Salmond and Sturgeon Want the English Fish for More Fat Subsidies

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Shakethedisease wrote: »

...Re pension headlines a bit more in the way of consistency may be in order however.;)

Scottish pensions to be slashed, says Miliband (Telegraph) Scottish pensions to increase, says Miliband (Mail On Sunday)

Perhaps if you actually read the articles Shakey, it would become clear. They mean: SNP Bad for pensions; Labour Good for pensions.

Incidentally, the words you give do not actually appear in those articles.

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skintmacflint wrote: »

Glad to see you're admitting mentioning FFA was simply a trap for Labour and the other parties to fall into . Looks like it has backfired on her somewhat. She certainly wasn't looking confident or credible in that debate with Brewster. She came across as a a local councillor in a bun fight,where has all her statesman qualities gone.

Do you know where this 15 billion additional onshore growth by 2020 is coming from? You're a member of Business for Scotland. Do they know?

Nice of Sturgeon to publicly admit, in an effort to calm waters, she couldn't deliver FFA. IMO it serves to highlight SNPs single purpose at Westminster is to ensure the agreed constitutional changes pass through Westminster, and are possibly enhanced, at any cost including all their talk of anti austerity policies, and the poor etc.

Normal SNP voters ( not the demented ones) expect spin and manipulation from every other party SNP have demonised up here but not from their own party . Which pretends it's honest , upfront, and always has Scotlands best interest at heart.

SNP better be careful with their 'long game ' plan here. Because the clock is ticking on them being well and truly found out that Scotlands best interests is only relevant if it happens to agree with SNPs best interest.

Yes, the "Debate" was an bit of a bun fight. I looked at it on BBCi. I would have used a bell if I had been the interviewer (a technique I've used before at a workshop incidentally - it works).
Sturgeon was evasive on the question on what the SNP would do about the £7.6 billion/£8 billion deficit business. She seems to think that the SNP Government can be immune from these things while happily contributing to a still higher deficit. It's like going for a swim in deep water with leaky water wings and learning how to swim as you go.

Both she and Murphy were interrupting and talking over others.

It was mentioned in that debate (I forget by whom, Murphy I think) that at the start of the Smith Commission discussions, the matter of FFA was taken off the table for discussion by Swinney. I had not heard that before but explains a lot about some muttering about dirty tricks by the SNP. If that is so then it's clear that the SNP went through the Smith process in bad faith.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Shakethedisease wrote: »

Mabye you're right *shrugs*.. The 'black hole' keeps moving.

OK....

I'm not going to try and score points here, I'll just keep to as clear an explanation as I can, as I'd genuinely like to spur a bit of debate about how Scotland could improve it's financial position regardless of politics.

The current annual deficit for Scotland is in the range of £14 bn to £15 bn a year.

The 'black hole' of that is £7.6bn. This is how much extra Scotland would have to borrow each year to cover our current higher spending per capita versus what we would if we kept to the same ratio of borrowing to GDP as the rest of the UK.

At the moment we don't really borrow the whole £14bn, Scotland's debt under any credible calculation is only a population share of the UK's debt, so in effect the £7.6bn is our subsidy from the rest of the UK's taxpayers each year.

Now before anyone gets their nose out of joint, Scotland absolutely deserves that subsidy, our population is sparse and infrastructure is therefore very spread out, it simply costs more (per person) to run a country the size of Scotland with only 6 million people than it does in more densely populated areas. But the fact remains, it IS a huge subsidy.

To put that number in perspective, £7.6bn is roughly equivalent to the entire local government budget for Scotland (so all the councils, their staff, services, etc), or about two thirds of the Scottish NHS.

The current changes to the Barnett formula don't really change much, some tax raising powers are being transferred to Scotland, and the total from those taxes collected is being deducted from Barnett. The subsidy remains intact under the smith commission output that Scotland should be no worse off after the changes.

Full Fiscal Autonomy is a different beast altogether. It would end Barnett and the subsidy inherent to it, and we'd need to raise taxes, reduce spending, or increase borrowing to compensate, but either way the full burden would be borne by Scotland, without any subsidy from rUK.

So why is this a good thing?

And what ideas do people have for closing the fiscal gap to the rest of the UK and increasing Scottish financial/economic performance?

kabayiri

Shakethedisease wrote: »

...
7.6 billion is a lot. Scotland's share of the UK deficit. Mabye would be better to try something a bit different managing Scotland's economy, and ensure the powers to do so.

You and other SNP supporters are expecting Hamish and others to buy in to independence or complete financial autonomy to quote "try something a bit different".

Oh, well, that's not risky then!

It's all a bit hit n hope isn't it?

Why can't Scotland do things now. Encourage new growth industries. Prove the credentials.

Generali

Let's try to make this deficit stuff simple. For the purposes of this post, bn = 000,000,000.

Scotland's GDP is a little under $250bn = £170bn.

If we take state spending in Scotland, add Scotland's proportional stake in UK state spending on things like the Foreign Office, defence and debt interest and then subtract that figure from taxes we get a number which is is about £12.5bn.

Traditionally deficits are measured as a proportion of GDP so Scotland's deficit if she were responsible for taxation and spending per the SNP's wishes would be about 7.4% of GDP.

As the price of oil has continued to fall the deficit for the past financial year is expected to be a bit more than £14bn for this financial year, 2015-6. That's about 8.3% of GDP. If Scotland is to have full fiscal autonomy in this financial year, i.e. raise the money by taxes and borrowing that is spent in Scotland plus their contribution to the overall costs of running the UK, then they will have to fill that gap with by cutting spending or increasing taxes or by borrowing some money.

The gap between the UK borrowing 4% of GDP on Scotland's behalf (as well as on behalf of Cornwall, Wessex and Wales) and the Scottish spending gap is about £7.6bn it is supposed.

This is entirely factual, based on the facts as supplied to us (e.g. GERS figures from the Scottish Government). If someone is prepared to claim that the GERS figures are out enough so that the Scottish Government is secretly solvent I'd love to see the credible argument they put up. 'I don't accept GERS figures' just makes you look shifty.

Generali

I think we X-posted HAMISH!!!

Generali

Oh and just a thought for those that want FFA.

The Tories are looking to save £12bn a year from the UK budget. FFA would get them almost 2/3rds of the way there at the stroke of a pen.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

kabayiri wrote: »

You and other SNP supporters are expecting Hamish and others to buy in to independence or complete financial autonomy to quote "try something a bit different".

It's pretty doubtful I would ever vote for indy, and that's as much an emotional position for me as it is for nationalists, but in terms of more devolution or fiscal autonomy I'm far more pragmatic.

I have much less objection in principle to these than I do to Indy, and I could be persuaded if anyone could put up a good economic case for why it might realistically make us better off as a country.

But to date nobody has been able to do that, and in fact, just the opposite... The economics of the situation are so clear cut that we'd be worse off, and not just a little but quite dramatically so.... That I genuinely don't understand why they want it?

Hopefully we can get some non-partisan debate going to explain?

Why can't Scotland do things now. Encourage new growth industries. Prove the credentials.

I'd be interested to hear any ideas for that. Loads of countries have full control over their own economic policies. No country in the developed world has been able to achieve higher growth than the UK last year.

What are the SNP policies to increase growth, and perhaps also, if it can be done why isn't everyone doing it?

kabayiri

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

...
Hopefully we can get some non-partisan debate going to explain?



I'd be interested to hear any ideas for that. Loads of countries have full control over their own economic policies. No country in the developed world has been able to achieve higher growth than the UK last year.

What are the SNP policies to increase growth, and perhaps also, if it can be done why isn't everyone doing it?

We probably know the answer to that last question, but it's a tough answer to accept.

There is no magic political solution. If Scotland somehow discovered a brilliant taxation method; it would be copied by others in a very short period.

kabayiri

Generali wrote: »

Oh and just a thought for those that want FFA.

The Tories are looking to save £12bn a year from the UK budget. FFA would get them almost 2/3rds of the way there at the stroke of a pen.

How about 'phased FFA' ?

Say £1.6bn per annum reduction for each year of the next parliament.

Take that money; and put it into an isolated Wealth Fund.

That meets 2 SNP goals doesn't it? FFA + a Wealth Fund.