Morning thoughts from my Twitter feed:
I might be saying things like this quite a lot for many months to come.
Repetition is essential to get this message through.
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Hi Richard,
Keep up the great work!
I was listening to the More or Less podcast from the BBC and they had a section on Scotland’s GDP. I thought it could be something you may want to listen to (see link below) and comment on – the section on Scotland starts at 5mins and 30 secs in and finishes at 14mins.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09k80jj
I will take a listen
I listened to it but found that it raised more questions than it answered. I’m puzzled by the acceptance of the ONS data as being authoritative when we know that so little real Scotland-specific data exists. Much of the discussion focused on the gap between taxes raised and Government spend but there was no clarity about whether Gov spending was just UK Gov spend on its own or an aggregate of UK and Scot Govs. If the latter, it raises the possibility of some double-counting: UK Gov Block Transfers being onward-invested into specific programmes by ScotGov.
Likewise arriving at an accurate figure for taxes raised is easy enough for taxes such as Council Tax, Land and Buildings Transaction Tax etc, but what about VAT, Petroleum Duty etc for which separate Scottish datasets are not maintained? For instance, there are no separate VAT numbers for businesses operating in Scotland, so the actual VAT raised in Scotland is lost in general UK returns for businesses headquartered elsewhere in UK. Although VAT is devolved to Scotland, the entire VAT system is operated by HMRC, but as a single system without a Scottish sub-set. Thus all VAT figures for Scotland are estimated and therefore subject to subsequent corrections (which can seriously distort trends and year-on-year reporting) and these corrections themselves are also estimates.
The figures quoted on the programme gave taxes raised by Scotland as £65bn and Gov spending of £79bn therefore a deficit of £14bn, which is remarkably close to the GERS figure. However, as has been discussed endlessly here for years, GERS is not a reliable indicator of Scotland’s current actual economic status, and far less an indicator of its post-independence economic prospects. The presenter did stress that an independent Scotland’s economy could have a different dynamic, but maintained that immediately after independence, Scotland would be carrying a sizeable deficit. I thought it was encouraging that the BBC was prepared to attempt an analysis of Scotland’s economic status, but that the outcome may have been tailored to give credibility to GERS.
I agree Ken
Good stuff and good luck.
The current narrative concerning Government money is nothing but a tissue of lies.
Keep on keeping on.
“Keep on keeping on”
Classic from socialist band The Redskins
Who remembers them?
I am not sure I do
I saw that Dr. Mary Bousted of the National Education Union tweeted that she was angry that Nadhim Zahawi said that teachers’ union had been against lengthening the school day as part of he catch up. Political posturing she “can accept but not lies”.
I met her some years ago when she was giving a talk to the Somerset branch of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (she was the general Secretary of the ATL-now merged with the NUT to form the NEU)
Earlier that day she had said to Michael Gove that we had different health outcomes from different social areas , so why not different educational outcomes from different social areas? His reply, ‘you are part of the culture of excuses.’
The Tory party seem to treat teachers as an unruly social group bent on undermining the noble aspirations of their party.
Mary also quoted a remark she had read that day by one, Richard Murphy. She said she had never heard of him but liked what he said. I told her what I knew of this chap.
Amused….