The Scottish Government

stop whinging fife.we could cut our cloth a bit better if alaister darling would donate back to the owners of the oil out of the north sea the scottish nation, the four billion he is reaping into the treasury in london with our oil at almost $100 a barrel

Montrosian (79) wrote “There are many english people in scotland who are very nervous of the future here” - people all over the world, of all nationalities, whether “natives” or “migrants”, are nervous about the future. Have you got one single piece of actual evidence that the percentage of English people in Scotland who are nervous about the future is any higher than the global percentage of nervousness about the future? Oh, no doubt you have anecdotal evidence. But for every piece of anecdotal evidence you can produce there is anecdotal evidence to prove the contrary. I know loads of English-born folk in Scotland who are confident about the future. My own daughter, for one. As for actual statistics, the statistical evidence which has been collected suggests that English-born people living in Scotland tend to vote SNP in much the same sort of percentages as their native-born neighbours. In other words, in an area of Scotland where about 35 percent of native born Scots vote SNP, so do around 35 percent of English-born folk, in an area of Scotland where 25 percent of native born Scots vote SNP, so do about 25 percent of English-born voters, and so on.

Oh, by the way, I’m a Ferrydener, myself, but some of my best friends are Montrosians……..

Just to follow up my previous posting, I put my concerns about this as feedback on the website, and received a phone call within a half hour. It's a company organises these events, costs need to be covered, but they would like to have smaller businesses attend and will talk to people about this.

Nice to have such a speedy response, and good to see responsiveness.

This is one of the benefits of "small", and one of the reasons I'm in favour of independence for Scotland. Westminster is just too far away to take a train and stand outside with placards and sandwich boards, and it represents 60 million people. Holyrood is only 2 hours away and represents just 5 or 6 million, so if I feel strongly enough about an issue, I can have a chance to influence it ...

From my Competitive Scotland newsletter, I've received notification of a conference which I am automatically barred from because of the cost - £249+VAT - more than the cost of an HP laptop from a well-known online computer website. Summary of conference:

"Enterprising Scotland, Glasgow, 25 February: The Scottish Government has recently restructured the enterprise delivery framework for Scotland to
make it more effective. This conference will explain what the changes to enterprise are, what they
mean for Scotland and how they will affect entrepreneurs in all sizes of enterprises.

Who is it for? Managers and Directors in any sector, analysts, representatives of professional
bodies and networks.

Event website: http://conferences.holyrood.com/content/view/324/ "


I note Jim Mather is attending, could he please put forward my view that the cost of these conferences excludes micro businesses such as mine from attending, and therefore from being properly represented, and indeed, even considered?

In an independent Scotland, would the Scottish Government expect to represent small business more effectively than at present? It wouldn't be hard, by the way.

Number 93

So we can get rid of Quangoes can we?

The First Minister promises to get rid of 50 or 25% of Quangoes, of which 26 were already identified by previous Lab-Lib executive. However as there are 247 existing quangoes counting the Local Authorities, Police etc, 50 is only 20%!!!

So to sort out the whole mess the Government creates ANOTHER 24 QUANGOES, assuming they will be temporary, this makes it easy to meet the target of 50 as promised by the First Minister. However this still leaves 173 not the 149 HE promised, his arithmetic.

Ever feel that you´ve been conned? Again?

Independence in economic terms make sense particularly if we align ourselves with the other small tiger nations in Europe, however we have to stop following labour's old economic agendas and to critically look at their raft of quasi quangos that Wendy Alexander set up using subsidiary company status of SE and HIE but funded direct from the Government(a good example here is the Intellectual Assets Centre or ICASS whic is a tendered process). They both appear to be doing the same sort of things so why are there 2 organisations. We seriously need to amalgamate such things as Targetting Innovation, ICASS, the Intellectual Assets Centre, IRC,ITI's etc etc. Surely we could save immediately by having 1 CEO, 1 Operations person, less administration staff, more advisors advising across the range etc. Where is the scrutiny by the Government to manage what we have at present to ensure real delivery and not more organisations.

91. RORY mackinnon. Very good point about the carbon footprint. Companies are to be able to buy and sell their Carbon Offsetting Credits, I guess the same should be true for countries. We should get a whole load of credits in Scotland, and be able to offset this against higher airport taxes, car fuel taxes etc. I guess it's a credit we'd be able to sell internationally, perhaps to encourage companies with high carbon emissions to setup their HQs in Scotland to gain a positive offset.

Yet another reason for being independent, so we can trade our own carbon credits, rather than have them lumped in at Westmonster - and generously given back to us as charity in the bald barnet formula.

Carbon footprint this !!,green that !!! Can I Just say that Every Individual Scotsman's/laday's Carbon footprint must be almost Zero,nothing,Zilch. Why you might ask? MMMmm let me think,Hydro Electricty,Thousands no! millions of Trees,Heather,Sealochs,fresh-air,Northsea Gas and most cars fitted with catalytic convertors!!!! So Scotland reached its carbon reduction Targets Years ago ????? !!!!!!Not fiction like some insurance add ?? But FACT and simple truth

89. Barry Scarfe - Brenntwood, Essex, England, UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NI, Atlantic Archipelago, European Union, Planet Earth, our Galaxy, the Milky Way, the Universe. no post code.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007 04:01

Most of us in Scotland value that same partnership, however today it is not a partnership of equals.
I and many others would like to see the partnership renegotiated to be a bit less to England's constant advantage, at our expense.

We are not going and cannot go anywhere, plate techtonics take an age to move nations anywhere these days.

See how everyone loves the Irish?
Just imagine the Scots like that, still best pals, and happy to get a dig in now and then about our respective sporting slip ups.

David Glen, Glasgow, England's interest is in having Scotland as a strong partner in Great Britain along with us. No sensible and rational person in England wants Scotland to leave the United Kingdom - a great country we all helped to build.


You may be small but you have always punched well above your weight so take some pride in that.

So, please don't go Scotland. We value you and we want to continue our great partnership with you.