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

Shakethedisease

posh*spice wrote: »

Without the billions from RUK - or do you expect us to keep paying?

I suspect you'll find it very hard to borrow money for soverign debt too.....so yes austerity will be very harsh.

Scottish independence might seem a less risky prospect when faced with the likes of this.

DD = David Davis

Has govt undertaken economic assessment of there being no deal?
DD: 'If you mean under my time, no.'

Can you confirm UK citizens will no longer have access to the EHIC health card? DD: Probably right. Haven't looked at it.

Can you confirm that in the absence of data adequacy decision from Commission, legal uncertainty about data transfer? DD: Not clear

Tromking

Shakethedisease wrote: »

Scottish independence might seem a less risky prospect when faced with the likes of this.

DD = David Davis

Lol!
Just keep telling yourself Shakey that indyref2 will be decided on the issue of the right of Scots to retain their EHIC cards in comparison to the pooling and sharing of risk and resources with 50 million other Brits.

TrickyTree83

Moby wrote: »

The problem with you is you don't listen to views which give answers to the questions you ask. You continually bang your drum about Scotland having no economic arguments for independence and I've told you time and time again why that position now has a limited impact, even with the fall in oil prices. I pointed out that the Brexit vote has also changed averything and opened up the brexiteers to charges of hypocrisy, because the 'Better Together' argument contradicts their position towards the EU. Monbiot produces a piece saying the same thing and your response is to label the Guardian as the liberals 'Sun' and as being 'hilariously wrong'. Is that the extent of your ability to move the discussion on?:rotfl:

I've read the Mobiot piece, and I've read the comments below, it's exactly how I called it. Right down to those people posting "yeah!! (fist waving) London should become a city state!". The self-professed 'educated' appear to be lacking in the smarts department, and that's a narrative repeated over and over again and it's started a culture war particularly on the internet. One which these types are losing rapidly. That's why the youngest generation are becoming more and more Conservative, which isn't a good thing, it just shows the ineptitude of left wing group think at the moment.

The Scottish economic argument doesn't have a limited impact at all, the political and virtue signalling arguments are those which have little impact. And that's all that's in the indy arsenal. The economic argument is paramount in Scotland because of their precarious position, had the UK been running at a near 10% deficit with no prognosis to improve it short of more austerity or taxation, I'd wager the EU referendum result would have been different.

Now that Nicola's backtracking on staying in the EU straight away Scotland will be governed in part by Brussels without having a say at all... no representation at all... so Scotland will be going from over representation in Westminster to (possibly, no guarantee of this either) no representation in EEA/EFTA, with a hope of getting the finances under control to re-apply to join the EU.

If it seems like I'm not listening/reading, you'd be wrong. It's just that I disagree because the arguments are not logically sound, they're just feelings. Monbiot's piece is all about feelings and not facts, The Guardian puts up pieces continually about feelings rather than facts (note the recent article they published, authored by a 4chan troll, purposely fake yet still published?!), it's how politics and journalism has rolled for ~20 years or more? It's coming to an end and I guess the liberal flowers/snowflakes/social justice warriors don't like it. Good.

Harping on about the Better Together campaign would be wrong, that'd be like harping on about Oil @ $100 a barrel, the battlefield has changed and it's in many ways worse than it was in 2014 for the independence support. I'm sorry if you and the indy supporters on here don't like that, but it's the honest truth. The only way I can see the indy support drumming up votes for their cause is the perpetuation of grievance, about the EU referendum (that they all knew about anyway), about the 'nasty' Conservatives and their austerity (which iScotland will need to go further than to survive), etc... People like Hamish can argue that they would have more control as a sovereign nation in the EU, but they're not going to be offered EU membership on the ballot now, it'll be EEA/EFTA where they'll have to comply with the rules without having a say in them. During the EU referendum that was a reason not to vote to Leave - who are the hypocrites in that?

Conrad

Shakethedisease wrote: »

Scottish independence might seem a less risky prospect when faced with the likes of this.

DD = David Davis

Can you quantify the benefits vs the costs and hindrances of the UK belonging to the SM?


Have you quantified the benefits of us being free to make our own deals and alliances with the ROW (whilst not losing EU trade of course)?


Are you allowing for the fact national politicians in Europe will never opt to harm their own citizens by dismantling existing profitable trade with the UK? Real world local considerations will always trump lofty Brussels abstract ideals.


By all means go independent but this obsession with the SM is quite bizarre.

TrickyTree83

Conrad wrote: »

Can you quantify the benefits vs the costs and hindrances of the UK belonging to the SM?


Have you quantified the benefits of us being free to make our own deals and alliances with the ROW (whilst not losing EU trade of course)?


Are you allowing for the fact national politicians in Europe will never opt to harm their own citizens by dismantling existing profitable trade with the UK? Real world local considerations will always trump lofty Brussels abstract ideals.


By all means go independent but this obsession with the SM is quite bizarre.

Part in bold was also argued by Shakethedisease regarding Scottish trade with rUK after independence.

So I assume she would agree with you, unless it's uncomfortable to do so.

If you're correct and the deal is good - even more economic reason not to leave the UK as the 80,000 jobs at risk would decrease as would the 1,000,000 jobs at risk but the proportional difference would increase.

Filo25

I'm not convinced the SNP are remotely as "socialist" as some on here seem to think.

Perversely Scotland's relatively small Corp tax base might help it in the same way it does Ireland, it makes the prospect of going for low Corp Tax a lot more attractive as you aren't caniballising your own corp tax base to anything like the same extent as the UK would if it follows the same strategy.

The UK is probably just too big an economy to go for the threatened tax haven strategy, the same isn't necessarily true for Scotland if they voted to Leave the UK depending on how its subsequent relations with rUK and the EU developed (it certainly wouldn't be a popular strategy with either entity)

I say that as someone who is far from convinced by the Economic case for Scottish Independence, albeit I can see the political case for it pretty clearly at present

.string.

That ties in with what Shakey said ages ago about the SNP not actually caring too much about being in the EU. Nevertheless the pretext for a Neverendum was that stuff about being dragged out of the EU. then there was that "Compromise" proposal put forward by Sturgeon whihc was, of course, nothing of the kind but followed the normal approach by the SNP of asking for something which was not possible and whingeing when they did not get it.

The Norway model was touted but that was debunked:
https://www.holyrood.com/articles/news/norwegian-politicians-say-scotland-could-only-join-efta-if-independent

Now the talk is about participating in EEA via the EFTA route - and this being a seamless process.

This link shows what that would entail:
http://www.efta.int/eea/eea-agreement/eea-basic-features

The bottom line of that is that should Scotland decide to join the EEA through the EFTA Route, it would need to sign an accession treaty which would have to be concluded and ratified, not only by the EU and Scotland, as is the case for a withdrawal treaty, but also by each of the 30 EEA member-states (27 from the EU and three from EFTA).

Enter Spain, Cyprus, Belgium, and France (at least) with their concerns on rewarding secession and setting a precedent for their own countries.

Yet this is touted as a "slam dunk".

More of a "Sham dunk" I would say.

Shakethedisease

Tromking wrote: »

Lol!
Just keep telling yourself Shakey that indyref2 will be decided on the issue of the right of Scots to retain their EHIC cards in comparison to the pooling and sharing of risk and resources with 50 million other Brits.

No, it's more about this sort of thing. Davies kind of came across looking like there was no real plans or assessments in place for anything.

Brexit: David Davis admits government has done no economic assessment of the UK crashing out of EU without deal

Brexit Secretary David Davis has stunned MPs by admitting the Government has done no economic assessment of crashing out of the EU with ‘no deal’.
Giving evidence to MPs, Mr Davis insisted it was not possible to calculate the impact of the Brexit talks failing – adding: “I may be able to do so in about a year’s time.”

* Said it was “probably right” that holidaying Britons will lose EHIC cards, which provide free or subsidized healthcare across the EU, but added: “I have not looked at that one.”
* Admitted he did not know the implications of leaving with no deal on the transfer of personal data, which is crucial issue for the booming tech industry.
* Acknowledged UK producers of dairy and meat would face tariffs of up to 40 per cent under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules – “the numbers in agriculture are high”.
* Described the argument that the UK could walk away without paying a penny to the EU, if no deal is reached, as “interesting” – “a very good start in this exercise”.
* Said he expected Northern Ireland would end up with a “very light border, not a hard border” with the Republic.
* Said he “assumed” the ‘Open Skies’ agreement – which has slashed airfares across the EU - will be lost, although he would fight for a successor.
* Confirmed financial services firms are poised to lose ‘passporting rights’ to trade in the EU, saying: “I would expect that to be the case, that’s an area of uncertainty.”

The SNP might be having a bit of a laugh about this part.

But Mr Davis hinted no assessment of the Brexit options will be carried out, saying: “You don’t need a piece of paper with numbers on it to have an economic assessment.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-latest-news-david-davis-no-economic-impact-assess-uk-eu-leave-no-deal-select-committee-a7630626.html

Shakethedisease

.string. wrote: »

That ties in with what Shakey said ages ago about the SNP not actually caring too much about being in the EU. Nevertheless the pretext for a Neverendum was that stuff about being dragged out of the EU. then there was that "Compromise" proposal put forward by Sturgeon whihc was, of course, nothing of the kind but followed the normal approach by the SNP of asking for something which was not possible and whingeing when they did not get it.

The Norway model was touted but that was debunked:
https://www.holyrood.com/articles/news/norwegian-politicians-say-scotland-could-only-join-efta-if-independent

Now the talk is about participating in EEA via the EFTA route - and this being a seamless process.

This link shows what that would entail:
http://www.efta.int/eea/eea-agreement/eea-basic-features

The bottom line of that is that should Scotland decide to join the EEA through the EFTA Route, it would need to sign an accession treaty which would have to be concluded and ratified, not only by the EU and Scotland, as is the case for a withdrawal treaty, but also by each of the 30 EEA member-states (27 from the EU and three from EFTA).

Enter Spain, Cyprus, Belgium, and France (at least) with their concerns on rewarding secession and setting a precedent from their own countries.

Yet this is touted as a "slam dunk".

More of a "Sham dunk" I would say.

We're going to be out of the EU anyway. Did you miss this somehow ? A transitional deal with a quick accession to full EU membership is now the only route back in. Scotland has to be independent first in order to follow this route.

I would've thought this would be a simple enough concept to take in. Scotland is out if it does nothing, but has a route back in via independence.

Shakethedisease

TrickyTree83 wrote: »

Part in bold was also argued by Shakethedisease regarding Scottish trade with rUK after independence.

So I assume she would agree with you, unless it's uncomfortable to do so.

If you're correct and the deal is good - even more economic reason not to leave the UK as the 80,000 jobs at risk would decrease as would the 1,000,000 jobs at risk but the proportional difference would increase.

You'll enjoy this. Kevin Hague certainly is..

More on why GERS might properly be called crap data

So the resulting figures are estimates that I would suggest are subject to an enormous degree of uncertainty. As I tell my students when I teach them about data quality (and I do on my course at City, University of London) some data is crap. That is a technical term. It stands for Completely Rubbish AProximations. This data meets that criteria.

That’s what I claimed. And I think I was right to say so. This is some very approximate data that Scotland does not control being used for a purpose for which it is not fit, which is to say whether or not Scotland would run a surplus or deficit post independence when just about everything, including the data, would be different.

http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2017/03/15/more-on-why-gers-might-properly-be-called-crap-data/