When will indyref2 happen?

[strichener]

2 minutes ago, git-intae-thum said:

Don't forget we simply do not know how much revenue Scotland raises.

For various reasons mentioned on this board on numerous occasions, Scottish revenue is likely to be seriously underestimated in the GERS figures.

Any unionist/British nationalist harping on about 13 billion deficits is spreading lies.

You don't know what the deficit is but you know what it isn't?

I also don't know if the £13bln is accurate but I am fairly certain Scotland runs at a deficit based on the information available.

[BawWatchin]

16 minutes ago, strichener said:

You don't know what the deficit is but you know what it isn't?

I also don't know if the £13bln is accurate but I am fairly certain Scotland runs at a deficit based on the information available.

What information is that?

GERS gives a public spend figure £13Bn pound higher than our tax revenue as it's measured under the current UK economic framework. It doesn't however give us a proper breakdown of that figure. We have knowledge of how the Scottish Government budget is spent. But nothing on how the UK Government spends the additional tax revenues it's retains, or any UK Government borrowing (in Scotlands name) over and above that.

[lichtgilphead]

42 minutes ago, strichener said:

The Scottish Government raised £450 million in borrowings last year.  They have clearly overspent.  They have not overspent on their budget as this 450m was included in the budget.  There is a difference between the two.

Stichener

Whilst I would agree that the Scottish Government budget for 2018/19 gave a proposed capital borrowing figure of £450 million, was this full amount actually drawn down?

If the 2018/19 drawdown was (say) only just over half that amount, and these figures had been published & easily verifiable, why would anyone want to use the £450 million figure?

I expect Malky the troll to lie & misrepresent. Don't make me skip over your postings too.

Scottish Government annual report

The figures are in para 6.1.1. Last year's drawdown was £250m. 

Edited August 13, 2019 by lichtgilphead
major typo! £2.5m instead of £250m!

[Baxter Parp]

The Scottish Government raised £450 million in borrowings last year.  They have clearly overspent.  They have not overspent on their budget as this 450m was included in the budget.  There is a difference between the two.

Strichner believes that every person with a mortgage has overspent, apparently. Holy f**k.

[Baxter Parp]

You don't know what the deficit is but you know what it isn't?
I also don't know if the £13bln is accurate but I am fairly certain Scotland runs at a deficit based on the information available.

Again, no. The deficit is in the money the UK says that it spends on our behalf. The UK runs at a deficit, Scotland has no control or responsibility for that deficit.

[Double Jack D]

18 hours ago, strichener said:

The Scottish Parliament does not have a fixed budget.  It has borrowing powers and therefore can spend more than it raises/is allocated and therefore it does actually "overspend".

Additionally the post that you responded to did not use the word "overspend" so I have no idea why you have put it in quotes.  This poster claimed that " Scotland currently spends around £13Bn per annum more than it generates in taxation.".  In as similar vein, my wife also has a fixed budget and she quite comfortably manages to spend more than she earns.

 

15 hours ago, strichener said:

It is the level of the budget in comparison to income that was posted about.  Nobody has claimed that the SNP has "overspent" it's budget but feel free to try and keep the strawman alive.

 

 

10 hours ago, strichener said:

The Scottish Government raised £450 million in borrowings last year.  They have clearly overspent.  They have not overspent on their budget as this 450m was included in the budget.  There is a difference between the two.

 

10 hours ago, strichener said:

You don't know what the deficit is but you know what it isn't?

I also don't know if the £13bln is accurate but I am fairly certain Scotland runs at a deficit based on the information available.

Are you Ruth Davidson?

The only figures we have (GERS) show Scotland has a £13bn deficit. The Scottish Parliament cannot overspend (barring some accountancy buffers which make sure it can balance year end figures)

I ask two things, again:

• Who is spending this £13bn, and
• WTF is it spent on?

[Malky3]

18 hours ago, tirso said:

I think it's reasonable to expect answers to these points.  

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in all of this.  The main benefit I can think of is it would be a chance to govern normally and not talk about the constitution.  I think it would be great for the people of this country to have a real democracy with responsibility.  Just normal.  You can call it blind faith if you wish but I simply believe Scotland can be economically competent.  There is a balance of opinions from very learned people on the independence side.  It's not an unrealistic or stupid proposition.  I find where Yes supporters may overplay positives, some No supporters seem to cream themselves at anything that could be construed as negative.  With Scotland's population and resources, we basically should be able to be independent quite easily.  If we can't now, why is that?  And what are Yes and No politicians doing together to change that?  If we're able to be independent then it's good whether we chose to or not.  

It's going to be unrealistic for Scotland to have no deficit.  I'm not sure why our bar has to be higher than every other country.  The EU provides the ability to be a small, more democratic nation in a changing world.  At root, I believe we should follow in the footsteps of Denmark and Ireland.  I don't see what they have that we couldn't.  We have a high GDP already in comparison to many other European countries. 

Blind faith, it certainly is especially in light of all the available evidence. However thank you for your excellent post and honest and fair assessment. 

I'm no expert either and as I said many time already I am open to persuasion to vote for Independence. What I need is solid tangible evidence that our country will be better than it is today. What won't change my mind is having nationalists queue up to accuse me of being in the Orange Order or telling me to "get out of my country". Hopefully your post here opens the door to a better level of discussion. 

Sterlingisation is the policy that an Independent Scotland couldn't have a deficit. Not my words but those of many economists. This is one of the articles on the tax research website 

https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2018/07/01/sterlingisation-is-how-to-destroy-hope-for-an-independent-scotland/

Quote

Nor will Scotland be in control of its own government budget, so it would not be able to stimulate the economy by running a deficit, for instance. That is because the Government would be forced to balance its books unless it borrowed in a foreign currency, which would make it hard, if not impossible, to maintain parity with the pound.

 

[Malky3]

10 hours ago, BawWatchin said:

What information is that?

GERS gives a public spend figure £13Bn pound higher than our tax revenue as it's measured under the current UK economic framework. It doesn't however give us a proper breakdown of that figure. We have knowledge of how the Scottish Government budget is spent. But nothing on how the UK Government spends the additional tax revenues it's retains, or any UK Government borrowing (in Scotlands name) over and above that.

Ok. So the GERS figures are the best we've got. Let's say I give you the benefit of the doubt and the Scottish Government spends exactly what we raise in tax revenues on divolved public services. How would you propose we fund services we share with the rest of the UK. Services like HMRC, the DWP, defence, or embassies and ambassador's? How would you fund a border force to police imports and exports over the Scotland / England border? How would you recompense the Royal Mint for printing money? 

IIRC the SNP White Paper assumed that the UK would provide all those sevices for free. It also assumed Scotland would be able to divorce the rest of the UK without taking on any share of the national debt. Those assumptions seem a tad unrealistic g don't they? 

Edited August 14, 2019 by Malky3

[BawWatchin]

10 minutes ago, Malky3 said:

Ok. So the GERS figures are the best we've got. Let's say I give you the benefit of the doubt and the Scottish Government spends exactly what we raise in tax revenues on divolved public services. How would you propose we fund services we share with the rest of the UK. Services like HMRC, the DWP, defence, or embassies and ambassador's? How would you fund a border force to police imports and exports over the Scotland / England border? How would you recompense the Royal Mint for printing money? 

IIRC the SNP White Paper assumed that the UK would provide all those sevices for free. It also assumed Scotland would be able to divorce the rest of the UK without taking on any share of the national debt. Those assumptions seem a tad unrealistic g don't they? 

If Scotland was independent, we wouldn't need to worry about funding UK wide services. Kind of killing off the "£13bn subsidy" myth.

[Double Jack D]

23 minutes ago, Malky3 said:

Ok. So the GERS figures are the best we've got. Let's say I give you the benefit of the doubt and the Scottish Government spends exactly what we raise in tax revenues on divolved public services. How would you propose we fund services we share with the rest of the UK. Services like HMRC, the DWP, defence, or embassies and ambassador's? How would you fund a border force to police imports and exports over the Scotland / England border? How would you recompense the Royal Mint for printing money? 

IIRC the SNP White Paper assumed that the UK would provide all those sevices for free. It also assumed Scotland would be able to divorce the rest of the UK without taking on any share of the national debt. Those assumptions seem a tad unrealistic g don't they? 

Now we are getting somewhere.

Is this the stuff that our £30bn tax contribution and £13bn allocated deficit for shared UK services is being spent on?

 

[Malky3]

19 minutes ago, BawWatchin said:

If Scotland was independent, we wouldn't need to worry about funding UK wide services. Kind of killing off the "£13bn subsidy" myth.

Scotland isn't funding UK wide services. Its paying its share of shared services like defence, embassies, ambassadors, HMRC and the Royal Mint. If you aren't paying the UK for that you need to set up your own which would have a cost

[strichener]

11 hours ago, lichtgilphead said:

Stichener

Whilst I would agree that the Scottish Government budget for 2018/19 gave a proposed capital borrowing figure of £450 million, was this full amount actually drawn down?

If the 2018/19 drawdown was (say) only just over half that amount, and these figures had been published & easily verifiable, why would anyone want to use the £450 million figure?

I expect Malky the troll to lie & misrepresent. Don't make me skip over your postings too.

Scottish Government annual report

The figures are in para 6.1.1. Last year's drawdown was £250m. 

I accept that the actual amount borrowed was £250m as we appear to have received Barnett for Crossrail and other things to make up the difference.

[BawWatchin]

1 minute ago, Malky3 said:

Scotland isn't funding UK wide services. Its paying its share of shared services like defence, embassies, ambassadors, HMRC and the Royal Mint. If you aren't paying the UK for that you need to set up your own which would have a cost

The Scottish Parliament is given a budget of £33bn. £27bn is retained by Wesminster + they borrow another £13bn on top of that.

These services would NOT cost £40bn a year in Scotland. The UK Government are at it.

[welshbairn]

Quote

I do not for one second suppose that Stuart Campbell thinks of himself as the figurehead of the entire Yes movement. I don’t think he seeks such greatness. But he may well have this greatness thrust upon him.

https://peterabell.blog/2019/08/12/beware-brits-bearing-gifts/

[HTG]

48 minutes ago, Malky3 said:

Ok. So the GERS figures are the best we've got. Let's say I give you the benefit of the doubt and the Scottish Government spends exactly what we raise in tax revenues on divolved public services. How would you propose we fund services we share with the rest of the UK. Services like HMRC, the DWP, defence, or embassies and ambassador's? How would you fund a border force to police imports and exports over the Scotland / England border? How would you recompense the Royal Mint for printing money? 

IIRC the SNP White Paper assumed that the UK would provide all those sevices for free. It also assumed Scotland would be able to divorce the rest of the UK without taking on any share of the national debt. Those assumptions seem a tad unrealistic g don't they? 

Ffs, is this the best you've got - how would we pay for a civil service infrastructure? We'd do it the same way as most modern European countries do it.  Hardly anyone seems to think that the "give all the money you earn to another country and they'll tell you how much you can have to spend" model is one to adopt. God knows why people are so wedded to it here - apart from shitebaggery or orangism (or both). If it's such a great thing, get Belgium and Luxembourg to chuck all responsibility for their income, expenditure and infrastructure to France and let the French decide how much they should get back. 

Absolute fucking nonsense.

[strichener]

59 minutes ago, Double Jack D said:

 

 

 

Are you Ruth Davidson?

The only figures we have (GERS) show Scotland has a £13bn deficit. The Scottish Parliament cannot overspend (barring some accountancy buffers which make sure it can balance year end figures)

I ask two things, again:

• Who is spending this £13bn, and
• WTF is it spent on?

Why can the Scottish government not overspend?  Over which period of time can it not overspend?

Taking the deficit as detailed in GERS (if that is what you want to use) then the £13bln deficit is quite clearly laid out in the report.  The extent to which you believe GERS is entirely down to the individual but you cannot ignore that Scotland's Future described it as "the authoritative publication on Scotland’s public finances." and detailed that it would have been used as "a starting point for discussions of Scotland’s fiscal position following independence."

At least you now appear to be getting to the point where you understand that the Scottish budget is based primarily on UK expenditure and not Scottish Income.

[strichener]

41 minutes ago, BawWatchin said:

If Scotland was independent, we wouldn't need to worry about funding UK wide services. Kind of killing off the "£13bn subsidy" myth.

Along with all benefit recipients and pensioners when you stop the funding of the services currently provided by the DWP. 

[DAFC.]

8 minutes ago, strichener said:

Along with all benefit recipients and pensioners when you stop the funding of the services currently provided by the DWP. 

Yes, of course an Independent Scotland means there will be no benefits whatsoever to those who need them. At least we wouldn't have Universal Credit, though, which, y'know, is kinda already killing people.

[BawWatchin]

11 minutes ago, strichener said:

Along with all benefit recipients and pensioners when you stop the funding of the services currently provided by the DWP. 

Give me an independent Scotland with a stable benefit and pensions system over the absolute clusterfuck we have right now every time.

[AUFC90]

Scotland isn't funding UK wide services. Its paying its share of shared services like defence, embassies, ambassadors, HMRC and the Royal Mint. If you aren't paying the UK for that you need to set up your own which would have a cost

And we also pay our share of Crossrail, London Olympics and HS2. Holyroods still waiting for it's cheque for the Commonwealth Games and Forth Bridge.