Ah, the good old days of the positive case for the Union.
But oh no! Shock twist!
Who could ever have guessed?
Average male life expectancy in Scotland is 77, so enjoy those two years, lads. (And let’s not even start on the women.)
Better together, strong and stable, broad shoulders, best of both worlds, etc.
Maybe all the old folk can eat Union Jacks.
Wings Over Scotland is a (mainly) Scottish political media digest and monitor, which also offers its own commentary. (More)
How about we give nurses/carers/essential workers £65K a year for starters and MPs/bankers get £30K a year and a clap every Thursday? 🤔
So print money. Print lots of it. Give people a #UniversalBasicIncome, at least until a few months after the lockdown ends. There isn't an alternative that is as simple, elegant and foolproof.
There is no reason NOT to print money and give it to people right now. The economy is in crisis for a non-economic reason. People aren't working or going out. The economy can't work without consumers but without work, many people have no money.
Wings Over Scotland
Richard Murphy at Holyrood poking the Britnat’s boils.
https://twitter.com/RobDunsmore/status/854643726647513088?s=20
More on GERS figures @ 10.28 above
Oil Revenues on page 22 show income of £2billion for 2018 MINUS Petroleum Revenue Tax rebate of £744 million. Contrast this with Norway’s oil revenues.
https://www.regjeringen.no/en/aktuelt/286-milliarder-kroner-fra-petroleumsvirksomheten-i-2019/id2613985/
The State’s net cash flow from the petroleum industry in 2019 is estimated to about NOK 286 billion (£26.3 billion).
In England councils are housing families in old shipping containers while a lowlife royal prince luxuries in an elite resort in southern Spain and avoids making explanations to the taxpayers who have financially supported him for decades.
Mark Francois, Patel and their fellow crypto fascists advance their hard right revolution whilst Scotland’s democratic settlement is whittled away piece by piece.
A corrupt mainstream media tries to depict Scotland as the basket case country when it is our neighbours and de facto masters to the south that are in a mess. The holier than thou BBC makes us pay them money to tell lies about our country, day in and day out.
Scots, proud to be Europeans and proved so at the ballot box in 2016 are having disaster inflicted on us because a mere 5% majority of Scots believed the lies sufficiently in 2014.
Far enough. More than far enough.
Norway’s govt owns the oil and takes a cut of what the oil companies extract
England’s govt just sells bits of Scotland’s waters for exploration and let’s the oil companies keep the oil
https://www.ogauthority.co.uk/licensing-consents/licensing-rounds/
We should troll westminster by telling them that we intend to set up a commission after Independence to investigate why Westminster managed to make so little, ( according to GERS) from a conservative estimated extraction of £2 trillion at today’s prices from the oil industry.
The Tories have admitted GERS was designed to undermine the potemtial for Scotland to gain independence, yet there are still allegedly credibly commentators who lend it credence. That is the sort of logic and lack of moral responsibility that supported the Nazis. I know the Scottish government appear to endorse it but what else can they do, as to reject GERS would invite the biggest media pile-on in all of SNPBAD history.
Here’s one for folk who still think the UKOK is a morally defensible democracy. Looking at you Church of Scotland.
Good Governance:
Rule of Law, Transparency, and Accountability
etico.iiep.unesco.org/sites/default/files/unpan010193.pdf
Ken500 at 7.38 am
Exactly, Ken. One of the destroyers from the Sunday Herald.
HS2 The UK high speed rail that will revolutionise travel and business in the UK and will cost (nobody knows) but it’ll be great value for the UK tax payer except…….
It will go nowhere near Wales, not even rocket launching distance of Scotland and it might as well be on the Moon as far as Northern Ireland is concerned, so HS2 is an English project for England to benefit England yet the rest of us have to pay for it
So it’s not a UK project then, unless as usual England believes itself to be the UK
When Scotland built the Queensferry crossing it was a Scottish project in Scotland for Scotland and Scotland paid for it
We don’t charge English folk to drive over it much less pay for its construction even though it benefits them as well
I hope folk have the volume turned down on their irony meter. Here’s a gender sensitive story about a pot looking at a kettle.
Why corruption matters: understanding causes, effects and how to address them
Evidence paper on corruption
January 2015
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/406346/corruption-evidence-paper-why-corruption-matters.pdf
Let me repeat my previous point
There are a number of ways a basic message about GERS can be purveyed.
“Scottish economy being damaged by being trapped in a bust UK.”
“Scotland must escape from a collapsing UK economy”
“Scotland bled dry as London uses Scotland’s cash for Uk follies”
“300 years of a union and they tell us it has reduced us to an economic basket case. And we should settle for that!”
“UK with a £3trillion debt giving Scotland economic advice.Aye right.”
and so on.
No point in arguing about the figures.
Plenty point in referencing all the other small countries doing better than Scotland without Scotland’s level of resources
I’ve just realised that GERS must stand for Greedy England Ransacks Scotland.
I do know a bit about democratic accountability, so I appreciate the threats posed by Scotland’s democratic deficit. A people who do not stand above their government, can not honestly consider themselves as free. Livestock would be a better description.
https://www.ids.ac.uk/files/dmfile/IDEADASDDeskreviewv10.pdf
Hang on a minute.
GERS 2019 says Scotland has a deficit of £12.6bn.
GERW 2019 says Wales has a deficit of £13.7bn
The deficit for the entire UK is £23.5bn.
Something doesn’t add up.
BBC Radio Scotland “explanation” of GERS has no mention of why oil revenues are so low or the £3 billion we get charged for UK national debt of £1.8 trillion (but no pro rata credit for UK assets).
Also GERS even charges Scotland £303million for EU transactions is that our share of Brexit costs which we didn’t vote for.
Half the total deficit would be wiped out at a stroke if we didn’t pay interest on Westminster’s debts or charged oil companies even a fraction of Norway’s taxation levels
GERS Report:
An often ‘not reported’ fact concerning Gers is how it came into being in the first place (Iain Lang…Tory Sec. of State for Scotland in John Major Government).Also,The UK Treasury seldom release full and complete data-sets,especially if the stats don’t fit their ‘anti-indy’ narrative.
Also noticed no Scots Gov representation on John Beattie programme.
re : Neil Mackay
– it’s funny how the “eco-system” of chattering-bullshit works – it starts out at source in a condensed form, then trickles out and down, diluted for public consumption.
What NM says is the watered down, middlebrow version of what Bella said at salon-brow level and Hassan said at the academic-brow level. Nothing to see here …
There wasn’t much substance to rebut at a higher level, so the current manifestation is not worth the typing. But there are a couple of things –
– first of all, I do not think Mackay is, in the slightest, a serious YES supporter. He isn’t. Let him photo his ballot paper and post it online, otherwise – your actions suggest not.
What frightens the other side is that we are collectively, comfortable with facts, data, argument – and confident enough to argue it in public. When the other side have nothing real to back them up, they resort to the infantilism of
“BOO HOO – YOURE A MEANIE!”
– along with “I am offended” and the new one “that’s hate-speech”.
As for “cybernat trolling” – we all know the score – you have been arguing about GERS or currency or EU or NATO, and the other side is beaten, and so they resort to abuse. One favourite is the “Jimmy Krankie” meme – and they think this WINS the argument – its like the condensed wit of wilde, bernard-shaw, dorothy-parker and frankie boyle delivered as withing put-down. But it’s not – its cheap and old. And then you decide to “retaliate” and like little children they cannot take it thrown back to them.
– if you want to be nasty, there’s plenty factual ammunition out there, just in, “Leggy Mountbottom” was a vicious paedo who raped little boys – who knew? Well, the FBI and MI5 as well, since they probably setup the old degenerates “dates”.
His main point is that “YES voters are frightening away Soft NOs” – I think the real problem is we are winning them to our side.
Here is something about how people really make decisions – everyone thinks they do it all forensically, facts and logic, with probabilistic inference, bayes rule and occams razor; for most people, decisions are irrational, often made for trivial, single reasons – the advertising and PR people know this well (applied psychology). “Soft NOs”, if any exist, are like “floating voters” – apt to be influenced more by their peer group, like teenagers. For the kids being “one of the cool kids” or liked by them, or associated with them is desired – cool hair, leather jacket, back of the class, dishing out ripping and hilarious putdowns to the old, pathetic, teacher … they are coming over to us because we are now looking like and acting like – winners – rather than plucky losers.
I also sense jealousy – these professional word manglers get paid, and need to get paid, its all they can do – but the newspapers are dying on their arse and lots of people would rather get their news and opinion from WINGS and its BTL – pros dont like to see “amateurs” doing it for free, esp. if the “product” matches, or exceeds, their own.
NM lives in a “pollyanna universe” where everything in it happened -exactly- as according to official history. It is possible to believe this mountain of lies, but it requires you to – not have any curiosity – not have the logical apparatus to detect inconsistency and paradox – and to have avoided doing any real reading at all on history, politics, para-politics, intelligence agencies, and so on. Read all about the British Empire – how it started, got built up, broke, then went into retreat – you will notice patterns of behaviour i.e. “perfidious albion”.
There is also in his mind an “approved independence supporter” and the rest of us – how does that work since we all just get one vote? Intersectionality, where “biggest victim” wins and is always right – has not penetrated the voting system – you don’t get extra votes for your oppressed-status or virtue-signalling.
He is also revolted by the lack of the “cringe” among the YES supporters, which is pretty odd.
As for “zoomers” – the comments on that article are an avalanche of stupidity and ignorance.
GERS are a lie, because if the oil figures are true and accurate they are an indictment on the competence of successive Labour and Tory governments managing the abundant resources of Scotland.
Science does to Tories what salt does to slugs, so here’s a wee peek at fiscal sociology. 😉
www2.ids.ac.uk/gdr/cfs/pdfs/Moore%20International%20political%20science%20review%20article%202004.pdf
Has anyone tested the robustness of GERS against the World Bank’s “Public Accountability Mechanisms”? I doubt it, though I think Scots would be the last to know if anyone has.
Public Accountability Mechanisms (PAM) Initiative
World Bank Governance and Public Sector Group
Methodology Paper
February 2013
siteresources.worldbank.org/PUBLICSECTORANDGOVERNANCE/Resources/285741-1343934891414/8787489-1361546839123/PAMmethodology_25Feb2013.pdf
Heart of Galloway @ 07:34,
I don’t disagree with any of that. It’s a whole different ballgame from 2014.
I was thinking about this some more listening to the lunchtime news, with BoJo’s upcoming visits to Merkel and Macron, both of which will result, I expect, in ever-so-polite rebuffs. If technology could solve the Irish border issue, why would the Leavers ever need to worry about a backstop?
It struck me though that the EU is still hanging on a thread to the hope that the HoC will manage to scupper Brexit somehow. Not in the way that the Leavers think, that it will fold at the last minute in the face of British Resolution and give them their bowl of cherries, but rather that it would still prefer to deal with the UK as a whole, and keep it in as a whole. Rather like the Remainers here in Scotland. Only when the last forlorn hope of both is definitively shattered will attitudes really change. (Which need not be post-Halloween.)
In the case of the EU, I continue to believe that the goodwill that we have earned will eventually bear fruit in the form of fast-track entry, even a “holding-pen” if we get our independence fast enough. But only afterwards.
Still, we won’t have any more of that pathetic Barroso dog-and-pony show. Marr will have to find some dummy from elsewhere.
Robert Peffers @ 08:04:
Aye, know your place, and never presume to challenge your betters. A well-known attitude of yore.
With that view (and given you have no notion of who is actually posting and what background they might have), you’re surely on the wrong website, RP. This one’s for open debate.
@RJS –
After his behaviour yesterday I am done with RP.
Absolutely, once and for all. The way he spoke to Daisy was atrocious and his ‘defence’ just made it all worse. It takes a big man to admit they were wrong and he, well, he just can’t do it.
Here’s a link to a tweet Rev Stu did just over half an hour ago.
https://twitter.com/WingsScotland/status/1164204417211666432
RP won’t address any criticism, direct or implied, of SNP/SG if it comes from Rev Stu. If it’s any of us btl commenters? heaven help us, but Stu? Nah. He’s exempt.
Can anyone guess why that might be?
Ian Brotherhood @ 17:31,
Yes, point well made, which I noticed also.
And why he seems to have it in for Daisy in particular I cannot fathom. To me, all her postings seem perfectly reasonable comment.
When ahm 74… ah’ve never really paid it much thought to be true
iScotland should align herself with the European standard
Standardise, then personalise
Yeah, Scotland could learn more from international Europe
To have direct independent financial commerce+
Working with.
Ian Brotherhood
That is a worrying tweet but so is the ambivalence towards faith schools, which are healthy features of open society, apparently.