Salmond and Sturgeon Want the English Fish for More Fat Subsidies

kabayiri

Generali wrote: »

If only Scottish taxes were spent in Scotland the Scottish treasury would be going cap in hand to London right now due to the huge fall in the oil price.
...

Indeed. Some would say it is important to bail out a specific region during a time of need.

I agree with this, as long as they set out a plan for reducing their share of spending - this would be fairer for the other regions. It would be silly long term to have a centre right UK government continually funding a socialist led region at the expense of other regions. If they wish to adopt a higher tax base for additional spend, then that's their choice.

.string.

kabayiri wrote: »

Indeed. Some would say it is important to bail out a specific region during a time of need.

I agree with this, as long as they set out a plan for reducing their share of spending - this would be fairer for the other regions. It would be silly long term to have a centre right UK government continually funding a socialist led region at the expense of other regions. If they wish to adopt a higher tax base for additional spend, then that's their choice.

Ah, but that's the SNP plan; the main steps are:

1 Claim that the devolution package is not enough to fulfill the UK commitment to Skotland

2 Demand Full Fiscal Autonomy (FFA) where all money goes to the Scottish Government but expect to be given less so that they can claim they have been short changed and cannot possibly makes ends meet on the pittance which they get.

3 Spend as much as possible on welfare and populous programmes and infrastructure concentrating on those which will improve the wished-for status of an independent Natland, but ignore the low-profile stuff.

4 Con the Scottish Electorate on how good their governance is because they have all these goodies and yatter on about how much better it would have been if FFA had been granted in the first place.

5 Be as awkward as possible to sabotage any UK savings which could possibly reduce the amount of money going to Scotland.

6 Run up big debts which are simply shuffled onto the UK debt

7 Wait until polls indicate a "Yes" type swing and pull a fast Referendum before their shiny balls fall out of the sky


Pay back the debt? - Oh no, suckers - that's a UK debt, nothing to do with Natland; if you had given us more (magic) powers there would have been no debt problem.

It's all so obvious.

Leanne1812

That's a good plan String. You know it makes sense :T

Leanne1812

.string. wrote: »

?? I thought I was quite gentle with him, seeing as how I remarked that I shared some concerns over the House of Lords. Maybe you refer to my remark that he made all those remarks while maintaining that it was not really any of his business? I think it is his business as being an MP in the UK and his remarks are reflected in those from other parties. But in as much as I disagree with some of what he said, that would have been the case for anyone who had said it.

As for objectivity, I belong to no party and can therefore be objective about their relative merits. This is not the case for a party member who feel an obligation to stick up for their parties point of view whether or not it would have coincide with their pre-party opinion. It's a characteristic of any party that they tend to describe counter views as some sort of rubbish or not-objective or whatever, but I have to say, objectively, that the SNP is better at that than most.

Do you see any merit in what I said about an alternative House of Lords, or are you bound to agree with whatever it was that Wishart said.

Yes he did say that he favoured a second house. I doubt that would happen in the unfortunate hypothetical event that Natland existed.

On the matter of the SNP giving/not giving up their goal; that argument would have more force should they get elected again but what they are clearly trying to do is thwart the implementation of the Referendum.

Fair enough String. Are you actually praising the SNP a little bit or am I imagining it? :-)

Let's be honest, the vast majority of mp's or msp's will toe the party line. I'm not saying I think that's right but that is politics today.

I absolutely think your idea of reform for the HOL has merit. The problem would be trying to get any party to agree to that extent when there's so much corruption.

I don't really get what you mean when you say the SNP are trying to thwart the implementation of the referendum. Do you mean the Smith Commission?

.string.

Leanne1812 wrote: »

Fair enough String. Are you actually praising the SNP a little bit or am I imagining it? :-)

Let's be honest, the vast majority of mp's or msp's will toe the party line. I'm not saying I think that's right but that is politics today.

I absolutely think your idea of reform for the HOL has merit. The problem would be trying to get any party to agree to that extent when there's so much corruption.

I don't really get what you mean when you say the SNP are trying to thwart the implementation of the referendum. Do you mean the Smith Commission?

Praise the SNP? Moi? !!!

Corruption? - so much? that's way over the top.

No I don't think my concept will make it, although I will be pushing it but I think the entrenched love that politicians of all stripes have for politicians will make it impossible for them to conceive of democracy being anything else than electing more politicians. But there are many types of election I think.

What I had in mind is a meritocracy for the House of Lords (House of Lairds in Natland?), but the trouble with the word meritocracy is that it implies some remote intelligentsia whereas i have in mind dedicated and experienced people from everywhere from midwives to rocket scientists.

On the thwarting thing, if you read my last post I think you will see what I mean even though I put it in suitable melodramatic terms.

Cheers

Shakethedisease

Generali wrote: »

If only Scottish taxes were spent in Scotland the Scottish treasury would be going cap in hand to London right now due to the huge fall in the oil price.

My back of envelope calculation saw a 15% fall in GDP just as a direct result of falling oil prices and perhaps a £2,000 per head fall in taxation. That completely ignores the second level effects (e.g. the oilman loses her job and can't afford to go to the pub so a barman loses his job) and the impact of similar falls in gas prices.

A fiscally independent Scotland would be ruined this year. I'll be very interested to see GERS for 2013-14. Of course the Nationalists will have decided that GERS is for some unfathomable reason illegitimate by then. The fact is that if you are a high cost producer of a commodity and the price of that commodity halves then you are in the poo.

If the POO doesn't recover in the next couple of years then an independent Scotland's finances would be looking appalling. The economic case for independence was always marginal. $60/bbl Brent makes it just horrible. $30-40 Brent, the 30 year median price, would see Scotland's finances simply untenable. Even without taking on a share of the UK's debt, Scotland would be running a massive primary deficit.

I'll see if I can be bothered to work it out.

BTW, the word is moot not mute as in Moothouse, what we had before the French gave us a Parliament. Moot means speak as does parler.

Fling that envelope away. It's not all bad news.

The Scottish economy will continue to pick up pace, despite the lower oil price having an adverse impact on the oil and gas industry.
The Fraser of Allander Institute's regular forecast shows the boost to oil users in Scotland outweighs the harm to North Sea producers.
The institute said tightening public spending could still hurt the economy.
But it said "strengthening" investment was a reason to expect higher growth than it had forecast in November...


..The oil and gas industry in Scotland has been hit by job losses, with BP, ConocoPhillips, Talisman Sinopec, Shell, Chevron and Schlumberger all announcing cuts in recent months.
However, analysts pointed out that low oil prices, while bad news for the oil and gas sector, could in fact boost wider recovery in Scotland as consumers raise spending and investment picks up.
Brian Ashcroft, emeritus professor of economics at Strathclyde University, said: "The falling oil price and recovering investment could provide a welcome boost to the recovery..

"Nevertheless, we estimate that the impact on employment this year could range from 9,700 net additional jobs to a net job loss of 600 on best and worst case scenarios."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-31730120

Don't worry about working it all out. There are others paid to do it.

CLAPTON

Shakethedisease wrote: »

Fling that envelope away. It's not all bad news.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-31730120

Don't worry about working it all out. There are others paid to do it.

lucky that Scotland's income isn't dependent upon the price of oil then but rather the corrupt Barnett formula

Shakethedisease

.string. wrote: »

.

Your deflections can be amusing up to a point but they get tiresome; If you really try to justify the SNP new view that Scottish MPs who represent Scottish Constituencies should vote on English Matters, then you have to explain why English MPs cannot do the same in Scotland.

Can you really be so, well, blind with this ?

ALL UK Taxes ---> Westminster---> Budget Allocated to Scotland----> Scotland uses what's given to fund NHS/Education/Bedroom Tax mitigation etc

Taxes---- > Westminster----> English MP's vote to cut English spending

---

> reduction in Budget allocated to Scotland

---

> Less money for Scotland's NHS/Education/Bedroom Tax mitigation.

Devolved matters depend on the what's allocated to Scotland from the Westminster tax 'pot' we all pay into. That's not spin. It's the way things work. And in case you hadn't noticed. Both NHS and Educations budgets encompass almost all Scottish citizens ? Why can't you see this ?

You'll LOVE the polls tonight though.. or mabye not so much.

It will be a bloodbath; a night of the long claymores. Gordon Brown’s Kirkcaldy seat? Gone. Alistair Darling’s Edinburgh constituency? Taken. Charlie Kennedy’s Highland fortress? Sacked. Even Jim Murphy’s East Renfrewshire seat is threatened by the Nationalist insurgency. So too is the last remaining Tory MP in Scotland, David Mundell. Which, in turn, means it is not fanciful to suppose Michael Moore’s neighbouring Borders constituency is also vulnerable to the SNP.


If the SNP can, as these figures suggest, enjoy a 28 percent swing in their favour in Gordon Brown’s former seat – the safest Labour bastion in Scotland – then, with the exception of Orkney and Shetland, they can win anywhere else. Everywhere else. In 2010, the SNP won just 14 percent of the vote in Kirkcaldy. Now they may win the seat. That’s an insurrection of historic proportions.

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2015/03/night-of-the-long-claymores-the-snp-are-poised-for-a-historic-momentous-victory/

Shakethedisease

CLAPTON wrote: »

lucky that Scotland's income isn't dependent upon the price of oil then but rather the corrupt Barnett formula

Correct me if wrong, but think the SNP may want to get rid of that... somehow...

zagubov

.string. wrote: »

Nonsense, what I charge the SNP with is stirring up discord between Scotland and the rest of the UK for it's own myopic agenda; the fact that some in the SNP already hate the English does not alter that one little bit.

In fact your post is actually an example which proves my point - no specifics, just a nudge-nudge-wink-wink-type of remark implying (yet again) that Westminster is the source of anything bad you can conceive of.

Is local government good? - of course it has its very legitimate place. Does devolved Government also have some merits? - Of course it does. But so has the central government, coordinating the common interests of the UK and providing, by virtue of the significantly greater resources that brings to the table, greater security in an improving way of life (cue for some winging there no doubt).

I'm not sure what you mean by HOL and puzzled over it. Assuming you mean House of Lords, my take is that the House of Lords needs reform although not of the type of pigs' breakfast of reform proposed by the Lib Dems a year or two back. Its chief benefit, as I see it, is to hold the House of Commons to account by providing a review process to sort out the idiosyncrasies and bad legislation that can come from the zealots in a political party; a sort of "ombudsman role". I can see why the SNP would like to avoid anything like the House of Lords that interferes with the one party state concept though.

.string. wrote: »

?? I thought I was quite gentle with him, seeing as how I remarked that I shared some concerns over the House of Lords. Maybe you refer to my remark that he made all those remarks while maintaining that it was not really any of his business? I think it is his business as being an MP in the UK and his remarks are reflected in those from other parties. But in as much as I disagree with some of what he said, that would have been the case for anyone who had said it.

As for objectivity, I belong to no party and can therefore be objective about their relative merits. This is not the case for a party member who feel an obligation to stick up for their parties point of view whether or not it would have coincide with their pre-party opinion. It's a characteristic of any party that they tend to describe counter views as some sort of rubbish or not-objective or whatever, but I have to say, objectively, that the SNP is better at that than most.

Do you see any merit in what I said about an alternative House of Lords, or are you bound to agree with whatever it was that Wishart said.

Yes he did say that he favoured a second house. I doubt that would happen in the unfortunate hypothetical event that Natland existed.

On the matter of the SNP giving/not giving up their goal; that argument would have more force should they get elected again but what they are clearly trying to do is thwart the implementation of the Referendum.

I've argued on another thread that the HoL has too many chancers.
I think both the government and the state need a body of inspectors to hold them to account and assess their fitness for purpose.

For a start we need parliamentary ombudsmen or inspectors to assess all parliamentary candidates and we need the HMSO to publish all we know about them and their track record.

And every time they propose a bill the ombudsmen/inspectors need to act on behalf of the public and scrutinise it by interviewing them with expert advisers. This will save on parliamentary question time as the answers will be already there.

And before anybody says that’s what the House of Lords does already, some are up to the job but the rest are unelected time-servers. We need to elect some wise heads to do this job.

If there is to be an upper house, that should perhaps be a kind of fluency committee that coordinates the overall joint actions of the four nations.