Alex Salmond, the First Minister for Scotland, has said that comments by Tony Abbott, the Australian Prime Minster, that the world would not \u201cbe helped by an independent Scotland\u201d are \u201cfoolish, hypocritical and offensive\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Abbott who is on a visit to London told the Times newspaper that it was \u201chard to see how the world would be helped by an independent Scotland.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the people who would like to see the break-up of the United Kingdom are not the friends of justice, the friends of freedom, and the countries that cheer at the prospect are not the countries whose company one would like to keep,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Scottish voters will go to the polls on 18 September and will be asked the question \u201cShould Scotland be an independent country?\u201d<\/p>\n
Alex Salmond jumped on Mr. Abbotts\u2019 comments and told BBC Scotland they were hypocritical and \u201coffensive to the Scottish people\u201d considering the benefits Australia has got since becoming independent from Britain after the Second World War.<\/p>\n
“They are foolish, actually, because of the way he said it. To say the people of Scotland who supported independence weren’t friends of freedom or justice, I mean, the independence process is about freedom and justice,” he said.<\/p>\n
He added that even the British government could recognize the need for a democratic vote on the issue and that the referendum was a \u201cmodel of democratic conduct\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Scottish premiere also said that Abbott was gaffe prone and had put his foot in it, with his comments.<\/p>\n
One of his previous gaffes involved referring to Canada as Canadia during a press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Ottawa in June.<\/p>\n
Source: RT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alex Salmond, the First Minister for Scotland, has said that comments by Tony Abbott, the Australian Prime Minster, that the world would not \u201cbe helped by an independent Scotland\u201d are \u201cfoolish, hypocritical and offensive\u201d. Mr Abbott who is on a visit to London told the Times newspaper that it was \u201chard to see how the … Continue reading “Oz leader’s comments on Scotland ‘foolish, hypocritical, offensive’”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,123],"tags":[8974,837,9720,1096,1945,9715,1946],"class_list":["post-15238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-world","tag-alex-salmond","tag-australia","tag-canadia","tag-independence","tag-scotland","tag-tony-abbott","tag-uk"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15238"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15239,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15238\/revisions\/15239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}