This was Christine Grahame's reply to me which is simply the full text of her speech.
She may have been misquoted but is still holding to the line people were scared into voting No.
On mainstream media bias, I read The Telegraph which of the was going to be unionist and The Guardian , which with the exception of its editorial I thought was extremely biased towards independence. On the BBC I thought John Curtice was falling over himself to put the best interpretation of polls for the Yes side. The Scotsman might have been officially No but my goodness it gave Lesley Riddoch acres of space right up to the last day.
I'm not sure what she expects ; if one thinks something is a bad idea , it's a bad idea. How can one say otherwise? And of course the Government had had the benefit of the White Paper published at public expense.
Christine Grahame: Share | Copy Link Copied
"Please let me make some progress.
Given that the over-55s represent some 36 per cent of Scotland’s population—thankfully, that figure is growing—the demographic gap and political priorities will widen. That will happen not just in Scotland or, indeed, the UK, but across Europe. I do not think that I am a typical pensioner—whatever that is—mainly because I am still working full blast well past retirement age and have been committed to independence and social justice for decades, but I have a great deal in common with other grannies and granddads out there, and the last thing that I want is hostility between the generations because of the outcome of the vote. I would be the first to woman the barricades and halt any move to granny or granddad wars, but I want to address why there is that difference.
First, there was the issue of access to information. Although others tweeted and Facebooked—I do not do that—many pensioners accessed the debate through the press and terrestrial media. No one on the no side can possibly dispute the inequality of the debate there. Only one national paper—the Sunday Herald—declared for yes; others had headlines that screamed vote yes for higher prices and so on. Nicholas Witchell even had the audacity to tell us the Queen’s private thoughts on the debate. BBC impartiality was parked.
However, the crux for me was the threat to the state pension either directly by people being scared into believing that it would not be paid out or that it could not be paid from Scotland’s own resources, and, indeed, the threat that even any private pension, which is a contractual matter, was not secure. That was a real whammy of a blow for a person who is retired or whose retirement is imminent. Incidentally, I know of cases in which pensioners entered the polling station to no campaigners still telling them that they would lose their pension should they vote yes. Therefore, I fully understand why the scare stories stuck as they were intended to.
Strangely, nearly a quarter of a million pensioners claim pension credit in Scotland because the UK state pension is so low. Worse than that, one third who are entitled to that benefit do not claim it. That was neatly sidestepped by the no side. On top that, some 50,000 Scottish pensioners are already worse off due to Westminster cuts of £90 million to the savings credit.
The battle for independence was so that Scotland could harness its resources for a fairer and more just society for all its people, not just for the young and the middle aged, but for the old—the pensioners. For the time being, I am waiting for Westminster to deliver that social justice to Scotland’s pensioners.
The no campaign promised energy bills that were lower by some £170 per annum. Labour has said that it will freeze energy bills. Let us see how that all pans out and what happens to the winter fuel allowance of £200, which is currently not means tested.
At the same time, those grannies and granddads should think of their grandchildren, because Ed Balls is committed to continuing the Tory austerity cuts. Freezing child benefit alone will cost the average family—people’s children’s families or their grandchildren’s families—£400 a year. They will be that amount worse off. That is what the Children’s Society says. I simply ask Scotland’s pensioners to watch this space. Promises that are made on the back of a fag packet are, like fag packets everywhere, easily thrown away.
Labour in Scotland has promised that nothing would be in or out of consideration for cuts if it governed in the Scottish Parliament. Means testing, which is already a failure with the pension credit—we should remember that one third do not claim it—may be extended to personal care, bus passes and even prescriptions on a Labour agenda. If we add to that the means testing or even ditching of the winter fuel allowance, which is literally a lifeline for many pensioners, that pension will be under greater pressure, and that will make life even tougher for our older people.
On the pronouncements of the self-proclaimed keeper of the promise, I prefer my late mother’s dictum when I returned from a night out full of jollity. She would say, “It’ll be a different story in the morning.” Indeed it is, and it has been. On promises or vows, I say to my fellow pensioners that they should not count on Westminster; instead, they should count what they have in their purse or wallet in the coming years once they have paid the bills and count up whether their grandchildren’s prospects for a happy and fulfilling life in Scotland improve under Westminster rule.
Labour in particular has a lot to answer for. It has saved David Cameron’s political skin, aided and abetted the Tories in the no campaign, and scared older people into believing that they would be on the breadline, when many of them are there already. So far, mum’s the word from Labour"