Friday 15 March 2019

No More Brexshit, please, SNP.

I was on line chatting to a Dutch friend who is a senior midwife in a NHS Trust in England. After 26 years working in the UK she is seriously considering a return to Holland. She has already gone as far as accepting a part-time teaching post in Holland and is reducing her NHS hours, whether she leaves completely will be determined whether on her next annual re-registration she will be accepted on the RCM as at present or if she has to register as a new overseas registrant, with all the attendant requirements, certificates and affidavits, post Brexit. Currently the RCM does not know what will happen because the UK Government still has not made clear the legal status of EU residents working in healthcare as Brexit ends the equivalent qualification rule under which many EU citizens are currently registered on UK Health Registers as practitioners. Along with all of this she is routinely working double shifts in the health trust due to the non replacement of midwifes by said trust as they trust is skint. I suggested that regular double shifts must impair her clinical decision making but her view is a knackered midwife is still better than no midwife at all.

The SNP Government in Scotland has, so far, mitigated the same impact of Tory cuts on the NHS in Scotland. Sure, it is by "robbing Peter to pay Paul" and can only continue in the short term as an active policy. The big problem for NHS Scotland is that current Scottish practitioners are registered by UK medical registration bodies. If the concerns of my Dutch friend are correct the registration bodies do not have a clue as to the legal status of EU citizens working within the NHS, post Brexit. Scotland, on Brexit, could see a number of currently active EU healthcare professionals unable to work as they will not be legally entitled to practise until their new registration is processed which for a new "overseas applicant' takes between six weeks and three months and under current UK wide regulations; there is nothing the Scottish Government can do about it. Not registered - can not work.

We have had a hint this week the SNP Brexit story is being reframed from "We are trying to save England from itself for sensible economic reasons for Scotland" to one which is heading more towards "hell mend them". Nicola loosing it, very politely, with a BBC interviewer over the independence referendum mandate, Mhari Black's devastating critique on Unionism and its Brexit failures on Wednesday, Ian Blackford's statement about the Labour front bench "having a shiver with no spine to run up" along with more and more SNP MP's reminding the English rabble opposite Scotland retains the option to walk away from the Treaty of Union as a sovereign country; something both the Attorney General and David Davis have stated, this week, is a right, proper and legitimate course for a sovereign country to take when a treaty no longer meets its needs.

The SNP Spring Conference is nigh. All I want from Ms Sturgeon's speech to the conference is to hear the following words:

"Finally: Conference, we in the Scottish Government and through our MPs have tried as hard as we can to mitigate the economic suicide and international lunacy that is Brexit but time after time our sensible suggestions, compromises and alternatives have fallen on deaf ears at Westminster and within the UK Government.

Time and time again we have seen the utter disregard Westminster Government has for the views of the sovereign people of Scotland and their representatives displayed in the House of Commons, not just on Brexit but frequently on other issues as well. It is my view that there has been a substantive shift in Westminster's considerations of and about Scotland and the position Scotland now finds itself in; being taken out the EU against the wishes of the sovereign people of Scotland. The predominant policy decisions made at Westminster are focused on the narrow needs of Tory or Labour Party political or partisan interests. Westminster and the UK Parliament is a failed institution as the bourach and stramash of Brexit has made perfectly clear. Given, even with an extension to Article 50, Westminster will continue to follow this destructive path of EU exit with no regard to the people of Scotland's needs or wishes I will be bringing forward, with the utmost urgency, a bill to hold a new Independence Referendum. It will be my desire to hold the referendum within 3 months of the bill's successful passage through the Scottish Parliament. If the referendum brings forward a "Yes" result there will then be a new election to the sovereign Scottish Parliament where a decision to join EFTA or become a full EU member, the latter being my preference, can be properly decided.

Let us be very clear, without a "Yes vote", and independence, Scotland will continue to be governed from a dysfunctional UK Parliament at Westminster by parties who are in the minority in Scotland. Ruled over by a crazy, corrupt, pretend democracy where minority parties get £1 billion bungs from the UK Government and their ten representatives have more say, as a result, over Scotland's future, than Scotland's elected MPs.

Without a "Yes" vote, arguments about currency or what sort of Scotland we can be; are moot.

Our message is simple, "Vote 'Yes' to be able to create Scotland that is fair and prosperous for all.""

Something along these lines will do me nicely.

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