You're like a wee boy. "Well you started it... Well you want to do bad things"
The select few???? I'm sitting in England looking after my cousin who has broken her back falling off her horse. Who was discharged from hospital in a spinal brace three days after an operation to a house where she has no one. She isn't married, she has no kids, no boyfriend no parents- they are dead- and which is full of stairs and steps. She could hardly walk. She could hardly go up stairs, she can't lift anything, raise her hands above her shoulders, shower, wash her hair. She can't bend, cook for herself or make a blasted cup of tea. She can't drive but she lives five miles from a shop. They sent her home on last Friday with no help coming in until today. She is in awful pain and taking morphine. We tried to get a frame for round the loo on Sat morning so she could go to the toilet by herself. We haven't got one. I love my cousin dearly. I had to drive from Inverness to Yorkshire to look after her until my mum can get here from France. No one cared, no one gave a crap that they were sending home a frightened, pain filled woman to an empty house miles from a shop with no support for four days.
Now I know that social services have similar problems in Scotland. But the difference is that in Scotland we have an opportunity to do something to change this. There is no opportunity to change things like this, welfare; we don't have the power to get rid of the bedroom tax -we have to pay it. We don't have the power to raise our own taxes or choose our own spending priorities, we can't choose our own tax rates, we can't increase our own income we have to be "given" those things by Westminster because they choose FOR us. We can't choose to keep our pension age at the age of 65 or 67 despite the fact that life expectancy in Scotland is lower.
Spending on health and social services and actually everything else too will REDUCE if we remain in the union because the money we get is based on how much is spent in England. Both main parties have policies of privatisation, reduction in size of the public sector and in spending. Health and social services affect EVERYONE. Welfare impacts on everyone. The only chance we have to change these things, to look after each other better than we do now is to vote for independence.
That in itself will not change things but the power control and opportunity it gives us is not to be missed.
PS Its now 1pm. Despite making 4 phone calls on Saturday, 7 phone calls this morning, despite the Dr faxing a letter thro last Friday to the "fast response intermediate team" - privately run, contracted by the NHS - we still have no visit and no prospect of one. The "fast response intermediate care team" apparently looked at the letter on Friday and decided that it was not on the right form but interestingly decided not to do anything about that. So ignored it. They knew there was an injured incapacitated woman for whom care was required and chose to do nothing about it. This happens in Scotland too BTW... See Ducati, I know you valet cars for a living, I also know you aren't an "oligarch"
but for many people THESE are the things that are their critical issues. You seem to suggest that makes them foolish, naive, economically illiterate or ignorant at how the world works and that trying to take the opportunity to have the power to do things differently is foolish. It's not. Interest rates, currency unions, GERS reports don't make a society, people do.
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