'Give us your Plan B, Alex': After TV debate humiliation, Salmond urged to come clean about his alternative to keeping the pound. Daily Mail, Updated.

 Alex Salmond is facing an unprecedented challenge to produce a 'plan B' for an independent Scotland's currency in the wake of his disastrous TV debate with Alistair Darling.

The First Minister is being urged to finally come clean by business chiefs, top lawyers, economists, academics and senior members of his pro-independence campaign.

But a stubborn Mr Salmond refused to veer from his proposal to keep the British pound, resorting once again to a reckless threat to default on Scotland's share of the national debt if he cannot get his way.

The SNP leader was in bullish mood yesterday despite his performance in Tuesday night's TV showdown, which a snap poll found that former Chancellor Mr Darling had won by 56 per cent to 44 per cent.

Mr Salmond claimed: 'I think everybody knows now that we are in a real position of possible victory. We are the underdogs - I relish that position.' However, the First Minister arrived more than an hour late at a conference yesterday amid rumours that he had been holding a post-mortem with his advisers.

He also made an unusual appearance at the SNP's weekly group meeting in Holyrood in an apparent bid to shore up support, while Nationalists in the parliament were privately admitting they were disappointed by his performance. Now SNP strategists are desperate for more debates in the hope of a recovery, and a BBC showdown is now set to go ahead on Monday, August 25.

He has refused to draw up a 'plan B', such as a separate Scottish currency pegged to the pound, joining the euro, or using the pound unilaterally in the way that East Timor and Panama use the US dollar - socalled 'dollarisation'.

Last night, lawyers including Donald Findlay QC and politicians such as Jim Sillars joined a growing chorus of demands for an alternative to a currency union.

Owen Kelly, chief executive of Scottish Financial Enterprise - whose members include Lloyds Banking Group, RBS, Aviva and Standard Life - said: 'All of the currency options would have serious implications for the financial services industry and no analysis from any industry source suggests a currency union is likely. It would therefore be prudent for businesses to plan on the likelihood of a new currency or dollarisation.'

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No pound, no euro: With a vote on Scottish independence imminent, why Scotland needs a plan C

 

'You are really scrabbling around now!' Alistair Darling takes the fight to Alex Salmond in first live TV debate on Scottish independence

 

Tom Peterkin: Salmond causes frustration for SNP

SNP in crisis talks over Alex Salmond’s TV debate defeat

Scottish Independence 'Makes No Economic Sense', Warn Experts

Scottish independence: Salmond says 'we're keeping the pound' BBC News

VIEWPOINT: Why Alex Salmond is deluded... Vote against political union is also a vote against currency union By SIR ANDREW LARGE AND SIR MARTIN JACOMB. Daily Mail, Updated

Successful partnerships or unions depend on give and take. Political unions provide for this. Money raised from taxpayers can then be transferred to wherever in the union needs it: in bad times and good, and over time. Our Union, as the UK including Scotland, has worked like that pretty well over the past 300 years.

One element of a political union is common money, underpinned by a currency union. That’s why we all have the pound. The money we use matters to us all. It must be universally accepted in payment; prices must be stable. And crises like 2008 must not undermine it.

So Mr Salmond’s claim that if Scotland votes ‘Yes’ there will be no change for Scotland’s money is a delusion at best. A vote against political union is also effectively a vote against currency union.

The Scottish Nationalists think that the three political parties who rule out a currency union are bluffing. But why would the rest of the UK wish to support Scotland with their taxpayers’ money?

Claims that it is in the UK’s interests to continue the currency union forget the potentially open ended longer-term commitments: whatever the short-term trade benefits.

And to insist that Scotland would be stronger than the UK is not self-evident. The lessons are there in the European Union. The UK rejected the euro because we knew this needed political union.

The euro’s difficulties won’t be overcome until that can be achieved. It’s not there yet, and the lack of political union today prevents wealth transfers where needed: resulting in mass unemployment in Spain, Portugal and Greece.

Of course Scotland has other options. They all involve change, and risk. Scottish nationalists may feel the risks are worth it. But they need to know what they would be.

Scotland could continue to use the pound but with no formal agreement with the rest of the UK. Some small countries do this: Kosovo uses the euro, Panama the US dollar and Jersey the pound. 

The consequence for the Scots would be that they would have no say over monetary policy. The rest of the UK would issue the pound, and look first to its own interests, not Scotland’s.

Another consequence is that banknotes issued by Scottish banks could be in jeopardy. Today these are equivalent to Bank of England notes, but people might think otherwise if the bank was in a foreign country.

Mr Salmond could peg the Scottish pound to sterling. But Scottish taxpayers would need to build a multibillion pound reserve to defend this against speculators, to avoid what happened when the UK itself was forced out of the parity with the developing euro [ERM] as recently as 1992

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No pound, no euro: With a vote on Scottish independence imminent, why Scotland needs a plan C

 

'You are really scrabbling around now!' Alistair Darling takes the fight to Alex Salmond in first live TV debate on Scottish independence

Tom Peterkin: Salmond causes frustration for SNP

Senior SNP figures stick the knife into Alex Salmond after his disastrous showing in the TV indy debate

Scottish independence: Salmond says 'we're keeping the pound' BBC News

In 2003, Mr Salmond told me Scotland would be independent in 20 years. After that debate I doubt it By STEPHEN GLOVER. Daily Mail

 During the 2003 Scottish elections I found myself walking around the back streets of Dundee with Alex Salmond. He was not then leader of the Scottish Nationalists, though he had been, and would soon be again. I remember him as an amiable and rumpled figure.

At one of our pit-stops he said something that chilled my blood. He told me that in 20 years, if not before, Scotland would be an independent country. He asserted this so calmly and confidently that it was hard to disbelieve him.

I wonder whether Tuesday evening’s debate with Alistair Darling will mark the point when Mr Salmond and the rest of the world began to realise that his prophecy of an independent Scotland has been confounded, at any rate for a generation.

And I also wonder whether the debate might remind Labour that Mr Darling (still only 60) is a considerable but often underrated politician who in most respects stands head and shoulders above the party’s present leader, Ed Miliband.

 The debate had been billed as a contest between the wily, charming Mr Salmond, and the boring, bank managerish Mr Darling. Some supporters of the Union had had so many qualms about the former Chancellor that there had been private talk of replacing him with the more pugnacious John Reid, a Cabinet minister in the Blair administration.

In the event, though, it was the supposedly plodding Mr Darling who easily won the day. An instant Guardian/ICM poll after the debate gave him victory by 56 per cent to 44 per cent. It is hard to find anyone even in the Yes camp who thinks their man did well.

By the way, let me say how outrageous it was that the contest could not be viewed south of the border except online, and even then the picture was often interrupted. These two men were discussing the future of our country, Britain, and yet most citizens of the United Kingdom were excluded from the debate.

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We are the underdogs now, admits Salmond: Support for independence slumps after his TV mauling, Daily Mail

Plan B or not Plan B: Salmond rejects the question,  The Scotsman

Scottish Independence, a Vehicle for Alex Salmond's Grandiose Ego ?

First Minister Alex Salmond warns that without the pound an independent Scotland would refuse to take its share of UK debt and claims debate was a success for Yes camp.

Alex Salmond defends Plan B currency stance after losing Scottish debate on TV, Telegraph, Updated

First Minister Alex Salmond warns that without the pound an independent Scotland would refuse to take its share of UK debt and claims debate was a success for Yes camp.

Alex Salmond today continued to refuse to name his Plan B currency for a separate Scotland after holding a post-mortem discussion with advisers over his surprise defeat in the independence TV debate.

The First Minister arrived an hour and a half late at a conference for businessmen who support separation this morning, his first public engagement since he lost the STV showdown with Alistair Darling.

A defiant Mr Salmond defended his repeated refusal to name a Plan B currency if the remaining UK won't share the pound, despite being booed by the debate audience for dodging the question.

He even attempted to claim the debate had been a success for the Yes campaign, citing a snap ICM opinion poll that showed most Scots thought Mr Darling won the debate

The First Minister argued that a breakdown of figures revealed undecided voters gave him the victory and said support for independence had risen during the showdown.

But Unionist parties said he was clutching at straws after the figures showed that the support for the Yes campaign increased by only six voters during the debate, while backing for No rose by eight people.

Mr Salmond, who refused to take questions from the print press, pointed to another figure showing 74 per cent of undecided voters thought he had emerged victorious. The ICM breakdown showed this was the equivalent of only 23 people.

The First Minister also defended his repeated refusal to name a Plan B on the currency and warned that without the pound Scotland would refuse to take on its proportion of the UK debt after independence.

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Scotland 'likely to be worse off after independence' Daily Telegraph

Independent Scotland's debt 'would force spending cuts or tax rises'

Analysts at Societe Generale said Scotland would have an “immense” task ahead of it were voters to opt for independence in next month’s referendum, disparaging claims from the “Yes” camp that the country would easily gain EU membership and grow rich off oil revenues.

A resounding 'no': the UK financial industry's verdict on Scottish independence

Kevan McDonald: Currency questions need answers, The Scotsman

Danny Alexander: Salmond stuck on pound question, The Scotsman

Scottish independence: Salmond says 'we're keeping the pound' BBC News

Homeowners fed up with council's refusal to repair road outside their houses order ton of tarmac and fill in the potholes themselves. Daily Mail

  Fed up residents forced to fix their own potholes after a year long dispute

  The 100 metre stretch of road had 100 potholes, some were 6ft wide 

  Homeowners, some in their 90s, said the potholes were 'dangerous'

  The pensioners, with an average age of 75, filled the holes themselves 

  Council refused to mend potholes due to a wrangle over road ownership 

Homeowners were fed up with their council's refusal to fix potholes outside their houses - so they ordered the tarmac and did it themselves.  

After a year long fight to fix 100 potholes on a 100 metre stretch of road, six pensioners, of Pudsey, Leeds, took matters into their own hands and repaired them themselves.

The men refused to take no for an answer when Leeds City Council highways bosses declined to carry out the work on the basis it is a private unadopted road.

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A hero for our time: Inspired by the man who built his own toll road? He's one of countless Britons rising up to solve problems the State's too useless to fix Daily Mail

Businessman sets up private toll road just 340 yards long charging motorists £2 a time to bypass closed section of main road. Daily Mail.

Militant Spanish mayor plans invasion of Gibraltar in anti-British protest, Daily Express

A MILITANT Spanish mayor has announced plans to occupy Gibraltar with thousands of supporters in a one-day protest to claim the disputed territory for Spain.

Communist Juan Manuel Sanchez Gordillo made headlines two years ago after organising Robin Hood-style raids on supermarkets and handouts of the stolen food to poor families.

Now the left-wing union he leads is preparing for a mass invasion of the Rock on August 29.

Gordillo, mayor of the town of Marinaleda near Seville as well as head of the Andalucian Workers Union, has claimed they will cross the border peacefully.

But he has insisted on keeping secret the details on how he and his supporters will get into Gibraltar, hinting union members could cross by foot and car as well as arriving by plane and boat before staging their headline-grabbing protest.

Around 2,000 people are expected to take part although the union has 20,000 members and is hoping for support on the day from Spaniards who work on the Rock or are visiting as tourists.

Mr Sanchez, who boasts of running his town like a communist utopia, told a Spanish paper: "We will enter Gibraltar from different points and then see what we do. "It will be a peaceful demonstration but a very revindicative one."We have to take advantage of the surprise factor to be able to achieve our aims."

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Gibraltar rejects Spanish border plans, Daily Telegraph

Britain's first armed police on routine patrol, BBC, Why on Earth, do we need armed police ?

In a little-noticed move, a small number of police officers are now routinely carrying sidearms while on patrol in much of Scotland - the first in the UK outside Northern Ireland to do so. How did this come about, and does it alter the relationship between the constabulary and the public?

Saturday night in Inverness. Outside a McDonald's restaurant, a scuffle between two men breaks out. Three police officers arrive to intervene. So far, so mundane.

Except that strapped around the hips of each of the policemen approaching the brawl is a holstered Glock 17 semi-automatic pistol.

It's a sight that once would have been unthinkable. In this corner of the Scottish Highlands - an area with one of the lowest crime rates in the UK - the officers showing up to a relatively workaday disturbance are armed.

Although every police force has a firearms unit, for decades it has been an article of faith that in the mainland UK, almost uniquely among major industrialised nations, the police do not carry guns as a matter of course.

But with little fanfare at first, a policy of routinely allowing specialist officers to wear sidearms as they walk the streets of Scotland has come into being.

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