Should I vote SNP?

We pay far more into the EEC than we get back but that is not the subject of this thread.

In New Zealand the government stopped subsidies to farmers, cold turkey. After they got over the shock they recovered and are doing very well indeed. If something is not viable why on earth are we doing it?

I hadn't thought of the payments as subsidies or handouts, but I guess they could be seen that way.
I recently read an article which stated that hill farming in the Scottish Highlands would not be viable without payments from the EU.

Ah.....subsidies! So we should stay in it for what we get in handouts? Whenever I speak to people who wish to remain in the EEC it is mostly because they get handouts. Either their jobs are linked to EEC funding or their livelihood is based on farming or fishing etc. where they are milking the system. It is always a personal gain they are interested in, not what is best for the country as a whole.
I want a return to a system where we elect a government which has the welfare of the country (be it the UK or Scotland) as a whole. Where laws are made and not overruled by unelected overpaid bureaucrats in Europe and our taxes are spent on our citizens. I am happy to have immigrants who wish to work, and contribute to our country via taxation, join us and embrace our values. I resent that we allow some incomers to milk our benefit system and refuse to assimilate. When individuals use our freedoms to fight to remain here, abuse our hospitality and our courts are overruled from Brussels I despair.
As part of the EEC we pay for the gravy train that Brussels has become. How can anyone seriously accept the ridiculous moving from Brussels to Strasbourg and back ad infinitum.
That is enough from me.

Why do you feel it is so dreadful?

What of the financial help we get from the EU?

Quite frankly FarNorth I am so anti EEC (as it is now, not what I voted for originally - i.e. a trading partnership) that I just want the UK or Scotland to be a nation in charge of it's own destiny.

Do you believe that the UK government will get a good deal for Scotland, through Brexit, Esspee?

There won't be a Lib.Dem revival Jamila, as a nation we don't thole those who go back on their words and will jump through hoops for a taste of power.
I so wanted to write NONE OF THE ABOVE on my postal vote but in the end, very grudgingly, put my X for the SNP. I want my MP to care about Scotland and always put our interest first. All the other parties, when they get to Westminster, just toe their party line and forget who they represent.
My dilemma is that I am pro Brexit. I voted to join the common market as a trading bloc. I resent having our laws overturned by the EEC and I want OUT! The SNP will inevitably assume that a vote for them is a vote for remaining in the EEC and a vote for a second referendum. I want neither. This has been a very difficult decision for me and I say that as one who has voted SNP all my life.

This is exactly what happened in 2015 when you could say "it was the Sun wot won it". By bigging up the SNP in Scotland and the Tories everywhere else they got exactly the result they wanted.

NS helped the Tories enormously by boasting that she would work with Labour to "lock the Tories out of Downing Street forever" thus ensuring the loss of many Labour and LibDem seats in England.

The proprietor of the Sun got what he wanted and just look at the result.

“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

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

What sorts of crimes have been reclassified, grannypiper?

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

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.

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.

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'

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!

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 .....

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.

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

FGS, vote for independence asap and buzz off!

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.”

"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/

Fingers crossed!

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