Let’s Talk about Tax if we don’t want to be Safety First Scotland
Let’s Talk about Tax if we don’t want to be Safety First Scotland Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, December 20th 2015 This was a significant week for the Scottish Government and Scottish politics. John Swinney presented his first ever budget since Scotland had been given limited income tax powers which allowed variety up or down by up to 10p. That he choose not to do so is significant. Swinney’s ninth budget came against the backdrop of a decade of real terms cuts by the Tories which we are only half way through. Against this backdrop and a Scottish election next year
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Time for an Independence of the Scottish Mind
Time for an Independence of the Scottish Mind Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, August 9th 2015 A second independence may be off the agenda of SNP conference for now, but Alex Salmond regards it as ‘inevitable’. Such are the pressures and tensions of success. Where do you take a movement which came close to winning independence last September? How do you balance pragmatic and idealist hopes? What do you after the SNP ‘tartan tsunami’ of May this year which carried nearly all before it – and, when your opponents are so weak and disorientated? There is talk in places of a
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