I wrote yesterday about the enormous cost to Northern Ireland of cutting corporation tax rates there.

Using a pro-cut quangos data I think it's safe to conclude each job created will cost more than £60,000 when this project starts and it may take up to 15 years for the tax revenues of Northern Ireland to recover the block grants - excluding interest considerations, and assuming, of course, the jobs last that long. All of this is also subject to the proviso that the scheme is legal - which I doubt, and can attract FDI, which maybe as dubious a claim.

The Scottish Nationalist Party is also keen to cut corporation tax rates. The same conditions of losing their grant from Westminster the moment the rate is cut will apply in Scotland. And there's no more chance that jobs will be created in Scotland as a result than there is in Northern Ireland.

The result will be a straightforward loss of spending in Scotland which is bound to hit the poorest in the community hardest whilst the main benefit, by far, will go to existing Scottish company owners. So there will be straightforward reallocation of wealth from the poorest to the richest with no guarantee that a single job will be created.

Is that what the SNP wants?

Is that what the people of Scotland want?

I doubt it.

But that is the agenda of people like the Taxpayers' Alliance who promote these ideas.

Time to think again, I suggest.