Friday, January 20, 2012

Does Alex Salmond think we're daft? Volume 1

So, I've been wanting details about life in an independent Scotland for a while.

Yesterday, we were treated to Alex Salmond's vision for defence.

Now, this is the same Alex Salmond who trashes Westminster at every single opportunity. He's been particularly critical about the Coalition's defence cuts, particularly as they affected air bases at Kinloss, Lossiemouth and Leuchars.

So, I almost choked on my Earl Grey when I read that he'd said this:
"The configuration of the Army in Scotland, the mobile brigade, which is the outcome of the defence review, looks exactly like the configuration you'd want for a Scottish defence force - so that's one naval base, one aircraft base and a mobile armed brigade."
 This was the same guy who marched to save RAF Lossiemouth, who took himself off to London yto make the case to then Defence Secretary Liam Fox for the retention of two air bases in Scotland. Now he tells us that we only need one.

You have to wonder what would have happened if the SNP had won their overall majority in 2007 and won an independence referendum in Autumn 2009. Actually, that referendum would still be being challenged in the courts because there's no way that Labour would ever have volunteered to give the SNP the power to make it legal. But that's by the by.

So, the newly independent Scotland, led by Alex Salmond, with the Coalition barely being a twinkle in anybody's eye, would have closed two air bases and cut the Armed Forces because that's "exactly the configuration you'd want for a Scottish Defence Force".  Who would have thought it?

5 comments:

MartinB said...

2 things, both of which were actually made pretty clear at the time:

1) The defence requirements of the UK (with its SoP of global willy waving) are very different to those of any foreign policy I'd expect from an independent Scotland.

2) While we're still part of the UK, it's perfectly reasonable to expect a fair share of its benefits. Otherwise you'd accuse Salmond of playing politics with national defence, allowing the spend to run down to be able to accuse Westminster of starving us.

Unknown said...

The point is that he made a huge fuss about the nasty ConDems cutting the military - to exactly what he wanted.

I've had SNP people go on about how awful it is that service personnel are being made redundant - but an independent Scotland would do exactly the same.

cynicalHighlander said...

Yes because you're showing it.

Firstly we contribute to the UK defence/aggression budget lets say c£8 billion yet the UK only spends c£3 billion in return giving a disproportional underspend of c£5 billion.

As Scotland's future reduced defence spending as an independent country would be around £1-£2 billion giving a saving of up to £6 billion to be spent within these shores rather than throwing it into a UK black hole.

You might be happy to throw money away thankfully a lot of others don't agree with you.

cynicalHighlander said...

Yes because you're showing it.

Firstly we contribute to the UK defence/aggression budget lets say c£8 billion yet the UK only spends c£3 billion in return giving a disproportional underspend of c£5 billion.

As Scotland's future reduced defence spending as an independent country would be around £1-£2 billion giving a saving of up to £6 billion to be spent within these shores rather than throwing it into a UK black hole.

You might be happy to throw money away thankfully a lot of others don't agree with you.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps Caron, but an Independent Scotland would be re-employing people to do jobs that are in keeping with our priorities rather than the priorities of imperialists in London and Washington.

Something you would surely support?

At the moment, folk are just being flung on the scrapheap after serving their country.

Pretty shameful stuff really.

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