Salmond and Sturgeon Want the English Fish for More Fat Subsidies

Shakethedisease

ruggedtoast wrote: »

You do have a point. It's outrageous that Scotland hasn't got at least three more major airports. Each one costs about as much as ten hospitals but they should just be built anyway. By Westminster. Or England as its otherwise known. Of course shipping from these airports will cost about 7 times more than just sending a lorry down to Stansted so they'll have to be subsidised too. Scotland can pay for that out of its own taxation from the people working in all the left shoe factories we're going to have to build so the Nats have somewhere to work to "restore Scotland's pride". Maybe that man who writes Wings Over Scotland passionately from his Braveheart home in Bath can finally move back and work in one.

He seems to be quite attached to Bath for some reason. It must be the Internet connection he needs for his important blog. If the hated English arm of IT oppression, BT would only give him fiber and a movie package for less than 20 quid a month in the honest Glasgow council estate he craves he would be right back there. With Sean Connery as a neighbour.

And another four ferry ports.

Then instead of driving loads of whisky down to Portsmouth and zipping them over the channel for export to France, they can get loaded on a boat at Inverness and spend about two weeks bobbing around in the ocean. This will cost ten times as much as a regular crossing too but that's ok because tractor production is soaring.

Your article also ignores the fact that 70% of Scotland's trade is with England. Or to rephrase that in Nationalist parlance, England steals 70% of Scotland's stuff and only offers useless bits of paper called pounds in return. So you need to in incorporate that too, into your cobblers.

Thank you.

No, the point made was that revenues and GDP are being credited under England's column. No matter that the product was produced and manufactured in Scotland. It shouldn't matter where the product's exit point from these shores are.. Like you say all the biggest ports at in SE England.

Exports are definitely marked as part of the regional GDP or the port where they are exported. Biggest ports in the UK are in the greater SE of England. Also high value low weight electronics and medical products are predominantly shipped from Gatwick / Heathrow / Stansted. This is why the SNP acted with speed to keep Prestwick alive for post 2014

elantan

Shakethedisease wrote: »

Must be all those years that pro-independence peeps have had to put up with being called 'separatists' of a 'Blood and Soil' movement, who are brainwashed fools and racist yobs blindy following a leader compared to Mussolini, Mugabe, Milosevic, Kim Jong-Il, Ghengis Khan and Hitler himself I suppose.

Mabye the author was giving some love back.

I'm not going into the subsidy myth thing with you again. You always just end things by calling me a brainwashed, racist yob who blindly follows a leader likened to Mussolini....

It was Jacobite Nazi separatist scum I got ... Along with yer getting two to the head... I felt the love

ruggedtoast

Shakethedisease wrote: »

No, the point made was that revenues and GDP are being credited under England's column. No matter that the product was produced and manufactured in Scotland. It shouldn't matter where the product's exit point from these shores are.. Like you say all the biggest ports at in SE England.

The irony being if your gambit for independence had paid off you'd be faced with having no currency union, no trade treaties with anyone let alone rUK and no obvious way to export anything.

Anyway, whatever, this was all done to death last year, it doesn't matter now and nothing will change your mind.

CLAPTON

Shakethedisease wrote: »

Must be all those years that pro-independence peeps have had to put up with being called 'separatists' of a 'Blood and Soil' movement, who are brainwashed fools and racist yobs blindy following a leader compared to Mussolini, Mugabe, Milosevic, Kim Jong-Il, Ghengis Khan and Hitler himself I suppose.

Mabye the author was giving some love back.

I'm not going into the subsidy myth thing with you again. You always just end things by calling me a brainwashed, racist yob who blindly follows a leader likened to Mussolini....

We have never discussed the 'subsidy myth' as I don't care about it.

I believe that the sovereign government should distribute subsidy on a basis of need and not on a basis that 'to the rich should be given' or on the basis to 'bribe ' the Scots to vote labour.
Obviously you don't agree that 'need' is the proper way but that's where we differ, because you put nationalism before social justice.

Shakethedisease

ruggedtoast wrote: »

The irony being if your gambit for independence had paid off you'd be faced with having no currency union, no trade treaties with anyone let alone rUK and no obvious way to export anything.

Anyway, whatever, this was all done to death last year, it doesn't matter now and nothing will change your mind.

Good luck with that EU referendum, and all those lovely exports, balance of trade deficits, banks leaving in droves and oddles of trade treaties... down the pan.

And no, I don't suppose you'll be changing your mind anytime soon either. Why should I then ?

zagubov

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Anyway, whatever, this was all done to death last year, it doesn't matter now and nothing will change your mind.

It was done to death but these zombie threads keep rising from the grave.

The NOs won and the YES side lost. The NO campaign are to be congratulated for their efficiency.:T

Nobody really wants a rerun of the referendum, nor is there any need for such a thing.

The YES campaign are identifying their new role in politics and the NO campaign can afford to be less defensive about the fruits of their success.

Shakethedisease

Generali wrote: »

Some whisky revenues will be correctly credited to the UK treasury. For example, Diageo owns the following whisky brands:

Johnnie Walker, Buchanan's, Cardhu, Justerini & Brooks (J&B), Bell's, Black & White, White Horse, Logan, Caol Ila, Vat 69, Oban, Talisker, Lagavulin, Glen Ord, Glenkinchie, Dalwhinnie, Cragganmore, Clynelish, Singleton, Haig, Royal Lochnagar, Glen Elgin, Knockando, The Dimple Pinch

The corporation tax from the sale of those whiskies would most likely be paid to London rather than Edinburgh in the situation where there was a fiscal split between Scotland and England as the headquarters are in England. In theory corporation tax is payable in the country where the profits are earned but in practice that is easily overcome using licencing and transfer pricing.

If the product profits come from Scotland.. why should there be a 'fiscal split' on the tax because the Headquarters are elsewhere ? Blimey why all the fuss about Amazon, Vodaphone and Starbucks then.. Just let them get on with it because it's only something that should happen 'in theory'.

Diageo (Cayman Islands) or whatever entity owns those brands would charge Diageo (Scotland) a licencing fee for the right to sell whisky under the brands. That negates the need to pay any corporation tax in Scotland and most of the need to pay it in the UK. They probably have an agreement to pay 1% tax with the Dutch, Irish or Luxembourg Governments (not really pointing the finger at Diageo, this is just how modern business works).

There will be a modest tax payment to the English Government but it will be very modest.

As above. And you're only talking about corporation tax. What about VAT, duties etc etc.. and what about the :-

Exports are definitely marked as part of the regional GDP or the port where they are exported.

... part ? You seem to have missed that one. Why are they marked as exports from the regions in where the ports are ? Why would that be ? It's a bit strange isn't it ?

It's worth noting that after the huffing and puffing of STD's blogger friend, he finds a total variance in spending figures of a little over £114,000,000. That's not a lot vs a total spend of £544,363,000,000.

The article is from 2006/2007. And let's face it, if it's not in officialdom and no newspaper will touch it ( for obvious reasons).. then where else are these sort of things going to appear ?

And what about supermarkets and the like ?

During the last financial year, 2012/13, Tesco reported UK sales of £48,216,000,000. Much of this is food which is not liable for VAT. On my last trip to the supermarket, around 15% of the amount spent was on non-food items, and so liable for VAT. That’s as good an estimate as any in order to work out some rough calculations...

...With a standard VAT rate of 20%, and assuming zero-rated food items make up 85% of Tesco’s turnover, this means the company forwards roughly £1.44 billion annually in VAT to George Osborne’s account books.

This figure doesn’t include other taxes paid by Tesco to the UK Treasury, such as corporation tax. The company says that it paid a total of £1.5 billion in direct taxation to the Exchequer in 2012/13, a figure which includes corporation tax, property taxes etc, but doesn’t include VAT payments. All this money is counted by the UK Treasury as revenue originating from Cheshunt in Hertfordshire, just beyond the boundary of Greater London, where the company’s head office is located and its tax returns are filed.


..with the additional assumption that Tesco’s Scottish stores each generate the same average revenue as stores elsewhere in the UK, this gives us a ballpark figure of £1.44bn VAT + £1.5bn direct taxation x (128 Scottish stores/3146 UK stores) – working out at £119 million annually in tax payments to the UK Treasury from sales and profits generated by Tesco operations in Scotland..



Scotland is not credited with a penny of this amount....this is the hidden Scottish revenue from just one supermarket chain

Or

Much of the alcohol duty paid by our whisky industry is not counted as revenue from Scotland. Alcohol produced in the UK which is exported abroad becomes subject to UK alcohol duty at the point of export, and a large proportion of Scotland’s multibillion whisky exports gets shipped out from ports in England. The UK Treasury counts the duty levied on this whisky as income from the tax region in which the port is situated. Billions of pounds of Scottish revenue is magicked away in the official statistics, and doesn’t count as Scottish revenue. It masquerades as revenue from other parts of the UK, most commonly as revenue from London. In total, the extra revenues which don’t currently figure in the GERS stats, but would accrue to an independent Scottish Treasury, would likely be larger than the entire annual income from the North Sea.

Is none of this true ? ( it's from a blogger friend ). Are all these revenues, and export duties credited to Scotland after all ?.. And would they not be 'in theory' if Scotland was independent ?

I read a comment tonight on another article where the person commenting said exasperatedly 'In short Westminster can't seem to make up it's mind whether it can afford to keep Scotland, or whether it can afford to lose it !!!'... For my money, coupled with the desperation of the No side of the referendum campaign that Scotland shouldn't vote Yes at any cost ( quick polls are close, let's vow something quick )... It's probably the latter. :cool:

Shakethedisease

Generali wrote: »

That's not my point.

My point is that companies should pay corporation tax in the jurisdiction where the profit is generated but don't. If the SNP can square that circle then they will be carried through the streets by a thousand cheering finance ministers but as nobody else can I wouldn't hold your breath.

To expect to book a revenue in Scotland that is entirely fictitious is a great way to plan for bankruptcy.

No-one's 'booking' anything. Just exampling for you a complete lack of transparency in where exactly the money is going out, and coming in ( in theory ) north of the border. And that there may very well be more than a few quirks and loopholes, here and there, that see a few billion in revenues credited to quite the wrong GDP.

As well as a real difference between money/taxes/VAT and revenues that are collected in the UK, Scotland as part of, as a whole. compared to FFA or independence, where again, more than a few billions, that don't now, and don't appear anywhere in GERS, which would be heading north quick smart.

Whisky exports being credited wrongly is shocking ! It's a major Scottish product, and earner. In fact it's a major UK earner too. It should be credited fully as such and where it comes from, not from which port it leaves from. I notice you didn't say my 'blogger friend' was wrong about VAT/Supermarkets either.

However, FFA or Devo-Max, even the proposals for them. May provide a little more transparency than there is now.

Even Harris Tweed ! :eek:

While the HTA would like you to think that the Hebrides are the centre of the exporting world for tweeds, as you will be misled by this HTA World Presence web-page, this is not strictly accurate. Indeed, all the fabric is created, dyed and woven there, but the vast majority of the product, and research indicates a substantial percentage of it, leaves the Islands by road haulage by Woody's Express Parcels and ferry for a depot in Inverness.

From Inverness I am reliably informed other haulage companies, namely DHL, UPS and FED EX take the fabric on the next step of the journey, to destinations such as East Midlands Airport (DHL, UPS), Newcastle Airport (FED EX) and all ports south. Very little of this Scottish iconic fabric actually leaves via a Scottish airport or dock. From this, I can only conclude that it doesn’t count in favour of Scottish exports and adds tonnage and financial gain to English exports, as bales of Harris Tweed exit via English ports.

What we have here is an iconic Scot’s product which has the appearance of being virtually deleted from the Scottish balance of payments ledger, while simultaneously accruing to England’s. To reiterate, as per UK export law, it is the port of exit that counts when it comes to registering overseas shipping, not the country of manufacture...

The important aspect I got from all of this is from London’s perspective, when you spread this “port of exit” requirement across all of Scotland’s exporting industries, whether it’s tweed, electronics or shortbread, they have created a wonderful statistical tool that ‘anyone’ can use to perpetuate the ‘too poor” case for the Scots’ economy and produce ‘believable’ statistical data..

http://weegiewarbler.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/pulling-wool-no-credit-for-tweed.html

The above 'quirk' needs sorting in order to provide a far more accurate picture of Scotland's economic status as it is now, and compared should FFA or independence occur in the future. Simply providing GERs links, that are taken from Treasury figures, that are allocating Scottish product revenues/GDP to exit ports, not in Scotland... hmmmm.. I dunno.

But I have no wish to re-run independence arguments either.

Those polls yesterday certainly caused a bit of a stir didn't they ! The Tories are now producing literature saying 'Vote Labour, get SNP'... and Labour up here are producing 'Vote SNP, Get Tories'..

Both obviously a bit rattled.

skintmacflint

Shakethedisease wrote: »

Who are you voting for then ? Just so we all have an equal chance in terms of ripping into them if we don't like them. And mabye point out to you how deluded/foolish you are and 'how it will all come crashing down' and brainwashed with sound bites ? Fair's fair after all.

Is that you Alex, or Nicola , posting under an alias on MSE?

In reply to your question , Labour as a strategic vote tbh. Not overly happy about this , but needs must in the current circumstances. . Feel free to rip away, I won't take it personally.

Didn't realise you were such a sensitive soul, and took general observations about a political party as a personal insult, considering the negative comments you post about the Red Tories, etc But there you go, rant ahead.

skintmacflint

elantan wrote: »

this one had me :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:wish i had the talent to say things like that off the cuff

Think you're showing your age here, but don't disagree laughter is good for you. I laugh a lot at some things on MSE as well, so enjoy.