Salmond and Sturgeon Want the English Fish for More Fat Subsidies

CLAPTON

Leanne1812 wrote: »

You're making it sound very much like I want to be free of the nasty English again......not true as I've stated many times.

I know this is an economics forum and I'm open to listening and learning but there are two sides to the coin here. Those who believe Scotland is better in the union and those who don't. Those who believe the Scottish government/yes campaigns and those who believe the uk gov. I've still got no idea how much we are subsidised by. Does anyone? Can we see a cast iron figure of how much? If we can't get to the nitty gritty with that figure amongst all the other grey areas about uk & Scottish finances surely you can understand my unease about blindly accepting whatever I'm told.

you live in one of the richest countries in the world

there is far further to fall than there is to rise

Generali

Leanne1812 wrote: »

You're making it sound very much like I want to be free of the nasty English again......not true as I've stated many times.

I know this is an economics forum and I'm open to listening and learning but there are two sides to the coin here. Those who believe Scotland is better in the union and those who don't. Those who believe the Scottish government/yes campaigns and those who believe the uk gov. I've still got no idea how much we are subsidised by. Does anyone? Can we see a cast iron figure of how much? If we can't get to the nitty gritty with that figure amongst all the other grey areas about uk & Scottish finances surely you can understand my unease about blindly accepting whatever I'm told.

I'm not asking you to blindly accept a nunber. I'm saying that for a Scottish state to be viable you are willing to believe that the UK and Scottish Governments' figures in GERS are:

1. Wildly inaccurate
2. Wildly inaccurate in such a way as to be helpful to the cause of independence
3. Failing to capture whatever it is that has made up the gap caused by the collapse in the biggest earner for Scotland.

Of course if the GERS figures are so bad as to fail to capture a surplus when predicting a shortfall of c.18% of Government spending (from memory, feel free to cottect the exact number) then presumably the shortfall could just as easily be 20% or 30% or 40%.

You are basing an awful lot on hoping that a group of highly skilled people have got their sums very badly wrong. Cutting Government spending by 20% (thus covering the deficit and the SWF) would be catastrophic for health and welfare in Scotland.

Thrugelmir

Leanne1812 wrote: »

I've still got no idea how much we are subsidised by.

The whole of the UK is subsidised. We fund our standard of living on borrowed money from overseas. That's the reality. As the layers get peeled back through austerity. Then a very different UK may emerge. As fiscal levers pulled tend to create reactions in totally unrelated areas of the economy.

Shakethedisease

Generali wrote: »

It's the new SNP inclusionist slogan. "Unionists go home, English lovers".

I said Scottish Labour and many voters would 'give up and go home' if they had a terrible election result next May. I meant would start to reassess their policies which aren't winning votes in Scotland. Blind unionism, no matter what..being one of them as the Glasgow Labour Councillor makes clear after his u-turn. There will be many more like him if Scottish Labour do really badly in a few months time. It's costing them votes, MP's and MSP's. Which after all, is the actual point of a political party's existence ?

I didn't think I'd.have.to.spell.it.out.literally. for.intelligent.people.here.

Nothing to do with the SNP. There are things that win votes in Scotland, and things that don't. Tory polices ( whoever implements them ) is one, Voting in Westminster so that power is held in Tory hands rather than Holyrood is another. Labour and the Lib Dems will learn from that soon enough if they are both wiped out even further in May 16 at Holyrood.

They'll soon come round. They'll have to if they want to survive. They need votes.

Shakethedisease

WannaBLoaded wrote: »

Yes, very gradual. Just like all fringe parties. They only ever come to heights at a time when the majority of voters are disenchanted with how the country his being run and how much money they have in their pockets. UKIP have snow balled too, and the green party. You could say it is mostly protest votes where people think 'it can't get any worse'.

UKIP is still a fringe party. In Scotland Labour, Lib Dems and Conservatives are.

4 million people voted for a man whose only policy is to get Britain out of the EU. You can't use that logic, it is false logic. The snp propaganda is the reason they have managed to avoid taking on the criticism that should be coming towards them, alex salmonds oil predictions were a big part of the scottish economic plans. All of which would have left you bankrupt.

The SNP have been in government in Scotland since 2007.

Push all you like, david cameron told you clearly it was a once in a generation thing. AKA a minimum of 100 years. Bet you as much as you like tories being re-elected in 2020 (which they will because the economy is on the mend and labour have turned all weird) that it does not trigger a scot referendum.

I'm sure you're right...

Shakethedisease

.string. wrote: »

Oh dear, I have to spell out the (what should have been) obvious even to you. It probably was, but the temptation of yet another irrelevant deflection was too tempting no doubt.

The article I linked to was published during the referendum campaign and reflected the common knowledge of the time that income from oil was on a downward spiral; so after the period when prices expected to remain high.

But did the SNP issue a revision of the White Paper on that point? There was plenty of time to do that.

Did they inform the Scottish people about the developing situation? Oh no, they didn't want to have a blemish on the fairy tale.

Instead they denied true and self-evident economic facts (see Salmond's remarks I quoted.

So they hid the truth and based their campaign on a lie.

That is exactly what is still going on with the SNP and their collective; the lies and misrepresentations continue. Valid economically are pushed side with cautious argument and disdain for anyone who voices them.

The campaign was far, far bigger than the SNP. In fact they admitted months before the referendum that they controlled very little of it. Most of it was just plain grassroots people power getting involved, informing themselves and making up their own minds based on what Hamish's lot was saying, and what the Yes side was saying.

Pure democracy in action. You may have missed most of it though. As you're still under the impression the SNP had carte blanche over the media airwaves to spread 'propaganda' 24/7. You couldn't be more wrong. Everyone was actually told how bad an iScotland would be. 45% didn't believe it though. 50% don't now a year later.

Shakethedisease

Generali wrote: »

I'm not asking you to blindly accept a nunber. I'm saying that for a Scottish state to be viable you are willing to believe that the UK and Scottish Governments' figures in GERS are:

1. Wildly inaccurate
2. Wildly inaccurate in such a way as to be helpful to the cause of independence
3. Failing to capture whatever it is that has made up the gap caused by the collapse in the biggest earner for Scotland.

Of course if the GERS figures are so bad as to fail to capture a surplus when predicting a shortfall of c.18% of Government spending (from memory, feel free to cottect the exact number) then presumably the shortfall could just as easily be 20% or 30% or 40%.

You are basing an awful lot on hoping that a group of highly skilled people have got their sums very badly wrong. Cutting Government spending by 20% (thus covering the deficit and the SWF) would be catastrophic for health and welfare in Scotland.

Jeezo... did you miss the Economist/OBR re public/Govt and NHS spending this week ? So lets rein in the iScotland 'omg the NHS and public spending will be terrible' stuff. Osborne's cuts don't exactly make for thrilling reading either.
Now most people won't have read any of this stuff via the media ( everyone is concentrating on Labour/Syria )... but it's all been shared far and wide in pro-independence and in Scottish circles.

In reality things are tougher. Under plans outlined by George Osborne, the chancellor, on November 25th, Britain will see a decade-long pause in public-spending growth, the longest-running squeeze on Leviathan since the 1950s. Spending will fall from 45% of GDP in 2010 to 36% in 2020, the biggest tightening by any big, rich economy over that period. What does all this mean for the British state?

http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21679219-though-latest-round-cuts-will-be-shallower-billed-british-state-taking

Frances Coppola ‏@Frances_Coppola Nov 28 The projected fall in NHS spending as a share of GDP is actually in the OBR's report


Biggest ever sustained fall in UK spending on NHS as share of economy

Over the course of ten years the Osborne aim is to reduce the state from 45.7% of GDP to 36.5%. This is way beyond the scale of cuts Thatcher managed. Former BBC economics editor Stephanie Flanders called this ‘the biggest cutting of a state anywhere in ten years.’ Indeed, the only bigger cuts have been the brutal shock therapies which happened in Eastern Europe after the Soviet Bloc collapsed...

...There needs to be a reality check. In the 1980s Margaret Thatcher remade British politics as Labour tore itself apart. The same is happening again. Some of the protagonists are even the same people: Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Ken Livingstone. They seem to have learned nothing from the past.
The Tories are being allowed to savage public services and spending, sell off national assets (Eurostar, Royal Mail, with housing associations and Channel 4 next), and punish the poor. Large parts of the Labour Party seem to not care about this or barely understand. History could repeat itself – first as tragedy and now as farce.

http://www.gerryhassan.com/blog/the-tories-are-shrinking-the-state-while-labour-go-back-to-the-1980s/

The Scots really, really didn't like Thatcher polices last time round. Independence might seem a welcome relief soon enough if Osborne is looking to go much further down this particular path. And without any opposition too.

Shakethedisease

elantan wrote: »

Shake have sent ya a pm

Just got it ! Will reply tomorrow.

Generali

Shakethedisease wrote: »

Jeezo... did you miss the Economist/OBR re public/Govt and NHS spending this week ? So lets rein in the iScotland 'omg the NHS and public spending will be terrible' stuff. Osborne's cuts don't exactly make for thrilling reading either.
Now most people won't have read any of this stuff via the media ( everyone is concentrating on Labour/Syria )... but it's all been shared far and wide in pro-independence and in Scottish circles.

http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21679219-though-latest-round-cuts-will-be-shallower-billed-british-state-taking

Frances Coppola ‏@Frances_Coppola Nov 28 The projected fall in NHS spending as a share of GDP is actually in the OBR's report


Biggest ever sustained fall in UK spending on NHS as share of economy



http://www.gerryhassan.com/blog/the-tories-are-shrinking-the-state-while-labour-go-back-to-the-1980s/

The Scots really, really didn't like Thatcher polices last time round. Independence might seem a welcome relief soon enough if Osborne is looking to go much further down this particular path. And without any opposition too.

It seems peverse to vote for independence if you want more Government spending. Unless the GERS figures are very, very wrong indeed; wrong to an extent that isn't really credible, an independent Scotland would be facing years of terrible poverty in the public sector.


Are you really trying to argue that GERS only captures 80% of Scottish taxation or are you willing to accept a lower total of Government spending that is a higher percentage of a much reduced GDP?

Shakethedisease

Generali wrote: »

It seems peverse to vote for independence if you want more Government spending. Unless the GERS figures are very, very wrong indeed; wrong to an extent that isn't really credible, an independent Scotland would be facing years of terrible poverty in the public sector.


Are you really trying to argue that GERS only captures 80% of Scottish taxation or are you willing to accept a lower total of Government spending that is a higher percentage of a much reduced GDP?

I'm willing to accept that you going on about Govt spending in Scotland falling to X levels upon independence. May not be that different from Govt spending under George Osborne. He's got some pretty big plans hasn't he for those ?

The Scottish Budget is going to be cut, from what I've read, a further 10% too. As for GER's have some Wings. 40% of GERS figures aren't under Scottish Govt control.

• GERS doesn’t represent a full set of accounts;
• Currently 40% of the costs (and the policies which drive them) aren’t under Scottish Government control because they’re reserved to Westminster.

No-one's voting for more Govt spending. They're voting for the above 40% and everything else to transfer to Holyrood control. And for some real choice through the ballot box of parties we want to see running the show. That usually doesn't include the Conservative party up here. Not for the last few decades anyway.

But like I've said before the financial 'black hole' an iScotland might have found itself last Sept..is looking more and more like the financial 'black hole' Osborne is intent on implementing anyway through 'shrinking the state' or whatever one wants to call it... 'long term economic plan' ?

Osborne is cutting, and cutting way harder than Thatcher did. Always popular politically north of the border....