New SNP Leader

Here is an opportunity to register your opinion on devolution,


We believe devolution in Scotland has failed, come at a cost to the UK economy and adds little to no value to the people of Scotland. We want a referendum to be held asking the public whether powers granted through devolution should be returned to the UK Government in Westminster.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/634090

Morayloon,

I don't know if you meant to, but you rendered your last post to me impossible to reproduce via the "quote" function so I have been forced to do a rather unsatisfactory improvised copy and paste job to reply to you here. Perhaps, if you are not doing so intentionally, you could desist from doing so in the future as a courtesy to other forum members.



Happyjack : Apart from Jaydee, who routinely insists that ScotGov underspends every year, I think that we all understand that ScotGov balances the books - and most of us realise that they only do so because they are obliged to, otherwise they would be running up ever increasing debts as each year passes

Morayloon: Just like your UK Government does do you mean?


I will ignore the racist undertones of the "your UK Government" in your response on this occasion and address the substance of your comment only. 

No, not like our UK Government, actually. Whenever our UK Government decides to spend more on any matter in parts of the country where that matter is not devolved, the relevant devolved nations get a corresponding pro-rata uplift to their budgets. However, despite receiving these regular windfall amounts, SNP ScotGov still routinely complains that it is being denied the right to borrow even more money and therefore, obviously, run up more debt.  




Happyjack: However, what has that to do with Vinny’s point ie. that the Barnett formula massively advantages Scotland as it gives ScotGov considerably more to spend per head on devolved matters than is spent in England or, on average, across the country?

Morayloon: I quite specifically said 'Just to add something ...'. That should have alerted you that I was drifting from his worn out whining.


if you had first of all made any attempt whatsoever to answer Vinny's point about the Barnett formula before saying that, then maybe this would be a reasonable point for you to make. However, as you have now confirmed that you didn't then it is not. 





Happyjack:  Do you deny this? If not, are you happy to take this benefit of UK membership or do you feel, as Vinny does, that this money should be used where it is most needed throughout the UK rather than being automatically given to Scotland (and the other devolved nations) irrespective of need?

Morayloon:  Spending per capita is higher in Scotland for various reasons. Water is still in public ownership so is included in Scotland's public finances. Water is privatised in England so it is excluded from its public finances. Scotland has much more remote and island areas than any other part of the UK. A lot of funding is required to take the people, living in those regions, up to the standards the rest of us take for granted. The list goes on. The fact of the matter is that you have to look deeper into the issue rather than accepting the raw figures at face value. 

I note that you have not directly answered the questions that I put to you above ie. 
1. Do you deny that the Barnett formula massively advantages Scotland as it gives ScotGov considerably more to spend per head on devolved matters than is spent in England or, on average, across the country, and
2. are you happy for Scotland to receive this benefit of UK membership or do you feel, as Vinny does, that this money should be used where it is most needed throughout the UK rather than being automatically given to Scotland (and the other devolved nations) irrespective of need?

However, from you what you did say in your reply, I think that we can safely assume that you accept that Scotland is massively advantaged through the Barnett Formula and that you are happy for Scotland to receive this benefit of UK membership irrespective of whether others need it more than we do or not.

As for what you actually say above, 
1. I understand that water is in public ownership up here but (1) Scottish householders pay their share through an add on to their council tax bills, and (2) Scottish businesses are billed and pay for their usage directly, so your point that Scotland receives more funds in part to pay for publicly owned water doesn't stack up ... but, if it did, then do you believe that it would be fair and justifiable for the UK Government to fund the Scottish people's water services when it doesn't fund the water services of the vast majority of us who reside elsewhere in the UK?, and
2. You obviously don't realise it (otherwise you would never have said it because you would never willingly acknowledge any benefit of being part of the UK) but you are actually making the case for Scotland's place in the UK here. You are absolutely correct, due to its geographical characteristics and its low population density, Scotland undoubtedly requires markedly more funding to keep its public services and facilities up to the same standards than is required across the UK generally. While we remain part of the UK, these additional funds are provided by the UK Government and the costs spread across a population of circa 70 million. Just think how debilitating it would be if these funds had to be raised from just circa 5.4 million of us in an independent Scotland instead. We would all have to either live with much higher taxation to maintain these services or allow these services to drop to an unacceptably damaging level. Neither is remotely appealing in my view, and neither would be anything other than detrimental to the Scottish people.  What would you prefer an Indy Scotland to do here ie. cripple us with taxes or introduce savage cuts to our services and facilities?





Happyjack:  As for your usual nonsense about the calculation of reserved issues in GERS, I guess that you are so far down the Indy rabbit hole that you simply can’t accept anything that contradicts the Indy narrative, even such inconvenient but reliable information as the GERS figures - so there is no point going into all of that stuff yet again with you. However, as the threat of Indy is pretty much over for my lifetime and yours, I can at least now allow you to continue to go on repeating this self-deluding nonsense unchallenged, safe in the knowledge that you can cause no harm to me or the Scottish people when you do

Morayloon: You accept that ScotGov balances the books. The so called 'deficit' must therefore come from reserved spending in, and on behalf of, Scotland.

Your argument is based upon flawed logic. ScotGov balancing the books, in itself, has nothing to do with GERS calculations or the deficit; the “books” that it balances are part of ScotGov’s financial reporting, not part of the GERS report. That is not to say that the amount expended by ScotGov does not feature in GERS - but it only features in the Expenditure column ie. there is no corresponding entry on the Revenue side of the GERS calculation against which it balances. So ScotGov balancing its books on devolved matters income and expenditure does not mean that the GERS deficit results from reserved matters expenditure.

However, what does impact upon the deficit is the value of the books themselves ie. the amount that ScotGov receives and therefore spends on devolved matters. This is a far greater amount than ScotGov would receive to spend on us if it were to be given a budget linked to the amount of revenue that Scotland raises. Fortunately for us, that is not the case. However, if that were ever to happen then ScotGov would have to operate on a much reduced budget, one considerably lower per head (rather than considerably higher as is the case at present) than the corresponding amount presently spent in England on such matters, with all of the pain and distress that that would bring.

So, rather than the deficit being due to reserved matters spending (as you argue is the case) because ScotGov balances the books, the actual reason that Scotland has a deficit is because the total amount of public money spent on providing Scotland with its devolved and reserved services is consistently much higher than the total amount of public money that Scotland raises to fund these devolved and reserved services. The fact that this deficit is only notional and not something that we have to address is, of course, down to us being part of the UK and not independent. The day we go independent would be the day when this deficit would become a hard reality - at which point we would really be in deep shit. 




Morayloon:  Some of those figures are quite transparent e.g benefit payments.Others, are pure guesswork. No attempt is made to divide the figures into what is paid from various departments to the devolved nations'. Unless you can prove otherwise of course.
Even if there was as big a 'deficit' as is claimed, it is an argument for getting Scotland out. It is obvious that the union is holding us back. Far better to go our own way, doing things our own way - just like the multitude of successful states of similar, or lower, populations

Scotland having a big deficit is routinely thrown up by Indy supporters as an example of the union holding us back and as justification for independence. I find this completely baffling tbh.  How can the UK providing us with £20 billion per annum more than we raise, and thereby allowing us to enjoy services and facilities that would otherwise be beyond our means, possibly be described as "holding us back" - and how can exposing ourselves to £20billion per annum of additional costs or, alternatively, savagely reducing the level of services and facilities that we currently take for granted, possibly be an argument for going our own way?

Just signed it mate. Its now standing at 5, 4 3 2

2011 census figures. I'll report back when the 2022 Census results come out.
Funny that, given the choice of Scottish only or Scottish & British only, 62% responded the former while only 18% chose the latter 

www.nrscotland.gov.uk/news/2014/census-2011-release-3a

Hello fellow BRIT.....Good to see you can still bitch on.

I answered the points within your quote. I thought this would work but obviously the program did not like it. I left it for you to work out


Yes we all know about consequentials. Scotland has only very limited borrowing powers so therefore it has very little, if any, debt



The responses answered your points. The Barnett Formula results in what I described as the raw figures. I explained, obviously not to your liking, why and how the per capita figures for each country differs a great bit. Are you seriously suggesting that, say, a crofter on Lewis should be disadvantaged because he lives in the Outer Hebrides. The same discrimination would apply to people residing in the other islands and the North West, and Central Highlands. Can you not grasp the fact that there is a bigger cost involved in servicing those areas.


You can 'assume' what you like. The amount Scotland gets goes someway to ensuring Scots in our remotest areas are not discriminated against. In any case what the UK returns to Scotland is a fraction of what it raises. 

You might find these figures surprising (I presume that you mean “funny” in the surprising sense of the word here and not the jocular?) but I don’t.

As I have explained on here before, many Scots who do not support Scottish Independence are not unionists. You, and other Indy-leaning forum members have thus far demonstrated an inability or an unwillingness to grasp that simple concept for some reason, but the figures that you highlight in your post above strongly suggest that there is merit in what I have been saying.

This survey was taken at a time when "support for independence -V- opposed to independence" was probably circa 30%/70%. By the logic you laid out recently in another thread, that meant that 70% of us were unionists. However, nobody who believes in the unionist ideology would ever fail to identify as being British, yet only 8% of us identified as feeling “ British Only”  and a further 18% felt enough of of a connection to the union to feel “Scottish and British”. Even if all of the 18% who felt ”Scottish and British” bought into unionism (which will definitely not have been the case) that still leaves a massive chasm between the high numbers who didn’t support Scottish Independence and the much lower numbers who felt at least some sense of being British (a pre-requisite to being a unionist, of course). Therefore there was a massive number of Scots who did not support Independence but who were not unionists. The percentages might be a bit different nowadays but otherwise the same scenario still applies today.

Hopefully you will be able to get your head around this and see the Scottish electorate for what it truly is rather than continue to buy into the Indy Fanatic propaganda - but I somehow doubt that.