Did you not read my post... SNP agreed with the timetable to age 66.

You could have stopped at did you not read my post

The point being that even though the SNP agreed with it they have deployed a few promising MPs to agitate about it but the SG won't move on it in any form, even though they could find a way if the motivation was there.

Personally I think it's unfair but equality does mean equalising pensions and there wil always be some winners and losers.

just watched that ignorant embarrassment on the bbc site talking absolute bollocks as per usual, this time about the refurbishment of Buck House, is the moron that stupid not to realise that these building are state owned and not the personal property of the Queen.

I find it very hard to believe someone as thick as that was awarded a place at university and attained a degree, I know there are some thickos at university but she cream crackers them all.

On a separate note, thanks to all who posted information about the state of the trains, lets hope its true about extra capacity but I won't hold my breath, Humza the fool has form for talking mince as does Abellio.

I actually don't mind her but her woman of the people moniker does get boring as she's not from the schemes or from a poor background and I believe she's the product of middle class parents who are both teachers or educators.

As for Buckingham palace, the Royals hardly live there, HM Queen prefers Windsor. It might bring in loads as a tourist hotel. Tricky thing the Crown estate as we basically own it all and give the Royals pocket money and a warm place to stay. We could give it all back to them of course but I'm not sure we would be better or worse off for it as a country.

Worse off as at present the Queen gets 15% of the profits only to carry out her job, the rest goes to the treasury and for a few years some extra will go to repair the palace with the rest still going to the treasury .

We could never really hand Buck House over as a hotel etc , like the Whitehouse etc it is a symbol of the country , the place the Head of State is, it would hardly be the same showing a facade with a Best Western sign outside.

The queen would be worse of because she would then have to fund the things her ancestor did before the agreement to pay of his huge debts, the civil service is one of those things the monarch of the day paid for.

Well they couldn't expect her to fund it today as the Civil Service is how many times the size it was back then ?

Scots have been directly paying for their pensions already so it would seem unfair to raise income tax for that end. Indirect taxation may be an option but how would you go about doing that? Borrowing powers are limited and, as you have continually made the point, the fiscal situation just now is tight. Would you really advocate borrowing for pensions when you don't have economic powers or borrowing powers to try and grow the economy at the same time. That seems irresponsible. Scottish pensioners also seem to be very keen to ensure that their pensions are handled by Westminster not Holyrood. I guess if the SNP did eventually get the powers to do as you suggest they would be attacked for opportunistically buying the votes of wealthy pensioners at the expense of the working class.

Devolution should be about doing things in a way that works for Scotland not putting Scots under pressure to pay more to mitigate the actions of UK governments. We shouldn't have to pay more just because the Labour Party blocked any kind of devolution that would allow Holyrood real power to change rather than mitigate.

Well, we do manage to do things differently under devolution already without burdening Scottish taxpayers.

The things like tuition fees are different, and don't forget of course we had a £400 million surplus last year.

And it wouldn't be a pension for all,pensioners it would be an interim payment to help a few women adjust to their new equalised pension.

It's no use blaming this on Westminster and labour, the SNP are in power and if the will was there it might be done. That's why we have devolved government.

If we want the sort of society that we think we want then we may well have to pay higher taxes for it, don't you think?

Oh and BTW, none of us directly pay for our state pensions, rather we pay for pensioners state pensions.

In devolved areas. What you are proposing is the SNP has a responsibility to once again mitigate the actions of Tory government and when they don't do that criticise them rather than Westminster. As you say below it's no use blaming this on Westminster. At the point you need to ask what kind of reasoning is used to come to that conclusion. Who is responsible for people like my mum being forced to work until they're 66, is Westminster or Holyrood. Put it like this, when Holyrood controls pensions then you get to blame them. As it is you want to blame Holyrood for Westminsters policies.


Education is devolved.


At which point people like yourself would pounce on the SNP for supporting wealthy pensioners as the victims of Westminsters benefits regime suffer. Again something people like yourself would deliberately try to blame on the SNP whilst say nothing against Westminster and the Tories.


We have devolved government to govern Scotland not put the financial responsibility for funding and mitigating policies to undo the harm done by Westminster policies. This highlights the failures and limitations of Scotland's devolved settlement rather than making the case for devolution. It's just too predictable to try and shift the blame onto Holyrood and we knew that would be a tactic employed when the powers were being discussed.


We may, but not on this issue and not in isolation.


People paid into an agreement between themselves and the state, the state failed them and rather than criticise the state you'll now attempt to shift responsibility and most crucially for yourselves; blame, onto Holyrood. It's so very predictable.

I'm not blaming anyone, you are. I'm simply stating that if the Scottish Government wanted to they could HELP SCOTTISH women with an interim payment until their pensions kick in. The SNP agree that people like your mum should not get their pension until they are 66 but at the same time they could pay her an equivalent until 66.

I don't blame Hollywood for UK pension decisions and if you'd just read what I'm writing instead of making it up you would see that even the SNP agree with the raised age but I'm saying they could help out our pensioners.

It's what devolution is all about, otherwise you'd be moaning that the SG mitigate the bedroom tax. Are you against this policy because Westminster instigated it and the SG did a good thing.

It seems like you would prefer your mum to suffer even though the SG could help her just to make a political point?

Edit to add

As for Pension, there's no agreement between you and the state. In a future independent Scotland there will be a million pensioners, think on that for affordability and pension ages. Mind you, that's also a million votes.

Not in recent years perhaps but until the rules changed the amount of state pension you got depended on your contribution. Most women approaching pension age will be familiar with the letters advising them of that and asking them to make up the shortfall. It's those women you need to convince that there was no agreement. Spurious arguments about there being no ring fenced pool ignore the fact that if there were then government borrowing would be far higher.

I think the amount of pension you get still depends on contributions.

Since April you now need 10 qualifying years to get any sort of state pension. This increases incrementally to the maximum of 35 years contributions to get the full amount.

More centralised control exerted by the SNP.

"The Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills (John Swinney): Phase 1 of the enterprise and skills review recommended the creation of a new single strategic Scotland-wide statutory board to co- ordinate the activities of Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council. Our intention is that, once established, the overarching board will replace individual agency boards while retaining the separate legal status of each of the bodies."

(Taken from Scottish Parliament report 23rd November).

So local control of Highlands and Islands Enterpise will be taken away and replaced by control from a central body. Stronger for Scotland and all that....

They do like to centralise things. I wonder if it's just to save money or if it's to have closer control.

Read today that Scotrail's new trains are well refurbished and are from the year 1976! ... Welcome to the Future and all that!
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/sc...ns-old-9389369

A fleet of 26 InterCity 125 trains will come into service in 2018 on routes from Glasgow and Edinburgh to Inverness and Aberdeen. The trains were first introduced in 1976.

Before going into service in Scotland under a 12-year lease, they will get new seats, tables, carpets, better lighting and wifi and power sockets.

Gordon Martin, Scottish organiser of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union, said: “Bringing in 40-year-old rolling stock may be a short-term solution.

“But at a time when maintenance fitter jobs are being cut, it’s a potential recipe for disaster if they’re not maintained to the proper standard.”

I don't know the difference really but even buses have a certain time limit and Health and Safety to follow - I know in a way some buses have been on the road for at least 17 years old, surely this is going to be a disaster in the making?

Surely you can appreciate that the Scottish budget is under strain? While it would be great if we could affford to divert funds it wouldn't be easy just now. In response to the issue of the bedroom whilst I think it is good that the Scottish government were eventually persuaded to fund that I don't think they should have had to. I don't think it's a good situation for one government that doesn't have much flexibility financially to pay for mitigating the actions of another. With folk like my mum, of course I want to see her retire like all her friends have but the way things worked out in life she's had to keep on working to pay the mortgage etc. Would she like to see the SNP allow her to retire as she planned? Well yes but I think she would also see that pensions are reserved and our budgets are in a bad way. Again I feel such is the level of hysteria in Scotland about the SNP that if they did go down this route they'd be attacked for sending money to wealthier pensioners. That's the climate we're living under.


As an aside, the issue about control being centralised away from the islands by the SNP, this I think is actually an issue where there should be criticism because if there's one thing the last few decades have taught us is that when you empower highland and island communities and let them to do things their way, it tends to be much more successful than centralised government.

In other words it's a contribution based scheme. That there's no actual ring fenced pension pot for state pensions is just the same as there being none for civil service pensions. The cash that should be in them is being used to keep the national debt down which in turn reduces the amount of interest that would otherwise being paid.

Put it this way, if a business raided the company pension scheme but was able to continue paying out on it through monthly receipts they wouldn't be boasting about it.

Just a the Scottish budget is under strain, so is the UK one.

There's almost a million pensioners in Scotland but very few WASPI ones. But you are right they might be accused of helping rich old pensioners instead of food banks.

However, these are choices we face whether devolved or independent. A year one independence budget would be far far more austere than anything we've seen in the last few years. And we would have to fund all pensions out of that.

Nothing is ever entirely black and white.

I found this article inyeresting because of the questions it poses about SNP supporters and the likelihood of Sturgeon surviving another vote to remain in the U.K. We all know that over a third of SNP supporters supported Brexit. We also know from recent polls that support for independence hasn't gone up, in fact it's gone down since the last poll.

http://www.scotsman.com/news/politic...ref2-1-4308439

So we have a conundrum for Sturgeon who has started raising a war chest for a highly likely referendum that she is highly likely to lose within the next two years.

Is Angus Robertson waiting in the wings to take over the Party after she resigns?

BIB
Guarantee she's in westmonster in the next election or two. If you take the time to look at how the party has been run since the coup in the early 90's (when I stopped voting for them) you can see how cynical and exactly the same, their elite are, as every other self serving political minded arsehole Scotland has produced in recent years.

Couldn't make this up. The most centralising and anti-local Government party ever to control Scotland. Even council tax is no longer in the hands of local councils and the goons who back this shower lap it all up think Sturgeon is a marvelous leader

I had to check it was not April the 1st, they may as well use steam and carriages from the 1800's because they would provide more comfort and be safer for the commuter.

Abellio are a utter disgrace.

I'm surprised they can get away with this but I guess someone approved it ... still 1976 I thought it was meant to be "newer" trains not "vintage"