Exaggerated currency claims

Exaggeratted currency claims 1/9/14

Sir,

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the Yes campaign does not care about the truth, they only care about ‘winning.’ To the most devout on the Yes side, the end justifies any means possible. Win and we’ll sort it all out later.

There are two issues in our country’s neverendum debate where this attitude is most evident. Firstly, on currency, our First Minister is all too happy to mislead. Following last week’s ‘debate’ with Alistair Darling, Mr Salmond has been happy to conflate (1) a formal currency union with rUK and (2) continuing to use Sterling without the formal agreement of the rUK, as being one and the same thing. To do so is to wilfully deceive, but this doesn’t seem to matter if it wins a few more votes for the Yes camp.

Why Mr Salmond wants to keep the pound in the first place is a mystery. We are repeatedly told that Scotland is richer per capita than the rest of the UK, has more resources than the rest of the UK, and would generally be better off alone. Why, therefore, is a new Scottish currency not on the table? Surely, if these people had such confidence in our country, this would be first on the to-do list in the establishment of an independent state.

The second issue on which the Yes campaign has a particular penchant for stretching the truth is the NHS. Last week, our reputable Deputy First Minister shared a platform with Patrick Harvie of the Scottish Green Party to tell voters that a Yes vote is the only way to ‘save’ the NHS. Where is the evidence for these claims? Why has it taken until now, the month before the referendum vote, for these concerns to arise? Before these bizarre lies became a staple of Yes Scotland’s campaign it was acknowledged by all sides that health policy is already fully devolved to the Scottish Parliament, and all decisions about the future of the Scottish NHS are taken solely by the Scottish Government. Whether it’s a Yes or No vote, the Scottish Government will still be the ones making the decisions about the future of the Scottish NHS. To claim otherwise is, again, to wilfully deceive, but again, this doesn’t seem to matter if it wins a few more votes for Project Yes.

Ah, but what about the Barnett Formula? Well, given that both the Labour Party and even the nasty Tories have signalled that the NHS budget in England will continue to be ring-fenced, the claims of the Yes camp simply do not stack up. To think they have the audacity to accuse the No campaign of scaremongering.

Iain Campbell

14 Carinish

North Uist

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