This letter by ‘Letters’ in the Herald seems to base its argument on currency uncertainty affecting the ability to borrow and the collapsed oil prices but, if we had left the Union by, say 2016, we’d have had several years of quite high oil prices and be using the Euro.
Far more important we’d only be watching with sadness the horrors that the Johnson regime is inflicting on the people of Rumpuk. Like the other small nations of Northern Europe, we’d have locked down weeks earlier and, crucially, we’d be controlling the flow of air travellers into Scotland.
Probably, after earlier private care home scandals, such as that in 2015, we’d have long since had a review leading to nationalisation and integration within the NHS.
Our own government departments would have developed their own trading links for PPE.
Free movement within the EU would have ensured no staff shortages in health or care services and our universities would have attracted some of the best medical researchers to help in this fight.
I could go on, but speed is of the essence here and readers must also get the chance to have their say.
Twitter comment:
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Please let us not use the Euro! We’d then be tied to that currency instead of the £. Euroisation instead of sterlingisation. We need, as an independent country, to have our own fiat currency so that we can create and spend it according to our own priorities and not be dependent on interest rates etc being fixed by a foreign country’s central bank.
LikeLike
Nothing to stop us using our own currency.
LikeLike
I know! Just slightly concerned by the sentence “if we had left the Union by, say 2016, we’d have had several years of quite high oil prices and be using the Euro.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
We would have eradicated the covid virus by adopting test, track, trace and isolate at the outset, following the example of other small, independent countries instead of following the flawed science accepted by the UK government. This government denied all the devolved governments reasonable access to and shared decision making in the SAGE process. We are paying the price for that.
Arguably, Scotland’s failings in handling covid19 arise because the “Union” is too firmly ingrained in parts of the Scottish psyche, including wer government’s.
LikeLike
It would not be difficult at all to be well ahead of England in almost every dept.
They are now a Empire in its final death throes,bankrupt,3rd rate nation,utterly divided,Xenophobic,delusional,political system totally corrupt and not fit for purpose
In todays rapidly changing world order
In fact a system that only Guy Fawkes could deal with
They completely devoid of sound rational thought as the powerful ruling class grab for more slices of the ever diminishing cake of wealth and border line in developing into a totally corrupt pariah bankrupt dictatorship state
A complete joke and laughing stock in the eyes of the world
Whose eyes are upon this Fawlty Towers
Farce
Indeed this time most other Nations would support Scotland in ending the Union
And although impossible to measure Major powers in the World would now quietly work behind the scenes in very clever and subtle ways to ensure our success in breaking away
E.G. the EU,Russia & China
Scotland has one of the most vital global Geo Political coast lines in the world at a stroke can disarm the threat of USA & English madness ruling the roost
This virus has moved the tectonic plates of the coming New World order
China is moving with all due haste now in order for once and all to end the hegemony
Of Western capitalism
LikeLiked by 1 person
👍
LikeLike
How the UK government and scientists got it wrong and can’t admit it. John can add point 10 to Scotland’s better handling of covid19. Greater honesty.
https://bylinetimes.com/2020/06/01/the-lost-march-how-the-uk-governments-covid-19-strategy-fell-apart/
“We may never know conclusively, but it’s a reasonable assumption that this was a decisive week for Government thinking. It seems around this time that it realised the assumptions it had made — about the UK curve, how it would behave, when it would peak, how far behind Italy it was — had been wholly wrong.
But it was, in many ways, already too late. The scientists had kept emphasising, in the early briefings, how crucial to their “delay stage” it was to catch this thing exactly right “on the inflection”, as they put it. How often they repeated that the spread would go slow for ages and then suddenly very fast and how crucial it was “to catch it before the upswing begins”.
Rewatching all those early briefings sequentially, I was left in little doubt that in the days leading up to the 23rd, when lockdown was introduced, this was a Government in panic. It was behind its own schedule in implementing its own plan. It had missed that elusive point of the inflection before the upswing began. ..
….So many things hang from this mistiming. Everything from the lack of earlier mobilisation to acquire everything from ventilators to PPE, the delay in expanding testing capacity, the empty Nightingale hospitals, which were still opening weeks after the peak, even as others stood empty or were closing. And of course the awful death toll. Researchers now claim the death toll in the UK could have been similar to Germany’s if it had acted earlier. Everything was geared towards being optimal, at the wrong time. ..
…Not only was the advisory body infiltrated by political appointees, who were more than mere observers, we now know. But the scientists were publicly co-opted by the politicians, from the start. They were put on podia, either side, given rope. They had to sound sure back then —it was conducive to public confidence. Little room for nuance or scientific doubt. Their function was to calm people, to look like they knew precisely what they were doing.
This Government didn’t “follow the science”. It cornered the science. Bullied it into sounding certain, on a subject with no certainty. We deserve the honesty of scientific doubt.
And now they have no option but to repeat the Prime Minister’s mantra: “We have taken the right steps at the right time.” Plainly, that isn’t true. “
LikeLiked by 2 people
Absolutely not join the Euro – that would be taking most of our economic and fiscal freedoms away again, a newlyindependent Scotland needs its own currency to get things up and running, it’s absolutely the only way to do it.
Don’t you read any of the stuff I post on economical matters John?!
We would have been in a far stronger position being part of the EU though for sure, but I think primarily, we would be able to make our own decisions and not be beholden to a foreign government for handouts – with our own currency – whether we’d have had a Scottish government that would have been able to act any quicker than this one, we can only speculate. It’s the speed of response that has been a big factor in suppressing the spread of the virus. But to have the freedom to make those decisions is key.
LikeLike
There is a very good argument for a Scottish currency
But as the World changes due to this virus
Geo politics and economic forces will shift
Dramatically
China is about to launch a new digital currency and has its eyes firmly set upon ending the commodity markets being dominated by the$
A aim it surely will achieve as the US reels from the virus plus many long term ingrained problems all of which it is incapable of resolving
So Scotland must keep its long term options with regards the €
Sterling will cease to be a reserve currency in world markets
And the € is probably the best long term safe bet to counter the Chinese Yuan
The € is slowly but surely gaining ground as a safe reserve currency
LikeLike
Don’t you read any of the stuff I post on economical matters John?!
You’re not the boss of me.
I’m firmly pro-EU and pro-Euro and pro-Euro Armed Forces
LikeLike