SNP to launch fresh Scottish independence campaign

[GusB]

I'm sure it would, however as an English voter I would want England to take a strong position in England's favour in any such negotiations and not concede to unreasonable demands.

What's wrong with an arrangement that suits both parties, and why would it have to favour one over the other? Isn't that what negotiation is all about?

Thank goodness it's not you that's in charge; what an awful world it would be!

 

[Wynd]

Might I suggest that you need to check more carefully what the stats you quote are measuring before jumping to conclusions about them. I've annotated the figure to highlight the rather obvious problems:



It's measuring relative productivity per hour. Before you can figure out whether that means Scotland is generating more wealth per person than the rest of the UK, you have to multiply that by the average numbers of hours worked, and the % of the population who are actually working. (I don't know how doing that would impact the results but it's bound to have some impact).

The chart also compares to the median region, not the mean GDP. That will be distorting the results because the two regions of London and the SouthEast are both hugely more productive than the other regions - and they will cause the mean to be higher than the median. Even worse, the regions are not weighted by population. The regions listed below Scotland in the chart are, on the whole much smaller than the two regions above Scotland (London and the SouthEast). Once you take those corrections, into account, it's pretty clear that the bar chart will be over-egging the actual productivity of Scotland. I don't know what the total production per head is in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK, but it is simply not possible from that chart to deduce that either the productivity or the total production per head in Scotland is higher than the UK average.

(I'm not by the way trying to knock either the chart or Scotland. The purpose of the chart appears to be to show how much more wealth per hour worked is generated in London compared to anywhere else, and it shows that very well. The chart was rather clearly not designed to show you anything about how Scotland compares to the rest of the UK, which is why you can't reasonably deduce anything meaningful about Scotland from it).



I don't know where you get that myth from, as I've never heard it before. But the fact is that Scotland does receive a considerable net subsidy in UK Government expenditure, and if Scotland loses that subsidy as a result of becoming independent, then EITHER the Scottish Government will have to oversee a massive cut in services OR there will have to be massive tax rises to make up the gap.

If you disagree with the ONS/Bloomberg, feel free to disagree with other reputable sources. Its not my data, so pick away to your hearts content. Here's another graph showing a similar thing.



As for your last point, if Scotland becomes an independent nation, it will fund any deficit the same way that the UK currently funds its deficit, via borrowing from markets or monetizing it via the central bank. And yes, Scotland will have a CB, because that's absolutely required.

The false dichotomy you outline, places Scotland as the only major western country on earth that couldn't borrow. Its an insanely false position, and its deplorable that educated people keep pushing it.

I'm sure it would, however as an English voter I would want England to take a strong position in England's favour in any such negotiations and not concede to unreasonable demands.

In the same vein that Scotland unreasonably hands over half its tax base and nearly all its oil resource to Whitehall every year, like that?

To mirror GusB, agreed. I wonder how your negotiations go in your own life with an attitude like that. The best outcome is a negotiation where both parties are satisfied. That's how we cultivate harmony and cohesion, whereas your approach just creates discord.

 

[Bletchleyite]

What's wrong with an arrangement that suits both parties, and why would it have to favour one over the other? Isn't that what negotiation is all about?

Thank goodness it's not you that's in charge; what an awful world it would be!

It's no different from a Union negotiating with a TOC. Each looks out for their own, but meet somewhere in the middle.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 1 Jul 2022 ==

In the same vein that Scotland unreasonably hands over half its tax base and nearly all its oil resource to Whitehall every year, like that?

I would expect to see that cease on independence, and Scotland would take its own tax and spend its own money, and the oil resource would be divided as per agreed borders.

I fundamentally don't want long-term complex relationships and payments. I'm happy for Scotland to be independent, but once it is that's that and we trade and relate as per a third country like RoI.

 

[Wynd]

It's no different from a Union negotiating with a TOC. Each looks out for their own, but meet somewhere in the middle.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 1 Jul 2022 ==



I would expect to see that cease on independence, and Scotland would take its own tax and spend its own money, and the oil resource would be divided as per agreed borders.

I fundamentally don't want long-term complex relationships and payments. I'm happy for Scotland to be independent, but once it is that's that and we trade and relate as per a third country like RoI.

That will be the maritime border moving back to pre 1999 shift, and Scotland having 90% of the crude then, not to mention the offshore renewable s.

If you go looking, you'll find a number of arguments around the oil and the net flows to the treasury. The short story is that that would feature in any negotiation against the national debt. Net flows from Scotland were significant, and yet, Scotland was still forced to borrow and poay interest on that borrowing.

When you take a step back and assess the arguments, it becomes pretty clear why Whitehall fought so hard in 2014, and why now, Westminster is even more reluctant to get in to this. There is another 8 years of hard data for both sides to make use of in negotiations.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'm decidedly not bothered about oil. As a fuel it has no long term future.

The actual renewable energy (wind, wave) is there for anyone to take in their waters. The devices which collect it are generally owned by private companies which will remain private companies.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

As you're so quick to demand that everyone else supplies facts and figures,

I would have thought that supplying facts and figures is a good thing, surely?

please provide the source that backs up your claim about Scotland receiving a net subsidy.

How about this: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06625/SN06625.pdf. The key statistic would appear to be:

Scotland accounted for 9.1% of UK public spending, around 7.9% of UK revenues and 8.1% of UK population in 2020/21.

From the context, the spending and revenues referred to are Government spending/revenues. I realise 2020/21 is a Covid year so needs to be treated with caution, but as far as I can see, the figures for previous years show the same Scottish bias. For example, this chart (from page 10 of the same report) shows higher public spending in Scotland is significantly higher per head than the UK as a whole:


To answer the obvious challenge to those figures: Were revenues higher to compensate? This graph (from the same report) indicates that, at least in 2019-20, they were not:


== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 1 Jul 2022 ==

If you disagree with the ONS/Bloomberg,

I thought my post made it very clear that I was not disagreeing with their figures: I was pointing out that their figures didn't support the interpretation you'd drawn from them.

As for your last point, if Scotland becomes an independent nation, it will fund any deficit the same way that the UK currently funds its deficit, via borrowing from markets or monetizing it via the central bank. And yes, Scotland will have a CB, because that's absolutely required.

Deficit funding by borrowing isn't sustainable in the long term (other than to the limited extent that you allow the total debt to grow in proportion to GDP, which is very roughly what the UK has tended to do, Covid years excepted.