Leveson Inquiry – Wanted- people who have had their evidence ignored

The Leveson Inquiry are refusing to use my evidence of press, PCC and police misdoing. They will not even take up the matter of Piers Morgan’s perjury before them despite the fact that I have given them a letter from Morgan to the PCC  in which he writes “ The   police  source of our article (whose  identity  we have  a  moral obligation to protect) gave  us  the  detail of the  letters  that  we  then published.”  (http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/piers-morgan-lied-to-the-leveson-inquiry/) . My  latest exchange of emails with the Inquiry is below.

I am in contact with a published  author who intends to expose such behaviour by the Leveson Inquiry.  He would like to hear from anyone else who has submitted evidence to the Inquiry and believes that it has been excluded for illegitimate reasons, for example, because   it would cause political embarrassment or require criminal proceedings to be taken against those with power, wealth or influence.

Anyone who wishes to expose such refusals should email me on anywhere156@gmail.com and I will forward them to the writer.

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RE: FTAO Kim Brudenell - UrgentWednesday, 15 February, 2012 13:02

 From: “Leveson Inquiry Solicitors Team” <Solicitors.Team@levesoninquiry.gsi.gov.uk>Add sender to ContactsTo: “‘robert henderson’” <anywhere156@yahoo.co.uk>, “Leveson Inquiry Solicitors Team” <Solicitors.Team@levesoninquiry.gsi.gov.uk>

Dear Mr Henderson

I write to confirm that your submissions are currently being considered by the Inquiry.  In relation to the letter from Mr Morgan, I would be grateful if you would confirm if you have a signed copy, and if so, please send a signed hard copy to the Inquiry.

 At this stage, we do not require a formal statement from you.

In relation to your final question, re how and when to make a complaint to the Metropolitan Police, I understand that you spoke to Ms Brudenell yesterday and she advised you that you may make a complaint to the Police, if you wish.

Kind regards

Sharron Hiles

————————————Miss Sharon Hiles, Asst. solicitor to the InquiryLeveson Inquiry Royal Courts of Justice StrandLondon WC115 February 2012

Dear Miss Hiles,

I supplied the Inquiry with a photstat of the copy of Morgan’s letter on 28 November –see copy covering letter below. The letter and enclosures were sent by recorded delivery. I am most concerned that you do not appear to have this in the file with the submissions I have made. Please re-check your records and let me know whether you have my letter of 28 November and all the enclosures listed in it. If not I will supply you with duplicates in person.

The copy of Morgan’s letter I sent to the Inquiry is written on the Mirror letterhead and has the PCC stamp on it showing they received the letter 20/10/1997. Morgan has not signed it but it was pp’ed, presumably by his secretary or PA. I cannot decipher the name of the person who pp’ed the letter, but the fact that it is on Mirror letter-headed paper and has been treated by the PCC as being from Morgan removes any doubt that it was from him.

As for my conversation with Miss Brundenell on 14 February, we agreed that I would not make a complaint to the police about Morgan until I have received written answers to the questions I raised in my email to her of 27 January. In case you do not have this I enclose a copy.

Please reply by return.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson

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Leveson Inquiry

Royal Courts of Justice

Strand

London WC1

28 November 2011

Dear Lord Leveson,

As promised in my email of 25 November (hard copy enclosed) , I send you hard copies of the following documents:

- Piers Morgan’s letter to the PCC dated

- Mike Jempson’s correspondence with the PCC

- The Mirror story of 25 3 1997 entitled

- The front page of the Mirror 25 3 1997 which advertised the story

- The Daily Record story of 25 3 1997

All the copies are of the original documents.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson

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RE: FTAO Kim Brudenell – Urgent

Wednesday, 15 February, 2012 17:40

 From:

“Leveson Inquiry Solicitors Team” <Solicitors.Team@levesoninquiry.gsi.gov.uk>

Add sender to Contacts

To:”‘robert henderson’” <anywhere156@yahoo.co.uk>, “Leveson Inquiry Solicitors Team” <Solicitors.Team@levesoninquiry.gsi.gov.uk>

Dear Mr Henderson

Thank you for your prompt response and for clarifying the position.

Having considered the letter and Mr Morgan’s evidence to the Inquiry, we do not propose to take this matter any further. The relevant part of the transcript relates to questions regarding payments to police. This is not the same issue as a newspaper receiving information for which no payment had been made. It is a matter for you whether you wish to refer your concerns to the Metropolitan Police.

I can also confirm that in this regard the Inquiry do not require a formal statement from you. We have the other submissions you have sent, however, if you wish to submit anything further regarding press intrusion, as the Chairman suggested you could when you applied to be a Core Participant, you may do so. This will be considered by the Inquiry although you may not necessarily be called to give evidence.

Yours sincerely

Sharron Hiles

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Miss Sharon Hiles,

Asst.  solicitor to the Inquiry

Leveson Inquiry

Royal Courts of Justice

Strand

London WC1

15 February  2012

Dear Miss Hiles,

Your latest email is decidedly odd from beginning to end.  To start with the obvious , why should you assume that the Mirror did not pay for the information?  Morgan does not mention payment but  it does not follow from that there was no payment. In fact, by far the most likely explanation for the provision of the information to the Mirror is payment by the Mirror to the police officer.  Why have you  assumed the police officer was not paid? Give me a plausible reason why a policeman would  without payment supply such information .

The other thing which makes no sense in your last email is context.  Even if you did not have the copy of Morgan’s letter in your  file containing my submissions, you had the text of  Morgan’s letter  before you sent your previous email  asking me whether I had a signed copy of the letter. Consequently, it makes no sense for you to now abruptly tell me that the Inquiry will not proceed because  “This is not the same issue as a newspaper receiving information for which no payment had been made.  “  If you honestly believed that you would not have asked me whether I had a copy of Morgan’s letter with a signature because it would be an irrelevance.

You are also objectively wrong when you claim that if no payment was made the matter does not fall within the Inquiry’s remit. Let me remind you of what the Leveson Inquiry website gives as part of the remit:

•Module 1: The relationship between the press and the public and looks at phone-hacking and other potentially illegal behaviour.

•Module 2: The relationships between the press and police and the extent to which that has operated in the public interest.

Even in  the exceptionally unlikely event  of no money changing hands,  the recipient of the information and the police officer would have committed an offence under the Official Secrets Act.  (The initial recipient was the Mirror’s chief crime writer Jeff Edwards; someone I suspect may well appear before the Inquiry at some point). It was also a breach of the Data Protection Act.

There is also another side to this matter. The police were supposed to investigate the Mirror admission of receiving information illegally but failed to meaningfully  do so as they concluded their “investigation”  without interviewing anyone at the Mirror, the details of this non-investigation I have already supplied to the Inquiry. That is a prima facie case of perverting the course of justice.

Finally, the consequences of the supply of the information and the Mirror’s use of it was severe  because  I suffered more than a decade of harassment, the details of which I have already supplied to the Inquiry.

All of that puts the matter  firmly within the remit of both module 1 and 2.   That removes your stated reason for not proceeding with the matter.  If you have another ground for refusing to use the information please let me know ASAP. 

You have ignored the request in my previous email for you to confirm that the material I supplied on 28 November by recorded delivery is in your possession.  Please let me know whether you have found these documents.

Why have you behaved in this way? Here is a scenario for you. Either you or your superior decided the best way to avoid taking action on the clear evidence of the Mirror receiving information corruptly from the police and  Morgan’s subsequent perjury was to cast doubt on the authenticity of Morgan’s letter by raising the question of whether his signature is on it.   When you received my email telling you that I had already supplied a copy of the Morgan’s letter to the Inquiry, you either found the copy I sent in November or you accepted that the details of the letter  I supplied made it impossible to go down the authenticity of the letter route.  That prompted  the strikingly sudden – only hours before you were ostensibly giving every indication that the material would be used  – and woefully feeble excuse that because you assumed no money was paid – an assumption best described as irrational based on the circumstances-  the matter was  outside of the remit of the Inquiry. In short, the story being told is incoherent and fractured. As a one-time Inland Revenue investigator, that  behaviour strikes me as the product of panic. Who made the decision not to proceed?

The best way of testing behaviour is always to ask how would it appear to a disinterested audience.  You and your colleagues need to ask yourself how your failure to use then potent  information I have supplied – not just the Morgan letter but the serious misbehaviour of  the press, the PCC and the police which involved me directly -  would appear to the general public.   I think it a fair bet that most people without a vested interest would conclude that the Inquiry has refused to use the evidence for reasons other than its relevance and that the most likely reason would be the involvement of powerful people, most notably the Blairs.

If the Inquiry does not use the information I have provided,  I  shall make that failure  a very public matter indeed by using the multiplicity of web-based media now available.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson

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RE: FTAO Kim Brudenell – UrgentThursday, 16 February, 2012 15:20

From: “Leveson Inquiry Solicitors Team”Add sender to ContactsTo: “‘robert henderson’”, “Leveson Inquiry Solicitors Team”

Dear Mr Henderson

Thank you for your email the contents of which are noted.

I can confirm that I do have a copy of your letter of 28 November and enclosures.  I can also advise that the legal team to the Inquiry made the decision not to take this matter any further.

Kind regards

Sharron Hiles

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Miss Kim Brudenell

Solicitor to the Inquiry

Leveson Inquiry

Royal Courts of Justice

Strand

London WC1

18 February  2012

Dear Miss Brudenell,

Please answer these questions:

1.  Who had ultimate responsibility for making the decision not to investigate Piers Morgan’s  admission  to the PCC of the  Mirror’s illicit receipt of information from the police?  I want a name not an obfuscating answer such as “the legal team to the Inquiry “.   Where there is a hierarchy, as there is within the Inquiry, the decision is not made by a group but the person in charge.

2. Who had ultimate responsibility for deciding to ignore Morgan’s perjury before the Inquiry?  Again I want a name.

3.  Did Lord Leveson see the  Pier’s Morgan’s letter to the PCC before the decision to act upon my evidence was made?

4. Has Lord Leveson had sight of any of  the evidence I have submitted to the Inquiry?

5. If Lord Leveson has had sight of any of the evidence I have submitted to the Inquiry,  when did this happen?

6.  Sharron Hiles confirmed in her last email to me (16 February)  that the Inquiry has received the original documents , including the Piers Morgan’s letter to the PCC on the Mirror letterhead , which I sent on 28 November .  At what date and time were these found by  those reviewing my evidence  to the Inquiry?

7.  What was the basis for Sharron Hiles claiming categorically that the Mirror had not paid for the information?

8. If the Inquiry believes that the Mirror did not pay for the information, what motive or motives does the Inquiry believe could have led a police officer to risk his career and criminal prosecution for no reward?

9. Regardless of whether the Mirror paid for the information,  the illicit receipt of information from the police – both the police officer and the Mirror employees involved in receiving and using it committed serious criminal offences under the Data Protection  and Official Secrets Acts  –  the misbehaviour falls indubitably within the remit of both modules I and 2 of the Inquiry.  It is also very serious misbehaviour. That being so, why did the Inquiry refuse to proceed  with the matter?

10. Miss Hiles’ first email to me on the 15 February was sent at 13.02 pm .  In it she writes “I would be grateful if you would confirm if you have a signed copy, and if so, please send a signed hard copy to the Inquiry”.  That clearly implied that Piers Morgan’s admission and perjury was being taken seriously and that the only serious stumbling block might be the absence of proof that Morgan was responsible for the letter.   By the  time Miss Hiles second email of the day was sent at 17. 40 pm the question of whether I had a signed copy vanishes.  Why did it become suddenly unimportant in the     In the 4 hours  38 minutes between the two emails?

You can of course  refuse to answer these questions either in part or at all, Miss Brudenell, but as an experienced solicitor I am sure you are aware that a refusal to answer questions in circumstances where it is entirely reasonable to have them answered can be damning is evidence of itself.  Indeed, that is what the revised caution is based upon.

I would appreciate an early answer.

Yours sincerely

Robert Henderson

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The claustrophobia of diversity

Robert Henderson

In November a 34-old woman Emma West was recorded on a tram in Croydon (near to London) expressing her very no-pc views of  the effects of immigration on England even though she was surrounded by ethnic minorities.   Since her public complaints were recorded by a passenger and put on YouTube other instances of such behaviour have come to light, the most recent to hit the national media being another youngish white woman (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2097142/Woman-filmed-hurling-racist-abuse-Tube-passengers-ANOTHER-video-rant-London-transport.html#ixzz1lgvuUjuO).  I put a few URLs for videos of such behaviour  from England at the end of the article. The examples are all of people who are under the age of 40. Nor does it take long for instances of such behaviour in the USA to be found on media hosting sites.  This goes against the oft made claims by liberals that what they term racial prejudice is restricted to the older generation,  who it is implied “don’t know any better”, while the young are race-blind.

Such outbursts are surprising  because of the risk they carry of assault by the ethnic minorities listening to them. They are doubly unexpected because present day England (and Britain)  is rigid with political correctness.  As  Emma West’s case vividly shows, the authorities are ever more penal in their  repression of dissent.  After her arrest in December 2011  Miss West was kept for weeks on remand in a high security prison for what the authorities coyly called “her own protection” http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/12/07/emma-west-immigration-and-the-liberal-totalitarian-state-part-2/) . She  has since been charged but not as yet tried (she appears at Croydon Crown Court on 17 2 2012) with a serious criminal offences  which carry a potential jail sentence of two years. (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/emma-west-immigration-and-the-liberal-totalitarian-state-part-3/).  All of that for simply expressing her anger at the consequences of mass immigration.

But even if people are not charged with criminal offences, to be publicly labelled a racist in England is to risk the loss of a job or accommodation if rented, a campaign of media abuse and social ostracism.  The risk of losing a job is particularly high for public service employees.  In extreme cases such as those accused of  the murder of Stephen Lawrence the persecution may be officially generated and sustained and  last indefinitely and include  the holding of trials which are manifestly unfair because of  hate-campaigns conducted against the accused by both politicians and the mainstream media. (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/stephen-lawrence-gary-dobson-david-norris-and-a-political-trial/).

With these very considerable disincentives to expressing honest views about race and immigration under any circumstances, what is it that drives people to express them uninhibitedly in situations which objectively place them in physical as well as legal danger?  After all the instinct for self-preservation lies at the core of human behaviour   and people are generally media savvy enough these days to realise that  anything they say in public is likely to be recorded and placed on sites such as YouTube.  So why do people like Emma West ignore all these formidable barriers to behaving in this way? Drink or drugs you may think, yet the noteworthy thing about most of the examples caught on mobile phones is that they  show no signs of being seriously intoxicated by either.  These are people who are doing it in the full knowledge of what they are doing and its likely effects. But  even if they were intoxicated with drink or drugs all that would mean is that the brakes of sobriety were removed and the true feelings of the person released.

A clue to what is happening can be found in the fact that their complaints gather around the same theme: that England is being invaded and colonised to the point where, in places such as parts of London,  it  scarcely seems to be England in anything in name.  Their  complaints are not about the particular ethnic minorities with which  they are surrounded when they make their public complaints or against individual immigrants generally,  but the general effects of mass immigration.

These people are suffering from what I call the  claustrophobia of diversity.  They feel that they are being oppressed by immigrants, that the land which is ancestrally theirs  is being colonised to the extent that parts of the country seem no longer to belong to England. Worst of all they see themselves as helpless to prevent it because the colonisation is being facilitated and encouraged by their own elite who  all, whatever their ostensible political colour,  subscribe to the treason and viciously support the suppression of  dissent to the betrayal.  This mixture of the act of elite-sponsored colonisation by foreigners, the failure of democracy through the tacit conspiracy of the political elite  to ensure that no meaningful alternative policy on  immigration is offered by any party capable of forming a government and the inability of the native population to even voice their  protest at this betrayal of their most pressing interests  in the mainstream media produces an ever growing sense of rage, a rage made all the more terrible and onerous  by  the feelings of impotence engendered by the ever more oppressive  restrictions on public expression which British governments have imposed.

These feelings are with the English all the time. If someone  English lives  in an area which  does not have a large ethnic minority population the anger and frustration may  remain bubbling below the surface most of the time, although they will be exacerbated by reports of their fellow county men and women elsewhere being harassed and bullied by the liberal elite into towing the multiculturalist line while ethnic minorities are pandered to ever more grotesquely  with bizarre interpretations of what constitutes a human right and  the constant growth of  interest groups which cater solely for ethnic minorities, for example,  the Refugee Council (http://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/about/board).

But those who live in an area which is heavily populated  by ethnic minorities  will face constant triggers for the anger and frustration to come to the forefront of their minds. Every time someone in such an area walks the streets they will be reminded of how the demographic balance has changed and is changing. Every time a native  English  parent seeks a school for their children they will be faced often enough with choices of schools where many, quite often a majority, of the pupils are from ethnic minorities.  A visit to their GP or hospital will find them sitting in waiting rooms outnumbered by ethnic minorities.  When they go for a job, especially if it is low-skilled or unskilled, they are likely to find themselves being asked to work, if they can get such work at all,  in a situation where they are in the ethnic minority and English is  not the common workplace language.  If they go into a shop, cinema or café they are increasing likely to find themselves being served by foreigners with inadequate English for the job.

Everywhere the white English man or woman in an area with a large ethnic minority population looks  it seems that their world is being changed utterly and that they can do nothing about it because of the elite complicity in what has happened and is happening. That is why the public outbursts of frustration such as that of Emma West occur.  They are the bursting of the emotional  dam.  The fact that the episodes recorded so often occur on  public transport  is  unsurprising because it is here that the proximity with those who trigger the feelings of rage and  betrayal is greatest and there is the  least opportunity to escape from these reminders of the surreptitious elite-sponsored conquest of England. The physical claustrophobia of being on a crowded train or bus marries with the social claustrophobia of diversity.

The people recorded in the urls at the end of this essay are white  working class Englishwomen. They of course are  from the class  who had to and have to suffer the main brunt of  mass immigration. They live cheek-by-jowl with the immigrants and their descendants. They send their children to schools where their child may be the only white English child in their class. They live in the tower blocks where they are the only white English family in the block. Not for them the middle class white liberals escape through white flight to the suburbs or countryside or the gentrification of once working class areas such as Islington. It is small wonder that people such as Emma West should feel deserted and betrayed and eventually lose all patience with public silence.

But uninhibited racial language and complaint is not restricted to those without status, wealth, influence and power. Two well know and recent examples are the fashion designer John Galliano  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CQO8q3FSH0) and the actor and director Mel Gibson (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50_qMJSPtqY&feature=relatedso – go in at 1 minute 17 sec). There is far more to these public displays of anger at the fact of mass immigration and the behaviour of the political elite  than simple desperation. It is entirely natural behaviour.  Public expression of dissent can be  partially successful but it will never be entirely complete. Even in extreme autocracies such as the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany there were still voices raised in  opposition. The English have been subject several generations of ever greater elite propaganda and censorship of dissent about immigration and its effects but this has not made them race or ethnicity blind, merely increasingly reticent, fearful and stressed  about immigration and its consequences.  Not only that, but the oppression arising from mass immigration is different in quality from the oppression  of a native  elite which merely tries to enforce its will on the masses. The effects of mass migration are around people all the time. There is no respite.

When people are asked to  suppress their normal feelings  stress occurs. Where the suppression of feelings relates to the most fundamental social and psychological structures  stress is at its greatest. That is what happens when an elite tries to  recreate society by asking the population to override the behaviour which makes a society strong and stable.

Social animals have two universal features: they form discrete groups and within the group produce hierarchies – although both the group and the hierarchy vary considerably in form and intensity.  Why they do this is a matter of debate but it is a fact that this what invariably happens.  Human beings are no exception; whether they are hunter-gatherers or people populating a great modern city they all have a need to form groups in which they feel naturally comfortable and within that group form hierarchies.

But the sense of being separate, of belonging to a discrete group with identifiable characteristics is of a different order of complexity than it is for any other social animal because homo sapiens is high intelligence, self-awareness and most importantly language.  Where an animal may simply accept another member of the species as part of the group through simple and obvious triggers such as scent, markings or imprinting, human beings judge by wide variety of criteria who is and is not part of the group, the most potent of which are racial characteristics and cultural differences. In some ways that makes acceptance of the outsider easier – at least in theory –  but in  others much more difficult than it might be for an animal,  for there are  many more reasons for human beings to accept or not accept someone into the group than there are for a non-human social animal.

Social animals form hierarchies  almost certainly because otherwise there would be no way of the society organising itself to accommodate the differing qualities and abilities  of individuals which arise in any species. Societies which consist of various human groups that  see themselves as separate  from each other disrupt the creation of a healthy hierarchy. Instead of there being a single hierarchy within an homogenous group (defining homogenous as a population in a discrete territory  which sees itself as a group), there are  hierarchies formed within each group and a further overarching hierarchy formed from the various groups themselves with  each group hierarchy competing within the population as a whole.

Man is also a territorial being.  Homo sapiens  need the security of a homeland. Remove that and insecurity is perpetual.  That is why mass immigration is the most fundamental of treasons.  That which  is called racism by liberals and their ethnic minority auxiliaries is simply  political protest of the most fundamental kind. When someone resorts to complaint  based on race, ethnicity or nationality  in their own country they are saying “This is my land, you will not steal it from me without a fight”.  The time to worry is when there are no public demonstrations of dissent to the policy of mass immigration and its consequences.

The package of emotion transmuted into conscious thought we call  patriotism is an essential part of maintaining a society (http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2010/09/20/patriotism-is-not-an-optional-extra/).  A society which forgets that is doomed.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pONVYjAd1wc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTocvGIEqOU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfGqwtn3GZY

Bring the Nuclear Deterrent to England now

Robert Henderson

A Daily Telegraph report  of 27 January 2012  ”Nuclear subs will stay in Scotland”  ( James Kirkup -http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/9043092/Nuclear-subs-will-stay-in-Scotland-Royal-Navy-chiefs-decide.html) is most disturbing. The essence of the story is that should  Scotland votes for independence the  UK nuclear deterrent would for years have to remain  in what would then be  a foreign country.

Why could the subs, warheads and missiles not be brought to England?  Kirkup claims  the Ministry of Defence (MoD)  believes  the  provision of  new facilities for the nuclear deterrent  in England could take up to ten years to build.

The Trident missiles carrying  Vanguard-class submarines are  based at Faslane on the Gare Loch; the missiles and warheads are stored and loaded from  the nearby Royal Naval Armaments Depot Coulport, on Loch Long.  Kirkup quotes an unnamed source:  “Berths would not be a problem – there are docks on the south coast that could be used without too much fuss. But there simply isn’t anywhere else where we can do what we do at Coulport, and without that, there is no deterrent.” In other words, the subs could be accommodated immediately in England but the storing and arming facilities of Coulport could not.

The official description of Coulport is:

The Royal Armaments Depot at Coulport, eight miles from Faslane, is responsible for the storage, processing, maintenance and issue of key elements of the UK’s Trident Deterrent Missile System and the ammunitioning of all submarine-embarked weapons.

It also stores conventional armaments for Royal Navy vessels.

Because of the nature of its work, the site is subject to the most stringent external security regulators who authorise the depot to process nuclear weapons and provide support to nuclear submarines berthed at the Explosive Handling Jetty. (http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/The-Fleet/Naval-Bases/Clyde/RNAD-Coulport

The claim that there is and will be the “most stringent external security” is questionable because the site has fallen prey to the privatisation mania with the day-to-day management moving in February 2012 from the MoD to  a commercial consortium led by the Atomic Weapons Establishment in alliance with  Babcock and Lockheed Martin (http://wmcnd.org.uk/news/nuclear-power-fukushima-and-chernobyl and http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/lockheed-group-to-manage-uk-nuke-installation/).

Kirkup reports an unnamed source saying “Maintaining the deterrent is the first priority for any UK government, so ministers in London would have to pay Salmond any price to ensure we kept access to [the Clyde bases]…It would be an unbelievable nightmare.”

The idea that it would take ten years to replace the  facilities Royal Naval Armaments Depot at Coulport is surely absurd. We know how quickly things can be done in wartime. This should be treated as a situation of equivalent urgency. Salmond must not be allowed to use it as a bargaining chip on the conditions of either independence or DEVOMAX.

Even if the referendum vote goes against independence, you may be sure that something like DEVOMAX will  be granted to Scotland by the current Westminster Government  which appears to have no sense of  protecting English interests. That will simply be a stepping stone to full independence.  If the nuclear facilities are left in Scotland in such circumstances they would ever be a hostage to fortune. The Government should not wait for a referendum, but begin the process of removing the nuclear deterrent facilities to England now.

If the nuclear deterrent was left in Scotland for years after independence it is almost certainly going to cause problems, not least with the Americans who supply the UK with the delivery system to for  the British made and owned warheads.  They might well be reluctant to allow their technology to be sited in what would then be a foreign   country with all the security implications that carries. (Amazingly, you may think, the UK only leases the missiles and they are pooled with the Atlantic squadron of the USN Ohio SSBNs at King’s Bay, Georgia).

In addition, there could be no certainty about what a future government of  an independent Scotland would do, or indeed how resolute a future Westminster government would be. The example of the three  Irish  Free State “treaty ports”  the Royal Navy continued to use  after the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty  is not encouraging. This agreement was abruptly terminated in 1938, a year before the feared  U-Boat menace to British shipping became a reality. The most dismaying thing with that episode was that the British government behaved in the most supine way – they gave and the Free State took – simply to end  a long-standing trade war with the Free State.

The worst case scenario would be to do nothing before the referendum, the vote is  for independence and Salmond  then insists  on the removal of the deterrent immediately because of the Scotch Numpty Party’s long-standing commitment to a nuclear free Scotland.

The MoD declined to discuss details of Kirkup’s story but a spokesman said  “The UK government position is clear and we are arguing the case for Scotland to remain within the Union. However, any decisions on Scotland’s future are for people in Scotland to decide.” This points to the coalition taking the Micawber strategy of waiting for something to turn. That will be unreservedly to England’s (and the British Isles) disadvantage.

It must be no to Devomax

Robert Henderson

The leader of the Scots Numpty Party  (SNP) Alex Salmond has a secret love. He has a long-time partner Independence , but also  a burgeoning  affair with  the siren Devomax.    No, this not a relative of the cyber personality Max Headroom, although  it is just as artificial and improbable a creation.

Like all lovers with two mistresses who know of the others existence the SNP leader has been drifting into a fevered incoherence as he tries to keep both the objects of his affection satisfied. Only the other day he said that if Scotland votes for independence  it will still be part of the UK:  “That union, that United Kingdom if you like, would be maintained after Scottish political independence.”  (http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/i_still_want_to_be_in_uk_says_alex_salmond_1_ 2085533)

Exactly what finery  Miss Devomax   should be clothed in when he finally presents her to the world, Master Salmond  has not crystallised  even in his own mind, but he knows that her garb would indubitably involve a skirt of full fiscal autonomy.  As Scotland under the reign of Mistress Devomax would be technically part of the UK,  her political clothes  would also mean  keeping the Queen as head of state, continuing to use the Pound and  sharing defence,  foreign affairs,  EU membership   and the servicing of the  National Debt and all other financial obligations in the UK  including Foreign Aid.   (Strangely,  when speaking of his ever less secret love,  the SNP leader  always omits to mention the  “servicing of the  National Debt and all other financial obligations in the UK”).  In short , it would be Home Rule more or less.

The biggest fly in the Devomax   ointment  is fiscal autonomy which  would mean Scotland raising all its government revenue from taxes which it imposed and collected itself. Some of those  taxes would have to be used to pay a share  proportionate  to Scotland’s fraction of the UK population (around 9%) of the UK defence budget, the foreign affairs budget and the servicing of the  National Debt and all other accrued financial obligations in the UK.   (Devomax would also mean that Scotland would have to fund the  cost in Scotland of  welfare, education,  housing,  the arts, the NHS , transport,  roads, the environment, PFI and PPP projects in Scotland, policing and  justice .  Some of this is already funded from the Treasury disbursement to Scotland but much is not, for example, most of Scottish welfare. )

A fiscally independent  Scotland would radically change the relationship between Scotland and the rest of the UK.  If  the Scots were  paying part of  the expenditure on UK projects such as defence  and Foreign Aid  they would expect to have some say in those projects.  This would cause immense difficulty both in terms of the level of expenditure and  how the UK project  expenditure was deployed.

How much would Scotland have to contribute to the UK budget under Devomax?  It would be a substantial. Let us have a look at the financial year 2011/12. The UK defence budget for  2011/12 is £40 billion,  National Debt interest is £50 billion,  http://cdn.hm-treasury.gov.uk/2011budget_complete.pdf p6), Foreign Aid is £8.7 billion (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1391334/Britain-doles-aid-country-despite-savage-cutbacks-home.html ), the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is £1,6 billion (go to http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/publications-and-documents/publications1/annual-reports/business-plan and click on Business Plan).  The net UK contribution to the EU in 2010 (the latest figure available) was £9.2 billion with the gross contribution being a whopping £19.7 billion. (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100081949/britains-net-contribution-to-the-eu-budget-has-risen-by-74-per-cent-in-one-year/).   The total (taking only the net contribution to the EU into account)  is £110 billion. That would mean Scotland’s share would have been £10 billion. If the accrued liabilities of UK taxpayer funded pensions  at the point of fiscal separation were dealt with at the UK level  as well that would add billions more Scotland would have to put into the UK pot.  In addition, there is the question of how much of the financial chaos created by the Scottish banks RBS and HBOS should be laid at the Scotland’s door.  The headline amounts involved in rescuing the banks are large enough (£45 billion for RBS and £20 billion  for HBOS via the Lloyds Banking Group rescue (http://money.uk.msn.com/news/articles.aspx?cp-documentid=152384309), but the  true figure runs into hundreds of billions (http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/nov/12/bank-bailouts-uk-credit-crunch and http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/the-wages-of-scottish-independence-public-debt/.)

That is the position now. By the time a referendum is likely to be held and a decision made, it is likely to be 2015. By then the national debt is projected to be around £1.4 billion as against £1 trillion in 2012. That would add something like £45 billion for Scotland to service.  Foreign Aid is due to increase to £11.5 billion by 2014 (http://www.dfid.gov.uk/news/latest-news/2010/spending-review-2010/).  The EU net contribution is also due to rise after 2013.

Although it is impossible to give more than a rough  approximation of what a Scottish government would have to be handing over to the UK Treasury under Devomax,   realistically it would  be in the region of £20 billion per annum, a sum which would probably represent  at least a quarter of the total Scottish budget by the time Devomax was a fact.  That would  put great pressure on domestic Scottish government spending and heighten the already natural desire of a Devomax Scottish government to demand a strong say in the UK’s affairs.

The general difficulty with UK projects is obvious. Scotland would expect a say on the amount spent and the nature of the spending ,  but the rest of the UK  – which is 91% of the UK population – would overwhelmingly outweigh the Scots  in any democratic procedure to make decisions.  It is impossible have an arrangement which did not have one of two outcomes that  would be unpalatable to one of the two parties. Either Scottish wishes  would be ignored  or the Scottish tail would  wag the rest of the UK dog by giving them a disproportionately powerful  say.

The situation would be exceptionally sharp in the case of defence. The SNP is ideologically against a nuclear deterrent.  There is probably a  majority of the Scottish public who support this view.  Any likely Scottish government for the foreseeable future  will  have the SNP as at least a strong partner in a coalition. This state of affairs has three possible consequences.  If things stay as they are  with the  nuclear facilities  in Scotland continuing,   they would be a  high value bargaining chip for a Scottish government to extract substantial concessions  from  Westminster on other subjects, for example, the servicing of the UK national debt.  Alternatively, if the  nuclear deterrent facilities were placed entirely in England  the Scots will  cavil at paying a proportionate share of its costs even though they would  benefit from the protection it offers.  More generally, a Scottish government ideologically opposed to a nuclear deterrent might try to refuse to  pay anything towards it.

The other great military problem  would be action overseas which would have profound foreign policy implications.   It would clearly be absurd to get into a situation where  Westminster decided on foreign action and the  Scottish government  could  veto the deployment.   There would  also be occasions where even if a fighting role was not being contemplated  disputes could arise, for example,  over the military being used in policing roles such as those in the Balkans or substantial amounts of the military budget being used to defend the Falklands. In addition,  Scotland might well  try to engineer a situation where there were military assets  such as Scottish regiments which,  while they were not formally under the control of the Scottish government,  were in practice always stationed in Scotland or at least in the UK , with an understanding that they were not to be deployed overseas .

The second  immediate and pressing problem would be  foreign policy in general and the EU in particular. Apart from foreign policy relating to the armed forces,  there would also be many points of potential conflict  between Scotland and the rest of the UK.  For example, Scotland might object to funding  or facilitating the British arms trade while the UK government was in favour or the  UK government could be in favour of restricting immigration and Scotland for increasing it.

But those problems would be nothing compared to the  perpetual wrangles over the EU.  Assuming  the UK remains a member of the EU and the EU is not dissolved by the economic acid bath which is the Euro collapse, how would the UK’s relations with the EU be decided with a quasi-independent  Scotland  paying part of the annual membership fee?   Scotland would undoubtedly ask for some form of official representation and however that was delivered it would weaken the hand of the UK government because it would seem to the rest of the EU that the UK was speaking with two voices.  That could provide a lever for the EU to weaken the UK by playing Scotland off against the rest of the UK.

In any discussions of new policy or bargaining over such things as the UK rebate,  fishing  quotas  or the disbursement of that part of the money from the UK EU budget contribution which is returned to the UK in various ways, the UK could find itself in a similar position  to that UK domestic politics is presently in with the coalition government:  no clear  public voice but one perpetually moving as deals are done behind the scenes. Most dramatically, imagine a situation where there is a new EU treaty which greatly increases the move towards a United States of Europe.   Scotland would be in favour: the UK government probably would oppose such a treaty.  Even if the decision  was left to a UK referendum would a quasi-independent Scotland  accept  such a referendum? Would they not seek a referendum for Scotland only?  In the medium term the likely response by the EU would be to try to expand their  long-held regionalist  plan to dissolve the power of nation states  within the EU to allow places such as Scotland  a large and ever increasing autonomy within  the EU while  Scotland  remain legally part of a member state.

The other great immediate Devomax  problem would be the management of the Pound. Many of the problems associated with a supposedly  independent Scotland continuing  to use the pound also apply to Devomax– see  http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/an-independent-scotland-must-not-be-allowed-to-have-the-pound-as-their-official-currency/. Foreigners at both the business and government levels would  begin to see the UK not as single economic sphere but  as two separate economies.  That would create uncertainty which would  of itself weaken the Pound.

If Scotland had a much weaker economy than the rest of the UK under Devomax,  which is probable because of the dangerous narrowness of the Scottish  economy and its massive public sector,  something similar to the Euro situation  would arise. The  value of the Pound against other currencies would be suppressed, just as the Euro  has not reflected the strength of the German economy because of the other weaker vessels such as Greece and Italy.     An artificially low Pound might sound attractive for exports,  but it also means more expensive imports and creates a risk that the currency may slip into the dangerous territory of precipitously devaluing until the credibility of the  currency itself is in danger.   At the very least a Pound dependent on  two separate fiscal policies would mean that the massively larger entity  – the UK minus Scotland – would  to some degree be dependent on the behaviour of the much smaller entity – Scotland.

Fiscal autonomy also means, in theory at least,  no transfer of money from the rest of the UK (in practice from England)  to Scotland if the Scottish economy runs into serious  trouble.   This could easily happen because of the size of the tax take Scotland would have to generate to meet their present  obligations under Devomax.

The quick way of getting a quick approximation of the  amount of money a Scottish government under Devomax would have to raise to fund present expenditure . The total budget projection for £2011/12 is £710 billion (http://cdn.hm-treasury.gov.uk/2011budget_complete.pdf p6). 9% of that is £64 billion.

In 2009/10 – the last year for which there are official Scottish government figures for public expenditure in Scotland : Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland ( GERS)  -  Scottish tax revenues were  £42,201 billion excluding North Sea oil and £48,132 billion with what are coyly called “an illustrative geographical share “ of North Sea oil revenues  with expenditure for the year of  £62.086 billion (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2011/06/21144516/1). Even with the Oil revenues included there was a shortfall of £14 billion in  tax revenue.

But there  are problems with GERS which could well substantially understate public expenditure in Scotland.  For many items there are no official statistics collected for Scotland alone. Consequently, the GERS figures are often based on extrapolations from UK statistics with methodologies which even the GERS compilers warn do not produce objective data:  “… these methodologies are subjective and therefore the figures should be viewed accordingly” (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2011/06/21144516/2).  The other  problem is the treatment of North Sea Oil revenues.  The “illustrative geographical share  of North Sea oil revenues”   are based on a study by the University of Aberdeen (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2011/06/21144516/7).

The fact that both the GERS estimates and the North Sea oil revenue estimate have been made in Scotland rather than by non-Scottish bodies puts a large question mark against their impartiality.   If there is partiality favouring Scotland in the GERS  estimates it does not have to be conscious.  It is human nature to always put the best appearance on things from the individual’s point of view.  That is particularly true when a study is commissioned by those with political power.

Even if there is no overestimating of the bare figures they would not tell the whole story.  Scotland’s GDP is dangerously  dependent on public spending.  By 2012 it will be in the region of 67% of Scottish GDP (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/4217793/Scotlands-dependence-on-state-increasing.html). The important thing to understand about  tax collection is that tax collected from those drawing their pay from the public purse is that it is simply recycled taxpayers’ money. It is only the money derived from private enterprise which drives an economy.  We can see this graphically in the present UK financial position. Only the private sector can grow the economy to allow larger tax receipts to reduce the deficit.  To have two thirds of an economy dependent on public expenditure is profoundly precarious because the tax base can shrink radically very rapidly. It is doubly dangerous for a small country of only 5 million people which does not have much diversity in in the little there is of a private sector.

Even if 90% of the oil tax revenues were allocated to Scotland this would not, on average,  compensate for the loss of a subsidy of some £8 billion pa which Scotland presently receives from the UK treasury through higher per capita funding  resulting from the Barnett Formula.   Not only that but revenues veer about wildly. In 1991/2 they were a paltry £647 million; in 2008/9 £13 billion; in 2009/10 they dropped dramatically to £6.4 billion.   (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2011/06/21144516/7).  The remaining oil in Scottish waters is also declining  rapidly and becoming more expensive to extract as the major oil discoveries run down (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/05/14/the-truth-about-uk-oil-and-gas/).  While it is true that overall oil consumption is rising because of the countries such as China and India,  which might be expected to keep the price of oil high, there are also dramatic developments around shale oil and gas so there is no guarantee that the price of oil will remain high or continue to rise.  In any event it would be a rash government to base its future on a single crock of gold.

There is also the strong possibility under Devomax of  the English public sector jobs exported to Scotland being repatriated (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/05/06/scottish-independence-yes-but-only-on-these-terms/)  and of  companies in Scotland moving out of Scotland if a Scottish government cannot afford to offer them financial incentives to say.

There would also be a problem  with new  national debt. With a  fiscally independent Scotland  neither England nor Scotland would  wish to run up new UK National Debt.  After Devomax Scotland would have to take sole responsibility for any new finance raised by the Scottish government, while the rest of the UK would assume responsibility for any new post Devomax  debt it incurred. There is the risk of Scotland being unwilling to cut its public financial cloth much closer because it has become substantially poorer and running up unsustainable Scottish debt.

It is only to easy to imagine Scotland getting into the same mess that the Republic of Ireland and Iceland got into by a mixture of reckless spending and a failure to control credit or risky financial operations generally.   The rest of the UK (essentially England for reasons already given) would either have to bail out the Scots or see Scotland go effectively bust with the dire  effect that would have on the Pound  and the UK international financial and political credibility. The latter  would also bring large numbers of Scots to England after jobs, housing, schools and welfare which their own government could no longer afford.  Which option would a UK government take? Almost certainly the bailing out of Scotland with English money because of the damage anything else might do.   This might be done as a supposed loan, but there would be no guarantee that  it would be repaid.

The best that could be hoped for from Devomax  from an English perspective would be that Scotland would not be reckless and would pay their share of UK projects such as defence.  But along with that would come a perpetual uneasiness and clashing of democratic wills. It would be, as mentioned previously, akin to the situation we have with the coalition government  with no clear position on anything.  Unlike the coalition government there would be no end to it.   If Scotland is to leave the UK, it must be as a fully independent state asking no favours from England.

Leveson Inquiry: Robert Henderson’s application for core participant status

The Leveson Inquiry- Note on the Directions Hearing 25 1 2012 in Court 73 of the Royal Courts of Justice

Robert Henderson

I attended a directions hearing  for the decision on whether I would be designated  a Core Participant.  I shall not be Core Participant (unless I can somehow persuade Lord Leveson  otherwise), but I could be a witness.

Regardless of whether or not I end up as a witness, the hearing was far from being a waste of time.   I was able to put my case  before a sizeable number of people (probably 50), including  lawyers  representing various people  who have been mistreated by the media, other applicants for core participant status and members of the public, some of whom were  mediafolk.  In addition, the negligent  and superficial way the applications for core participant status were treated showed the Inquiry in a bad light.

Leveson began the proceedings by blithely announcing that he had not read any of the submissions  for core participant status.  Consequently, he made his decisions purely on the oral testimony given at the hearing by the applicants for core participant status.   This was not only odd in itself,  but became doubly so when placed in the context of the advice given to Core Participant applicants before the directions hearing:

“Dear Sir
You have made an application for Core Participant status for module 2. The Chairman will consider your application at the directions hearing which is listed for 2pm on Wednesday 25th January.  It is not necessary for you to attend the hearing, but you may do so if you wish.  If you do propose to attend, please let me know by 2pm on Tuesday 24th January.
Regards
Sharron “

If an applicant had chosen not to appear, it is probable their application would have been dismissed without their submission being considered.

Leveson  further hamstrung  the applicants by saying that he would not get into the detail of individual cases. I did manage to overcome this restriction  but as a method of proceeding it was absurd for an inquiry into press misbehaviour. The final shackle he  put around the applicants was the  danger of  jeopardising   legal action outside of the Inquiry.  Although there was no question of sub judice  because no charges had been brought, I decided not to name  the ex-editor who had committed perjury before the Inquiry by denying any knowledge of receiving information illicitly from the police.  I did this because  I wish Leveson to refer  to the police the perjury, the receipt of information illicitly from the police and the failure of the police to investigate meaningfully the receipt of information illicitly given by a police officer and illicitly received by the ex-editor and his staff.   If I submit the complaints the likelihood is that the police will repeat their behaviour and refuse to investigate meaningfully or at all.  Nonetheless, if I do not get a positive indication from Leveson I shall submit the complaints.

Despite all these seeming grave handicaps to free expression I managed to get a good deal of embarrassing material  into my testimony.  This included the Blairs’ attempt to have me prosecuted in 1997 (that produced a real murmur); the Mirror’s libelling of me and failure to offer me any right of reply and  the PCC’s abject failure to deal with my complaints honestly .  I also, without giving names,  described the perjury of the ex-editor, his admission of having received information illicitly from the police and the police’s refusal to meaningfully investigate the ex-editor’s admission that he had received information illicitly from  the police.  I emphasised that the Inquiry had been in possession of all these facts for more than a month and that if I was not to be a core participant I certainly wished to be a witness.

All that ensured that there are now substantial numbers of people who know that the Leveson Inquiry  has facts which by definition must fall within  the ambit of the Inquiry. Leveson himself acknowledged that  the receiving of illicit information from the police was  indisputably pertinent.

After the hearing  I discussed my situation with the Chief Solicitor to the Inquiry Miss Kim Brudenell.  I got her to agree to a number of actions.  These are:

1. to ensure that my submissions are brought to the notice of Lord Leveson.

2.  to advise me if a formal witness statement  is required after you have reviewed what I have already submitted.

3. to advise me  when and  how  the evidence I have of  the ex-editor receiving  information illicitly and his subsequent perjury before the Inquiry should be  reported to the Metropolitan Police.  I am  willing to make the complaint myself, but  I think it would be most appropriate for the this to be done  under the auspices of the Inquiry, not least because the perjury was committed at the Inquiry. (I wrote to the Inquiry on 22 December advising Lord Leveson of the perjury).

4.  to  advise me when and  how the failure of the Metropolitan Police to meaningfully investigate my complaint to them that the ex-editor had admitted receiving information illicitly from the police – the investigating officer told me that no one at the paper  had been interviewed – should be reported to the Metropolitan Police as a complaint of a perversion of the course of justice.

Salmond’s proposed referendum question is heavily biased

The Scotch Numpty Party (SNP) leader Alex Salmond’s proposed referendum question “‘Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?” is strongly biased. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9040988/Alex-Salmonds-independence-question-is-loaded-and-biased.html).

The question is biased because it is (1) asking people to positively agree not merely choose from neutral options and (2) it would require a positive yes or no by the voter. It is well established that humans are predisposed to agree and say yes rather than disagree and say no, because both of the latter seem negative and confrontational.

A neutral question, as far as any can be devised, would be something like this:

Scotland to remain within the UK?

Scotland to be independent ?

With a box against each question  and a cross put in one box. That would remove the need to vote Yes or No directly.

There would still be the problem of putting one question before the other which tends to make more people go for the first question. This could be obviated by printing half the ballot papers  with one of the questions first and the other half of the  ballot papers with the other question first. 

A question in the form  proposed  by Salmond would never be used by a mainstream  polling company or in academic research because of its slanted nature.

An “independent” Scotland must not be allowed to have the pound as their official currency

Robert Henderson

The Scottish Numpty Party leader Alex Salmond desperately wants to have his independence cake and eat it. He wishes to have DEVOMAX as well as independence on the “independence” ballot and, if the vote is for independence, he blithely imagines that the Queen will remain head of state, defence will be shared with the remainder of the UK (henceforth the UK) and , most tellingly because of his constant boasts about the robustness of an independent Scotland’s economy , that the pound Sterling will continue to be currency used by Scotland. It is the last which I shall concern myself with here.

It is vital that Scotland should not continue to use the Pound as their national currency whilst pretending to be independent, because of the potential and probable damage it could do to Pound and the UK economy .

If an independent Scotland was allowed to retain the Pound the situation would not be like that of a heavily devolved country such as the USA , a single state where general monetary and fiscal policy is set at national level and, most importantly, money can be transferred from richer to poorer parts of the country. Rather, the position of the UK and Scotland split into two independent states would be akin to that of the Eurozone where there is no shared fiscal policy and no ability to move money from richer states to poorer states and chaos currently reigns. Chaos could well be the state the UK and an independent Scotland arrived at and probably sooner than later.

The situation with a UK/Scotland currency grouping could be more extreme than that of the Eurozone, because the Eurozone at least has theoretical rules to prevent member states from debauching the currency. If Scotland simply used the Pound without any rules the situation could deteriorate much more rapidly than the Eurozone, a likelihood reinforced by the much smaller size of the economic grouping UK/Scotland compared with the Eurozone. Whether an independent Scotland would agree to restraints on what they could do with stringent rules designed to protect the Pound is dubious: even more dubious is whether, if they agreed to such rules, they would abide by them when shove came to push .

If there is one thing which international traders and markets do not respond well to it is uncertainty. That is what the sharing of a currency between two independent states would guarantee. At present the Pound is freely traded currency which still has enough international credibility to be held widely as part of national reserves. Foreign investors and traders would rapidly begin to harbour doubts about who was exercising control over a currency being used by two supposedly independent states. Nor would international investors be reassured by the idea that whatever form control took, there would be two economies almost certainly being driven by seriously different political agendas. Without Scottish MPs, the House of Commons would have, at least for quite some time, a Tory majority with a strong free market agenda, an agenda which it is improbable that any likely Scottish Parliament and government would follow. This international uncertainty would extend to British based industry and commerce.

Whether an independent Scotland had no control over the pound or whether it exercised some control there would be serious difficulties. If the Scots had no control over the monetary and fiscal policy set at Westminster, these policies might be directly at odds with the wishes and needs of Scotland. Should that be the case you may be sure that a continuous barrage of complaint would come from north of the Tweed with pleas for monetary and fiscal policies to suit Scotland which might well disadvantage the rest of the UK. These pleas could of course be ignored at Westminster, but that would come at a cost because any serious financial or economic crisis in Scotland would result in a weakening of foreign confidence in the Pound and the general economic performance of not Scotland alone but of the UK and Scotland. This would again create uncertainty at home and abroad.

If the UK and an independent Scotland shared the pound, its fortunes would be judged by those who matter on the economic prospects and performance of the UK and Scotland combined, not as two separate economies. That would leave the UK and Scotland with many new disadvantages and precious few if any of the advantages which the Pound currently enjoys as a currency used by a single nation state with a long history of meeting its obligations.

The worst case scenario would be an independent Scotland which became another Republic of Ireland or Iceland through reckless spending and/or lax credit controls. The Pound would suffer severe consequences no matter how prudently and successfully the economy of the rest of the UK, was managed just as the German economy is suffering because of the less disciplined countries in the Eurozone. In such circumstances the rest of the UK would be faced with a choice between a rapidly depreciating and unstable pound if nothing was done or the provision of vast amounts of English taxpayers’ money to bail out Scotland.

The splitting of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993 is instructive. The official division took place on 1 January. Initially both countries retained the old Czechoslovak currency the koruna, but by 8 February they had set up separate national currencies (each also called the koruna) because the Czech Republic was substantially richer than Slovakia and having the same currency made no sense because she could only be a loser. In effect, the Czech Republic would have been subsidising Slovakia if they had continued to share a currency. (Once the new national currencies were established the Czech koruna traded at a substantially higher value than the new Slovakian koruna.)

In the case of an independent Scotland and UK sharing the Pound the UK (in effect England because Wales and Northern Ireland receive far more from the Treasury than they raise in tax) would be subsiding Scotland. This is because England is by population ten times the size of Scotland, has a much broader based economy and that economy is nowhere near as dependent on public money than Scotland. Even with Wales and Northern Ireland (both heavily dependent on public money) to support England is in far better economic shape than Scotland.

The Scottish private sector is very heavily dependent on a few industries: tourism, whisky, financial services and oil ; the proportion of Scottish GDP derived from public spending is above 60% (http://www.scotsman.com/news/scottish-news/edinburgh-east-fife/60_of_gdp_comes_from_public_sector_1_1412305) and a substantial part of the GDP is derived from the higher per capita Treasury payment to Scotland compared with England – the Scots currently get around £1,600 per head more than the English which gives them around £8 billion more pa than they would get if they were paid the same as the English. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2031543/UK-government-spending-Scots-1-600-year-spent-English.html).

What would there be to stop people in Scotland using the pound as currency regardless of the agreement of Westminster? Nothing in the sense that any Sterling held in Scotland could be used by those living in Scotland just as using the dollar or the Euro in England could be done if people were willing to accept it. But an independent Scotland would have no means of printing Sterling notes or minting Sterling coins, so it would be impractical to run an economy in that way because it would have no means of readily expanding the money supply. In addition, if the Scottish economy deteriorated badly holders of Sterling in Scotland could rapidly shrink the money supply by moving it out of the country.

That brings us to the matter of the three banks in Scotland which at present have the authority to issue sterling bank notes: Bank of Scotland, Clydesdale Bank and The Royal Bank of Scotland. If the Pound was denied to Scotland by Westminster or the Scots did not choose to use it, their issuing powers would be removed.

If the Pound was shared between the UK and an independent Scotland the Sterling banknote issuing rights of Scottish banks would either have to be rescinded or strictly limited. If this was not done Scotland could print as much money as they chose. Such controls over banknote issue would not be difficult for Westminster to enforce regardless of the wishes of a Scottish government. As things stand Scottish banknotes are legal currency as authorised by the Westminster Parliament but not legal tender .(http://www.scotbanks.org.uk/legal_position.php). Not being legal tender means amongst other things that no one is obliged to accept them in payment. That alone would prevent an independent Scotland having carte blanche to issue as many notes as they wanted , because although they could issue them they would be worthless outside Scotland if no one would accept them as they certainly would not. In addition, the note issuing banks are effectively beyond an independent Scotland’s control. RBS is more than 80% owned by the UK taxpayer, the Bank of Scotland is part of the Lloyds group which is 43% owned by the UK taxpayer and the Clydesdale Bank is part of National Australia Bank Group.

But the issuing of banknotes and coins is only a part of the money supply, and a diminishing one at that because of the ever increasing use of credit cards, direct debits and other non-physical money means of payment (http://www.paymentscouncil.org.uk/files/payments_council/future_of_cash2.pdf).   In addition there is the ability of financial institutions to expand the money supply by making loans directly to individuals and corporations, the use of state power to “print money” through procedures such as quantitative easing and the general fiscal tenor of a government in terms of such things as credit controls, taxation policy and regulation of the economy, especially the regulation of the banks and their ilk.

If all or any of these matters were left for the UK and an independent Scotland to decide each for themselves there would be inevitably serious political clashes. More fundamentally the effect of clashing policy decisions would be to undermine the Pound and by extension the economy of one or both countries. For example, if the UK introduced credit controls and Scotland did not, Scotland could run into the type of trouble created by the pre-2008 bubble while the UK did not, but the Pound would be weakened by the Scottish behaviour. If the Pound was shared between the UK and Scotland there would have to be very strict rules to ensure that reckless financial and fiscal behaviour was not possible. As mentioned previously, it is very doubtful that an independent Scotland would agree to such rules or observe them if they did officially accept them.

Allowing Scotland to use the Pound would have only disadvantages for England and would carry with it the risk of a sudden and drastic failure if Scotland became another Republic of Ireland or Iceland. For Scotland it would be all benefit because they would gain the advantage of using a recognised currency and know that the rest of the UK would have to bail them out if the Scottish economy went down the pan. Westminster should make it clear now that there is no question of an independent Scotland continuing to use the Pound.
The SNP are peddling a bogus independence .

If they really wanted Scotland to be its own master they would be seeking to establish their own currency not remain with the Pound or become enmeshed in the Euro.