scotlandisdifferent

Three additional shopping loads: Waitrose, 1st December 2020 Union Jack: eggs, mushrooms (2 items). The word "British": chicken, lamb (2 items). Saltire: none (0 items). The word "Scottish": cream (1 item). No mark: bananas, beer, blueberries, bread, broccoli, cake, cheerios, chocolate, cooking oil, fruit juice, grapes, lentils, milk, pears, pilchards, salad, sardines, shortbread, wine (19 items). So for Waitrose, 4 items out of 24 (17%) were marked with Jacks or as "British", one out of 24 (4%) as "Scottish". It seems clear where their sympathies lie. Morrison's, 9th December 2020 Union Jack: beef mince, cream, potatoes (3 items). The word "British": none (0 items). Saltire: eggs, milk, mushrooms, shortbread (4 items). The word "Scottish": milk (1 item). No mark: apples, beer, bread, cake, cheerios, empire biscuits, fruit juice, grapes, halloumi, jam, onions, red cabbage, salad, stock cubes, swee...

Update, 26/09/2020: The joke at the foot of this post, the pseudo-graph from pseudo Kevin Hague, has been picked up and republished by Munguin's Republic , a lovely site with stunning nature pics, a strong but unencumbering commitment to Scottish independence, and jokes. Thanks, Tris, and best wishes in the ongoing struggle. IT'S TIME for a brief look at GERS, the "Government Expenditure and Revenue in Scotland" report. The usual narrative is: • Scotland has a deficit, because it spends more on public services than it raises in taxes. • The UK funds that deficit by giving money to the Scottish Government (the "fiscal transfer"). This means that Scotland sponges on the UK. • An independent Scotland couldn't fund that difference. All nice and clear, then - and all nice and falsely spun. Let's look at those falsehoods. Firstly, deficits are normal: all countries in the world have deficits, bar a handful of tax havens. What matters is whether a country...

RECENT CONVERSATIONS and internet posts have left me with the feeling that the independence argument is in fact won, and the ice-sheet of No that's been stifling the hopes of younger generations is beginning to crack and break up. First up is the dog-walker, whom I reported on earlier , who had a visceral hatred of nationalists because of what they were doing to the country he loved. Leaving aside the question of why loving one's country isn't nationalism, this man is trapped in circular, content-free thinking: - I love my country. - How do we know you love your country? - Because I want it to stay in the UK. That's where it belongs. - How do you know it belongs there? - Because it does. And I love my country. This isn't political or social thinking, this is emotional masturbation. And the problem for these people at the high end of the No scale is that, when faced with facts or concrete thinking, they have nowhere to go: they can only retreat into vitriol. There...

For those who haven't heard of Kevin Hague and his rabidly anti-independence blog (What is he scared of? Why does he hate independence so much? Is he misinformed, or just greedy? And if greedy, what for?) , this is a chilling post: https://chokkablog.blogspot.co.uk/ 28 August 2017 at 01:14 Comments to "Professor Murphy and the Deckchairs" Anonymous Drew said... Here's a tricky one for anti-independence campaigners. While you want the Conservatives and/or Labour to win control of Holyrood in 2021, you wouldn't want them doing too well. There's a danger for opponents of independence that if Scotland's economy ever improves to the extent that tax revenues increase and spending on poverty, health and social problems decrease, then the situation with GERS might show Scotland could prosper with greater control over the economy. This would risk doing the SNP's job for it. The parties against independence need to be able to show that Scotland is economically w...

An open letter to Kevin Hague Dear Kevin, Kevin Hague said... yes - unclouded by anger and not troubled with supporting data that is an excellent summary, thank you 31 August 2017 at 07:24 I'm glad you agree that I gave ( here ) an excellent summary of your post about GERS on your blog. I summarised your post because I wanted to get behind your vituperation and your avalanche of data, and look at the merit of your arguments. I have to say I'm not impressed. Let's take your five main points:- 1. Professor Murphy asks why the Scottish deficit is so much larger than that of the rest of the UK (the 'deficit gap'). You reply that it's because the difference between what Scotland spends on services and what it collects in revenue is larger that that of the rest of the UK. This answer is vapid: it doesn't explain, it just restates the phenomenon. If you asked an employee of yours why they were late, and they said it was because they hadn't arrived at the state...

GERS, as readers will know, is the "Government Expenditure and Revenue for Scotland", and is published yearly. The report for 2016-2017 came out recently, and economist Richard Murphy questioned its accuracy, voicing his early suspicions that these books had been cooked. His claim elicited a vigorous rebuttal from Scottish entrepreneur Kevin Hague, blogging as chokka blog. In my view, Hague's rebuttal, which you can read here , should have used more moderate and factual language, which would surely have made it more persuasive. Instead, he wrote a sarcastic and emotional attack on Richard Murphy's competence, and also included a welter of raw data. This made the thread of Hague's argument difficult to follow, and in the end (in my view) weakened his case. I've therefore re-presented his argument below, leaving out the emotive language and the overly detailed data, in order to make his argument clearer. This is what I think he should have written: Professor Mur...