Smith Agreement could see Scots paying twice over

Scots could end up being “overtaxed” under plans to hand sweeping new powers to Holyrood as part of the Smith Agreement, MSPs have been told.

Peter A Bell's insight:

It looks like the whole Smith fiasco is unravelling already. Which is, of course, precisely what was intended. It didn’t really matter what the proposals were, because they were never going to be implemented to any meaningful extent. And all the excuses for reneging on the “The Vow” are now being rehearsed.



The British parties and their friends in the media have to tread a fine line between hailing Smith as if it was actually the massive transfer of powers we were promised right up to the 2015 election, and preparing the ground for the proposals being unceremoniously dumped immediately after a new UK government is installed. Practically the first thing that government will do is announce that Smith is seriously flawed because the whole process was rushed. They will then set up yet another talking-shop - under the control of the British parties and with a rigged remit - to spend five years cobbling together a fresh round of futile constitutional tinkering that amounts to nothing more than an increasingly contrived rationalisation of continuing to deny the Scottish Parliament the powers that it should have as a matter of right.



This further effort to resuscitate the dead horse of devolution by flogging it with a legislative lash-up will fail, just as all the others have, because it takes as its imperative the preservation of the structures of power and privilege which define the British state and not the needs and aspirations of Scotland’s people.



It is time to say ENOUGH! It is time to take the only sensible course left to us. It is time for independence.

See on scotsman.com



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