Wings Over Scotland

Why not go the whole hog? Cut income from all revenues and we could be worth zillions to give to needy causes.

To be fair Labour also proposes increasing the top rate of tax to 50%, but that would still leave a shortfall. Sooner or later the party will have to bite the bullet and talk about ending the council tax freeze, biting deeper into the middle class on income tax or both.

If at first you don’t succeed, lie lie, and lie again

@Ken,

You are aware that if Labour increase the top tax to 50p they also have to increase the lowest rate by the same amount ,further hurting the poorly paid.?
What do you think is fair ,as you say ,in that ?

Rev,
Magnus, and The Record are right,
Way can’t you all see “the Kings clothes “!!!!!!!!!!!.
(You must admit , it’s a novel way to hoodwink the public)

The role of the 3 Stoogies parties-let’s call them by their real names;

British Labour

British Conservatives

British Libdems

is to take any concievable data and skew it into SNP BAD,then roll it out through the corrupt CORPMEDIA and hey presto,Shit Smearing headline good to go.

Hold the vision for a free Scotland and let’s put these callous bastards out of their misery and out of our lives-for good.

Not long now

Keep the faith.

Following the White Rabbit down to Wonderland. The tax band differentials will initially be fixed. One pays more, everyone pays more.

How difficult is it to grasp the concept?

Hope they keep on pretending that their alternative-dimension arithmetic hasn’t been rumbled. The longer they persist the dafter they look.

Is there a word for this media phenomenon where they just pretend things aren’t the case, even though we know it is, and they know that we know it is?

Remember when they pretended for ages that Scotland couldn’t keep the pound even though everyone knew that they couldn’t stop us using it? It wasn’t until Alistair Darling admitted out loud in a debate that of course we could keep it that the media dropped the charade because they just couldn’t get away with the deception any more.

And then there was Jim Murphy’s claim about the biggest party wins the election? Even my dog knew how the sums worked with that one. Yet the media let him away with it for months. Or what about David Cameron’s #piggate? That never happened at all according to the silence from the BBC.

It’s almost like social media is some kind of fictional movie world where events don’t take on any qualities of reality until the BBC decides to acknowledges their existence. It’s only at that point that events have reality bestowed upon them. If the MSM doesn’t talk about it, it doesn’t exist.

Is it truthiness? Is that the word? Where their version somehow SEEMS to have the ring of truth about it even they know that it doesn’t? They’ve been caught truthynessing again.

OT
Prof Kay article in the Herald, and a poster claiming RBS employed 300,000 people implying that’s in Scotland, whereas the total figure for the financial services sector in the article is 96,000 made me do a very small bit of research.

(2012-13) “UK – 2.1m people now work in finance and related professional services” From the graph there’s 150,400 in Scotland” = 7.1% of the UK figure compared to 8.4% of the population, i.e. less.

Since then Scotland has lost jobs in the financial sector, including legal jobs, to London, according to the article. Seems to me the sector jobs was hyped up by BT during the Ref, and is even less the now.

Sunday Herald front age is quite interesting. I am not able to post a link from this tablet I am using. 🙁

This post reminded me of a wee email sent to the chief propagandist at the Herald in May last year. Needless to say I waited in vain for a reply! A wee bit of rage nostalgia:

Dear Mr Gardham

I write this email without malice or spite- simply out of a desire to know the reasoning behind your editorial stance.

Up until recently I have been a regular Herald reader. I bought the paper for about 15 years.
I have stopped buying your newspaper 6 days a week because the constant anti-Independence editorial bias has become more and more pronounced over time. It is now impossible to call it journalism. It is propaganda, pure and simple.

You mislead the public with your headline and subsequent lines:

“Salmond sets immigration target of 24,000 per year

AN INDEPENDENT Scotland would need to attract an extra 24,000 people per year to meet the Scottish Government’s economic targets, Alex Salmond has confirmed”

It is only later in the article that Alex Salmond merely asserts “plays down” this figure as a small increase on the current average figure, NOT an extra 24K immigrants at all. You know the “extra” figure is closer to 2K yet you pretend it is 24K.

And only those who have read this far and are minded to the tricks and chicanery of the unionist press would fail to be misinformed. Is misinformation really what you set out to do when you started out as a journalist?

I am fed up of just sitting back, reading these distortions of the truth and becoming more and more incensed by it, so I wanted to just ask, once and for all, what reason could there be that you have shed all journalistic probitity and integrity to pursue the No camp’s agenda?

And can you really justify pandering to the kind of anti immigration fear that plagues all countries, even one as accepting, as tolerant and as welcoming as Scotland. How do you even begin to get over that philosophical hurdle? Its breath-taking hypocrisy is it not?

There is no shame in believing in the Union but can you really look back on this period in your life and say “That was a job I am proud of- I applied journalistic rigour to the Independence debate and I am happy that I tried to get at the truth”.

If there is some other great dark motivation behind all this then fair enough- don’t tell, but I would be curious to know your take on it. God knows, we’ve all got to live together after this referendum is over. And live with ourselves.

Kind regards

Thomas Jardine

When the Herald employed Gardham, they signed their own death warrant as a newspaper.

Gardham could prosper at the Record where the political analysis borders on the comical. However, the Herald’s readers expect a brain cell or two from their politics editor, and even those of a Unionist persuasion have undoubtedly found his output poor.

Osborne’s tax credit cuts are going to apply from the start of the next tax year, aren’t they?

All the proposed “mitigation” methods are unavailable till at least 2017 (unless they did put up all rates of income tax in parallel).

So how would SLab mitigate in the interim?

(I eventually abandoned thinking about how they might update the 2015 baseline to calculate losses in 2018, for instance; too many known unknowns.)

Kezia isn’t playing this game to win. All she needs to do is prevent the SNP getting a majority.

If enough low information voters believe the Kezanomics in May then the Union is preserved and her work is done.

The National`s front page today, “Nursery challenge to gender stereotyping“.
Hard hitting pro independence stuff.

Dearie, dearie me. Me thinks that poor Magnus has been on the poteen and he is under the guidance of a drunken Leprechaun pointing him to his ‘crock of gold’ at the bottom of the Kez’s fabled rainbow or could it be ‘El Dorado’??????

Auld Rock

ALL Unionists have been told to fall in behind this half baked idea about Tax Credits. Their aim is to make Scottish Labour look electable.

Why are the enemy dragging the SNP into this. It’s Scottish Labour’s policy, if they are voted in as the next Scottish Government in May, then they can implement it.

But please stop involving the SNP, Kezia.

‘Give Scotland the power’ says the Sunday Herald. Scotland as a supplicant again. Why do we not take the power?

I thought there had been an enlightenment last week about the level of cynicism involved in the production of the Sunday Herald?

Could this explain “Scottish” labour’s reluctance to be described as an “accounting unit?”

Unsubscribed from The Herald online this week mainly because of this buffoon. The equivalent cash will be making its way to Wings, Pop et al in due course.

Never forget that when Labour Lords could have voted against AND defeated the Tory Osbournes Tax credits, they could have.

Instead they choose to abstain, instead, knowing they would win agreed that the cuts should be “postponed”.

Hahahahaha!

Let’s see if they can “postpone” the death of Labour in Scotland?

Caz I remember him saying that. He is turning into an oaf. Even if je doth protest too much.

Again Kevin being led by BBC instead of seeing it for what it is. Vacuous mumbo jumbo dressed up as economics.

It’s actually becoming an embarrassment. It’s one thing Baillie sounding like a simpleton trying to be clever, but the Political Editor of Scotland’s oldest surviving national daily?! It’s like some bizarre collective ideological will-to-power moment SLAB sympathisers are indulging in…”this is it boys, the one we’ve waited for, now close your eyes and repeat 10 times in the mirror SLAB Good, Nats Baaad”; we’ll check the facts laters.

The Labour Party with their magic beans.

I’m starting to think this isn’t political propaganda any more.
It’s starting to look like they genuinely just don’t understand.

Thank Christ none of these numpties has a chance in hell of being in charge of anything important.

I stand to be corrected, but is Labour not mooting a Ponzi scheme ? Which by the way is illegal.

this is yet again the Scottish MSM polishing the colossal jobbie on a stick that is Scottish labour.

They should be holding it to account. They should be ripping labour to shreds. But no – they are left desperately trying to convince us, that labour can do the impossible. The impossible being to make money out of nothing.

There is no scenario between now and 2018 when the Scotland bill becomes the new Scotland Act, that will see extra money being available. Even then, it would still take time to put in place, the complex & costly administrative infrastructure to make it work. That would put the date that labour could put its bold plan in to effect, being around 2020 to 2021 at the latest.

It would of course require labour to win in 2016. Which if it did would make what the SNP planned meaningless. If it does not win in 2016 then frankly what the labour party planned would not concern the SNP.

In the end its all rather pointless. Westminster still holds the purse strings. As long as it does and implements one cut after another, Scotland will increasingly be forced into taking from a multitude of peters to try and mitigate the pain of an army of Pauls.

Imho I think this farce is nothing more than a truly despicable attempt to score points against the SNP, and then try to bully it into doing something it simply cannot implement in the long term and could not afford to do indefinitely.

One day, someone will write this history of this collection of room meat and call it “Scottish Labour: The party that died of shame”. If it is written, there should be a chapter devoted to the Scottish media and its part in its downfall.

If Labour are saying that they would raise the upper rates of tax, then surely that would make it easier for the SNP to do – should they wish – because Labour could hardly complain if the SNP implemented their policy.

But it’s uncertain how much that would yield, as folk in that bracket are well able to avoid increased tax liability.

All they would have to do is get an address in Berwick and claim they are not Scottish tax payers.

Earlier today I asked if anyone had any ideas on what, if anything, can be done about George Foulkes’s behaviour last night.

‘No answer’, came the reply.

Fair enough.

Don’t know about anyone else, but last night, when that appalling tweet surfaced, it was a mighty strain not to send him the kind of message which would’ve had the cops at my door first thing this morning.

Many of us are not SNP members, but we acknowledge that the prospect of independence has only become feasible thanks to the efforts of the SNP over many decades. That’s a given, and no-one reasonable would dispute that.

What’s driving some of us up the proverbial wall is the preternatural tolerance of SNP high-heid-yins in trying to maintain some kind of ‘moral’ high ground when they’re dealing with the likes of Foulkes, Baillie, Smart, Cochrane, Kelly, and other prominent Nawbaggers who manufacture reasons to Nat-bash.

Foulkes’s comment last night is not ‘surprising’ (because it was made by Foulkes!) but it is still shocking and unacceptable to anyone – regardless of their political leanings – who wants to see the democratic transition to independence as trouble-free as possible.

That’s why the SNP cannot continue to ignore such behaviour. Characters such as Foulkes – an unremarkable man nearing the end of his life who knows that he will have no influence in an independent Scotland – cannot and should not be allowed to issue such vile statements with impunity.

How the Scottish government can best do it? I don’t know. But something has to be done – Foulkes and his ilk are spewing hate-speech. Isn’t that a form of ‘free speech’? Aye, but such bile must be at least contested by those representing the people he’s traducing.

Alan Mackintosh: Scotland already has the power to vary income tax by 10p, but with all bands in unison.The Smith Commission advocated: “…the Scottish Parliament will have the power to set the rates of Income Tax and the thresholds at which these are paid…” in paragraph 76 of the report, which can downloaded at:

link to smith-commission.scot

That the matter is now going through parliament and is on its third reading is pretty well known. By typing “tax powers Scotland” into Google I found this amusing piece which suggests that in September most people were not aware of just how extensive the new powers are:

link to scotsman.com

I am sorry that I cannot create clickable links, but WoS is set up not to allow them.

Correction: the links I gave out are clickable, but I cannot embed them in text. Sorry for any confusion.

O/T

For tomorrow

link to facebook.com

Makes me cry every time.
You can stick your poppies
Whenever did we accept our masters’ judgement that charity was an adequate reward for young men and boys, many of them marching to awful oblivion.
I avoided National Service by months. I might have been shooting Malayans in Malaya if I hadn’t been so lucky

I’m definitely sensing the Yoons don’t like us but do we think they don’t know we know

BTW “Angling Club” full up

Tackety Beets: Try this link from Mr GA Ponsonby

Got to hand it to Ponsonby – doing a sterling job spotting BBC’s piss-poor journalism that amounts to propaganda.

Saw Ruth using petrol pump (too much detail!) on the other side of my terminal. Stolid, solid, chunky lady. Never budged an inch while she filled up. Got to writing this about Tory party:

link to wp.me

“Scotland is entering an exciting phase in its development” says Baillie.

Development? Over a 1,000 years of history, and we are ‘in development’. What a balloon. Born in Hong Kong. Aye, and China is entering an exciting phase in its development.

I’m beginning to think that I’m the economic illiterate!

Listening to JB as she tries to patronise Stewart Maxwell and “explain” how SLabour can reach into the top hat and pull out a bunny is excruciating!

Is SLabour being hypnotised?

OT
£165b to renew Trident. If it hasn’t been used & having cost so much in the first case that it would have been washed & polished every weekend, why change it? Was it not fit for purpose in the first place.
I notice that one of Ecurie Ecosse’s Jaguar D Type (built 1956) car is up for sale this week at an estimated sale price of £3.25m & it has been used.
Hmm! Worth putting in a bid? For Trident, I mean.

But she went to a genteel ladies finishing school.
Sadly it didn’t finish her

Baillie is now saying SLAB have clearly designated where the Tory cuts compensation is to come from. If it is so clear then she should be able to easily state where but seems unable or unwilling to do so.

Notwithstanding, of course, the rather pertinent fact that there is no definite statement from Osborne, as yet, as to how much those cuts will eventually be and therefore how much compensation would be required is actually still unknown.

If APD reduction does yield an overall net increase in revenue, as hoped for, then that could cover some or all of that, but since SLAB have stated that they will not be doing so if they get in, then they will have to fund all of the compensation from other government spending.

Unless, of course, some new freeing up of revenue, like say the cancellation of Trident, occurs.

And as Baillie and Dugdale and most ELAB MPs are in favour of Trident renewal rather than removal that does not seem a realistic proposition.

They seem to be on a big push to paint Labour as “more left wing” than the SNP, seemingly oblivious to the fact that we can all make our own judgements based on policy, performance and parliamentary voting records. “The idiots say they want a left wing government, keep telling them we’re left wing!”

Not complicated at all. I’m sure Mr Gardham can count if not some of his ‘economist / financial expert’ friends at the end of his phone can. I’m not going to give him the benefit of doubt. He knows the score full well just as we know the score and can see right through him.

Magnus Gardham is just another wee, manipulative Labour supporting anti-Independence liar: one of many using his position to brainwash the Scots; in this case the Heralds readers.

If they want Labour to win the battle, if they want Labour to run the country the tactic they should start using is bl**dy-well straightforward and very simple indeed. Start telling the TRUTH. The Scots, most Scots, aren’t so easily duped anymore Magnus. Reports like this are driving more and more people away from the Labour Party. Wake up and see the light. More than anything stop making a fool of yourself.

Let’s face it, the Herald’s sales are, no great, but I would like to think that the vast majority of readers of the said are more than capable of making up their own minds & not led by the nose.
It’s the red top weegie times that has to be targeted & in an easily understood manner, like “blatant lies”.

Is the Sunday Herald beginning to rat on Independence, with Hutcheon and Gard the ham??

Just read wikipedia re Jackie Baillie. Discovered she’s “Shadow Secretary” for finance. S**t, wish I’d never sent that monopoly set. I only did it for a joke, honest.
Have I inadvertently opened a can of worms?

I don’t use Twitter but googled about 6 MSM journos. Curiously the best for keeping a cool head, professional outlook in his tweets, was Severin Carrell.

Help me!

@donald anderson

I don’t think the Sunday Herald was ever truly pro Independence. Certainly Paul Hucheon is not and never was.

I no longer buy it.

Believe it or not, BBC Scotland GMS news bulletin still telling us this morning that Scottish Labour’s tax credit policy is better than the SNP’s air passenger duty policy.

This is the kind of brick wall that we are up against every day.

Keep hammering away, we will bring this wall down.

‘Labour’s plan to implement neither the Conservatives’ proposed income tax cuts for higher earners nor the SNP’s planned air passenger duty cut would not actually generate any revenue to pay for tax credit top-ups.

However, it would give a Scottish Labour administration a bigger pot of cash, making top-ups easier to afford.’

Magnus Gardham is just another ‘UKOK Better Together Hate Preaching Manipulative Con Artist Scumbag’

I do hope the people who are worried about tax credit cuts can see through this con.

Seeing what ‘journalists’ say about this issue will be a true test of their worth.

Gordon Brewer passed the test however he gets points deducted for being slow off the mark.

Iain Macwhirter’s article in Sunday Herald omits to mention that in Holyrood on 4th November Labour MSPs voted against a motion calling for tax credits, employment rights and the minimum wage to be devolved to the Scottish Parliament.

‘she wasn’t entirely clear how this would be paid for since not cutting Air Passenger Duty (APD) and not increasing tax thresholds does not of itself raise any new money. The cash still has to be found from somewhere.

But since the Scottish Government had evidently carved out a pot of cash to meet the cost of reducing APD it was not unreasonable of Dugdale to suggest that it could be used to help defray the £400m or so required to compensate the 250,000 families who lose out.’ Iain MacWhirter

Iain MacWhirter – FAILED

Iain MacWhirter seems to have joined the ‘Twitter Victims Brigade’ along with JK Rowling, Susan Calman & Michelle Mone.

Labour spent three years along with their best pals the Tories telling us we would be Better Together. How does having to mitigate tax credit cuts make us Better Together?

@ Tackety Beets
I saved the Ponsonby clip for morning, not wishing to have nightmares. You’re right. It’s excruciating. I noted JB thinks we are at an exciting phase of our “development”. Is this a 3rd world country now?
Also, she believes the SNP lack political will. Clearly the goal of Independence is less ambitious than mitigating Tory tax and benefit cuts from Westminster – with no visible means.

I honestly do now think, that the reason Labour people keep persisting with this nonsense, is because they genuinely are not intelligent enough to follow the logical reasoning. Some people really do have problems with that kind of thinking – which of course begs the question, should they really have running the Scottish Government as a career ambition, if that is the case.

That aside, there is of course much more to this issue. As rightly pointed out by Rev STU, to mitigate tax credit cuts, is possibly one of the most complex and administratively expensive things for ANY Scottish Government to attempt. So, if in reality such a policy were ever to be pursued, would it really offer the right kind of help, and most importantly, could it ever be made to work?

There is one final matter, which you might sort of call the elephant in the room, and that is this, NO tax credit cuts have been legislated as of today. Looking at political editorial coming from England’s capital city, Londinium, and the murmurings from within the Tory party, the question is, will tax credit cuts ACTUALLY happen now?

link to archive.is

The last two weeks were crazy? I predict the next two will knock your socks off.

We are probably heading into a constitutional crisis this week and next. It may get very heated.

There’s a lot of chatter eh…..

But not about the things that matter.

‘Kezia Dugdale’s tax credits policy puts Labour firmly to the left of SNP …..’

Kezia Dugdale can say what she likes ….. she’ll do this that and the next thing ……. promise the World ……. in the full knowledge that she’ll never be in a position to do anything at all. She basically just spouts what she thinks the largest majority of voters want to hear and changes her mind at the drop of a hat for example on Trident.

Strange for the Herald to link ‘Kezia Dugdale’ to the word ‘left’ when we all know that she’s a right wing Blairite who voted for Yvette Cooper, not Corbyn, to be leader of Labour Party. Stranger still that the Herald haven’t tried to pin her down and ask her to outline exactly how much money will be required to cover tax credits, where the money is coming from and if she’s made up her mind yet if the ‘unsubstantiated’ sum of money will be spent on tax credits or education.

Be warned – Kezia Logic is applied below.

A rich old Arab has three sons. When he died, he willed his 17 camels to the sons, to be divided as follows: First Son to get 1/2 of the camels. Second Son to get 1/3rd of the camels. Third Son to get 1/9th of the camels.
The sons are sitting there trying to figure out how this can possibly be done, when a very old wise man goes riding by. They stop him and ask him to help them solve their problem. Without hesitation the wise man adds his camel to their herd making 18.
Then First Son gets 1/2 of them, or 9.
Second Son gets 1/3 of them, or 6.
Third Son gets 1/9 of them, or 2.

That makes 17 camels, with one left over; the wise man takes his camel back.

Tackety Beets

Incredible stuff- we have seen and heard how slab politicians fall apart when questioned on TV or radio on the substance of what they are proposing- fortunately for them it doesn’t happen too often.

Surely the logical conclusion if slab can magically generate £250 million by not cutting APD would be for the SNP to promise to cancel APD in full rather than reduce it (which after all is the intention in the longer term).

If Scottish labour then don’t cancel APD in full they will then have released £500 million needed to protect in full the tax credits.

Or (get this) they could reduce the APD by 50% instead of the revised SNP proposal of cancelling APD in full. Scottish labour would then have reduced APD and thus boosted the Scottish economy AND freed up the £250 million to go towards protecting hard working families from the tory cuts.

Re TheItalianJob

You make some interesting points.
You infer that there is a Left Wing Press in Scotland; actually there is no Left Wing Press.
There is only a Right Wing Press and people like Gardham are, at their core, Tories.
Labour have been a Right Wing Party from the moment Blair became leader and were moving in that direction prior to Blair. Their supporters in the MSM were and are completely aware of this fact.

Politics in Scotland is now polarised into;

1 Independence and support of this goal.

2 Extreme British Nationalism, narrow in focus, backward looking, elitist, xenophobic, socially unjust.

The MSM support the latter. Talk of Tax Credits and anything else is all fluff designed to prevent change, any change and especially Scottish centric change.

O/T

Does anyone else find that Herald front page odd. According to them, the snp are ‘asking’ for the power to hold a second referendum. What happened to “the people of Scotland are sovereign & they will say when its time to call indy2” Are the snp now saying we need permission from westminster liars and thieves.

I’m a member of the snp and I have not heard anything about this call, anyone?

Tomkins shouting the odds last night, saying “Oh, and no chance, btw. The constitution and the Union are reserved, and the Smith Cm agreed they should stay so”

While we wait quietly Gove is about to bring in a new law about westminster being sovereign, long to reign over us.

Tweet I spotted last night

@NeilMackay SNP members not aware of this “call”. Surprising, just as Gove is about to put parliamentary sovereignty of WM into new law.

Which makes me wonder if the Sunday herald are not what they pretend to be.

Ruby: I now know how Jim Murphy felt.’ Iain MacWhirter

Like telling a friend the colour he chose for his car is dire, telling independence supporters there’s a different way, or the SNP has failed in some manner, releases insecurities. Journalists have to be very careful when discussing alternatives to Scotland’s autonomy.

I had this discussion hours ago with somebody on Twitter who was certain Macwhirter was a diehard independence supporter. He never was. He believes in a federal state, and has gone to great lengths to explain his belief.

Some while back he realised independence should be welcomed. He did that for two reasons: he sees it as inevitable, and he thinks it’s not a bad thing.

He thinks its not a bad thing because it delivers all the powers he feels Scotland does not have, including a better broadcasting service. But that only means he does not oppose independence, though he still prefers federalism.

Now, it’s easy to verify all that.

Twitter allows people to write to a journalist. It’s the ‘Annie Hall’ moment come true – nowadays you can pull the author out of the air on Twitter and ask him if the facts are true or not and get an instant reply. That’s better than condemning him for saying what he has always said.

I start from the premise not a single journalist working in Scotland has ever supported independence, or does now. They all harbour reservations, or as so fixed to the doctrines of the Union they simply are unable to see the light.

Nana

“Gove is about to put parliamentary sovereignty of WM into new law.”

Can you expand on this Nana- what does this mean? Is it time to man the barricades?

Colin Dunn

You’ve missed my point- the 2 posts I wrote were the kind of fantasy bullshit economics Scottish labour is espousing to generate cash out of thin air- Kezia said the increase (or not the decrease) in the top rate would generate up to £100 million so that, in the magical labour money machine translates to £100 million of hard cash in the bank.

@Tam Jardine

I’m trying to find out exactly what is being planned. I know there are changes coming regarding Human rights laws for Britain within the EU which Gove and the tories are fiddling around with.

As the permanency of the Scottish parliament has not been ‘given’ I worry what is going on.

There is a of of stuff information online but not being a lawyer I find it hard going trying to get some answers.

link to politicscymru.com

link to parliament.uk

@Capella

I never read that rag so would not have seen the article.
Do you know what particular referendums he stated, whether or not he specifically mentioned indy2?

Am getting very suspicious in my old age!

@ Nana
I don’t read it either but in the side bar of the Guardian Severin Carrell article Stu linked to on Scottish education (5th November), there was a link to an article on Pete Wishart calling for power over referendums to be devolved.

I’ve searched but can’t now find that article.

@Ruby
“”But since the Scottish Government had evidently carved out a pot of cash to meet the cost of reducing APD it was not unreasonable of Dugdale to suggest that it could be used to help defray the £400m or so required to compensate the 250,000 families who lose out.’ Iain MacWhirter””

At least that is a reasonable mistake to make based, as it is, on only one false premise. That premise being “evidently carved out a pot of cash to meet the cost of reducing APD”.

As I understood things, this not the case. The APD policy was to be implemented on a ‘suck it and see’ basis in anticipation that sufficient identifiable additional revenue would be generated to pay for itself and more.

Of course JS, being the ever cautious chap he is, which is exactly what you want in a finance secretary, is very sensibly testing the water by phasing it in rather than the Gung-ho modus operandi characteristic of SLAB.

I have no doubt that cheaper air flights would lead to a significant increase in Scotland’s GDP through increased tourism and other benefits. How much exactly and how much of that results in increased SG revenue through the existing tax net and whether it would fully compensate the direct loss is still somewhat of an unknown, hence the caution, if a reasonable expectation and definitely something well worth trying.

Nana at 10.20

No. That is exactly what the SNP should do – and dare Westminster to refuse.

It actually doesn’t matter who organises or permits a referendum. As long as the procedure is demonstrably honest,properly supervised and open a majority verdict will be definitive.
The UN Charter is unambiguous. We don’t have to ask anybody else for permission to rule ourselves or to establish if this is what we want.
Cameron’s position is bluff.
And anyway if we want to be sure to win a referendum let Westminster try to hinder it.

It would of course be in everybody’s interest for the process and the parting to be amicable

This represents another step to another referendum.

Sunday Herald is good again this week. Maybe the editor was away or asleep and the bad boys (who are Herald staff writers)got away with unionist mischief last week.
Or maybe the howls of protest last Sunday gave it the kick up the arse that was required.
Watching brief

@Capella

Thanks. I wonder why this is being stressed right now, and if the snp are ‘asking’ for permission.

I don’t trust any corpmedia rag or tv station so I will wait for the snp to tell me what is actually going on.

@Dave McEwan Hill

I’m looking for assurance that’s all. As I said above I worry about the machinations behind the new laws and what might be slipped in under the radar.

Of course you can walk into that shop and say “since I am the one in charge of the money, I won’t be spending the money that would/could have been spent on the fridge and spend it on the telly” !!

@Nana @12.17

I think the time for asking the British government for anything has long since passed.

As you say, let’s see what the SNP says.

Got a feeling it’s going to be a busy week next week for the unionist corporate media, the next Kez revelation must be imminent.

No rest for our esteemed ‘journalists’ and ‘broadcasters’, so many knees to bend, spittles to lick, boots to polish.

@ Stoker says at 11:19 am

Alan North wrote:“Unsubscribed from The Herald online this week mainly because of this buffoon. The equivalent cash will be making its way to Wings”

”Well done, Alan, and others on this thread who have expressed similar discontent and commitment. There are many of us on WOS who are not fully convinced of that stables motives.

At best they seem to be tepid in their support of independence one minute and then they’re pumping out misleading unionist style headlines the next, today’s headline the perfect example.

They also stated that The Herald would review/change its stance should The Vow/Smith Commission not be delivered in full. Well, we all know how that went, eh!

I’ve asked this before and never got any form of reasonable response so i’ll throw it out there again – If that stable was fully committed and serious about its support for Scottish independence then why did they create The National?

It would have been far easier to announce the full commitment of both the Herald and its Sunday sister to the cause ………”

Stoker I thought that the Heralds political stance was as follows (from Wikipedia):

‘The newspaper backed a ‘No’ vote in the referendum on Scottish independence. The accompanying headline stated, “The Herald’s view: we back staying within UK, but only if there’s more far-reaching further devolution”.

They were honest about that and well let’s face it we still don’t know what powers we are going to get as the Scotland Bill hasn’t been fully / finally dealt with and of course may ultimately be rejected by the Scottish Government. Quite a way to go yet I would imagine.

The Sunday Herald however was the only newspaper fully supporting us through the Referendum. I was extremely grateful for that at the time so will definitely continue to buy it to monitor how things are going, especially as they have a change of editor now with Richard Walker taking voluntary redundancy recently.

As we all know Richard Walker launched the National which was built around a staff of casuals and freelancers. He’s now a consultancy editor to the National.

I reckoned that the National was established to provide Monday to Saturday sales to augment the Sunday (Herald) newspaper which was totally pro-Independence.

Maybe things will take time to settle down at the Sunday Herald. I don’t know but I’m not ready to pull out yet. We can say what we like about the S Herald but it’s probably the last Scottish newspaper I’d want to see go down the stank and that could happen if we abandon it now. What would we be left with then?

Right – only one response and that’s from the Rev. And I absolutely get that he’s sick of explaining.

But I still don’t see it – so can someone else reply?

If SNP cuts APD, it has less revenue than now.
If Lab do not cut APD, they have more revenue than the SNP would and the same revenue as now.

Why can’t the party with more revenue spend more? The expected revenue different is absolute. One side has more cash.

Happy to take everyone else’s word that I’m missing something – but what is it?

The SH article on the SNP call for Scotland to have the referendum power is from amendments tabled to the Scotland Act, and is legit, and I support it.

link to publications.parliament.uk

Angus Robertson
Stewart Hosie
Dr Eilidh Whiteford
Pete Wishart
Alex Salmond
Joanna Cherry

“Scottish independence referendum
(1) Paragraph 5A in Part 1 of Schedule 5 to the Scotland Act 1998 (general
reservations) is amended as follows.
(2) In sub-paragraph (1), leave out “if the following requirements are met”.
(3) Leave out sub-paragraphs (2) to (4).”
Member’s explanatory statement
This New Cause would permit the Scottish Parliament to decide whether and when to hold a referendum on Scottish independence.

@FalkirkBairn
It doesn’t work because if Labour got in to Government in 2016 to implement their plans, the SNP wouldn’t have got into Government in 2016 to implement their plans, so APD wouldn’t have been cut, the other cuts wouldn’t have happened.

Labour can not use money from the proposed SNP budget, they would need to have their own budget with actual figures. There is no pot of “extra cash”, only the block grant, which can only be spent once, whichever party is in power.

@ Stoker at 2:46pm ”That rag is as rancid as the others and i stand by my position against it and the questions i’ve asked of that stable.

The people to blame for the survival of these trumpet rags are people such as you who financially back them. And i don’t mean that in a nasty way at you Petra but it’s quite hard, for me anyway, to portray a normal face-to-face type chat via typing.

That rag, no-matter how certain folk want to spin it, played a major part in deflecting possible votes away from ‘Yes’ by leading people to believe there was a better alternative on offer when there was no such thing.

We all know, no-matter how long they spin this out, that we are going to get nowhere near what everyone was led to believe we would get. Even the Smiff Pish was designed specifically to make us all feel a part of something important.

And it’s been nothing but deflection tactics ever since.The Herald has contributed massively to that state of affairs. They helped to create confusion and mislead some of the electorate.

And i bet when the crumbs from the masters table are finally displayed across the floor The Herald, along with all the other unionist rags, will be positively orgasmic in their efforts to convince us all how great a deal it is and they’ll continue in their previous unionist role forever more. Job done, Jocks fooled once again!”

Stoker I don’t buy / read the Herald … never have done. However I do buy the Sunday Herald and the National every day.

Are you referring to the Sunday Herald? …. ”That rag, no-matter how certain folk want to spin it, played a major part in deflecting possible votes away from ‘Yes’ by leading people to believe there was a better alternative on offer when there was no such thing.”

I found it to be very supportive leading up to / during the Referendum. I’ve had my doubts about it more recently but reckoned I’d carry on and see how it’s going to pan out.

Excuse the predictive text errors on my last post. It’s barely readable.

@FalkirkBairn
To make it easier, if the block grant is £30 billion, the SNP can spend £30 billion, or Labour can spend £30 billion, they can only spend that £30 billion once, and they can’t spend the other party’s £30 billion! I wish they could 🙂