{"id":52505,"date":"2020-08-28T16:34:48","date_gmt":"2020-08-28T15:34:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=52505"},"modified":"2020-08-28T16:34:48","modified_gmt":"2020-08-28T15:34:48","slug":"wee-ginger-dug-and-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2020\/08\/28\/wee-ginger-dug-and-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Wee Ginger Dug, and me"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I spent last evening talking to Wee Ginger Dug - or, rather, Paul Kavanagh who blogs, writes and podcasts under that name. We did, perhaps inevitably, discuss GERS (Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland), but quite a lot else came up along the way. I repost this from the <a href=\"https:\/\/weegingerdug.wordpress.com\/2020\/08\/28\/dugcast-fae-the-dughoose-with-prof-richard-murphy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Wee Ginger Dug<\/a> site:<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-soundcloud wp-block-embed is-type-rich wp-embed-aspect-1-1 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"><a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/user-291670852\/dugcast-27-08-2020-with-richard-murphy\" rel=\"nofollow\">https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/user-291670852\/dugcast-27-08-2020-with-richard-murphy<\/a><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F883496041&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;visual=true&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;color=ff5500\" width=\"100%\" height=\"300\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div><i><a title=\"WeeGingerDug\" href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/user-291670852\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">WeeGingerDug<\/a> \u00b7 <a title=\"Dugcast 27 08 2020 With Richard Murphy\" href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/user-291670852\/dugcast-27-08-2020-with-richard-murphy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Dugcast 27 08 2020 With Richard Murphy<\/a><\/i><\/div>\n<p><i>This week, especially because it\u2019s the week of GERSmas, I am delighted to be joined online by Professor Richard Murphy.\u00a0 Richard is perhaps best known in Scotland for his work on the GERS figures, but he has a wealth of experience in tax policy.\u00a0 He is a chartered accountant and political economist who campaigns on issues of tax avoidance and tax evasion.\u00a0 He is currently a professor of International Political Economy at the University of London.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>We discuss the GERS figures and how in Richard\u2019s estimation, \u201cGERS is CRAP \u2014 Completely Rubbish APproximations.\u201d\u00a0 He explains how he first got interested in GERS because of his interest in the way that numbers can be used to construct a political narrative, and GERS is a perfect example of this. The GERS figures are designed to show that Scotland has a deficit, and were so designed for a political purpose.\u00a0 GERS compares income WITHIN Scotland to expenditure FOR Scotland. Or more precisely to expenditure which is arbitrarily assigned to Scotland.\u00a0 This is not comparing like with like.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>Using a hypothetical example he explains: \u201cIf Scotland had a real deficit of 3%, and England had a real deficit of 3%, GERS would show that Scotland had a much larger deficit than England.\u201d\u00a0 He tells us how GERS is little more than a method of shovelling England\u2019s debt onto Scotland.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>It all makes for fascinating listening, and for once we had no technical issues with the sound.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I spent last evening talking to Wee Ginger Dug &#8211; or, rather, Paul Kavanagh who blogs, writes and podcasts under that name. We did, perhaps<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2020\/08\/28\/wee-ginger-dug-and-me\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,106,140],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-politics","category-scotland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52505\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}