I did an hour-long special on Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS) for Scotnomics last night. This is it.
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But the corporate tax revenues who took are owed to Scotland cannot be collected by an independent Scotland..it is a figure made up by you not owed to Scotland
That comment literally makes no sense
It is also apparent that you know nothing about corporation tax
Thanks for posting this Richard, I hadn’t seen it, and some very good points made. And clearly presented as always!
One of the overarching things I note is that people seem to be getting better informed, the questions more pertinent, and this allows more detailed explanations of how bad GERS is (instead of continually having to go over the basics). It’s good to see progress.
As for the Labour Scottish branch office and Jackie Baillie with her wilful misunderstand of how economies work – they have to remain ignorant to maintain the fiction of Scotland’s incompetence – it’s a self-fulfilling prophesy: they believe Scotland should not be independent, and therefore must be dependent; they must show themselves be wholly incapable to prove that the dependence is true; therefore we can’t become independent and the belief intact; so they must continually display incompetence or their world view collapses.
Just because Jackie is incompetent doesn’t make that true for the rest of the population though! How anyone can live with so little self-respect, I don’t know, but the harm it does to Scotland and our economy is, and has been, enormous (the attitude of the ‘house jock’ as its termed, those that are fully on board with Scotland, and themselves, as lower class to the English regime, means that nothing done in Scotland can be worthwhile, or anything but subordinate to Westminster rule, by their ideology). We will never thrive when those attitudes prevail.
You may as well put the SNP in the category of ‘house jock’ too – I have; they are a lost cause, with the added bonus of pretending to want independence to suppress that part of the population that do want independence (in any realistic sense). They, the SNP government, will keep publishing GERS, with relish and publicising it, to ensure Scotland is seen as no-hope and they can rally to the call of ‘now is not the time’. They appear to be going out of their way to prove how incompetent a Scottish government can be – all the talk of land reform halted, that ferries fiasco, secrecy, double standards, spineless, neoliberal – huh, that elites-only investment bank waste of time – ideological-friends-only government funding of institutions. Just spineless; for the COP26, Sturgeon ‘might’ be allowed to address the opening (and be ready to be appalled at the state of Glasgow’s streets in any filming, piles of rubbish and chasm-like pot holes courtesy of the SNP council) and capitulating everything to the ‘four nations approach’ on Covid. The SNP can’t even manage their own party accounts (ref ‘ring-fenced’ donated money – not donated for SNP party business – ‘woven through the accounts’), so are hardly likely to be able to run an economy. No demands that those frigate ships are built in Scotland as promised way back (an ever changing number of); in fact no demands at all, as they wring their hands in supplication and gratitude to whatever crumbs are thrown their way from their superiors – as we hear another outraged and ineffectual statement about how they are powerless to do anything as the power is reserved to Westminster (soaring drug-related deaths, for instance). Zero work done by the SNP to plan for and set up institutions for independence – the statistics required to make GERS have any meaning is a case in point; where is that mystery Scottish statistics office? And would they produce anything of worth, for that matter – they were handed over some social security benefits that they’ve failed to implement years later, and indeed handed some back because it was too difficult for them. Where is that SNP that was meant to be fighting our corner and at least administrating to Scotland’s needs? Gone – it went out the window with the Sturgeon regime. Look at the deeds, not the words, and you can only see a litany of failures – my accusation is only that it is on purpose – that will appeal to the unionist mindset; the one that needs us, and themselves, to be a failure.
And so, when you say you are bewildered why the SNP government would publish GERS – it’s only bewildering if you think the SNP want independence; if you think of them as unionists (or devolutionists, to use a softer term, they don’t appear to be hard line unionists for sure), then their actions make sense.
Things look fairly dire at the moment – for making progress – and we just need to see how things unfold, but any pressure put on the SNP to prove they intend to bring about independence, or to admit the unionist leanings, is good. We have the council elections next year, and that should tell us which way the political wind is blowing. I hope for changes before then, though; however painful it might be (it won’t be as painful as keeping the current regime intact mind you).
Engaging with Jackie Baillie is a grim experience – she is so far removed from what any Labour politician should be. She has no faith in people
But the SNP gives little evidence of that either
What is required is the passion. Where is it? Common Weal had it. Where eise is it?
Haha, Jackie Baillie is your typical Scottish Labour MSP, an no, you’ll never get anything except swivel eyed frothing when you try and discuss anything remotely constitutional. Ms Baillie performed quite well in the recent Fabiani Whitewash – her interrogation skills outstrip her politician skills by far – and her & Johann Lamont have done well standing up for women’s rights during recent horrific legislation debates in Holyrood. Constitutional issues are a trigger though, where the IQ halves and aggression doubles – dunno why, decades of indoctrination, I guess, that’s the colonial result of the British empire & plantation.
Passion! Yes, how right you are – where is the passion?? I suspect that when any party becomes mainstream and enters the establishment, they – those that want top jobs – have to ditch any passion, idealism or integrity. The parties are all a bit homogenised, with a couple of tweaks, aren’t they. The back benches in Westminster still contain some passion, but I don’t think there is any among our MSPs. Interestingly, I believe Alex Salmond (not a current sitting politician though) – despite being somewhat establishment – still retains some passion (for independence), and that’s being reflected within the new party Alba. Their two MPs – Kenny MacKaskill and Neale Hanvey – are speaking out, with passion, now that they’re freed from the gagging yoke of the SNP homogeny.
In fact, I enjoyed this show yesterday – it demonstrates the passion that’s missing from the SNP. Most of the people that have joined Alba have come from the SNP – the activists, the bloggers – and with their upcoming conferences they are excited about being ALLOWED to discuss independence. And to be making plans for it. Both those things are missing from the SNP.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTZzT1ui5MY
The first half is with two Alba candidates; the second part is the usual Scottish Prism discussion and gives an idea of some of the issues afflicting us and how sorely people feel the betrayal by Nicola Sturgeon (mostly those that were members). I think it’s worth a watch if you have the time. (‘Woo woo’ indicates identity politics, and is about the only thing the SNP, or the Scottish Greens, are passionate about now. As long as it doesn’t involve debate or telling the general public about it. The SNP appear to be trying to make themselves, and so independence, as unpopular as possible using extreme, ill-thought out and divisive legislation to, apparently, satisfy 0.01% of the population. You won’t hear about it in the news, but it’s happening.)
I wouldn’t want the SNP in charge of making the tea let alone of the complex and serious process of becoming independent – but there *are* lots of people that are planning and thinking about it, and doing things, though it has to be done despite the SNP and worked around a hostile media (and a hostile SNP!). It’s going to be a tough time, but things are moving at pace, and hopefully you will see a mature and decisive politics emerge soon enough, and we can ditch the happy-clappy fairy-wand-waving ‘oh sometime in future’ ideology of the Sturgeon led SNP. Scotland – the SNP gov’t – is making political prosecutions – and have even jailed a blogger – this isn’t a direction you want any modern democracy to go in.