BY EDWARD THOMAS BLACK

Every country has its shameful past. Fortunately – for most – the past is well in the past. A product of different times and difference circumstances. However one country in Europe is in the unfortunate position of simultaneously living its shameful past and its shameful present. That country is Scotland.

Why should we Scots be living through shameful times?

For one. The ruling party is an extreme Ethnic Nationalist Party whose ex leader will soon be up in court on multiple sexual offences including attempted rape and intent to rape. He is innocent until proven guilty in a court of Law but the very fact that our legal system believes that there are many charges to answer shames us in the first place. I can think of no other country in Europe whose ex leader has been charged in this way.

There are two specific ways that this shames us:

Either he is totally innocent of all charges and it shames Scotland that our legal system sought to charge him in the first place, or he is found guilty and it shames us as a nation that an ex First Minister will go to jail for sexual offences.

If he is found totally innocent many questions will be asked about the efficacy of our legal system and how it could produce this outcome. If he is found guilty then questions will be asked as to who, if anyone, actually knew about these allegations and whether they were covered up.

This shames us.

Another thing that shames us is our media in Scotland. Not only our TV but our national papers and radio stations. Two Saturdays ago a march was held in Glasgow under the auspices of Nationalists in the All Under One Banner Brigade. They stated that there was a crowd of around 80,000. People who filmed and counted the crowds put the figure at around 12-14,000. That our media printed the 80,000 figure shames us as these are the kind of numbers that are put out by dictatorships and brutal, tyrannical regimes. Not in a democracy.

That shames us.

In fact, the media in Scotland shames us even more than the shameful Nationalists in the SNP – we expect the latter to lie. They’ve been lying for decades. But the media? The day the media in Scotland decided to lie to us to curry favour with the ruling Nationalists shames us.

There is one thing more than anything else that truly shames us Scots and that is the deliberate never-ending cascade of lies put out by the Nationalists about our economy. All companies rely on qualified and efficient bookkeepers and accountants to produce and verify their accounts. Larger companies get audited just to make sure that they’re correct.

The same thing happens with countries.

When Greece applied to join the EU, external merchant bankers were brought in to verify the finances. Instead, they overstated the good financial health of Greece. The EU knew this, but they needed someone to whitewash the accounts to let Greece in, as they wanted to expand. The recession in 2008 put paid to this fantasy. Greece was bust all along. This shamed Greece.

Now back to Scotland.

Can you name another country in Europe that publishes their own economic accounts then in the very next sentence pours doubt on the very veracity of these accounts? These accounts produced by professional economists and statisticians that were previously touted as correct, accurate and a fair reflection of our economy but now are in doubt because they say the opposite to what the ruling  Nationalists say?

That shames us.

In the years leading up the referendum in 2014 the SNP promoted the Scottish accounts (GERS) at virtually every opportunity. Why? Because of high-priced oil revenues and the recession they showed that Scotland was in a better financial position than the rest of the UK. Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon promoted our accounts on Twitter with abundance. They were correct, accurate and fair, so they said. Not any more, they say. Simply because they now show that our economy is in a much poorer shape than the rest of the UK.

That shames us.

Politicians like to portray themselves as decent, fair and progressive, but they can only do that if the economy produces the goods to allow them to do so. Without money you can’t improve anything. How many of you know that Scotland has run a fiscal deficit every single year since 1990 and that Scotland has only subsidised the UK in only a single year out of the last 21 years? The remaining 20 years we have been subsidised. That the ruling Nationalists have managed to hide and lie this fact from us …

That shames us.

Since 2010 to the end of January 2020 Scotland has received around  £70 billion pounds (in real terms) in subsidies. That money helped pay for our vital public services that we all use and cherish. That the Nationalists have managed to obscure, pour doubt on or deny these sums ….

That shames us.

Our Unionist politicians in Scotland are week, feeble and  totally incompetent. Just how hard can it be to read a simple set of accounts and understand them? In Holyrood, Derek MacKay stands up and lies and says that he hasn’t cut council funding. His own statisticians (SPICE)  provide evidence that he has, and our unionist politicians let him get away with it. Time after time after time the Nationalists lie in Holyrood and our unionists politicians let them get away with it. Worse still we have to rely on the English based media to hold Scottish politicians to account.

That shames us

The Nationalist Nicola Sturgeon’s legacy will be one of shame. Shame at how she has reduced a country to strife, chaos and lying. The misdirection play of Scottish independence covering grave sins of mismanagement and incompetence. That is her legacy. One of shame and English subsidy.

That, my friends, shames us.

The above was an edited thread from the Twitter account of Edward Thomas Black, “a Scottish Economist”.