The Oban Times

Will referendum be Sturgeon’s undoing?

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Sir, Ever since Nicola Sturgeon became First Minister at Holyrood, she has been utterly obsessed with one thing only: independen­ce.

A dreamy craving to be separated from the UK is much more important, and a greater priority, to her than the 1,001 despairing problems with Scotland’s NHS, economy and education. She’s not interested, and never has been, in the important ‘ bread and butter’ issues that affect so many people in Scotland, over which they struggle with every day.

Having lost at the ballot box in 2014, she is now daring to impose yet another independen­ce referendum on the people of Scotland. Foolishly thinking they made the wrong choice then, she just can’t accept reality. Like a wee girl having uncontroll­able tantrums in the school playground, the First Minister has played the part well, daily, over the past three years because she didn’t get what she, and her Holyrood crew, desperatel­y coveted.

Stubbornly, and bitterly, refusing to accept that the UK voted to leave the EU, she now seeks revenge by loading her ‘independen­ce rifle’ – with Brexit bullets – ready to fire at everyone on the other side of Hadrian’s Wall. Honestly, this woman seriously needs to go and lie down in a darkened room and get quick and urgent help for the good and sake of Scotland, the nation she is supposed to govern.

There are many reasons we don’t want or need independen­ce. For the moment, I’ll only make a brief reference to two. One of the fundamenta­l reasons for Scotland to remain a part of the 300-year- old union is an important economic one, which cannot be lightly ignored by any sane person.

Even though our block grant has been cut by Westminste­r, it still remains a fact, to the annoyance of many English MPs, that we get more per head in public services spending than England. This is reality, whether we like it or not. To the penny, £10,536 is spent each year on people here in Scotland, which is £1,460 more than the UK average of £9,076.

If anyone is fooled into thinking that ‘ local oil’ tax revenues will maintain this spend, they better think again. In the year 2011/12, Scotland’s North Sea oil was doing so well that the tax revenues were worth in excess of £9 billion to the economy. By the year 2015/16, the last time that the figures were assessed, that revenue had been virtually wiped out by the global fall in the price of oil. The revenue had gone from £9 billion to a mere £ 60 million.

Leading up to the 2014 referendum, we were told that an independen­t Scotland would be wholly reliant on oil revenues to resolve every foreseeabl­e problem that goes along with governing ourselves.

Which planet are they on? It is high time Nicola Sturgeon, and everyone who is obsessed with independen­ce, woke up. Last time it saw the demise of the then First Minister Alex Salmond. Maybe Nicola Sturgeon has done us a great favour in calling for another referendum so that hopefully she too might disappear, forever, from Scottish politics. Donald J Morrison Old Edinburgh Road, Inverness.

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