All the polls and all the reports concerning the coming Scottish referendum tell us that what people want is information and facts. All the propaganda that passes for argument and debate from the Better Together campaign, whose title is, I hope you remember, Project Fear, is based on 'maybes' and 'what ifs'. Maybe we wont be admitted to the EU, maybe this company and that company will leave the country, what if we don't get the pound, etc. So, lets look at some facts. First, last month the Joseph Rountree Foundation told us that child poverty had fallen in Scotland at twice the rate of the rest of the UK in the last ten years. That is the result of the Scottish government's policies in Holyrood, and credit has to be given to all parties who supported such policies. Next, the Scottish Outlook Campaign which is an amalgamation of members from McMillan, Shelter Scotland, Oxfam, Alzheimer Scotland, The Children's Hospice Association, Child Poverty Action, The Poverty Alliance and The Scottish Council for Voluntary Associations, has been telling us how the Scots are being 'battered' by welfare reforms.
Now the aforementioned groups represent the people who are able to provide us with the most accurate empirical data available on the subject of poverty, welfare, disabilities and health in the country. These are the people in direct day-to-day contact with all the fundamental problems of disadvantage and exclusion. Such people deal with facts, not propaganda. According to the Outlook Campaign, approximately 900,000 people in Scotland are living in poverty. Now, according to the National Records Office, Scotland has a population of 5.2million, so, just under 20% of the Scottish population is living in poverty, around 4.68 out of every 10 people, in the 7th richest country on earth. That is the empirical reality of the Scottish situation under Westminster rule. Never mind emotion, never mind nostalgia, forget patriotism, that is where we are in the year 2014. Indeed, if you do subscribe to the odious notion of patriotism, then it is your patriotic duty to free the Scots from this situation.
The Outlook Campaign tell us that the Scots are being battered by "welfare reforms, stagnant wages, rising utility bills, higher living costs and job insecurity", and calls this situation a 'humanitarian crisis'. They also highlight how there are 155,100 households on council waiting lists and how Scotland has 40,000 homeless, whilst highlighting the exponential rise in food banks as people can no longer afford food if they wish to pay their rent and mortgage, heat their homes and clothe themselves. This situation is a genuine national scandal for which the Better Together people can offer no solution as they are the cause.
I sincerely hope that the people in the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties who tell us that we are Better Together and sustain a prolonged campaign of propaganda based on fear are proud of themselves and can sleep comfortably at night. What have these people to offer us if we stay within the United Kingdom other than more of the same, I await a response? The other reality is that all three major Westminster parties are committed to the dominant neoliberal economic order and that the differences between them is an argument about who can mange the neoliberal programme of cuts and austerity the best. None of them offer any real solutions. None of them offer to unleash the power of the state, the power of local government, the power of a truly national effort to solve the problems. There is another way, there are alternatives, but there are none on offer. Better Together? The people who argue this nonsense quite genuinely do not understand the problems, let alone the solutions. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
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