Should I vote SNP?

Granny23 you and I are in total agreement that brexit is a potential disaster. Neither of us want our country to be dragged out of the European Unoin.

Where we disagree is that I follow through the same logic and am opposed to Scotland being dragged out of the United Kingdom.

We should resist separatism and understand the spirit of Jo Cox, when she told us "there is more that unites us than divides us"

She was a Labour MP and neither you nor I support her party but she was a wise and good person and it was such a tragedy that she was murdered because of what she said and what she stood for. We are Better Together.

Another remainder here. United we stand divided we fall. We are part of the UK. Its a shame that we were outvoted on brexit but we are where we are. I'd rather be responsible to Westminster than EU Parliament even if an independent Scotland could meet their economic threshold which it can't.

Varian Last night we attended Hustings, organised by the Regional Equalities Council. A good turn out of the public gave everyone a fair hearing although there was some heckling for the Tory as he tried to defend his party's policies on Immigration, WASPI and the 2 child policy/rape clause. He was booed for his lame response to a 'man in a wheelchair' who had lost his mobility vehicle and was now struggling to carry on working.

However, what I wanted to tell you was that the Liberal candidate, a lovely warm older man who had himself been a refugee, spoke calmly but authoritatively on every topic and was rewarded with loud applause every time he spoke. This from a mainly SNP supporting audience. I was struck by how much we and the SNP Candidate could agree with. As Independence was not really an issue(except for the very poor Labour Candidate who laid the blame for all ills on the SNP controlled Scottish Government) the focus being on fairness and equality' the SNP and Liberal stances on the issues were as one. I so wish the Liberals would at least support 'Scotland's right to choose' if not going the whole hog and supporting Independence. The Liberal Party would undoubtedly flourish in an Independent Scotland as 'SNP until Independence' voters choose who to support thereafter.

The Liberal Candidates name is Iliyan Stefanov. He should be featured more as a Party Representative rather than proven liar Carmichael or waffling Wee Willie Rennie.

What a pity Granhy23 that you started well with a friendly post, then had to spoil it by gratuitously insulting two good LibDem politicians.

As we were promised by the SNP that the 2014 referendum was "once in a lifetime" it would have made sense for the SNP to disband until, say the year 2100 (quite a lot of lifetimes are 86 years of so). Sadly the SNP lied to the electorate

*Varian" Carmichael IS A LIAR he has been taken to court and the judge AGREED he was a liar ,he compounded his "crime" by asking a charity to pay his court expenses ,In any other job if he had lied about someone and produced "evidence" to back up his lie he'd have been out on his ear.Willie Rennie lives on a different planet,nice wee man but inefectual.The SNO DIDN'T PROMISE the referndum was once in alifetime that was a remark made by Alex Salmond and not a PROMISE to anyone why WOULD A PARTY WHO HAS INDEPENDENCE AS ITS CORE POLICY EVER SAY SUCH A THING .I suggest you find where Alex said it and the context it was said in.The SNP have done far more for the people of Scotland in 10 short years than Labour did in 7 decades or more.There really is no point answering people like you who will say SNP BAD at every opportunity.Independence is not about the SNP its about SCOTLAND being in control of Scotland and thats something that cant/wont happen while we have only 10% of the MP's England has.England will win every time !!I believe you dont live here so maybe you dont see the full picture I'll give you the benefit of the doubt,I can tell you I have many friends in England who think we were mad not to vote for independence and back us all the way

Oh dear Paddyann, you have a short memory. It was not just Alex Salmond (then SNP leader) who promised that the referendum would be "once in a generation" or even "once in a lifetime", his then deputy, now leader Nicola Sturgeon repeatedly promised the same thing. If you cannot remember this, perhaps you should remind yourself by listening to what she told us all in 2014. If neither Salmond nor Sturgeon can speak for the SNP who can we rely on?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-hV_nPhzzs

As I have said umpteen times before the 'once in a generation' statement was not a Promise, rather a rallying call to use this unique opportunity to have your say on the Nation's future. Anyway, why worry about something which Trust Me Theresa has said will never happen?

Now THE VOW was not just a promise but a full blown VOW signed by all 3 Better Together party leaders and look what happened to that!

www.thenational.scot/news/14899551.The_Con__Only_9__of_Scots_believe_The_Vow_has_been_kept/

Last year the LibDems promised to add 1p to the Scottish basic rate of income tax to be spent on education. As I understand the Scotland Act, any extra revenue generated by this would mean a reduction in the block grant, so the taxpayer would be worse off and no difference made to the budget. Now the same LibDems want to increase income tax across the UK to go to mental health, which according to Barnett consequentials would mean extra money coming to Scotland via the block grant which could be spent any way the Scottish parliament sees fit.

Latest poll has Conservatives gaining 6 seats from the SNP in Scotland.

Fingers crossed!

"The trouble is that the SNP have made it very easy for the other Parties to snipe at them because they have, by and large, been very good in not only Westminster, but Holyrood too. Yes, they have made some mistakes and not everything goes to plan, but, and this is a very big point I have to make here: they have protected the people of Scotland from the Bedroom Tax, Prescription charges, Uni fees and Winter Fuel Payments. The NHS in Scotland is the best performing in the whole of the UK. And still there are ungrateful gits out there moaning. Even today, Nicola Sturgeon pledged to protect the care for the elderly.

So, I have an idea for the SNP (an idea which they’ll rightly ignore) stop protecting Scotland from the worst of this useless government. Introduce uni fees, prescription charges, means-test Winter-Fuel Payments and bring in the Bedroom Tax. Let the Scots take the full hit. Labour, Tories and LibDems won’t be able to moan because those are the very policies they defend by wanting Scotland in the UK. If those policies are good enough for the English and the Welsh then they’re good enough for the Scots."

scottovoce.wordpress.com/2017/05/30/let-them-have-it/

THERESA May got herself in a muddle after she was tackled on the government’s shameful decision to keep hold of Police Scotland’s VAT.

The Prime Minister seemed to think VAT was devolved and then, bizarrely, answered by reiterating her support for “shoot-to-kill.”

May was making a brief campaign stop in Edinburgh, where she addressed a handful of enthusiastic activists gathered in a removal warehouse.

A journalist asked her if she would consider removing VAT from Police Scotland so they can “invest £25 million extra in frontline services here”.

“Well first of all I think you should be very careful when you look at what the Scottish Nationalists did in relation to VAT up here,” the Prime Minister responded.

VAT is entirely reserved. EU rules mean a member state cannot have differential rates within it.

May then sidestepped the question on Police Scotland’s VAT bill, instead saying her government had increased the number of armed police officers in the rest of the UK.

Calum Steele from the Scottish Police Federation called it a “frankly embarrassing” answer which showed an “ignorance of what’s going on in Scotland.”

Each year Police Scotland has a VAT bill of between £23m and £25m, while the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service pays about £10m. They are the only emergency services in the UK unable to recover VAT.

Despite repeated requests, the UK Government has never sought to fix what the SNP have long described as an unfairness. HMRC says the Scottish Government was warned in 2012, when the forces became national rather than regional, that they “would become ineligible for VAT refunds.”

FGS, vote for independence asap and buzz off!

You have a very apt username, don't you, nigglynellie

Wee Nicky has just starred again, mouthing off about Police cuts in England and how the streets are not safe due to Police cuts But forgets that she has stood by whilst police numbers in Scotland are being cut ! you couldnt make her up.

police numbers are UP 6% in Scotland grannypiper This I know for fact becuase I work with the police recruits much of the time.The cull that happened with the single force was from the top down,all those top brass running about in flash cars that were un needed.Crime is also 40% down over the past ten years .....

News: a further cut of 400 more police officers as part of Scottish police 10 year plan. Source:Phil Gormley. Cuts of £188 million by 2020.
Not very encouraging is it!

REALLY PADDYANN ? police numbers are up and crime is down ? You must live in a different Scotland to me. The only reason crime is down is that it is not recorded or more worringly coppers cant find incidents i.e car accident last week exact postcode given to call operator who insisted that the scene of the accident must be over 10 miles away as thats what her computer told her and even when the coppers were sent to the proper location they couldnt find any sign of a RTA even though the car was on its roof with other cars stopped round about it and people stood in the middle of the country road in broad day light. The coppers in question were sent to look a second time before they 'found it'

Official Police Scotland figures :

Police officer numbers have dropped by 60 since March 2016, according to the latest official figures published this week, although numbers unchanged in the last quarter from 31 December 2016.

However, there are still over a 1,000 more officers than in 2007, meeting a key Scottish Government pledge.

Official Criminal Justice Statistics:

Recorded crime is at its lowest level since 1974. The total number of crimes recorded by the police in Scotland in 2015-16 was 246,243. This is 4% lower than the level recorded in 2014-15 (Chart 1 and Table 6).

Crime has been on a downward trend in Scotland since 2006-07, having decreased by 41%. This continues a generally decreasing trend in recorded crime in Scotland, from a peak in 1991 when crime reached a record high of 572,921.

Here in S.Ayrshire, crime down 17.4% yet incidents recorded up 2.3% how do they manage that ? Crimes that used to be crimes are no longer crimes. Very clever

What sorts of crimes have been reclassified, grannypiper?

Easily explained Granny Piper - e.g. shoplifting, drunk and disorderly, domestic abuse, etc, several 'incidents' recorded but perpetrator charged with one crime.

“We hope the Scottish people call Sturgeon out for her cynical, self-interested game-playing,” rages the Sun’s English edition. If you want to know what cynical, self-interested game-playing looks like, read the Sun’s Scottish edition. It says the opposite, contrasting the risks of independence with “the stick-on certainty of decades of Tory rule with nothing to soften it”, if Scotland remains within the UK.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/15/theresa-may-dragging-uk-under-scotland-must-cut-rope?CMP=share_btn_fb