George Kerevan: Alba Party’s Economic Plans

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!