Scotland’s resources must not be sold off to the vulture capitalists
Have your say by emailing letters@thenational.scot
DARREN Jones, Rachel Reeves’s deputy, made the incomprehensibly stupid remark that Thatcher oversaw a period of “economic renewal and wealth creation”. I’d like to plaster this all over Scotland to warn those gullible enough to think English Labour offers us anything apart from stealing what remains of our wealth and impoverishing us further.
English Labour keep showing us who they really are. We should pay attention.
Larry Fink, CEO of Blackrock, the planet’s largest private equity firm that manages $10 trillion of assets, praised Sir Keir Starmer for saving English Labour from “extremism” under “Marxist” Jeremy Corbyn. What Fink really meant is that Sir Keir saved the UK for the world’s vulture capitalists to exploit.
Blackrock and Vanguard, Blackrock’s largest shareholder, own huge swathes of the global economy. Many of the world’s oldest and wealthiest families – the British royal family, the Italian Orsini family and the American Bush, Du Pont, Morgan, Vanderbilt and Rockefeller families – are owners of Vanguard.
Together they own the majority of stocks in the largest corporations spanning big pharma, big tech, big banks, the biggest media companies and the militaryindustrial complex. By 2028 Blackrock and Vanguard will be managing assets worth $20trn.
How does this relate to Scotland? Blackrock owns Edinburgh Airport; Aberdeen Asset Management merged with Blackrock’s investment trust; Scottish Widows awarded a £30 billion contract to Blackrock to manage index strategies; the Wheatley Group received a £100bn injection from Blackrock to drive
Scotland’s biggest housebuilding programme; Blackrock bought a West Lothian wind farm from Muirhall Energy.
There are rich pickings in Scotland. Starmer’s “single defining mission” is to increase economic growth in partnership with business. Scotland’s resources are for sale to vulture capitalists like Blackrock, leaving nothing for the rightful owners – the Scottish people.
I can’t think of a more clarion call to end this disastrous Union.
Leah Gunn Barrett Edinburgh
WONDERFUL to know that members of the Labour Party consider that Thatcher was a visionary when she used the North Sea oil profits to deregulate the London financial markets and destroy the last decent workingclass community, the miners. Good to know that for the Labour Party she’s St Margaret.
Andrew Slimon via email
I DIDN’T pay much attention to the SNP gathering the weekend and from what I’ve read I don’t think I missed much.
Brian Lawson in Tuesday’s paper said a lot of what I’m thinking. Why concentrate on the handful of Tory seats when the main threat is from Labour? There are more potential independence supporters amongst Labour voters than amongst Tory voters.
Have the SNP given up on independence? There was little mention of it at the weekend. Without independence there is no point to the SNP and all the so-called “woke” policy attempts will end in failure.
The Labour Party in Scotland, when it held sway, offered tea and sympathy for being unable to convince Westminster to change policies. The current SNP appear to be using the same ineffectual stance and face the same route to inevitable decline. This decline may result in a temporary resurgence of Labour before it too falls before Westminster intransigence on Scottish wishes.
Current polls show a hardening core of support of about 50% for independence despite the SNP’s lack of enthusiasm towards that aim. The desire for independence is not going away any time soon.
The SNP leadership should be concentrating on voter registration and ID issues before the next election, while extolling the benefits of independence.
The “make Scotland Tory-free” speech is no more than an attempt to disguise the lack of progress on independence. It could also be taken up by Labour and used in a UK sense more effectively. Where does that leave the SNP other than
high and dry? Many independence supporters will look at the current SNP and say “what’s the point?” and stay at home on voting day.
Is that the intention?
It looks like the SNP are getting close to the same position that the Irish Party, under Redmond, reached before being pushed aside in the 1918 election. Playing the Westminster game led to their demise and should be a lesson for the SNP if it’s not too late.
Drew Reid
Falkirk
THE former editor of the Daily Record was quoted in The National on Tuesday as saying that “contrary to popular belief, we never wanted The Vow to sway the outcome of the vote, even if that’s what the politicians who signed it might have hoped for.”
Words fail me! The Edinburgh
Agreement was governed by the rules of purdah! And he would have known it.
Iain Bruce
Nairn
WHILE I am glad to see the BBC apology in relation to broadcasting a text message that related the SNP to the Holocaust, having seen their wording I have to wonder what they are apologising for. It appears to me that they are apologising on behalf of the author of the text and that they are “sorry for the offence that it caused”. I do not see the BBC taking any responsibility for having taken the editorial decision to have presenter Kaye Adams read out the text on air.
We are still due a genuine apology from the British state broadcasting corporation for their own crass actions in relation to this text.
Ni Holmes
St Andrews