These Islands

The full 5 minutes of today’s FMQs remake of Jeremy Paxman vs Michael Howard, starring Russell Findlay as Paxman and John Swinney as Howard.

Awkward moment at FMQs as Jack Middleton launches into an enthusiastic round of applause for John Swinney, but hardly anyone else joins in.

As an independent country, Scotland would have to put up with energy bills soaring higher still, and budget cuts that would make a £5 billion black hole look like a trifling matter.

Taking inspiration from Emma Harper, SNP councillor Roza Salih has solved the intractable currency problem.

Well… what a surprise. Hannah Mary Goodlad’s signature election pledge was a sham. I wonder how her “artist in residence” will depict this?

Dave Doogan executes a handbrake turn at the wheel of the SNP grievance-mobile. After years of demanding the abolition of gas standing charges, the SNP will now campaign for their reintroduction.

Here is Dave Doogan explicitly arguing for standing charges to be “redistributed onto the unit price” in order to encourage lower consumption. Now it has happened, Dave Doogan is complaining loudly about the very thing that he asked for (see quoted tweet).

Anyone citing the Czech-Slovak currency separation as a precedent for how an independent Scotland might launch its own currency really should read about what happened there. cc @KennyFarq

Tim Rideout’s conference gets its first coverage outside the pages of The National. He’ll be wishing it hadn’t after reading this…

What a farce. As it slowly dawns on Tim Rideout that Laurentjoye has shredded his own cherished currency plan, he is now going to spend several months trying to get the report changed… (he originally promised to publish the Laurentjoye report at 10am on Saturday).

If Stephen Gethins was a serious person, he would just admit that the programme for government made a mistake in proposing *off-grid* pumped storage hydro. But he can only recite prepared lines. Pathetic.

Shockingly sensible letter published by @ScotNational. Richard Murphy gets a proper kicking.

1/ Tim Rideout will doubtless try to rewrite history and claim the Laurentjoye report agrees with his longstanding currency plan. It does not. In the highlighted text, Laurentjoye is explicitly ruling out “voluntary exchange” - the defining feature of Tim’s plan.

An all-time classic from Richard Murphy. A weakening S£ would make private GBP pensions go up in nominal S£ terms. But those pensioners would not be “better off” in real terms. Scotland is very import dependent. Meanwhile state & public sector pensions would crater in real terms.

Tim’s first tweet is false, but even if it were true, an opt-out system is very different to opt-in. Tim edges towards telling the truth in the second tweet. Under Laurentjoye’s proposals, depositors cannot opt-out, they must *get*-out, and that is profoundly different to opt-in.

The Laurentjoye report is a big step in the direction of realism on currency, but the chapter on energy is not realistic. An independent Scotland could not expect bill payers in England & Wales to continue underwriting Scottish CfD & grid costs. That is not independence!

This is Tim Rideout, speaking just a week ago at the SSRG conference, about how his big idea was to reject a one-day redenomination of bank deposits. Then yesterday, Tim unveiled the Laurentjoye report, which proposes exactly that: a one-day automatic redenomination of deposits.

The person whose job for the last two and a half years has been to get a grip of this situation is Ivan McKee. He is effectively a ghost worker himself, and enjoys the same protection: no matter how little he achieves, he apparently cannot be fired.

Shirley-Anne Somerville on #BBCSundayShow repeatedly states “we have not seen the detail” behind the Jackdaw consenting decision. But the UK government published a 92-page document fully explaining the consenting decision. @S_A_Somerville can find it here: assets.publishing.service.go…

Laurentjoye is to be commended for being frank about the draconian measures that would be necessary for an independent Scotland to establish its own currency, but this is implausible. The chaos this would cause ahead of a vote pretty much guarantees the vote itself would be lost.