievance & Grudge,much employed by the Tories and the other London based political parties,is going to be working overtime shortly.
    Along with the Irish,we are supposed to know our place and doff caps to decisions Made in England by our “sovereign” superiors.
    If nothing else comes out of the Brexit debacle it is that devolution was a con perpetrated on Scots by the British Labour party to give the impression of having a say in how Scotland is run but in reality changing none of the fundamentals.
    As with May’s Brexit,there is now no middle way,it is either London rule or independence.
    No more hiding behind pretendy devolution/federalism for Labour/Liberal voters.

    Liked by 3 people

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    2. The most powerful devolved government in the universe?

      They make me laugh.

      I think that Cameron will find that the move he pulled to try to keep his precious Tory Party together will not only render it asunder, but his beloved union with it.

      So some good may come from his premiership after all.

      Liked by 2 people

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  7. Bear with the englandlanders.
    They will gradually come to terms with the fact that Empire One is Dead and coe to equate it with the empire music hall which was pulled down in the 50’s.
    Wee snippets of news.
    Army recruitment not achieving the targets. Capita the agent.
    ENHS increased spend launch delayed.
    The increase in house building in england not making it’s targets.
    Rough sleeping in london increasing.
    Bed utilisation in enhs nearly 100% before the bad weather.
    Nebulous maybot gets upset when the truth is pointed out.
    We are currently residents of the Kick the Can Empire.
    Fortunately we have an out, roll on the independence vote.
    Wake up Scotland or you will live in scotlandshire.

    Liked by 2 people

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    1. I’m pretty certain that if you investigate every single department in England a match it against its counterpart in Scotland, the Scottish one is doing better.

      From Prisons to house building.

      How can they delay the extra funding for the NHS? The £350 million a week needs spending.

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  8. If not off topic, then tangential to it. In response to a correspondent from darkest Englandshire, in relation to the Continuity Bill judgment, I came up with the following. I think I’ve got it right, but am not as sure as I would like.

    Here goes.

    Further information tells me that the Supreme Court had a problem with only one section of the Continuity Bill as it stood at the time it was passed by the Scottish Parliament: §17, which gave Scottish Ministers a say in legislative matters repatriated from the EU in areas which had been devolved to Holyrood.

    You will come across reports that the Supreme Court had “eviscerated” the Scottish Government’s case, and words to that effect. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is interesting to see exactly who is making that sort of statement… the legal situation was changed by subsequent legislation by Westminster after the Continuity Bill was passed by Holyrood, in a manner which we independentistas consider sleekit; i.e., sneaky and underhand – and all without any consultation whatsoever with the Scottish Government.

    As I interpret it, the Supreme Court relied on part of its judgment in the Gina Miller case over article 50, in which the Scottish Government’s plea was that Westminster should not be legislating in areas devolved to the Scottish Government without the agreement of the Scottish Government – the so-called Sewel Convention.

    The Supreme Court ruled that the word “normally” which had been inserted into the wording of the Convention (“should not normally”, etc.) meant that the Convention was not binding on Westminster; rather, it was a “self-denying ordinance”. The Secretary of State for Scotland at the time, David Mundell, who is for some inexplicable reason still in office, denied this at the time, and told us not to worry our pretty little Jockanese heads about it.

    This latest ruling on the Continuity Bill is no doubt correct in law, and the Scottish Government has accepted it in its entirety. It will be less obvious, to people outwith Scotland in particular, that the Court’s ruling on §17 is in complete contradiction to what we were promised back in 2014 if we voted No to independence.

    In fact – I say “fact” advisedly – not one of the promises made to us Scots then has been delivered. The promise relevant to the Sewel Convention / §17 matters was that the Scottish Parliament (which was to be made a permanent feature of the UK constitutional system, but of course has not been) would not be overruled by the Westminster legislature or Government over Scottish affairs and legislation.

    That could be seen as the quid pro quo for EVEL – English Votes for English Laws. However, as we have seen, there is in fact nothing stopping the non-Scottish MPs at Westminster overruling the wishes of the Scottish MPs, the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish people over matters which affect Scotland alone.

    It should surprise no one that some of us Scots are just a tiny bit put out by the behaviour of the Tory regime at Westminster.

    Liked by 3 people

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