Regret it Brexit Part 2

MaizieD. The Scottish debt is a matter of record, not a matter of opinion.

As I understand it, the 'Scottish debt' is a matter of Treasury dictated calculations on figures that are, in some cases, hypotheses rather than fact.

I'd find it ironic if you were to quote them at me when Treasury figures for the effects of Brexit are dismissed as 'project fear'.

I agree with Nigglynellie, if that is what the majority of Scots want then we should not stand in their way. but the referendum showed that the majority of Scots did not want to leave the Union, Allygran. Is your opinion based upon what you hear/read/think/suppose? If it is it is a valid opinion. So is mine that the majority of voters, despite the result of the Brexit referendum, in fact do not wish to leave the EU. If you have accepted the validity of one referendum, you should accept the result of the other, surely?If you think one referendum should and could be ignored, then so can the other.

The rules of the EU are clear. We can’t have the benefits without the obligations. Simples. We can’t cherry pick. The EU aren’t deliberately making life difficult for us. We are shooting ourself in the foot by demanding special treatment.

I think we're bending over backwards to be as conciliatory as possible. We realise we can't cherry pick, and have not sought to do so. It will be interesting to see what happens over Gallileo? If we are to be a excluded, I don't think that the EU can expect to go on using our overseas territories?! Cherry picking?!!!
I think it's quite alarming that we appear to be embroiled in an organisation from which there is virtually no let out. Tbh back in c1975, if I or DH had known then what we know now we wouldn't even have contemplated voting to stay in the Common Market! We would have listened to Tony Benn, but we didn't and hindsight is a wonderful thing!!

GillT57 Sat 09-Jun-18 18:40:28
"I agree with Nigglynellie, if that is what the majority of Scots want then we should not stand in their way."

Your point is? I repeat that I agree with Nigglynellie, that if the majority of Scots want to leave the UK then we should not stand in their way.

MaizieD Sat 09-Jun-18 18:23:59

" As I understand it, the 'Scottish debt' is a matter of Treasury dictated calculations on figures that are, in some cases, hypotheses rather than fact."

The post was not about the Scottish debt, it was about not being allowed to leave the EU. However since it was mentioned as an example of making things easy, should the Scots decide to leave the UK, and you claim the debt is "hypotheses rather than fact", it would be good to have some foundation for what you say on this.

Spot on Nigglynellie.

The Leavers in 2016 tried to present themselves as patriots. Did they ever tell the voters that brexit might destroy the United Kingdom?

That's because it won't!

but a week is a long time in politics and TM will be back soon.

Lost the first half of that post!

Not looking too rosy at the moment - but a week is a long time in politics.

varian Sat 09-Jun-18 21:16:05
"The Leavers in 2016 tried to present themselves as patriots. Did they ever tell the voters that brexit might destroy the United Kingdom?"

Let's get this straight shall we. How long has the SNP been seeking to make Scotland for the Scottish, long, long, long before Brexit. Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond naturally, will use any political lever they can to push those Scots who are not SNP into their political framework. Brexit is just a tool. Not the cause.

It might be also worth pointing out that the Scots, are still part of the United Kingdom and you might also find that there will be a reaction in Scotland to the SNP, in fact there was in the last General Election, SNP had lost two of its most senior MPs and 22 seats in total.

"It is often forgotten that a third of SNP voters backed Brexit in the EU referendum last year. While official data has yet to be released, it is possible that some of these people abandoned the SNP in order to vote for a party that was more committed to Brexit, such as the Conservatives, or, potentially, Labour. Whether or not this diminishes their support for Scottish independence remains to be seen".
This personal viewpoint was originally published by OpenDemocracy under a CC-BY-NC licence

SNP General Election figures only.
www.open.edu/openlearn/society-politics-law/politics/why-did-the-snp-lose-seats-the-2017-general-election

I ? Scotland. Don’t diss the Scots. England with its Brexit built on anti immigrant rhetoric is heading into a global meltdown.
Scotland has embraced Europe. They continue to enjoy free University education, bursaries for student nurses, free prescriptions, a great legal and house purchase system. They welcome people to the country, there is a widespread opposition to Brexit, and genuine debate about the future.

suzied no one is dissing the Scots in any way, Sadly on here you don't hear accents.

Just a quick word about the free University education bursaries for student nurses, free prescriptions. Have you seen the deficit? Running on empty suzied, running on empty. You can only give away what you have. If you give away for political favour and you ain't got the cash, you are borrowing, and that has interest payments. Hence a hugh deficit. It is all in the Scotsman, or the Parliamentary papers.
Take a look. Fortunately there is a fall back bail out isn't there.

As for the EU membership. It would take ten years for Scotland to get into the acceptable membership situation with the 3% GDP (check that not sure of the figure) or around that. There is no chance of Scotland being allowed into the EU. Certainly no chance of Scotland staying outside of the Euro and staying with the £ sterling. Behind every dream there is reality, and unless the SNP get real, the people of Scotland will not be voting for them. In the last general election seats were lost 22 and two big guns went. Hugh deficit, oil revenue's falling, everything is not what it seems.

Having given everything, what happens when those freebies have to be withdrawn? I will leave you to think about that one. Look behind the curtain, the wizard of oz is just flesh and blood like the rest of us.

suezed, just another point, don't diss England, or any other member of the Union. Read the threads I recommend it to you. This is not about immigrants, read the threads.

I am off for lunch now.

Like most Scots I want Scotland to remain in the UK and the UK to remain in the EU. However if we leave the EU, support for separatism could well grow.

We don't of course have to leave the EU and irrespective of the fact that a narrow majority voted leave in the advisory referendum, there are now more people waking up to that fact that there is no answer to the Irish question, or indeed the many other questions arising from that folly. Just because we wrote a suicide note, it does not mean we have to jump off the cliff.

Listening to Any Questions yesterday, I heard businesswoman Emma Bridgewater say what so many are thinking, along the lines of "it's like a group of kids who got pissed at a party, they go outside to wait for a lift home, but eventually realise the lift's not coming and so have to knock on the door and sheepishly admit they made a mistake and ask to be let back in" (this may not be word for word but that was the gist of it). Huge applause!!!!

The reason Scotland has free prescriptions is that it’s actually cheaper to provide free for all than to pay the administrative cost of means testing as England does. Think about who requires most prescriptions - the elderly, the poor, the chronically ill and children.
Also Scotland is a more socialist country than England - hence in Scotland higher rate tax payers pay more than in England to help subsidise the poorer.
England had all those subsidised benefits in the past - it just governments have decided to ditch them and would rather lower taxes for the wealthy and shake the magic money tree at the DUP and Brexit costing billions. After the indy ref scots were told they would have far more say in their own government- seems like England is still calling the shots as far as Scotland goes.

Varian I see the point your making. Not sure the analogy of the kids party is helpful, but I can see where your going.

Should the people of Scotland decide to leave the Union, then the rest of the Union should facilitate that decision, putting no obstacles in their way. That is what the EU should have done with Brexit, that would have been the right thing to do.

suzied, you might find this useful:The GERS report says overall public spending – combining UK and devolved spending – was £71.2bn, or 9.2% of the UK total. Including a geographic share of North Sea oil revenues, that was equal to 44.7% of Scotland’s estimated GDP – five points higher than the level of public spending across the UK as a whole.

The GERS data shows Scotland’s total tax revenues, including oil and gas taxes, stood at just under £58bn. That left Scotland with an estimated gap between income and spending of £1,437 per head – the widest gap since the last Scottish independence referendum campaign started in 2012.

The Scottish and UK governments spent £13,175 per head on public services in Scotland, including schools, hospitals, policing, welfare, transport and defence. The UK per capita rate was £11,739.

Opposition parties said the figures exposed how unreliable the claims made about Scotland’s wealth by Sturgeon and Alex Salmond, the then first minister, had been during the referendum campaign.

In November 2013 the independence white paper, Scotland’s Future, forecast oil revenues in 2016 would be between £6.8bn and £7.9bn. Salmond said that would help power the country’s growth.

In fact, GERS found the plunge in global oil prices and the UK government’s decision to cut North Sea taxes and increase decommissioning subsidies meant Scotland’s share of oil revenues was £208m – the second lowest figure since the 1970s.

The GERS report presents a notional figure for Scotland’s deficit, since its share of UK debt and relatively higher spending are funded at UK level and 37% of its public spending is controlled by the UK government, some of which is overseas.

The Scotland Office, the UK government department for Scotland, said the notional deficit meant public borrowing per person for Scotland was more than three times higher last year, at £2,453, than the UK figure of £704 per head.

David Mundell, the Scottish secretary, said: “Being part of a strong UK has protected our living standards, and that’s one reason the people of Scotland clearly rejected Nicola Sturgeon’s plan for a second independence referendum at the election.

“Scotland’s deficit is falling at a slower rate than the UK as a whole and economic growth is lagging behind. It is vital we grow the economy and we want to work with the Scottish government to achieve that.”

Many critics of independence warned during the 2014 referendum campaign that it was unwise for Scotland to rely on oil revenue to fund its higher-than-average public spending.

Sturgeon insisted on Wednesday, however, that no one had forecast the oil crash in 2015 that led to North Sea tax revenues plunging to near zero.

She said that since her devolved government did not have full control over taxation and UK economic policy, the UK government and supporters of the UK needed to explain why Scotland’s economy was comparatively weaker.

Sturgeon and Derek Mackay, the Scottish finance secretary, acknowledged the Scottish government had not commissioned any independent economic analysis which compared the effectiveness of their economic and public spending policies, which include removing all business rates for 100,000 small firms, with the UK government’s policies.

Prof Graeme Roy, director of the Fraser of Allander Institute at Strathclyde University, and formerly Salmond’s head of economic policy, said forecasts showed the gap in performance between Scotland and the UK as a whole would continue for the rest of this decade.

In a blog analysing the latest figures, Roy said GERS provided “a pretty accurate picture of where Scotland is in 2016-17” and was a useful starting point for analysing the challenges posed by independence. Those challenges would grow in future, he said.

“All countries face big fiscal challenges in terms of what will replace declining revenues in the face of rising spending pressures over the next few years,” Roy said. “Changing the constitutional set-up doesn’t alter the fact that these fiscal challenges need to be addressed by all governments in all countries. Today’s figures show that a more autonomous Scotland will be forced to meet such challenges sooner rather than later.”

sussed sorry should have posted the link:https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/aug/23/independent-scotland-would-need-to-cut-deficit-says-sturgeon

:The GERS report says overall public spending – combining UK and devolved spending – was £71.2bn, or 9.2% of the UK total. Including a geographic share of North Sea oil revenues, that was equal to 44.7% of Scotland’s estimated GDP – five points higher than the level of public spending across the UK as a whole.

I said earlier that the GERS figures are subject to critique. This is one such critique which I hope you will read. Not only the main text but also the comments which make what seem to me to be some salient points.

I post a rather long extract from the blog:

Start
Now I hate to be an accounting pedant here, but I am not sure I agree. Let me offer a third party view, found using Google on a web site called Accounting Coach. It says:

Under the accrual basis of accounting, expenses are matched with the related revenues and/or are reported when the expense occurs, not when the cash is paid. The result of accrual accounting is an income statement that better measures the profitability of a company during a specific time period.

As an accountant I will say straight away that this second version is what accruals really is, and not what GERS says it is. And this matters, and could explain why GERS appears to sell Scotland so short. That is because the GERS version of accruals accounting treats income and expenditure as independent variables even though it then goes on to compare them when computing a deficit. So in GERS income is treated on an accruals basis and so is spending in the strict sense that it is not cash flow that is declared in GERS but sums receivable and payable. So far, so good: in accounting terms this makes sense.

But accruals also requires that the expenses be those recorded to incur the income. Or, perhaps more accurately in government accounting terms, the income shoukd be that received as a result of the spend since, as a matter of fact, national income accounting shows that government spending is a part of GDP and is then a driver of tax revenue, and not the other way round.

This is where my new problem arises with GERS. I agree that a significant part of the spending in GERS - at least sixty per cent of it - is devolved spending managed by the Scottish government and unsurprisingly as a result almost entirely spent in Scotland.

And of course I agree that some of the spending by the UK government for the supposed benefit of Scotland is also spent in Scotland. There are defence establishments, for example, in the country.

But the point that some spending for the benefit of Scotland is not spent in Scotland would not need to be made if it was not true. I have perused the GERS data and the GERS data set and admit I cannot be sure I can determine the sum in question with complete accuracy at present: I stressed at the outset that this is not a finished piece of work. The best estimate appears to be that the sum in question is unlikely to exceed £10 billion, but I stress, this will need refining.

The point then is this: a significant sum is spent for but not in Scotland. The cost is recorded as Scottish. But because the version of accruals accounting in GERS is a distortion of what that accounting concept actually requires, which is that costs and revenues be matched, the tax paid as a result of that spend does not appear to be credited to the Scottish tax account. Instead it is credited where the activity takes place.

Take an example of spending on the civil service in London charged to Scotland in GERS. The cost is in GERS. But where is the revenue? That's in south east England.

If that is the case, and I think it is, then I would suggest that the accounting base used for GERS is misleading, and the distorted view of accruals accounting as defined for GERS might suggest that this is by design.

If GERS was to present a true picture of the Scottish income and spending arising as a result of activity for the government then not only can costs from the rest of the U.K. be attributed to Scotland but so too should the tax resulting from them be attributed as well.

Actually, it's rather more than a basic basis of attribution that is required. What we know, after all, is that government spending has what is called a multiplier effect. In other words the impact of the spend ripples out into the economy because, of course, the income recipient of that spending does in turn spend what they earn. And the recipient of that spend then spends, and so on. And if a lot of government spending for Scotland is actually spent outisde the country - and it may well be - the revenue side of GERS may be seriously deflated and have no real connection with spending side of GERS at all under the accounting convention adopted because not only is the first and direct stage of tax collected not attributed to Scotland but nor either is its multiplier impact, which may be much larger.

End

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2017/08/25/gers-is-this-why-it-always-says-the-scottish-deficit-is-so-large/comment-page-1/#comments

Can I respectfully ask if you ladies who haven’t already can pop over to the Thank you ( Suffergettes) page where I am trying to get 100 Thanks in honour of those brave ladies who fought to get us the vote , we owe all that we say & do to their bravery & determination.

Ian Birrell, writing in the "i", urges patriotic Tories to stand up to the brexit bullies. He writes-

"You might think an outbreak of trade war would make even the most ardent Brexiteer question the wisdom of quitting the world’s biggest trading block. Instead, we discover that Boris Johnson, leader of the Eurosceptic gang, told a private dinner that he is "increasingly admiring” of Donald Trump as this dismal US president flirts with despots and fuels economic instability. “Imagine Trump doing Brexit,” he said. “There’d be all sorts of breakdowns, all sorts of chaos… it’s a very, very good thought.

Preaching chaos theory is fine if you are cushioned from the impact of disruption by privilege and wealth. Less so for many of the fearful masses who flocked to back Brexit based on Johnson’s dodgy claims of taking back control and transforming our future. This is why cliff-edge withdrawal remains so concerning: it would fall hardest on the most vulnerable sections of society. Yet still the political shenanigans continue, with tantrums and threats round the Cabinet table, while the nation bumbles along a path to departure with little idea of its end destination."

inews.co.uk/opinion/columnists/brexit-bullies-vote-lords-amendments/

There were a couple of interesting comments on Richard North's blog a few days ago which relate to Boris's 'meltdown':

Last night I was speaking with a friend whose judgement I trust. I mentionned that in April next year, the economy would tank, the shelves of shops empty and all trade, even air traffic, cease.
His reply was that I was being silly because it would never happen.
He looked at me as if I had suddenly gone mad.
I suggest that he speaks for an awful lot of people.

And a response on the same lines:

Of course he thinks that you are mad. If the population actually believed any of this, we would be seeing serious rioting and general disorder. The disorder would not just be the rejection of the idea of privation but an expression of rage that their political class could hold them so cheap and in such contempt that they could actively connive in such a fate for the UK.

So the trick for our political and intertwined media is to play dumb, soothe the concerns. Call them project fear as they did so successfully the last time. Above all else, make sure that there is no evidence that they ever understood the issues. None of these people will be held to account. What laws have they broken? Stupidity in public office is not a crime, ideologically driven bullshit in public office is not a crime.
We already know that neither the prime minister, nor her ministers read the impact assessments.......

And a further response which I think nails it:

It's a kind of 'childhood syndrome' (or similar). 'Nothing bad can happen because Mum and Dad would stop it'.

The idea is that people act as if whatever crazy ideas and political plans they try out, nothing really bad can happen because 'the adults' wouldn't let it. So we can do a no-deal brexit and nothing really bad will happen because 'the adults wouldn't let it'.

To a large extent this is also seen in Communists and Libertartians, who both want to (a) tear up the existing order, and (b) assume that day to day life wouldn't change too drastically.. because it wouldn't be allowed to.

It's seriously dangerous thinking. Because really bad things can happen and we are not immune.

The problem, as I see it, is that all the 'adults' are being steadfastly ignored...

www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=86895

(The comments are always interesting..
I hope I haven't violated some sort of bloggers' etiquette by copying those comments to this forum.)

That was very interesting Maizie. My worry is that by the time others realise the impact it will be too late. Even if we were to stop everything today so much damage has already been done and it would take time to repair - also who would trust the U.K. and what is said?