Currency Union - The Sequel

Oh my, according to the BBC someone from the union-side has made an actual decision.

George Osborne, Towel Folder and Chancellor of the Exchequer:

Is set to rule out a currency union. 

No likely/unlikely, maybe/probably or conceivably/implausibly - Osborne says no, he's oot, its a 'no' from Gideon.

When Osborne makes his announcement, remember to:

A) Laugh enthusiastically if he doesn't rule it out
B) Bear in mind its not unknown for Tory (and Lib Dem) politicians to perform u-turns on a whim
and
C) The £££ is an internationally traded currency (see third paragraph in link) - there is simply nothing Osborne, Balls or the pointless Danny Alexander can do to stop an independent Scotland's populace from using it.

I don't have much more to say beyond the usual outrage at being told yet again by the arrogant insufferable ruling class in London what the people of Scotland can and cannot have even although these are things we have contributed to building so partly own.

We are told Scotland owns none of the assets built up over centuries of union, has no rights with regards to treaties & agreements with other countries, cannot use our own currency - we've even been told that when Scotland became part of the Union, it ceased to exist as a country. We're also told, if we choose independence - rUK would be the successor-state, not Scotland.

The successor-state gets to keep all the assets, the new state starts afresh with nothing... Turns out they merely modified the 'to wee to poor to stupid' argument and brought in a change of tense, now they're screeching: 'we will be to wee, to poor & to stupid.'

We do get to keep a share of the liabilities though... Its hard to understand how that works if Scotland was never a country while those liabilities were building. Its also hard to understand the threat of dire consequences should Scotland default on that debt when the UK treasury said:

"...it will honour all UK government debt issued up to the date of Scottish independence."

When a unionist doom-sayer mutters from beneath its cloak 'Scotland's credit history would be in tatters if it defaults' , it begs the question: what default?

For more outrage click here for something I typed a while ago. 

And if you're at all worried about there being no currency union, what can the rUK do in reality if there is no agreement? They cannot impound the contents of your savings accounts or pensions, they can't insist you turn out your pockets nor can they compel the company you work for to pay you in something other than Sterling - they can't actually do anything. Even in terms of borrowing, countries borrow from other countries, (central banks are supposed to promote stability, look how well the BoE did there...)

I'm no expert (no really) but even I get that the Scottish economy is very similar to the rUK economy, its just a bit smaller (although not per head of population where Scottish folk are much richer.) The rUK government could do all sorts of things to harm Scotland's interests, but with currency & the economy, they'd also be harming their own.

If Osborne does anything less than absolutely, without a doubt, rule out a currency union - since Osborne's credentials are already in the Scottish gutter and we probably can't think any less of him, we'll just have to laugh very hard at his daftness.

If he does rule it out? Roll on the Scottish Pound.

The McCrone report was a UK Government dossier on the economic viability of an independent Scotland, written in 1974 by Professor Gavin McCrone, a leading civil service economist, for the Conservative UK government. By the time it was completed the Labour Party had returned to power. The report predicted that North sea oil revenue would give an independent Scotland a large tax surplus, on such a scale as to be "embarrassing", making the country "as rich as Switzerland."^[1] It also surmised that this surplus revenue would make the Scottish pound the hardest currency in Europe "with the exception of the Norwegian kronor"^[1] The report went on to advise UK government ministers on the various methods they could use to take "the wind out of the SNP sails".

(wikipedia - times have changed, but not so much that we could still be a lot better off with independence than we are with the union.)