Then there was a presentation on the scale of Scottish deficits that assumed that the Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland statement (GERS) is factual, and that Scotland runs the biggest deficit in Europe, and that this is utterly unsustainable. There was not a mention that GERS quite specifically says it provides no indication of how the economy of an independent Scotland might behave. Instead it was assumed that nothing would change if independence were to happen. How that constitutes a credible argument, even before the flaws in GERS are considered, is hard to conceive.
The point is rather that GERS gives us an insight into what would have to change if Scotland became independent. You know, quite a lot to close that deficit.
Anyway, so Ritchie finds the audience at a Fabian meeting not up to scratch. And says so:
I then told them that since the quality of political and economic debate on The Bake Off was bound to be of a higher calibre than that in this meeting that was what I was going to watch, and left the meeting.
Hmm well, yes:
his claim was wrong, but what was clear was that argument had disappeared and pedantry was on display……It was the arrogance on display,……plus the sheer scale of economic incompetence evidenced
If you say so Snippa.
But deficits don’t matter and they can just print money because only the government can do so and therefore the government can’t run out of money and…
Oh, and where do Fabian meetings take place? Can we go and meet the Webbs and George Bernard Shaw? Do they still espouse eugenics?
It’s a good job the Nigerian government doesn’t have a GERS report
Were not all those studies on Brexit predicting economic harm, and championed by Richie et al, also assuming nothing changes?
It is amusing that the Potato doesn’t seem able to grasp that Scotland doesn’t generate much in the way of tax but spends oodles on benefits. That dooms independence to failure unless you can make immense structural changes to the Scottish economy. You can’t manage to run a modern welfare state on the back of whisky, tourism, and salmon. Even if you think about Nat West, based in Edinburgh, where are the bulk of its profits made? I bet mostly in England, where they will be taxed. It might be a struggle to find any Scottish based multinational that pays a meaningful amount of tax in Scotland (including business rates, VAT and payroll taxes).
As well as being a moron he’s also a vindictive little bastard as well
Capt. McPotato needs to get shirts with a bigger collar size or give up watching programmes about food on the telly. Still and for all that, we have another useful insight into the consuming interests of the great man.
She then acknowledged that she has no economics training.
Aha. ha. ha. Seriously? Captain ‘I didn’t bother with my Economics lessons as they were bunk’ Potato actually wrote this? Has he no shame?
I did of course explain all the well-known problems with GERS, and was laughed at.
Is he not used to it by now?
+1 TMB
Would it be fair to suggest that Scotland needs to become a tax haven, similar to Jersey, if it gets independence? My caution is based on the feeling that the Blighted Spud might read and have a stroke.
Elsewhere, are people really selling euros on ebay?
http://climateerinvest.blogspot.com/2020/09/selling-euros-on-ebay-is-thing.html?m=1
A lot of the deals seem to have got the exchange rate the wrong way round! Has Spud become an FX trader? If he is, he’s getting roasted
Shame there isn’t a recording of the meeting on youtube. My delight in seeing the Potato being openly laughed at and ridiculed would be complete. The only reason he’s taken such an interest in Scotland appears to be that he thought he could get vermine up north. Sadly (for him) he seems to have fucked off both the SNP and Labour.
Would IndyScot have vermin? Surely he’d get the Order of the Tartan Banner.
There are quite a lot of people in Scotland with reasonably high salaries. The problem is that they all work for the state!
I’d absolutely love to see this.
Any last vestige of curiosity I had for him has gone, what an utterly monstrous, repellent suppurating cock-end he is.
A middle class version of the nasty drunk on the street telling everyone to fvck off. We at least know now to tell him to “Bake Off ya cvnt”.
I trust he is well provided for so he can finance a private room at the care home.
Even if you think about Nat West, based in Edinburgh, where are the bulk of its profits made? I bet mostly in England
NatWest (and 99% of the rest of the Scots financial services industry, not excluding the Widows) would decamp to England following (or, more probably, immediately before) independence.
@ Excavator Man
Not all of them – Standard Life Aberdeen employs a number of high-paid staff and Standard Life said it would re-register as an English company if SNP were to win the referendum. There is also Scottish Widows (owned by Lloyds Bank), a number of good Investment Trust managers (e.g. Baillie Gifford who run Scottish Mortgage and Martin Currie) who could easily relocate to avoid the wealth tax that Nicola will need to introduce to replace the Barnett formula subsidy from England – if James Anderson gets paid 0.01% as a performance fee on top of his basic salary he must be a multi-millionnaire …
So if I read this right, he has insulted yet another group of people, and pompously walked out n them? How many is this now, thousands?
Can you imagine the sorry, sad life the poor cunt has carved out for himself? Two failed marriages, apparently no friends, desperately seeking attention from whomever will give it to him, only to fuck them off and seek refuge in his grubby little echochamber where he’s man enough to dish it out. As BF so eloquently put it, he’s an utterly monstrous, repellent suppurating cock-end.
Scotland has the oil industry and has the potential to be a renewable energy superpower. It also has great water resources. Useful for hydroelectricity and other uses of water.
Scotland could still have a strong financial industry in the European Union.
Look at the success of Ireland in the EU.
@ Richard West of Wales
When will you learn that windpower is 99.7% unreliable (look at https://gridwatch.co.uk/ ) and, however much I love hydroelectricity, that is only supplies a relatively trivial share of our electricity?
The success of Ireland in the EU is due mainly to the vast subsidies that it receives with a secondary amount from its playing the tax haven card for American (and now many UK) companies who need a brass plate base in the EU.
So why can’t Scotland and Wales be bases for American and foreign companies in the EU?
Norway produces the majority of it’s energy through hydroelectricity. Why can’t Scotland and Wales do better at hydroelectricity and wave power?
Now you’re clearly just trolling. You have to keep it at least semi-plausible to get others to bite.
Richard – the air will soon-enough come out of the (subsidy farming) renewables balloon. Hydroelectric is a good business, but you need the sites and huge amounts of capital; I have no idea how many suitable valleys remain available in Scotland, or their access to capital – but if you can build hydro dams in Ethiopia or Paraguay you can probably build them in Scotland. The problem with hydro is that it provides very little economic base once the facility is built – you can run a 3-5GW hydro dam (which is a pretty massive facility) with four dozen people, and the profit goes to the guys who provided the capital, and my guess is they won’t live in Edinburgh but in London or New York.
@ Richard West of Wales
Norway has five times the area of Scotland, mountains twice as high and a smaller population.
Do try to think before you write.
Not only does the full moon come early for RWW but it remains full longer.
@Richard West of Wales
Did you think changing your name would make the commentators bite? And assuming you aren’t who you appear to be? Do you think Scotland will be allowed back in to the EU? My guess is Spain would veto any expansion. Even if that weren’t the case are you seriously thinking that Germany will provide a funding for Scotland equivalent to the Barnett formula? If so, I have several bridges to sell you…
The central point that Tim makes is correct. GERS is a report that shows what a seceded Scotland would need to change to get the deficit down. It doesn’t really prove the case for or against secession. In fact the vast majority of the evidence seems to be “glass half full/half empty” that arms both sides.
If Scotland is massively subsidised, then that doesn’t just prove that the Union is beneficial,it also proves that it is harmful because Scotland shouldn’t need subsidy. However the converse is also true, if Scotland is not subsidised then it proves that Scotland can manage BUT the Union is not actually harmful either.
So really GERS is not actually worth much.
FWIW my view, as a Secessionist, is that Scotland is currently too statist and Secession will cause many companies to leave but all the pain will cause Scots, especially in the left leaning Central Belt, to have to face economic reality and move to a small state economically free model.
Ultimately, like Ireland before it, the choice is relative decline in the Union and likely economic pain when the U.K. cuts the subsidies or economic pain and the chance to take back control and eventually gain.
“So why can’t Scotland and Wales be bases for American and foreign companies in the EU?”
Because Scotland and Wales are full of small minded socialists who never saw a large company they didn’t want to tax or nationalise.
” Why can’t Scotland and Wales do better at hydroelectricity and wave power?”
Who are they going to sell the electricity to? There’s only really the English, and why would they buy it, other than at a cheap price? Its no good being able to generate lots of lovely ‘renewable’ electricity if you don’t have plenty of customers lining up to buy it.
Plus I doubt any country really wants to be reliant on another for electric, its too much of a hostage to fortune. Name me another country that makes its living selling electric to its neighbours. Most inter-country electric supplies/purchases are at the margin, when X has small deficit it buys from Y and vice versa. No country relies on imports for a large % of its consumption, it would be giving the country at the supply end the power to close its neighbour down.
Doesn’t a large part of europe rely on Russian gas imports?
Blimey: the potato is actually right about something – it’s better to be watching Bake Off than being a Fabian Society meeting…
“Doesn’t a large part of europe rely on Russian gas imports?”
And more fool them……….