Truth and lies (not in that order)
First the lies (from the print-only editions of today’s Daily Mail):
And then the truth, from our own Scott Minto a week ago.
Decide for yourself who to believe.
We’re not sure, incidentally, that we can recall the story which allegedly revealed it would cost an independent Scotland £1 billion to set up a few embassies. That seems an awful lot of money, given that there are only a couple of hundred countries in the world and £50m per office seems a touch high. Even in Kensington or Chelsea you’d get a pretty darned impressive building for that, let alone Angola, Tuvalu or Micronesia.
We wonder if it’s perhaps been arrived at using the same broken calculator Alan Cochrane of the Telegraph used to work out the cost of intelligence services, exaggerating the reality by a breathtaking 900% – an “error” the Telegraph still hasn’t seen fit to correct a month later. What a puzzle.
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Correct me if I am wrong, but has Westminster not spent all of the pension contributions that we have already made to our basic state pensions?
Astonishing that they print the same old crap time after time. Even more astonishing that people buy the same old crap time after time.
Anyone know the circulation figures for the Daily Mail in Scotland?
That’s why they call it the Daily Fail!
Well I know who I would believe, but then I would say that wouldn’t I?
Re the cost of setting up our own embassies; like you I don’t have the answer, but I know someone who probably has, and that is Craig Murray, former Ambassador to Uzbekistan , past Rector of Dundee Uni and a nationalist to boot.
He responded to my request to reply to a query from a unionist troll regarding Scotland’s stolen sea, in your blog ’Pushing at an Open Door’ a few days ago, so Ill get him to answer this one too.
In the meantime perhaps you would put up a link to his excellent and controversial blog at http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/
I like his latest one at the Oxford Union debate, when his side defeated the motion “This house still dreams the American Dream”.
Note he proudly wears the kilt!
“The UK Exchequer absorbs much of the cost [of Scottish rural pensions]. Or, will make you work until you die, of course.
Who would be a satirist in these days of newspaper idiocy?
Only an idiot wouild think that a UK state pension will be worth anything once they retire (if they live that long) but then these are the same idiots that buy the Daily Mail.
The incredible scandal is that the UK is increasing the retirement age knowing full well that, although they’ve contributred all their lives, in certain parts of Scotland people won’t live long enough to be able to collect their state pensions. So yet again Scotland is subsidising the UK though NI contributions and doesn’t get much of it back.
Why would we need embassies, they are BRITISH embassies not UK Embassies. We are becoming an independent Scotland, we are still part of the British Isles and we pay a share for them now, it would only change if Westminster were spiteful.
This really gets my goat, I wish people would get over this misconception that
BRITISH=ENGLISH, they do not have a concession on the name.
Scotland is not sawing along the border and floating off into the Atlantic, we will still be on the map as a part of the British Isles
The embassy thing.
There a handy list of all New Zealand representatives overseas here. A quick count came up with 67 high commissions, embassies and consulates general. Not quite “100”, but not a million miles away.
As at June 2012, the value of all buildings owned by the NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade was NZD 100 million. Even if we assumed all of those buildings were in the form of embassies, diplomatic residences, etc, an assumption which is obviously wrong because there are offices at home in NZ, that’s only £50 million book value and there’s another £50 million in furnishings and equipment. On top of that there is £150 million in land spread around the planet, but unlike the earlier numbers land values are estimates of market prices and not paper valuations.
I am not inclined to try and figure out what proportion of the UK Foreign Office’s land and buildings are located in the UK and even if I did the figures would not be comparable. A relatively minor problem is that the UK National Asset Register does not distinguish land and buildings. Much more importantly, the NZ Ministry whose accounts we used is responsible for Foreign Affairs and Trade, so we’d have to include some, but not all, of the assets attributed to the UK DTI (and its vast array of quangos and agencies). If we looked at Ireland, we’d have a different problem as Ireland’s foreign ministry does UK DfID stuff too. And so on.
So is a billion quid just to set up embassies impossible? We can’t be sure that it is, not like we could be certain that the Cochrane number was a blunder, but it doesn’t look at all likely. Anyway, we all know how the Big Lie works. The Daily Mail uses the technique every day, so why be surprised to find it in a story about Scotland rather than in one about “benefit scroungers”, “asylum seekers”, or any of the other DM regulars?
I read the headline of the Daily Mail article, the first line, scanned, saw the name Danny Alexander and then read the conclusion. I have read this very same thing a hundred times, just a different topic. Tomorrow it will be about square sliced sausage, or wee dugs, or has that been covered already?
@Rev Stu
I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while about the Daily Mail in that a lot of your articles are based on the guff emanating from the likes of the Scotsman, the Daily Record, the Herald, etc. The Daily Mail comes out with some quite incredible lies, smears and misinformation…every day! Do you usually just ignore it because it is just so far ‘out there’ that it is beyond comment? If it is that, I wouldn’t blame you! Anyway, having seen today’s Mail ‘offerings’ I was going to post something about it on one of your articles no matter what. Great to see that you’ve picked up on the Daily Mail’s behaviour today!
“Do you usually just ignore it because it is just so far ‘out there’ that it is beyond comment?”
A lot of the Mail’s Scottish content either doesn’t appear on the website at all, or is buried very deeply so I just don’t see it.
What they are not saying of course is stick with Westminster and watch our share of their debt increase exponentially.
This is the real threat to future welfare and pensions in Scotland and not having all of our affairs managed from Holyrood.They still haven’t explained to the Scottish electorate why they are so desperate to hang on to what they describe as an economic basket case which can only survive with support from Westminster.
So, Ireland then.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade combines the functions of the UK FCO, plus DfID and part of DTI, so even more extra stuff than the New Zealand equivalent. It has 71 embassies and the like overseas with permanent staff, slightly more than NZ. The easiest comparable source to use for information on the DFA’s budget and assets is last year’s appropriations for Vote 28 (Foreign Affairs and Trade). The DFA’s other source of funding is Vote 29 (International Cooperation), which corresponds more or less with the DfID except that it doesn’t involve the extra red tape which a separate department does.
Luckily for us, the Irish government’s land and buildings in Ireland are owned and run by a dedicated works department. So the Vote 28 figures show only those assets located abroad. This is really about as close as we will get to the sort of number we want to compare with the DM’s Big Lie.
As at 31 December 2011, the DFA owned land and buildings worth EUR 160 million and other assets, from cars to coffee machines and from paintings to photocopiers, valued at EUR 126 million. And even adding an extra 30 embassies and consulates to get us to “100″ would make little difference as the total book value of the assets making up an average Irish permanent overseas diplomatic facility comes in at about EUR 4 million.
So there’s no way we could get anywhere close to a billion pounds if we paid any attention to the numbers from Ireland and New Zealand. But even if the DM exaggerated the costs by 300-400%, which seems a conservative guess as to the scale of this particular lie, that shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, this is a newspaper which appears to be claiming that half of the population of Bulgaria will up sticks and move to S.E. England fairly soon. The Daily Mail does truthiness, not truth.
Embassies on countries that have few connections to Scotland could just be small rented offices, it’s like that all over the world between countries that barely “see” each other. Its just the least of countries that would need a full building.
Embassies…
To be honest, if Scotland does become Independent, then rather than rush out and buy buildings here and there, in every capital, in every country in the world, I suspect Scotland will initially open up key embassies in the US, Canada, Australia, NZ, China, Japan, Brazil and India, plus all the countries in Western Europe.
After that, I would wait. It won’t take long for other nations to get in contact with us. The first few nations that will come calling will be from the Middle East (the rich nations such as Saudi, Oman, UAE, etc) and Eastern Europe, followed by South America. In time, we will have a few here and there in Africa. I have no doubt that some nations will offer us incentives, and give us good deals for opening up an embassy in their nation, and likeswise, we will do the same for them.
To me, I think that is how the embassy situation will start. Have the key few at first, then slowly build them up when needed or required.
But, all this negativity over embassies, for that is exactly what it is – Negativity. A complete put-down, basically saying Scotland is incapable of setting up relationships with other nations.
As I said, I think Scotland will do fine when it comes to embassies….
Scotland in the EU will have access to EU member states’ embassies around the world.
regarding embassies, the Scandinavian countries have made arrangements to share some of their embassies. If we were part of the Nordic Circle, we could also be involved in this.
I don’t see any information on the SNP site about their plans for dealing with the change to Public or Private Pensions. There is a piece from 2011 here http://www.snp.org/media-centre/news/2011/nov/pensions-more-affordable-independence with a .pdf attached to show some figures but there are no Articles “devising a credible scenario for dealing with them”
I can only assume that the plans are secret ? In my opinion this type of Information is vital and should come from an official SNP source.
Not just “could be” but “will be and here’s how”
Just sayin’.
@deewal
http://wingsland.podgamer.com/rainy-day-blues/
Or perhaps Scotland could come to an arrangement to share embassies with other states, much like the UK and Canada does?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/sep/24/britain-canada-share-embassies
How’s about we just use the existing UK embassies, each of which we own a piece of?
The Yes Scotland site has a Q&A about pensions. It would appear to be a hot topic!
http://www.yesscotland.net/pensions_in_an_independent_scotland
@Gusmac
Genius!
Why not just establish a franchise whereby tastefully-decorated Scottish ‘pubs’ can have ’embassy’ status – that’s where everyone ends up anyway. Isn’t that what the Irish have done to great effect?
Adrian B – National Insurance contributions have been added to current spending ever since the welfare state began in 1948, and have been subsidised by taxes. Outgoings always exceeded NI income and probably will in independent Scotland, especially if we have a generous benefit system. NI is another tax, but paying it does entitle you to certain non means tested ‘contributory’ benefits, including a pension.
Embassies. I wouldn’t see us sharing British ones – the point of independence is that we have out own. However, they don’t need to be extravagant mansions, modest offices would be fine.
JLT,
Our most important embassy will, probably, be the one in London.
@Gusmac: But why would we want that many embassies, consulates, etc? And how can you be sure we do own a share of them? Ireland didn’t get any “share” and Westminster may not be any more minded to share today. Writing today, Professor David Shaffer thinks this is a bad thing, but since I agree with his remarks on sharing debt (on page 3) I am not so sure that it is. After all, the value of UK government debts is about ten times greater than the value of UK government assets which might be divided up.