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Once again Alex Salmond is working in Scotlands national interest as he tries to protect our people.Will Labour in Westminster be able to respond??

Intriguing that CJ wants SNP-introduced means testing ended. My mother was "means tested" prior to having central installed.3 years ago. Is there anything CJ and her ilk wont lie about? Has it got to the stage they no longer recognise any difference between truth and expedience?

[quote][bold]Salmond challenges Brown: act now on fuel poverty[/bold] [/quote] Here's something that no Labour group leader in Holyrood has ever done or will ever be able to do... Stand up for Scotland without fear of chastisement from London.

There is a great related article in the Sunday Times : "Salmond will demand higher winter fuel payments for pensioners, adding to Brown’s woes but, more significantly, he has a question for the prime minister he intends to repeat frequently — and laboriously — in the run-up to a referendum on independence in 2010, and it is this: why should a country that produces more oil and gas than any other in western Europe be paying the continent’s highest prices for these products? " In 1974, Gavin McCrone, the Scottish Office’s chief economist, told Edward Heath’s Tory cabinet that oil could make Scotland one of the richest nations in Europe, endow it with an “embarrassingly” large budget surplus and give it one of the strongest currencies in the world. “For the first time since the Act of Union was passed, it can now be credibly argued that Scotland’s economic advantage lies in its repeal,” said his report, which remained hidden from the public for 30 years. Labour’s Jim Callaghan was equally determined not to publicise the extent of Scotland’s potential wealth. Fearful of an oil bonanza fuelling the independence cause, and needing oil revenues to bail out the UK’s crippled economy, in 1977 the then prime minister went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that all the income from the North Sea headed directly south to the Treasury, ordering the designation of an entirely new economic region — the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) — to which all North Sea revenues were to be assigned instead of to Scotland. If the money had been assigned to Scotland, it would have doubled the country’s GDP overnight. Instead, all North Sea revenue was assigned directly to the UK exchequer, with small slices specifically allotted to the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland. ------------- The idea of “regional weighting” for winter fuel allowance and cold weather payments was recently floated by Energy Action Scotland, the charity dedicated to ending fuel poverty. “We think there should be a tiered system for these payments so that the further north you go, the higher the sums,” said Elizabeth Gore, Energy Action Scotland’s deputy director. “That would compensate people for the longer heating season, as well as the colder temperatures. It’s definitely something that should be picked up in light of the recent energy price hikes.” Gore’s idea received a sympathetic hearing from MPs on the Commons select committee on Scottish affairs, when it took evidence on poverty north of the border last year. In its report, the cross-party group recommended “consideration should be given to establishing a form of regional weighting that would recognise the increased burden in fuel costs to colder parts of the UK”. However, in its response in April, the UK government rejected the plan. “The winter fuel payment is a national scheme available to most people aged 60 or over and the amounts paid from it are the same throughout Great Britain. It would add complexity and expense to take account of regional differences in temperatures, given variations between areas of the UK are not extreme,” it said. see - tinyurl.com/6k5dyd Yet another dividend of the Union

[quote][bold]martin[/bold] wrote: Once again Alex Salmond is working in Scotlands national interest as he tries to protect our people.Will Labour in Westminster be able to respond?? [/quote] Are you a robot? What a shameful obeisance.

http://www.timesonli ne.co.uk/tol/news/uk /scotland/article444 9089.ece An absolute blinder of an article in the times, well worth a read folks. Any comments from our Unionist chums?

It's a classic if Salmond is complaining that he hasn't got control of monetary policy. [bold]As I understand it, after independence, he wants monetary policy for Scotland to be set by an English Government that has no accountability to us at all.[/bold] Mind you, I could just be behind the times since the Nats do seem to want to put Eck on bank notes, judging by their most recent propoganda. They'd be more credible on fuel poverty if they weren't letting affordable home building crash by almost a third in the Highlands & Islands (and elsewhere outside Edinburgh & Glasgow), or had a clue what they were doing about the Central Heating Programme (apart from cutting it).

Fuel poverty in an energy rich country as prices are allowed to soar to allow Gordon Brown's treasury to garner increased corporation tax, vat and a windfall tax scheduled for next year. Salmond is bang on the button when he roars that Brown's should do something, but of course Brown has another agenda, and he doesn't care how he gets it for his war chest. Corrupt, bent and uncaring New Labour. Friends of big business and the corporate buck. Now who do you think would look after your interests, Alex Salmond or Gordon Brown.

Cathy Jamieson, hit out at Salmond last night over what she described as his "megaphone diplomacy". Cathy haven't you heard that the Scottish Government including our FM and the Scottish Parliament have the unquestionable right, and indeed the (moral) duty, to express themselves on any issue that concerns the welfare of the people of Scotland and to make representations where such are required.

Traquir, Alba on 1:24am today: [quote]There is a great related article in the Sunday Times[/quote] Unfortunately the Times have rather spoiled the effect but headlining it with a mock-up photo of Salmond holding up a burning Union flag as though he was a terrorist. That's actually far more offensive than the Sun's famous noose and surely merits a strong complaint.

How Salmond can be so two faced beggars belief. On the one hand he is gleefully pandering to the wishes of the wind industry by covering Scotland with wind turbines which due to the ROCS system is guaranteed to push up energy prices, while at the same time he is **** about pa Broon and opposing nuclear power stations which produce cheaper electricity. The man is a balloon! Unfortunately the numpties in the labour party are no better.

I presume, Ben, you now live near one of the windmill farms benighting the hills of Dumfries and Galloway, destroying long established views with their monstrous waving arms and the peace of the area with their whining and moaning.If so I feel sorry for you. The truth is Scotland has enough Hydro to look after its own needs, to smooth out peaks and sufficient core production, without nuclear, to keep us going. That is before wave power projects and other projects like the one Labour scrapped at Peterhead because Wee Eck looked like winning. The problem for England is that if one of our generating stations goes off line the trains stop in SE London, Police computers in Oxford fail and all the rest recently reported in the Sunday Times. We in Scotland are paying high energy prices because the National Grid charges Scottish generators more to shift electricity around than generators in the SE. Go figure!

We put in central heating at our own expense (including VAT). It is the slight problem with paying for fuel that is worrying me! I'm thinking of installing a wood burner in one room just to retain a core of heat in the house. There is enough PROCCESSED timber, stacked on the Forestry Commission's land, ROTTING, around here, to keep us supplied for life! In the meantime Saint Alex should demand that ROCs payments be stopped for onshore windfarms. That would help cut the cost of electricity to the consumer in the long term.

Cathy Jamieson want FM to shut-up? Think a vocal response at least giving us all that FM is akin to the pressures of those whom have a finally balanced house-hold budget. Labour admitting that they would merely ignore the house-holder and, hope they would like true Brits not complain.