Wings Over Scotland

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.

link to regjeringen.no

The State’s net cash flow from the petroleum industry in 2019 is estimated to about NOK 286 billion (£26.3 billion).

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

link to ogauthority.co.uk

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

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

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 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.

Democratic Accountability and Service Delivery
-A Desk Review-

Executive Summary

This report seeks to identify, define and document how different modalities of democratic accountability are linked – if at all – to improved service delivery in developing democracies. The work extends an agenda proposed by the International IDEA‘s Democracy and Development program with a view towards understanding the workings of accountability mechanisms.

The guiding premise is that democratic regimes offer citizens the legal means and guarantees to articulate and voice their policy concerns in a way that reaches elected and non elected representatives to demand the effective provision of public services.

Thus, the first part explores the concept of democratic accountability, and discusses different approaches identified by the existing literature, including social and political accountability approaches. More specifically, it seeks to describe the number of different accountability agents, the nature of existing arenas and the presence of sanctions to render effective accountability.

The paper outlines some four ideal dimensions to evaluate the effectiveness of accountability relations: standards, answerability, responsiveness, and enforceability. In each of these dimensions, we are interested in looking at who are the main agents of accountability, what their incentives are to be accountable, the existence of formal and informal provisions to enable accountability, and the presence of sanctions to enforce accountability.

The empirical part offers a detailed review of sixteen cases where citizens or politicians held government officials to account for the delivery of public services. These cases are analyzed, according to the proposed four dimensions of democratic accountability. Based on these evaluations, the paper discusses the need to combine social and political factors to strengthen democratic accountability and improve the delivery of government services.

link to ids.ac.uk

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

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.

Science does to Tories what salt does to slugs, so here’s a wee peek at fiscal sociology. 😉

Revenues, State Formation, and the Quality of
Governance in Developing Countries

ABSTRACT.

Sources of state revenue have a major impact on patterns of state formation. This proposition from fiscal sociology is valid and convincing in the context of western European history and comparisons among contemporary states in the South. This article investigates the extent to which we can conclude that the quality of governance in contemporary developing countries might improve if states were more dependent for their financial resources on domestic taxpayers. The radically different context of contemporary third-world states cautions against too firm conclusions.

Keywords: • Accountability • Fiscal sociology • Governance• Oil • Rentier state

(I) The Fiscal Sociology Paradigm

….Schumpeterian fiscal sociology does not amount to a theory. It provides neither a conceptual toolbox nor a specific set of propositions about the relationship between fiscal and political development. It is simply an approach, a paradigm, or a way of looking at things. But the paradigm appears to point us toward important, neglected questions in the study of comparative state formation in a broad historical or cross-sectional perspective….

www2.ids.ac.uk/gdr/cfs/pdfs/Moore%20International%20political%20science%20review%20article%202004.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.

@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.

link to twitter.com

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?

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

Ian Brotherhood
That is a worrying tweet but so is the ambivalence towards faith schools, which are healthy features of open society, apparently.