I am grateful to Martin MacDonald who posted this tweet:
To which he appended this chart:
Does anyone smell a rat?
Could that rat just be in the near 40% of costs supposedly for the benefit of Scotland that the UK government dumps into GERS without there being any justification provided, or any element of choice on the part of the Scottish people, which have most definitely rejected what Westminster is trying to do?
It is ludicrous to claim - as the mainstream media parrots out all over the place today - that Scotland has, or might have, a deficit of the sum claimed by GERS.
Very politely, there's some decidedly dodgy accounting going on here, because the evidence clearly shows it. It's simply not true that Scotland has the deficit claimed for it, and I explain why here.
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Hi
From a statistical basis the list you have produced looks to me without plotting it to be an almost normal distribution, in a normal distribution there are always outliers that don’t fit the curve. I think some statistician call them “Black Swans”
I personally think your argument is spuriuos, you may be an accountant but are you a statistician? Add to this that the rest of your list are independent self regulating countries most of which are within the EU with strict borrowing requirements. Each one of those countries will have regions that do well alongside others that don’t, each one of those countries start from a different place, where each have a borrowing requirement that they have to work within, Scotland have none of these constraints a la free buses, free universities, free prescription, free retirement care etc.
Stop protesting it is wrong and offer a solution to the question “London and the South East provide all of the surplus funds to fund the other regions, one of the other regions is Scotland, tell us what the subsidy is, one thing is certain there is such a thing?”
I have some qualifications in statistics, yes
I am not claiming to be a statistician but along the way I’ve done some exams in the subject
And what you’re claiming is statistical baloney. Sure you claim Scotland is an outlier – and on this data it is
But then, maybe that’s because the others have control of their decision making and Scotland does not
And maybe as a result they don’t have very large costs dumped on them That they would never choose to incur
What’s the probability that’s a better explanation than your statistical nonsense? Close to 1, I’d say
But please feel free to carry on making pseudo statistical claims in support of your prejudices. If that’s all you’ve got you’re in deep trouble
Your an idiot.
I did not know I had an idiot
Hi Richard
Answer the questions I asked, and stop throwing about insults. You are not the only one with professional qualification so do try and be professional.
Who subsidies who?
Why is an Englishman with an Irish name so pro SNP and why the disinformation, are you after Scotland highest highest order, The Order of the Flying Haggis. You are not interested in the answers only self publisist.
When you are quite so rude why do you honestly think I should bother to engage with you?
And if you bothered to search this site (there is a thing called Google to help) you’d find answers to your questions
But you won’t be posting again
With due respect John C, you’re an idiot. One who doesn’t even know his own language properly. I presume you meant to say “who subsidises whom?” and not “subsidies who.”
Why don’t you come and visit Scotland some time to see how us feckless (not to say ungrateful) Scots are blowing the money you generous English are flourishing on us?
Now excuse me, I must go outside in the pissing rain to finish off chiselling the gold from the street outside my house.
I do enough typos, but the attitude on display is repulsive
What figures does anyone believe from HMG? You have done an excellent job of pointing out the anomalies (there may easily be more). What it underlines is that the Scottish government must start to create the infrastructure of statehood (shadow central bank, currency plans, tax raising system etc) so that falsehoods can be identified and the independence process MANAGED. Alas, nothing seems to have been learnt from the Brexit shambles.
Well written Richard (and Mr MacDonald). Thanks for the effort you put in to this. I cannot understand why supposedly intelligent people accept GERS without questioning anything. It must be authoritative …. because it is the government. Nobody can examine the primary data (most of it surveys (!)), but nobody even sense checks the output. Does it make sense? When Scotland is a significant part of the whole UK deficit that should worry people. It doesn’t. It makes Unionists proud. It is as daft as that: Britain today..
This is English exceptionalism writ large
Who subsidises who, asks the time-waster. Well, I have just watched this video from back in 2014, a very short video (5mins)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TG8uLTaicIY
John Jappy, a civil servant working in accounts, found out in 1968 that Scotland wasn’t the subsidy junkie it was portrayed to be – this was before oil – he found out that Scotland was subsidising England even before oil was discovered. Anecdotal of course. But then, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that reality is the opposite of what we are told. As usual, there is information out there, but it’s not allowed to be reported, it’s obfuscated, buried. Let’s face it, Scotland will never be allowed to know it’s worth while ruled by Westminster – and it is ruled, nothing is equal, otherwise we wouldn’t all have been perpetually lied to.
I think, Richard, that if you really were allowed to get a hold of the real accounts over the last 300 years, and were given say 10 years full time to work on them (I’m not saying you’d want to! You could delegate though), you would find that Scotland would be owed a fair amount if there was dissolution (then double it and add 50% for damages, obviously). Scotland I think just wants to be gone though, just to get away from the malevolent presence, nobody cares who owes what to who. But then, maybe we need to threaten a huge lawsuit in damages and reparation, maybe that’s the only language the elites understand – go on the offensive rather than this perpetual defensive. Except,,, we can’t get a hold of the real numbers! It would be a cracking good court case though 🙂
I might not be the right person, but I know those who are…..
There is of course a name for the vigorous defence of GERS espoused by unionists – Stockholm Syndrome.
What an extraordinary collection of comments. It appears almost as if Unionism is having a virtual mental breakdown.
It is
Here’s George Kerevan’s interpretation of GERS 2019-2020:
https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2020/08/27/scotlands-problem-low-taxes/
Without detailed analysis of GERS I’d guess that the most substantial component of his under-taxation as compared with other European states derives from UK’s astoundingly lax attitude to taxation of North Sea oil. His claim that Scotland is not the highest-taxed part of the UK (the Tories love to claim that it is) might not be right: the OECD figure of tax as % of GDP for UK of 37.7% may have been inflated if Scotland’s rate of 37.4% is substantially higher than any of the other UK nations and Scotland has been included when calculating the UK figure. On the other hand, if the UK rate is net of Scotland’s data, he may be right.
George is arguing for a fundamentally different approach to tax in Scotland
He’s right to do so
As fir that % – we do nit gave a reliable figure for Scottish GDP so all the claims are to use my term, CRAp
In your famous appearance at a Holyrood committee (linked below), you admitted that your alternative to GERS would only shave a couple of percentage points off the Scottish deficit at most. Is that still your view? In that case, Scotland would still be bottom of the league.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni5dTPBgLKE
No
Because we understand the issue better than then and I think the so called difference is to now restore parity
I was cautious then
I am cautious now
And the evidence for the errors just keeps growing
That’s what happens when you research and think about an idea
Have a look at the Annexes in the GERS documents. Prior year adjustments; billions of ‘accounting adjustments’. The notes are both windows on layers of obscurity, and a sobering commentary on the reliability of the figures; even within a year. There is some hint that some of these adjustments net-off and the consolidated difference in some cases is small; but that netting-off is contingent, it suggests a symptomatic unstable unreliability of measurement. We should remember that without accurate measurement we can have no science, and GERS is a slapdash world of concrete-fact absent surveys and questionaires short even of social science. GERS is a creation largely of official, managed, procedural imagination; which is brought to the edge of the loosest plausibility by pressing into service the formal protocols of statistics.
It is absolutely credible, and is very easy to explain: large parts of Scotland, in particular Dundee and Greater Glasgow (not coincidentally the greatest drain on the public purse in Scotland) have been dominated and controlled by Marxists since the 1920s. And, despite the occasional blips in the 50s and 80s, Scotland as a whole – which is, and was even before the advent of the Scottish Parliament, the most powerful state-within-a-state in the world – has been in the control of Marxists, whose answer to everything has been, ‘Your problems are not your fault, but the fault of the evil Tories and capitalists, and therefore the answer to all your problems is more State.’ This has led to a bloated public sector, insanely large numbers of people being written off onto lives on benefits, and the widespread demoralisation which is responsible for Scotland having the worst life-expectency and drug and drink problems in the developed world.
Alas, because of this ideology, successive administrations in Scotland have been unable and unwilling to offer up any supply-side/tough love solutions that would not only solve Scotland’s endemic structural problems, but actually get her in shape for independence. Things entirely within the purview of the Scottish Government to achieve this include slashing income tax, taking a chainsaw to planning regulations, setting up a bunch of enterprise zones, defunding all universities and ploughing the money into technical colleges, abolishing business rates, capping top public sector pay at £100,000 and having an across-the-board public sector pay cut of 30%, and stopping telling everyone that their problems are other people’s fault. Then, hey presto, you’ve automatically fixed the deficit and set up Scotland as a business-friendly state ripe for big inward investment. It’s easy. Only this will never be done because Scotland is Marxist. (As a life-long supporter of independence this is somewhat depressing, but, hey ho, onwards and upwards!)
Jack
Let me tell you that I know want a Marxist is.
And let me also assure you that I am not a Marxist, although I have certainly read Marx.
Let me also assure you that Scotland is not Marxist
And let me also add that if you think cutting the pay of all teachers, nurses and many hundreds of thousands of others is going to help the market economy of Scotland you are very sadly deluded.
In fact, you’re talking total shite.
That’s not a technical term. But it’s precise, and accurate in this case