The New Fat Scotland 'Thanks for all the Fish' Thread.

Shakethedisease

TrickyTree83 wrote: »

You told us earlier you were campaigning for independence and you were telling everyone that this was a real possibility.

So either some people did know as you previously claimed and chose to remain anyway or what you told us about your campaigning was wrong.

Which is it?

Sigh... I said that it was Yes voters and pro-independence supporters who were pointing out the possibility of a Brexit and that Scotland could potentially be out of the EU anyway.

No supporters, the media in it's entirety and BetterTogether were telling Scots that the above was total bo***cks and that the only way for Scotland to stay in the EU was to vote No.

Do you understand now ? When the EU question came up it was people like me that pointed out there may be an EU referendum in the offing and that Scotland might have to leave it the UK voted out. People like you were telling me that Scotland would be out of the EU with a Yes vote, and that I should vote No if I wanted to stay in the EU.

There was no way people were voting No en masse to remain in the UK, but with the full understanding that the UK may be voting to come out of the EU just 18 months later. Because No advocates on this board, Ruth Davidson, Alistair Darling, Johann Lamont, everyone and everywhere else were saying that a Brexit would never happen.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

TrickyTree83 wrote: »

I wrote them. It's a brain dump of things I've read/learnt when trying to educate myself on the Scottish independence question.

You should read some more.

I'm quite happy to argue with Shakey all day long as to the size of the Scottish deficit and fiscal black hole.

And she is often wrong.

But you are double counting....

TrickyTree83

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

You should read some more.

I'm quite happy to argue with Shakey all day long as to the size of the Scottish deficit and fiscal black hole.

And she is often wrong.

But you are double counting....

What exactly am I double counting? I only ask because I'm not the one who counted, those figures are pulled from 3rd party sources.

There's a £15bn deficit per year, 9.7% of Scottish GDP.

Barnett gives Scotland ~£24bn of funding per year.

If you take Barnett away that leaves a hole of £39bn to be found. You may get all of the North Sea oil trade, which is pretty meagre at the moment.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-36111753

What is wrong with any of those figures? What figures do you have?

TrickyTree83

Shakethedisease wrote: »

Sigh... I said that it was Yes voters and pro-independence supporters who were pointing out the possibility of a Brexit and that Scotland could potentially be out of the EU anyway.

No supporters, the media in it's entirety and BetterTogether were telling Scots that the above was total bo***cks and that the only way for Scotland to stay in the EU was to vote No.

Back in 2014, a Yes vote would have resulted in a loss of EU membership and a No vote would have resulted in a continuance of EU membership. There was a possibilty of an EU in/out referendum if you'd bothered to find out about it and if you felt there would have been a Conservative majority government in the future. Is this statement correct?

If so, then the only way to remain in the EU was to vote No as BetterTogether were saying. Since the alternative was an absolute dissolution of EU membership as Scotland would no longer be part of the UK. So where were they lying?

Is there any evidence of politicians or the media putting it out there that a No vote was a guarantee of EU membership?

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

TrickyTree83 wrote: »

What exactly am I double counting? I only ask because I'm not the one who counted, those figures are pulled from 3rd party sources.

There's a £15bn deficit per year, 9.7% of Scottish GDP.

Barnett gives Scotland ~£24bn of funding per year.

If you take Barnett away that leaves a hole of £39bn to be found.

What is wrong with any of those figures? What figures do you have?

The £15bn deficit is correct.

Barnett gives Scotland circa £24bn per year.

But part of that Barnett money is taxes collected on revenue earned in Scotland - hence your double counting.

The Scottish shortfall to the UK equivalent deficit level is only between £8 and £9bn per year.

That is the 'Westminster Subsidy'.

And it is the entirety of the additional money we'd need to find in the event of independence, via either budget cuts, additional tax revenue, or a combination of the two.

To put that in perspective, financial services alone pay the UK Treasury £63bn a year in tax and a large component of that is based on Single Market FS passporting rights....

If just 15% of that trade moves to Scotland instead of Paris, Dublin or Frankfurt following a loss of single market access the Scottish fiscal black hole is paid in full.

And that's before we even begin to talk about the thousands of other companies with hundreds of thousands of jobs and Billions in tax revenue that have located in the UK to service the Single Market from within, that may now have to move if we leave it.

TrickyTree83

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

The £15bn deficit is correct.

Barnett gives Scotland circa £24bn per year.

But part of that Barnett money is taxes collected on revenue earned in Scotland - hence your double counting.

The Scottish shortfall to the UK equivalent deficit level is only between £8 and £9bn per year.

That is the 'Westminster Subsidy'.

And it is the entirety of the additional money we'd need to find in the event of independence, via either budget cuts, additional tax revenue, or a combination of the two.

To put that in perspective, financial services alone pay the UK Treasury £63bn a year in tax and a large component of that is based on Single Market FS passporting rights....

If just 15% of that trade moves to Scotland instead of Paris, Dublin or Frankfurt following a loss of single market access the Scottish fiscal black hole is paid in full.

And that's before we even begin to talk about the thousands of other companies with hundreds of thousands of jobs that have located in the UK to service the Single Market from within, that may now have to move if we leave it.

Where did you get the figures for Scottish tax revenue? I can't find any that summarise it and it's late and hot and I can't be bothered to add up all the sub-tables in the HMRC documents.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

TrickyTree83 wrote: »

Where did you get the figures for Scottish tax revenue? I can't find any that summarise it and it's late and hot and I can't be bothered to add up all the sub-tables in the HMRC documents.

This explains it rather succinctly.

http://chokkablog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/scotlands-economy.html

At the time of that article's writing the gap was around £6bn.

But around £3bn revenue was from oil.

If we now assume oil revenue as zero the gap becomes £9bn.

Thrugelmir

To put that in perspective, financial services alone pay the UK Treasury £63bn a year in tax and a large component of that is based on Single Market FS passporting rights....

Think you are confusing turnover with profit, let alone tax revenues.

Generali

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

To put that in perspective, financial services alone pay the UK Treasury £63bn a year in tax and a large component of that is based on Single Market FS passporting rights....

If just 15% of that trade moves to Scotland instead of Paris, Dublin or Frankfurt following a loss of single market access the Scottish fiscal black hole is paid in full.

And that's before we even begin to talk about the thousands of other companies with hundreds of thousands of jobs and Billions in tax revenue that have located in the UK to service the Single Market from within, that may now have to move if we leave it.

AIUI, passporting rights come from membership of the EEA not the EU.

Probably the biggest danger to the UK's international banking sector is the prospect of losing access to Target 2, the Euro clearing system. I would hope that Mrs May, as a former employee of the UK clearing system would be pretty alive to that.

skintmacflint

Shakethedisease wrote: »

Nah. People in 2014 were told and voted on the basis that the only 100% guaranteed way to stay in the EU was to vote No and stay in the UK.

That didn't turn out so well for them. Many are now reconsidering what a Brexit means now. And when it comes to the point that even people like Hamish and other's I personally know in real life..are very reluctantly reconsidering their options should it come to a second vote ( single market access ). Then it seems something pretty monumental really has changed in terms of what is and what isn't democratically acceptable to your average Scottish voter, whether they voted No last time or not.

A Brexit vote didn't just dismay SNP voters. It dismayed the majority of Scotland. Yes/No, SNP/Labour/Greens and Tory voters alike.

Every No voter I know was fully aware that an EU referendum for the UK was on the cards. Moreover SNP activists were advising people on the doorsteps a No vote gave no guarantee remaining in the EU due to the EU referendum. But a Yes vote did.

Would agree most people probably didn't think a Leave vote was likely, but as you well know , this doesn't translate or guarantee the extra Yes votes needed to win an Independence vote.

Every long standing SNP voter I know has no wish to remain in the EU. They have no wish to take back control of the few decision making powers they don't have, to give them straight back , with even more powers in the near future to an unelected team of faceless and nameless technocrats they have zero control of. The SNP Facebook page nearly went into meltdown during the EU ref night with comments from SNP voters saying just that.

But I wouldn't get too worked up just now, as Sturgeon has never looked so vulnerable and unsure of herself in the past couple of weeks. At Salmond's behest she came right out the stable doors within 3 hours of the decision announcement onto the world stage, with her grandstanding announcements. Her grandiose plans were floundering within 36 hours , and within 3 days she had fallen flat on her face.

No one is going to endanger the UK's position in the coming months, least of all SNP. World leaders will see to that, because there is simply just too much at stake.

If Ms Sturgeon has any sense at all she will quietly withdraw and get on with her domestic policies for now, as she is making an idiot of herself at very interview these days with her talk of 'options' of which she can't even mention 1 which is in any way credible.

Meanwhile half of Scotland is more than totally fed up with SNP stating at very opportunity , they speak for Scotland, when they clearly don't. They don't even speak for many of their own voters these days.

For the record I voted to remain in the EU, but I accept the democratic Leave decision, just as I would have accepted if Scotland had voted Yes.