Salmond and Sturgeon Want the English Fish for More Fat Subsidies

Shakethedisease

N1AK wrote: »

Ex-solicitor, active in party politics for 30 years, professional politician for ~16 years, hand-picked by Salmond; sounds like a real fresh face to shake up politics :rotfl:

I could show you a video of Salmond kicking an Englishman to death singing flower of Scotland and you'd deny it meant anything. What people communicate isn't the same as what they say then I'm certainly not going to persuade you.

I am the same age as Nicola, and grew up in the same area and went to the same leisure centres, pubs etc. My boys go to her former secondary. I know where she comes from, and I know what she came from. I also know what she must've seen during the late 70's and 80's because many members of my own family were put out of work because of it. The area has never recovered and remains an unemployment blackspot to this day.

Nicola didn't come down with the fairies. Nor a silver spoon in her mouth. Dreghorn ( I am there every day ) isn't exactly rolling in cash, and certainly wasn't when she was there. Neither were her parents. She's stuck consistently to pretty much everything she's always stood for ( CND leanings for example ). And is to the left of Salmond. She has obviously had to work very hard to get where she is.

Oh but feel free why don't you to make completely unsubstantiated attributions of someone saying something they didn't.. then extrapolate it out to mean whatever you like. If it's your own opinion say so. Otherwise, please back it up with something. Salmond has never said what you said he did. Because if he had you'd have had the link up here so fast my screen would be a blur.

As to your last point, I disagree. Stocking up, just enough, antipathy between the English and Scots is a very smart thing to do when your objective is to end the Union.

I think the Tories are doing a pretty good job of doing just that at the moment. Stoking up English nationalism/British nationalism, EVEL and voicing all sorts of horror at the thought that Scots may choose a different flavour of Scottish MP this time round. All in order to save their party at perhaps the expense of the Union. It's very transparent. The newspapers/media are full of it at the present time if you need pointers ?

Am surprised you haven't noticed it at all..since you seem so hot on the SNP and Salmond blatantly doing it for years ( even though you have no actual evidence to point to ).. :rotfl:

Leanne1812

N1AK wrote: »

Ex-solicitor, active in party politics for 30 years, professional politician for ~16 years, hand-picked by Salmond; sounds like a real fresh face to shake up politics :rotfl:

I could show you a video of Salmond kicking an Englishman to death singing flower of Scotland and you'd deny it meant anything. What people communicate isn't the same as what they say then I'm certainly not going to persuade you.

As to your last point, I disagree. Stocking up, just enough, antipathy between the English and Scots is a very smart thing to do when your objective is to end the Union.

So, you can't provide evidence of your claim about Alex Salmond so you'll just try a ruse and hope it'll be forgotten.

Can you provide any links at all?

Double standards I think that it's ok for Alex (who is no longer FM) and Nicola to endure constant ridicule but how dare they say anything derogatory about the Union or any other politicians.

CLAPTON

Leanne1812 wrote: »

Would you care to share your inventive vision for the UK going forward?

I don't recall saying I was all for unending borrowing, can you point out where I have?

Unless I misunderstand, you are against 'austerity', service cuts and against tax increases, without drawing the only conclusion that you want more borrowing without an end in sight.

The inventive alternatives are to use the resources (money) that we have more effectively.

N1AK

Leanne1812 wrote: »

So, you can't provide evidence of your claim about Alex Salmond so you'll just try a ruse and hope it'll be forgotten.

Can you provide any links at all?

Ahh the false assertion and strawmen schools of debating technique; we certainly don't see them enough around here.

A more civil response may have left me inclined to do the donkey work for you. For reference there is a difference between choosing not to do something, and being unable to do it.

The accusation of double standards makes me wonder if you are taking the time to consider others points before responding. How about you highlight where I applied double standards, and ridicule, with regards to either character? You won't even have to find a link. Then once you've done that I'll go and do considerably more work looking for sources for quotations by a comparatively minor player in a political event that happened 5 years ago.

N1AK

There's a few things I'd like you to validate a few other statements with an external reference while we're at it so that they can be legitimately be accepted into this thread:

Shakethedisease wrote: »

I am the same age as Nicola

Shakethedisease wrote: »

and grew up in the same area and went to the same leisure centres, pubs etc.

Shakethedisease wrote: »

My boys go to her former secondary.

Shakethedisease wrote: »

I know where she comes from, and I know what she came from.

Shakethedisease wrote: »

I also know what she must've seen during the late 70's and 80's

Shakethedisease wrote: »

many members of my own family were put out of work because of it.

Sources please.



But more seriously:

Shakethedisease wrote: »

I think the Tories... voicing all sorts of horror at the thought that Scots may choose a different flavour of Scottish MP this time round.

Could I have a source for this?

Leanne1812

N1AK wrote: »

Ahh the false assertion and strawmen schools of debating technique; we certainly don't see them enough around here.

A more civil response may have left me inclined to do the donkey work for you. For reference there is a difference between choosing not to do something, and being unable to do it.

The accusation of double standards makes me wonder if you are taking the time to consider others points before responding. How about you highlight where I applied double standards, and ridicule, with regards to either character? You won't even have to find a link. Then once you've done that I'll go and do considerably more work looking for sources for quotations by a comparatively minor player in a political event that happened 5 years ago.

The SNP battled passionately to leave the Union, Salmond made some pretty odious remarks about how he would be willing to exploit the "mighty hand" fate had dealt the SNP in 2010 to get a better deal for Scotland at the expense of the rest of the UK.

ThIs ^^

My response to you was regarding the paragraph above. I'd like to see evidence of Alex Salmond making these odious remarks. If you can't provide any then I'll assume you made it up.

Leanne1812

CLAPTON wrote: »

Unless I misunderstand, you are against 'austerity', service cuts and against tax increases, without drawing the only conclusion that you want more borrowing without an end in sight.

The inventive alternatives are to use the resources (money) that we have more effectively.

When will the end in sight be under the present plans?

Have any targets been met?

Is it working or is it time to consider an alternative?

CLAPTON

Leanne1812 wrote: »

When will the end in sight be under the present plans?

Have any targets been met?

Is it working or is it time to consider an alternative?

I've already said that the deficit has been reduced although not as quickly as originally planned (probably a good thing).
It is now planned that the UK stops increasing the debt in 2016/7/8.

What do you mean by alternative :
to increase borrowing?
to reduce spending?
to increase taxes?
to make more effective use of existing money?


The UK economy is growing, employment is growing, inflation is very low which to me are all very encouraging signs.
In general we as a country are doing better than most comparable countries.

kabayiri

Leanne1812 wrote: »

When will the end in sight be under the present plans?
...

Define "end in sight".

2018/2019 is only the point at which government income and expenditure are roughly in balance.

*If* we achieve this by the target date (a big ask) then there will be the small matter of paying off a debt which will be approaching 2,000 BILLION pounds.

Even at a rate of £100 billion pounds over payment per annum, that would be 20 years.

How about "no debt in 2040"? How does that sound?

Leanne1812

CLAPTON wrote: »

I've already said that the deficit has been reduced although not as quickly as originally planned (probably a good thing).
It is now planned that the UK stops increasing the debt in 2016/7/8.

What do you mean by alternative :
to increase borrowing?
to reduce spending?
to increase taxes?
to make more effective use of existing money?


The UK economy is growing, employment is growing, inflation is very low which to me are all very encouraging signs.
In general we as a country are doing better than most comparable countries.

Have a read Clapton, this might clarify alternative.

It's nothing too radical.



DID First Minister Nicola Sturgeon get her sums wrong when she put forward an alternative to Westminster’s austerity agenda ... and does it make any difference if she did?

The Treasury certainly thinks she made a mistake.

It costed measures the Scottish First Minister laid out in a speech in February, in which she argued for a more gradual approach to cutting the UK Government’s deficit and debt.

Sturgeon suggested that, even if departmental spending was increased by 0.5% per year in real terms in the next parliament, debt would still FALL as a percentage of GDP from 2015/16 onwards.

The Treasury costings, on the contrary, suggest debt as a percentage of GDP under the Sturgeon proposal would GROW in the first two years of the parliament and then begin falling in 2018/19 from 82.2% to 81.4% in 2019/20.

It would still appear, though, that Sturgeon is justified in saying that the debt to GDP ratio could fall even if real term departmental spending is increasing, although the speed of this fall is not as rapid as she suggested, and the debt to GDP at the end of the parliament is fractionally higher than at the beginning (81.1%).

The reason for the differences between the Sturgeon and Treasury costings appear to be driven largely by assumptions about how the additional borrowing adds to debt interest repayments.

Ultimately, however, it is difficult to ascertain exactly the extent to which different assumptions made by each ‘side’ are driving the result.

The SNP does not appear to have produced an exposition of their analysis, while the Treasury analysis could certainly be more transparent (an attempt to replicate their figures requires cross-referencing various tables and debt ready reckoners published by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the interpretation of which can be ambiguous.

This all poses a number of questions.

First, does it make sense for the Treasury to cost opposition party policy? There would seem to be a stronger case for this role to be undertaken by an independent body. But George Osborne previously ruled out the idea of the OBR performing this role.

Second, how meaningful is it to use the Autumn Statement as the baseline against which the Sturgeon proposals are assessed? As has been pointed out by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the fiscal tightening implied by the Autumn Statement is stronger than that proposed by any of the main UK parties, including the Conservatives.

Third, and most importantly, how significant is the difference between the estimated debt/GDP ratio under the Sturgeon plans made by the Treasury (81%) with that suggested by Sturgeon (79%)?

Arguably, this is a fairly minor difference. In both cases, the debt/GDP ratio remains high in the context of the period since the 1970s.

But whether the ratio is 79% or 81% doesn’t undermine the general point that Sturgeon was making.

With growth remaining lacklustre, economic output below potential, and with interest rates at the Zero Lower Bound, there is a strong argument for saying that now is not the right time to pursue rapid austerity.

Instead, use fiscal policy to help stimulate demand, and pursue austerity when interest rates can be reduced to offset the negative effect of austerity on demand.

Both sides could improve the transparency of their policy costings. But Sturgeon’s case for a slower path of deficit reduction is not undermined by splitting hairs on whether debt:GDP might be 79% or 81% in five years time.

David Eiser is a Research Fellow at the Centre on Constitutional Change and the University of Stirling