Now with added fear
Ooh, we haven’t had one of these for a while. Browsing the newspapers on our iPad this morning before getting up, we noticed an interesting headline in the Scotsman.
Intrigued, we clicked on it to see if it was a standard-issue scare story in the paper’s “Scottish independence” section, and were pleasantly surprised to note that it wasn’t. In fact, the warned-of tax rises or cuts in services were those which would follow a No vote in the referendum, as they’re those planned by UK Chancellor George Osborne.
Having noticed with relief that the headline on the story didn’t come with what would have been a highly misleading “Scottish independence:” prefix, we were a touch alarmed to be sent a link by a concerned reader pointing to what turned out to be a re-titled version of the same story.
Well, that’s a bit more like what we expect from the Scotsman.
The CPPR paper reported in the story notes that “the authors question whether ministers can continue to protect the NHS from spending cuts, given the huge share it takes of the total pot, and there’s no faulting that conclusion. All a devolved Holyrood can ever really do is stall cuts which emanate from Westminster for a few years, by finding efficiencies or robbing Peter to pay Paul.
So try as we might, it’s all but impossible to concoct a journalistic rationalisation for the change of title. The story is now blatantly misrepresented by the headline, and is empirically less accurate, not least since it now warns solely of “tax rises”, not “big cuts OR tax rises”, despite it not being known which will actually be deployed.
That, of course, isn’t the worst of its problems. Anyone reading the headline could only reasonably assume that these threatened cuts/tax rises were to be a result of independence, rather than the opposite. We can only imagine the ear-bashing some hapless sub-editor must have endured for the original title, which accurately and properly (if slightly ambiguously) represented the content of the story and totally failed to include any massively dishonest implications about independence. The idiot.
Ultimately the Scottish Parliament’s budget is controlled by London, and there’s only so far the Scottish Government can make its pocket money stretch across the gaps. The only way to actually STOP the cuts is for Scotland to control its own finances, and in particular to not waste the best part of a billion pounds every year on defence spending far beyond even the most hawkish assessment of Scottish needs.
If only there was some way that could happen.
Increased Scottish oil revenues go south to Treasury coffers. Savage public sector cuts head north to Scotland courtesy of the Chancellor, George Osborne.
Scots are being cheated and punished at the same time. Better Together my @rse.
Amazing ‘George Osborne is planning to rob you, but we’ll use a headline throwing suspicion on John Swinney’. Does The Scotsman ever think of ‘journalism’ and ‘ethics’ in the same paragraph?
My response is to impliment the Levison enquiry recommendations in full. That newspaper gives journalism a bad name.
A little additional info – the original URL was
link to scotsman.com
This now redirects to
link to scotsman.com
What a disgrace this rag is, I hope the people wake up soon and realise the Scotsman thinks they are just dim-witted idiots who will swallow anything they print.
A disgrace to the nation
Last night my local SNP councillor came round for a little tete-a-tete about this and that and HE takes the Scotsman! When I was out leafleting in Peebles for Yes Scotland our co-ordinator said to me, make sure you do that house, they’re SNP, and when I got to the all-glass door there was a copy of the Scotsman on the mat.
Some people never learn.
The sad decline of the Scotsman newspaper inexorably continues…
Do the people of Scotland really want to continue to receive pocket money or are we now confident enough to receive and use our wages?
@Muttley
What is sad about the decline of the Scotsman? Are you sad at the decline of the Labour Party? Perhaps you are one of those happy to eat yoghurt after its sell by date but for most if something smells then its bin time and no regrets.
So.
The Scotsman’s answer to the large cuts coming our way is to vote No to ensure that we receive the full whack in the face?
How about we vote Yes, and take control of our own tax affairs?
PS To cheer yourself up, every time you find a spare Scotsman at an airport, or wherever, pick it up and dispose of in the nearest recycling bin.
Every little helps.
I think if you write to the Scotsman about impartiality you’ll get a response similar to the one from the BBC, and I’m paraphrasing here – “We don’t have to be impartial yet so screw you!”
Whilst many decent journo’s and workers at The Scotsman will have my genuine sympathy when their employer folds, in all other respects I cannot wait for this politically and morally cancer-ridden institution to die in the gutter.
The Scotsman and journalistic ethics (thinks).
Nope, no one has ever accused them of having any that I’m aware of. Still if you’re going to cut down the trees anyway make sure you get more than one use out of the paper.
Suggestions on a postcard please… 🙂
John
I think the Scotsman is more likely to say “we will never be impartial (or honest) so beat it with this journalistic integrity crap”
It’s interesting to see a story being edited for bias… because the original wasn’t biased enough!
A thought occured to me .. companies like Tesco, Asda, Marks and Spencers etc all pay tax.. presumably to Westminster? Would I be right in thinking that after Independence that the taxes from said companies who have businesses in Scotland would then be paid to the Scottish Government?? That’s a hell of a lot of tax money coming our way .. there’s about 18 Tescos in Dundee alone , if you count all the wee metro branches!! Unless of course they all pull out of Scotland … somehow I can’t see that happening though! 😉
The Scotsman is a joke, it is pushing the Unionist line no matter what contortions or lies necessary. It makes no pretence at honesty. Then again I make no pretence about ever buying the damned thing ever again.
More nonsense from the Hootsman:
link to scotsman.com
“This is the position of most Scots unionists; we’re quite happy as we are.” Really? It’s all that happiness that’s causing them to post foam flecked rants about “separatists”? Who knew?
“Actually it is difficult to make a positive case for the Union. It’s a bit like making a case for your marriage.” I would have no such trouble on the second point. What a lucky lady Mrs Massie is to have found this treasure.
“More nonsense from the Hootsman:
link to scotsman.com“
The best thing about that article is that it starts with the headline “Nothing negative about not saying Yes” and ends with the line “Negativity rules, OK.”
HeatherMcLean
I think we only get the tax if the companies have their head office registered in Scotland. However, more than one of the companies you mentioned, pay very little tax in Britain.
I think if you write to the Scotsman about impartiality you’ll get a response similar to the one from the BBC, and I’m paraphrasing here – “We don’t have to be impartial yet so screw you!”
I think you’re more likely to get “We don’t have to be impartial ever so screw you!”
The Scotsman, spreading rumour and innuendo, and talking pish since 1846…..
And people actually buy this crap, you can’t even wipe your bum with it as it is too shiny!!
@handclapping
What is sad about the decline of the Scotsman? Are you sad at the decline of the Labour Party? Perhaps you are one of those happy to eat yoghurt after its sell by date but for most if something smells then its bin time and no regrets.
I said it was sad because it used to be a quality newspaper. I do not know why you feel exercised at my comment.
Pop out a Scotsman and maybe watch BBC Scotland`s ‘I love my country’ after for the full unionist experience (union flags not included).
link to c21media.net
Just read Allan Massie’s article. What an horrendous, passionless, negative, vision-less, uninspiring, dire mess it is. He is supposed to be one of Scottish Unionists’ leading intellectual figures. Oh dear! I presume that was not meant as satire? The constant use of ‘separatists’ to describe independence supporters is beyond irony, given that we are probably heading out of the EU if we stay as part of the British state. Massie admits there is no positive case for the Union. Confirmation, if it was ever needed, of what many people think about the Unionist position in Scotland.
Heather –
Yep, as Cameron b says, only if the headquarters are in Scotland. Not sure the deal with those firms you mention, but from memory I know that Boots moved to be headquartered in Luxembourg a few years ago to avoid UK taxes.
I would have thought that all most large retail firms would have similar tax avoidance plans in force.
@Rev
The best thing about that piece is that it ends.
@muttley79
What exercises me about people going on about sad declines is that decline is inevitable. The Union lost its purpose in 1956 and yet there are people who think they’ll vote No because it was great whilst it lasted. We’ve had 57 years of decline and people are still “sad” and by gum isn’t BT egging them on. I’m well into my decline and its not sad. It’ll only be sad if we don’t get Yes next year after 50 years a nationalist. Then I was handsome and could run up the stairs to leaflet a tenement, now I can only do the ground floor doors. Like the Scotsman I no longer serve a useful purpose, if I was dead you could celebrate my life but it is pointless being sad at my or the Scotsman’s decline.
I would have thought that all most large retail firms would have similar tax avoidance plans in force.
That doesn’t mean that the Scottish tax system has to follow or include any of the loopholes that exist in the UK tax system. A more fair system would simply tax the profit where it occurs rather than where the company says it occurs.
Heather and CameronB
Yes Company tax would continue to be paid where the Company is registered but the VAT and tax on wages paid would be credit to Scotland.
The SNP have talked about having a lower Company Tax than London so some might shift their Registered Office to Scotland or at least put their Scottish operations into a separate Scottish company with all taxes paid in Scotland.
The same would go for the Scotch Whisky Industry whose HQs are in London. Maybe Holyrood could pass a law which would be incorporated into the legal definition of Scotch Whisky such that to qualify fir the Appellation the product would need to be bottled in Scotland and the producing company based there. The barstewards would always try something to get round that by creating a “marketing” company outside Scotland to maximise profit take in a low tax authority; cf Google, Amazon, Starbucks etc
Just read that piece by Alan Massie and suddenly feel very old and tired. Just as I was getting excited by my own vision of an independent Scotland as a bright young child, full of wonder, curiosity, energy and creativity, full of possibilities, discovering its place in the world, exploding with new ideas, making new friends and forming new international relationships throughout the world, not being held back by old baggage from the past, taking responsibilty for itself and looking out for each other under a progressive, inclusive philosophy of equality, justice and the common weal………just as I was bursting with the excitement of it all…….Alan likes it to buying a new car, being part of an old comfortable marriage and living in an old decrepit house. Alan, that’s a hard sell, I have to tell you.
I respect Allan Massie – but who would really say ‘I don’t want an inside toilet because the kludgie at the bottom of the garden has served me well’.
@handclapping
‘Like the Scotsman I no longer serve a useful purpose’
What an awful way to think; and being unemployed (unemployable?)
for a while now I have often thought it thus. The UK MSM makes great
play on trying to make sections of the populace think this way.
However, I remind myself of Robert Louis Stevenson when he said
‘No man is useless while he has a friend’
Never think that one has no purpose!
I am tempted to say ‘never trust a Scotsman who likes cricket’, but then that would be so very wrong 🙂
“Scottish” Daily Mail:
“The new figures are a massive blow for the SNP, as the cuts would bite in the first years of independence if Alex Salmond wins next year’s referendum. The cost of dismantling the United Kingdom would place even more pressure on the fragile economy.”
“Scottish Labour’s finance spokesman Iain Gray said: ‘It’s very clear from this research that if independence were to go ahead, the burden on the Scottish economy would be severe in order to just maintain the status quo, let alone deliver any of the promises the SNP are making.’”
link to 1.bp.blogspot.com
Bugger (the Panda)
The barstewards would always try something to get round that by creating a “marketing” company outside Scotland to maximise profit take in a low tax authority; cf Google, Amazon, Starbucks etc
Shells within shell, within shells. All perfectly legal, of course, though not in the slightest ethical. Hopefully, that can be sorted out in an independent Scotland.
I might be placing too high an expectation on what our written constitution might achieve (fingers crossed), but I don’t see how such exploitative business practice would remain legal.
Don’t be to quick to complain. Just think of how many unsuspecting britnats will read it thinking they are going to get their daily fix of anti-independence bile and be tricked into reading the truth for once.
“Don’t be to quick to complain. Just think of how many unsuspecting britnats will read it thinking they are going to get their daily fix of anti-independence bile and be tricked into reading the truth for once.”
An excellent point well made 🙂
That Daily Mail article is just plain weird. So, massive cuts are coming our way if we stay in the Union, but if we vote for independence it will be worse. Why? We won’t be getting money from Westminster if we’re independent – we’ll have our own money from oil, vat, corporation tax, income tax, airport tax, etc, etc, etc, and we won’t be paying out money for Trident, cost of MPs and Lords, etc.
All that article does is point out the disadvantages of staying in the union, as far as I can see. I’ve just no idea whatsoever what Ian Gray is talking about.
@Geoff Huijer
Thank you. As one well retired all I do is consume scarce resources just as the Scotsman kills trees but as you will have noticed I did say useful purpose. I do attend Yes events and hand out leaflets which is about as useful as the bins that hold the copies of the Metro at stations. I presume the Scotsman still records hatches matches and dispatches and if so it too has a “useful” purpose.
I suppose I was really getting exercised at the use of sentiment instead of sense, feeling not thought in relation to the MSM. Am I sad at the present day output of the BBC? Are you?
Re. That Daily Mail article. I got to “£2.7 blow forecast for fragile Scottish economy”, and for some reason a strange thought popped in to mind….. I smell s…….
O/T funny bit of irony……. was looking at the Darwin Awards for this year and guess who is advertizing there….. Better Together!
“Read all about it – NO POSITIVE CASE FOR THE UNION – Read all about it”
link to scotsman.com
Re “Scottish Daily Mail”, do they really believe that independent Scotland would continue to exist on pocket money doled out from Westminster???
If thon’s a massive blow to the SNP what is it for “Better Together”? In what way is slashing our budgets and services beyond the bone “better”?
They’re basically saying the union’s so crap that independence has to be worse. Is that because we’re too wee, too poor and too stupid to do a better job of it than Westminster?
I recently spent three days in a hotel in Aberdeenshire and the only paper that was available to guests was The Hootsman’ There were two large piles on a table in reception in the morning and interestingly, most were still there when I passed through at bed time, untouched. I wonder if these unwanted freebies are counted in the falling circulations figures?
@Jeannie “I’ve just no idea whatsoever what Ian Gray is talking about.”
Neither has Iain Gray.
@Holebender
I know – have they factored in the additional income and the savings we would make if we were independent? Don’t know what the point is in implying we would have the same amount of money or less money as independents as we would have if we stay with the union. Just makes no sense to me, unless they’re choosing to ignore the additional income we would have and the reduced costs.
@Jeannie
unless they’re choosing to ignore the additional income we would have and the reduced costs.
Hmmm…I wonder…
“Dim Witted Idiots, swallow anything printed in Scotsman”
‘DWISAPIS’
I propose we start calling Scotsman readers ‘dwisapis’ 🙂
NorthBrit says: More nonsense from the Hootsman
My comment on Bella’s take on that Allan Massie story…
link to bellacaledonia.org.uk
@Scott Minto
Love that “sponsored by Hyundai” ad at the bottom 🙂
all comments on the article in the scotsman itself disagree with him
Story being changed again.
link to scotsman.com
Reminds me of a BBC Radio Scotland news item about a year ago, when Jim McColl endorsed indy.
In 2:30 bulletin he was “founder of one of Scotland’s biggest businesses”.
By the 4:30 bulletin he’d become a Monaco based tax exile millionaire.
Early retirement for the poor fool who wrote the first item.
“who would really say ‘I don’t want an inside toilet because the kludgie at the bottom of the garden has served me well’.”
Sadly that is a mindset in some areas of Scotland (or maybe more generally). I have a neighbour who point blank refuses to even consider changing factor because “this tenement has always had the same factor”, despite the fact they’re ripping us off, charging for work not done, employing cowboys where they do work and we’re regularly flooded.
My immediate thought after our last encounter about it was “I’ll no bother putting any more yes leaflets through her door then.”
The big issue that hasn’t been addressed is the differing political beliefs, one is a capitiist agenda the other a socialist. The Labour party is failing in this regards, how can one criticise a system which thay state they support whislt at the same time sprout a capitislist agenda.
Regarding tax – personally, I’d be in favour of all tax records, personal and corporate, being published annually.
Norway, Sweden and Finland do this, and it seems to me it would enable consumers making informed choices about where their spending will do most good.
In the often repeated mantra of successive Westminster governments: Nothing to hide, nothing to fear.
@Max etc
providing the Scotsman link puts money into the company.I think I could trust you if you gave just a wee synopsis.
@handclapping
I’m interested to know why you think the Union lost its purpose, specifically, in 1956. (Suez?) I’m not disagreeing by any means, but it’s intriguing as this is a very precise date and eight years before I was born.
BuckieBraes
The choice of Suez is interesting and according to McWhirter it signaled the end of the UK as a World power, publicly that is. From then on it was all downhill with the loss of the African Colonies and the independence movements for the white colonies.
The invasion of Suez, with the French and subsequent withdrawal by way of American diktat was the “tipping point” for the British Empire and its military prowess.
McWhirter also says that for many Scots, the Empire was where their careers were forged. No Empire, no career path for Scotland and no captive sale for Scottish produced trains, ships and buses.
Bugger (the Panda)
They may have been Scottish produced trains, ships and buses, but where were the taxes returned? Westminster?
Scotland was the empire’s source of comparatively low cost labour, producing the goods but getting little of the benefit. Though a damn sight more than the ordinary Joe in the captive markets of India, etc.
cameronB
Agreed but there was full employment here and it was viewed up to that time as a job for life; building ships, trains, lenses (Barr and Stroud), foodstuffs (Jean McGregor Soups, Camp Coffee, Roberstons Jams, Buses (Alexanders) and trucks (Albion) A lot of stuff went to a captive Empire market.
Edited in Remember that Scotland voted Unionist at that point.
Yes the real money went to Westminster but, as I said, the Union had opened the door to Scottish entrepreneurs, administrators, bankers and aspiring policemen throughout the colonies.
The end of the Empire was a rumbling shock for Scotland which eventually led to an industrial decline.
@Buckie Braes
At Suez Westminster had no Plan B:- what does it mean not to be a world power with an Empire? Westminster still haven’t an answer and continue to live with the trappings like some Stately Home that the National Trust wouldnt touch with a bargepole. We were a small European nation before 1603 and we will be again. Quite what the reaction of the rUK will be, when they are woken to the fact that they are just parts of small islands off the NW of the European mainland, is thankfully not a matter for us.
“At Suez Westminster had no Plan B:- what does it mean not to be a world power with an Empire?”
Seems not much changes. Which is a shame because there are huge benefits to all of us, and opporutinities for a different future, with a re-structured UK, including Scotland being independent again. Too many, especially among those who’ve forged careers running Scotland and Scots in Westminster, can’t see past what they personally stand to lose so rage against it, fingers in ears.
So – one of the things Scotland, as a mature independent country, will want to address is its imperial past as part of the UK. Much of Empire was shameful; some honourable, depending on your viewpoint. Accept this, yes; acknowledge it; commemorate it as appropriate.
We ought to have no problem with this. However, unlike the more reactionary elements of the UK establishment, we can also acknowledge that this isn’t who we are now, and that it’s time to move on.
BuckieBraes
I agree that we will need to address of past and work forward to build new partnerships.
I remember when I was sitting my Highers and was worried what I would do if I didn’t get the grades I need to get to Uni.
I went to see a “Guidance Adviser” who turned out to be a failed Teacher, maybe a Lamont antecedent?
He suggested I apply for a job as a Lab Tech in Beardmore’s Steel Foundary. I knew Beardmores was doomed to be closed because economic changes in steel manufacture and Glasgow was not the place to build a new steel plant.
The other areas he suggested was to go to Hong Kong and get a job (Inspector starting grade) in the HK Polis or the HSBC (today’s name) because Hong Kong was a “Scottish Colony” It was and I would have been absolutely guaranteed to be employed.Incidentally, until Patten the Governor of Hong Kong was always a Scot
Bugger (the Panda)
Ah, the HSBC bank. Founded by a Scot, on the proceeds of the first two Anglo Chinese ‘opium wars’, or possibly all three, I can’t remember. Plus ce change. Sorry, I know we are supposed to be positive, but I just find it very difficult to do so with regards Britain and the former empire.
link to theguardian.com
Here’s Joan McAlpine in the DR on just how disadvantaged Scotland’s farming community is because so much policy is made in London.
link to dailyrecord.co.uk
I think the farmers are figuring out which side their bread is buttered on.
We are far too polite. Elected Labour, Tory and LibDem politicians have knowingly lied to Scotland for forty years. They are lying to Scotland daily. They know they are lying. They are running out of time.