Tag: Edinburgh P4Indy

George Kerevan: Alba Party’s Economic Plans

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Julia Laurie, co-convenor of Edinburgh and Lothians Pensioners for Indy group writes:

The following podcast took place on Tuesday the 27th April, only 9 days before the Scottish Elections, and I knew this could not be edited and posted before then. I therefore decided to complete it after the election when we knew the results. You will now know that Alba Party did not achieve any MSP seats, but have no intention of disappearing, and are in fact pressing ahead with the party structure and planning their first conference. This podcast may therefore still be of interest to some of our members.

George Kerevan

George Kerevan, an economist and a member of Alba, came to speak to our group on Alba’s economic plans for an Independent Scotland. George has spoken to us on a number of occasions, and has become a friend of our group.

Alba’s Economic Plan

Alec Neil and George wrote Alba’s economic policy. It focuses on building the economy through a massive house building programme. To achieve this a new land tax will be brought in, land will be compulsorily purchased, and crash training courses will be provided to create the labour to build, therefore creating jobs and boosting the economy. The Alba Party plan to build environmentally friendly housing, not in huge estates, but in pockets of houses to help population growth throughout Scotland. Their aim is 30,000 houses per year.

George also spoke about pensions partly funded by a sovereign renewables energy fund. He outlined how a Scottish currency could be run in parallel with the sterling for a few years. Like many, I am extremely interested in the economic policies, so for me, this was a very exciting presentation. We had excellent questions from our members, these are a few examples: 

  • Would private/company pension funds be able to invest in a Scottish currency?
  • How do you see Now Scotland interacting going forward with Alba, SNP & Greens?
  • Do you subscribe to the SNP promise  to increase the state pension to the EU average?

You can listen here:

George Kerevan: The Alba Party’s Economic Plans

I hope you enjoyed listening to George, I found his talk and answers to be clear and interesting. We had loads of good comments so I think our Edinburgh & Lothians members were definitely engaged

Our Next Meeting:

Our next meeting is being held on Tuesday the 18th of May. We are hoping for a good turnout. It will be a chat meeting among our members to take stock of the current political situation and to decide how the group will progress from here. At present, we have no further speakers organised, but all suggestions are gratefully accepted!

Craig Berry talks about the SNP Commonweal Group

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Julia Laurie, convenor of Edinburgh & Lothians P4Indy group, writes:

This is from our first meeting of 2021, and the year has not started well, with bad weather, rising Covid numbers, not to mention the end of the Brexit transition period with the awful consequences for Scotland becoming immediately apparent. So it’s good to get together again with our local members..

One of our members suggested that we invite Craig Berry. P4Indy does not support any individual political party, but whether you are a member of the SNP or simply lend them your vote, we do need the party to achieve our goal, and certainly need to know of developments within the party. So I decided to ask Craig. He responded very quickly, quite delighted to have the opportunity to talk to us, and I am very glad he did, as it was a really enjoyable meeting. You can listen to it here:

Pensioners for Independence
Pensioners for Independence
Craig Berry: SNP Commonweal Group
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Background …

Craig started by telling us a little about himself, and how he came to set up the SNP Commonweal group. He is a fervent believer in the Common Weal think-tank aims and he wants to bring as many of these aims directly into the SNP, with the aim of trying to influence policy-making.

We had a great variety of questions from our members:

  • is there too much centralisation within the SNP,
  • are policies agreed at Conference by the members taken forward,
  • Do you think we can persuade the SNP to make the election in May a plebiscite?
  • How do you endeavour to engage with SNP policies?
  • What do you think of the Salmond/Neal recovery plan?
  • how we can influence the party,  which made the meeting very interesting, and indeed fun.

Overall, it was a very good meeting, and our members who were able to join, really enjoyed it. Craig comes over as a forward looking, passionate young activist, and boy, do we need plenty of them! I do hope you enjoyed listening to this recording.

At our next meeting….

… to be held on Tuesday the 9th February, we have Dr Kirsty Hughes, Director and Founder of the Scottish Centre on European Relations speaking to us. She has published extensively, including books, reports, and policy papers, as well as contributing to a wide range of national and international media outlets. Her research focus has included: the UK, Scotland and Brexit, EU democracy, the politics of the Eurozone crisis, the EU enlargement to central and eastern Europe, and Turkey’s EU accession process. Kirsty spoke to us in November of 2019, and much has changed since then, so we are very much looking forward to this meeting.