According to Douglas McWilliams, the chief Executive of the Centre for Economics and Business Research it will take the people of Scotland just over a decade to destroy their country’s economy to such an extent that it will become the Ethiopia of Europe and require Western aid. They will do so despite being part of the EU, the world’s first trade power and the largest and wealthiest economy on the planet.
The latest third rate unionist attack on Scotland comes from Douglas McWilliams, the chief Executive of the Centre for Economics and Business Research. He used to say that an independent Scotland would be a Third World Country by 2050. Now however, with the independence referendum looming, he has cobbled together a new report and revised that date to 2030.
The Finance Minister, John Swinney, has dismissed this latest report as “deeply flawed” and containing “a series of basic mistakes”.
Mr McWilliams may very well believe in what he says but, how he comes to his conclusions are unclear.
He points out that in the last ten years, living standards in Spain and Greece have caught up with hose in Scotland and that Korea, Poland and Turkey are soon to do so. Good for them.
The reason for this, he claims, is a lack of entrepreneurship and over-government. This is compared to who or what you might ask. Because as far as I know, everything’s far from rosy in the garden south of the border.
As for Spain and Greece - just what were they doing in the last ten years that an independent Scotland should have been copying?
But, a “Third World Country”?
The term “Third World” has long been considered an arbitrary one. It arose during the Cold War to define countries not aligned either to Capitalism and NATO or Communism and the Warsaw Pact. Today it is generally considered to mean those countries which demand and receive Western aid.
So, if Mr McWilliams is correct then more than the people of an independent Scotland should be worried. In the relatively near future the European Union will be in such a mess that one of its better off countries will have become comparable with present day Ethiopia, Sudan, Afghanistan and Haiti. In economic terms these countries are considered the least developed by the United Nations based on, among other things, their Gross National Income per capita (GNI).
If McWilliams’s prediction had already come to pass, then in 2010 the Scottish GNI would have been £460. The GNI for the UK (nominal atlas method) was £1,468,800. However, all that the rest of the UK would have to do to stave off “Third World” status was have a GNI above £551. The suggestion being made by McWilliams however, is that while Scotland becomes one of the least developed countries in the world, England, Wales and Northern Ireland will remain on a sound economic footing.
That then, is the astonishing prediction.
In just over a decade after independence the people of Scotland will show themselves to be so incompetent that they will destroy their country’s economy to such an extent that it will require Western aid.
They will do so despite being part of the EU, the world’s first trade power and the largest and wealthiest economy on the planet.
