scotlandisdifferent

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...

That title reminds me of a linguistic joke, so let's get that over with: New student at Harvard, seeing a clearly established student whom he can ask for information: "Say, is this where the library's at? Established student (snootily): "This is Harvard. We don't end sentences with a preposition." New student: "Oh, I'll rephrase my question. Is this where the library's at, asshole?" To the point, now. It's been a long time since the Scottish independence movement has been anything other than murky, unpredictable, unbelievably baffling or just plain hopeless. However, things are beginning to turn the corner, with some upcoming dramatic events:- This coming Wednesday, it is said, Nicola Sturgeon will set out her response to BJ's refusal of the request for a Section 30 order. This either will or will not contain a commitment to an indy referendum this year. It's difficult to see how it will plausibly do that. But if it doesn...

This claim turned up in comments on The National yesterday, from John Stuart Wilson. Since it's based on data, it needs to be taken seriously: Our largest on-shore private sector employer is the finance industry. It accounts for, directly and indirectly, 1 in 12 jobs. It doesn't want to be located in a foreign country from 90% of its customers. (Ask yourself: how many local authorities and SMEs currently send their monthly pension scheme payments to Belgium to have them managed there?) And it will not accept the loss of a LOLR [lender of last resort] backstop. So independence will cause major job losses in Scotland, as these firms relocate to the rUK. However, there are a few points in the above claim which are not clear: - the Scottish finance industry employs 160,000 people, out of a labour force of 2.6m. This is 1 in 16. Where does the writer get his figure of 1 in 12 from? - the UK-wide finance industry employs about 2m people, out of a labour force of 32m. So the Scottish...

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...