Margo MacDonald: Half-truths are all Greek to me

The response to this dreadful apocalyptic warning was probably not quite what the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) had anticipated. Given the weather, it sounded a great idea to be like the poor men of western Europe.

Since we're doomed to living with the sunshine we've got, an alternative activity for rainy days could be just sitting around indoors, thinking about our national debt.

But the IEA's conclusions on the possibilities for the Scottish economy kyboshed even that faint fluttering amongst activist Scots . . . these financial whizz kids say we'll be in debt to the tune of 110 billion, and that's just in paying our share of what could be, in 2015, the former United Kingdom's debt.

Can you credit it? The same interchangeable London-based economists who've been warning the Scots of how much we'll rue the day we decide to do our own economic thing and cast off the protective paternalism of the bigger, wealthier English economy, are indicted by their own words of running the Scottish economy into the mire.

If we really are like Portugal and Greece, it certainly wasn't Scottish nationalist management of our resources, including oil and gas, that brought us to this state of economic health.

Don't forget that Unionist politicians and economists had a free rein with the Scottish economy because it was too important to be left to Scots. This fatuous statement of the IEA is probably the clearest yet on the urgent reasons for getting out from under London.

If oil revenues are allocated to Scotland as they would be in an independent country, we'd be quids in. The challenge would be in trying to ensure against the north of England being adversely affected by more attractive development grants and loans to grow employment, investment and business activity in Scotland.

Every developed country that has become independent has experienced a surge of intellectual, innovative and entrepreneurial energy.

Unless the Scots really are genetically inferior, or unless we're quite wrong in believing that there is such a thing as a distinctive society and economy north of the border, there is no reason why the re-birth of autonomy, expressed by an elected parliament, should be any different from elsewhere.

So before believing a word of the dodgy declaration of abject national poverty forecast by the IEA, first ask these less than fastidious political economists who produced the forecasts to predict Scotland's share of the national debt if the Scots decide against independence. What will the difference be in economic activity and out-turn figures?

Per head, will our GDP be greater? Why will this be the case and what different strategies and policies will future UK governments adopt to produce a different outcome from the one that IEA says has produced a Scottish economy just like Portugal and Greece?

The arrogance of the people who produced this report is breath-taking. Thirty-odd years ago, much the same sort of tosh was written about the Scottish economy: independence would pull away its slender supports, business and industry would flee over the border, the oil would run out and there would be no more military shipbuilding on the Clyde.

But cabinet papers and political memoirs mean that we ken noo whit we could only make guesses and calculations aboot then.

We were fed half-truths and deprived of information that was essential to understand and then choose the way forward that was in the Scots' best interests.

Let's not make the same mistake again . . . make the Unionist political economists defend economic policies that allow them to claim the credit for taking an oil-rich economy to the same output and activity statistics as Portugal.

An end of dignity

CHARLIE Russell, who wrote, produced and directed Monday night's BBC2 programme on assisted dying, presented by Sir Terry Pratchett, is to be congratulated.

The film was beautifully shot, but simply produced so that the viewer could concentrate on the deeper questions that many, though not all, will require to answer before deciding on the means and timing of their own death.

Before seeing it, I had doubts the BBC should screen film of someone as they die. I was, and am now even more, lost in admiration for John Smedley. He carried his campaign for the right to choose to the very end of his life.

But before Monday night's showing, I held the view that such filming would be unavoidably intrusive when the person dying had wanted a peaceful end of life experience.

And although I found the film to be both moving and dignified, I still think the choice to die like this should be private.