BHEASTS Face New Chanting Probe

[calscot 0]

Thankfully enough in this country were wise enough to see thro' the SNP white paper lies

 

Can I ask you why the SNP would lie? There is no motivation for them to do so as they would be left carrying the can.

 

If Scotland are better off outside the UK, SNP have no reason to lie, and in fact they must be telling a lot of truth.

If Scotland are worse off outside the UK, SNP have no motivation to lie - they are just mistaken, generally nobody lies to create a situation where they are worse off.

 

If Scotland are worse off outside the UK leaving rUK better off, rUK have no reason or motivation to lie, generally nobody lies to create a situation where they are worse off.

If Scotland are better off outside the UK leaving rUK worse off, rUK HAVE A REASON to lie. (Although doesn't mean they have lied.)

 

There is only one side and scenario where lying makes any sense.

[calscot 0]

You've got to ask why anyone against Scotland leaving would be gleefully extolling the £15b deficit while taking it completely out of context to throw a worse light on it than the reality. Is that a form of lying? And if so why? What is the motivation?

 

The most benign reason I can come up with is that people just like to do the "I'm right and I told you so" thing.

[craig 5,199]

Are you saying rUK didn't have a budget deficit? Surely you have to qualify that figure or it's just meaningless?

 

You do understand that a significant amount of Scotland's income is tied to the price of oil which goes up as well as down?

Do you realise, Norway are also running a deficit for the same reason and are about to withdraw money from their "oil fund" to pay for it? Now why does't Scotland do that? Oh wait...

 

Given the quantum of the deficit would this not be a reason for considerable concern ? To be almost completely at the whim of oil prices determining whether you operate in surplus or deficit ?

 

To be honest I don't want to get into UK politics as there is enough going on in Bermuda right now politically.

[craig 5,199]

Can I ask you why the SNP would lie? There is no motivation for them to do so as they would be left carrying the can.

 

If Scotland are better off outside the UK, SNP have no reason to lie, and in fact they must be telling a lot of truth.

If Scotland are worse off outside the UK, SNP have no motivation to lie - they are just mistaken, generally nobody lies to create a situation where they are worse off.

 

If Scotland are worse off outside the UK leaving rUK better off, rUK have no reason or motivation to lie, generally nobody lies to create a situation where they are worse off.

If Scotland are better off outside the UK leaving rUK worse off, rUK HAVE A REASON to lie. (Although doesn't mean they have lied.)

 

There is only one side and scenario where lying makes any sense.

 

I am very much on the outside looking in as I haven't kept up to date with Scottish or UK politics for a long time.

 

But when we saw the referendum last year it looked to me like there were a number of variables that made it difficult for anyone, including those in power, to know whether Scotland would be better or worse off.

 

I'm not sure that EITHER side would be foolish enough to lie because surely eventually the lie is found out ? I guess in some cases the means justify the end.

 

The massive deficit I don't think would have been shrouded as a lie - more that nobody could have predicted that the energy industry would see such drastic slumps in oil prices. Nobody could have foreseen that - and given I work in insurance, insuring many of the major energy industry multinationals I know for fact that they never envisioned the slump we have seen. Worse, for them, is that there is pretty much an industry-wide cull of 20% of staff. Sad times.

 

But the fact it has happened should also give cause for concern for the SNP in that if we did, or do, get independence then we simply cannot rely on an inflated oil price to support the economy as a whole - you have to make sure that you have a balanced economy so that when one pillar is suffering you have alternatives to support the economy whilst it languishes.

[Rousseau 9,581]

I think the lie is that they can peddle the anti-austerity line, but then admit that they'd reduce our deficit by "doing the same as Westminster". NS was reluctant to concede that they would have to cut spending or increase tax. It seems they are more interested in peddling a party line rather than dealing with the issues. Perhaps it's not a lie per se, but it's certainly hypocrisy.

 

Nobody is "gleefully extolling the £15b deficit". It merely proves that an independent Scotland would be in serious trouble if there was a Yes vote. I believe the SNP party line was that Scotland would be better off, so was that a lie? Or maybe just a misinterpretation of the facts? Either way, it doesn't lend much credibility to their party line.

 

They were also suggesting that the referendum was a 'once in a lifetime' thing, but we now have NS announcing that they are working towards another -- I can't remember the exact announcement details -- was that then a lie?

 

The SNP's record is not encouraging: high unemployment, failures in NHS and Education, and, of course, the deficit figures. They keep suggesting they're doing what's best for Scotland -- which is a silly statement because what are the others doing? -- but the figures would suggest they're not. They keep painting this rosy picture of an independent Scotland, but the facts do not align with that picture -- point it out and you're "talking Scotland down". Again, is that a lie, or a misinterpretation?

 

It is very frustrating that they seem to be beyond criticism.

Edited March 18, 2016 by Rousseau

[RANGERRAB 3,336]

Can I ask you why the SNP would lie? There is no motivation for them to do so as they would be left carrying the can.

 

If Scotland are better off outside the UK, SNP have no reason to lie, and in fact they must be telling a lot of truth.

If Scotland are worse off outside the UK, SNP have no motivation to lie - they are just mistaken, generally nobody lies to create a situation where they are worse off.

 

If Scotland are worse off outside the UK leaving rUK better off, rUK have no reason or motivation to lie, generally nobody lies to create a situation where they are worse off.

If Scotland are better off outside the UK leaving rUK worse off, rUK HAVE A REASON to lie. (Although doesn't mean they have lied.)

 

There is only one side and scenario where lying makes any sense.

 

Come on the SNP told a whole pack of lies leading up to the 2014 referendum.

 

Lets rewind to February 2014 when the support for independence was barely 30 percent in the polls. The SNP had to take drastic action so they embarked on a whole series of lies & deceit to convince people to vote YES.

 

They said there would be currency union with rUk............... lies.

They said there would be EU membership............................. lies

They said the price of a barrel of oil would be 113 USD.........lies

 

Thankfully It didn't convince enough guillible voters to vote YES otherwise we'd be in economic meltdown now as last weeks GERS figures showed to those who understand what they mean

[calscot 0]

I think the lie is that they can peddle the anti-austerity line, but then admit that they'd reduce our deficit by "doing the same as Westminster". NS was reluctant to concede that they would have to cut spending or increase tax. It seems they are more interested in peddling a party line rather than dealing with the issues. Perhaps it's not a lie per se, but it's certainly hypocrisy.

 

History has shown that sometimes there are better ways out of recession than austerity. Eg Hoover vs Truman. Austerity does not have much of a track record.

 

Nobody is "gleefully extolling the £15b deficit". It merely proves that an independent Scotland would be in serious trouble if there was a Yes vote.

 

How does it prove that? Like I said, without any context it's completely meaningless. The UK has had a massive deficit for a long time so does that prove Scotland are in serious trouble by staying in? Your argument makes no sense without some kind of qualification and explanation.

 

The £15b is totally taken out of context and actually is a pretty subjective calculation and based on full UK spending. But you can see the implication is that the rest of the UK have zero deficit and only Scotland is racking it up.

 

Scotland could have had the calculated deficit of say £10-11b and you still could say we would be in serious trouble (still sounds large to me), but that would be the similar level as the rest of the UK. If that's the case it means you are saying the UK is in deep shit, which has nothing to do with the SNP. That's one of the lies by omission I was talking about, making you assert pretty false conclusions based on the argument you gave.

 

Another lie by omission is that you can't say whether Scotland can stand on it's feet on the back of one year. You have to look at decades to make a judgement - say the past 30 years. If Scotland have had a lower deficit for much of that amount of time then it blows your argument out of the water - I can't find the data.

 

As I said, Norway are in the same trouble BUT the difference is that instead of giving most of their oil money to another country over the decades, they have invested the surplus in an oil fund where they collect the interest instead. It's value seems to be about £500 billion - think of the interest they earn on that. The funny thing is that I think I read that Scotland has produced more oil... They plan to "withdraw" about £15B of that to pay off this years deficit. A bit of a coincidental number. BTW This is what the SNP have been proposing for decades - seems they were on to something.

 

But comparing previous years, or Norway, doesn't suit the anti-independence agenda, coincidentally, one of the worst years for oil income has been just after the referendum. The oil price will go up, that's virtually guaranteed.

 

I believe the SNP party line was that Scotland would be better off, so was that a lie?

 

Better off instantly or better off in the long run? You think they were looking just at the short term? But then when you strike off bills for Trident and HS2, you could balance the books in the short term...

 

I think all governments generally work under a deficit and some years are worse than others. Scotland would be no different in that respect and unless you show that the amounts mean Scotland would go bankrupt or suffer under severe cuts and tax increases to prevent this, your argument applies to the UK as well. Your argument is that Scotland somehow can't afford to run a deficit but the UK can.

 

Or maybe just a misinterpretation of the facts? Either way, it doesn't lend much credibility to their party line.

 

You see, with my arguments above, it actually doesn't lend much credibility to their opposition.

 

They were also suggesting that the referendum was a 'once in a lifetime' thing, but we now have NS announcing that they are working towards another -- I can't remember the exact announcement details -- was that then a lie?

 

I don't remember it being once in a lifetime, I thought it was once in a generation. It would have been once in a lifetime had they won the vote... However, circumstances change - the problem here is the No campaign may have lied. They said Scotland would have to stay to stay a part of the EU. Now that's a huge betrayal of the electorate there if we vote out.

 

The SNP's record is not encouraging: high unemployment, failures in NHS and Education, and, of course, the deficit figures. They keep suggesting they're doing what's best for Scotland -- which is a silly statement because what are the others doing? -- but the figures would suggest they're not. They keep painting this rosy picture of an independent Scotland, but the facts do not align with that picture -- point it out and you're "talking Scotland down". Again, is that a lie, or a misinterpretation?

 

I have not really looked into what the SNP's record is - things like unemployment are also in the domain of the UK government and it has a record of shafting Scotland on that score. I'm not a support of SNP nor against them, I'm pretty much on the fence, but I see most of the disinformation and propaganda coming from their opponents. As in this case. That's what I'm against. I would do the same for the SNP but I have not seen their arguments as being so facile.

 

For me, a lot of the anti-independence lot, do talk down Scotland a hell of a lot - some of it is ludicrous. You would think that if Scotland was so crap they would be encouraging independence. Like I said, there is only one side and one scenario where there is a possibility of a nefarious motivation to do this. Combine that with the blackmail and you see which side is darker.

 

It is very frustrating that they seem to be beyond criticism.

 

I would get your point more if most of the criticism was justified - and like this case, without context and qualification, it's just attempting to pull the wool over the eyes of the electorate.

[calscot 0]

Come on the SNP told a whole pack of lies leading up to the 2014 referendum.

They said there would be currency union with rUk............... lies.

 

You have absolutely no idea about the veracity of that, you can't possibly know what would have happened.

Firstly you are lying, they didn't promise that, it's what they believed, they offered other scenarios.

It was a bit of blackmail by the UK government which has a high likelihood of being a bluff.

 

That's a very poor one that shows you cannot see both sides.

 

You even just have to look at it in the context of who are the good guys and the bad guys:

 

Scottish people want currency union and SNP would try their hardest to negotiate this - good guys.

 

No campaign threaten no currency union and would deliberately block it - bad guys. Really, that showed how much England care about us as a nation, what kind of family are they? That was one of the shittiest things threatened by England in the campaign and yet you use it against the SNP...

 

They said there would be EU membership............................. lies

 

Again, you cannot possibly know that and it was not a lie, it was an assertion, BUT it's also a very weird allegation considering the no campaign and in out vote.

 

Are you really giving this as an argument consider the vote is in June?

 

Again the Scottish people want EU membership and so yes campaign would fight to retain membership - good guys

 

No campaign say while there is no precedent, we wouldn't be members and would have to stay in UK to be members - then create a vote to leave the EU - bad guys

 

They said the price of a barrel of oil would be 113 USD.........lies

 

Please show me where they have "lied". It's not something you can lie about as no-one intelligent person will state a future price of a commodity as fact. Getting a prediction wrong is not lying. I personally predict the price of oil will rise at some point.

 

Thankfully It didn't convince enough guillible voters to vote YES otherwise we'd be in economic meltdown now as last weeks GERS figures showed to those who understand what they mean

 

You come out with stuff like this and then call people gullible?

 

At worst the yes campaign were optimistic and possibly mistaken.

At best the the no campaign threatened us about the currency, conned us about Europe, and were right about the short term price of oil.

 

I'll say again, the no vote are consistently the ones who distort the truth.

[craig 5,199]

Come on the SNP told a whole pack of lies leading up to the 2014 referendum.

 

Lets rewind to February 2014 when the support for independence was barely 30 percent in the polls. The SNP had to take drastic action so they embarked on a whole series of lies & deceit to convince people to vote YES.

 

They said there would be currency union with rUk............... lies.

They said there would be EU membership............................. lies

They said the price of a barrel of oil would be 113 USD.........lies

 

Thankfully It didn't convince enough guillible voters to vote YES otherwise we'd be in economic meltdown now as last weeks GERS figures showed to those who understand what they mean

 

I'm not pro-SNP but anyone who believed them when they said the price of a barrel of oil would be $113 was a mug. Not because they were telling lies though but merely because unless the SNP can control the price of oil (clearly they cant...) then that was nothing more than bravado and hubris. If, however, they were basing their fiscal projections on that $113 (I don't know if they were or not, as I said, haven't been involved) then that seemed like an aggressive value per barrel. Would be interesting to know on what basis that $113 came from.

[calscot 0]

But when we saw the referendum last year it looked to me like there were a number of variables that made it difficult for anyone, including those in power, to know whether Scotland would be better or worse off.

 

Completely agree.

 

I'm not sure that EITHER side would be foolish enough to lie because surely eventually the lie is found out ? I guess in some cases the means justify the end.

 

The no side are getting found out quite a bit. The EU thing is huge. Then there are the devolution promises which were not 100% genuine. Because the no side won, we can't know if a lot of the stuff they said were lies - and if the yes vote had won, there wouldn't be much accountability.

 

The thing about the "lying" is that a lot of it is not technically lying - it's more disinformation, spin and propaganda. The £15b deficit is a current example. £15b for Scotland means it can't fend for itself. £93b for UK is fine. The fact that if Scotland was the same as the UK it would be about £11b anyway is brushed under the carpet. Previous years when oil price was higher are totally ignored.

 

The massive deficit I don't think would have been shrouded as a lie - more that nobody could have predicted that the energy industry would see such drastic slumps in oil prices. Nobody could have foreseen that - and given I work in insurance, insuring many of the major energy industry multinationals I know for fact that they never envisioned the slump we have seen. Worse, for them, is that there is pretty much an industry-wide cull of 20% of staff. Sad times.

 

The lie is the sensationalist assertion that it's evidence Scotland would have gone bankrupt or otherwise in deep crisis.

 

But the fact it has happened should also give cause for concern for the SNP in that if we did, or do, get independence then we simply cannot rely on an inflated oil price to support the economy as a whole - you have to make sure that you have a balanced economy so that when one pillar is suffering you have alternatives to support the economy whilst it languishes.

 

I agree that we can't rely on oil. It's too late - I've already explained the Norwegian analogue.

 

However, there is more to independence than that - when you have control over your income and spending you can change that. As Norway have shown there is usually a surplus, a few bad years doesn't necessarily change that. With good, targeted investment Scotland could perform a lot better - instead of targeting London all the time.

 

I can't really predict whether it would be better or worse but I think the whole the UK suffers under the London-centric model.

 

However, hypothetically I do see the oil as a possible crutch to lean on while Scotland builds its strength back, hopefully not needing it after a while.