She also made clear that despite fourteen years of Tory rule, growth and increases in productivity in Scotland have been bigger than they were in England.
Not that I think that’s true but still. So, where might such a statistic come from? Well, the only useful analysis we’ve got of the Scottsih economy is the GERS. Which, recall, is a hole mess of pottage that no one should believe according to Spud.
Well, except when it’s convenient that is.
The Scottish Nationalist Party is taking £500m of green funds to plug their spending hole.
Heart of stone etc.
I suppose it’s better that they use it to pay for their old idiocies instead of wasting it on new nonsense.
It’s not impossible given some of the interventions and frankly so many easy wins against a much lower baseline and the receding threat of independence for investors but as far as i can see in the stats its just displacement from private sector to public sector and then the normal fudge that input = output in public sector productivity but that’s just a quick skim.
Government misbehaviour over Covid has made me give up my longstanding objection to capital punishment. Therefore I can, with clear conscience, say that the SNP government members should be arrested, charged, tried, convicted, sentenced, and hanged for what they’ve done to the Scottish schools.
More than four hundred years of being bloody impressive tossed away in a decade or so. Compared to this it’s mere wanking to discuss whatever bogus economic statistics are issued from time to time.
There’s little doubt the Jockish economy is a mess in a hole.
Government misbehaviour over Covid has made me give up my longstanding objection to capital punishment. Therefore I can, with clear conscience, say that the SNP government members should be arrested, charged, tried, convicted, sentenced, and hanged for what they’ve done to the Scottish schools.
Did they ever get around to cutting the bottom off all the classroom doors…?
@dearieme Covid was just an acceleration of the damage wrought by the Curriculum for Excrement.(Objective: all pupils’ results will be above average. Outcome: predictable.)
I watched Shona Robison, the Scottish minister of finance, deliver a statement in the Holyrood parliament yesterday. The statement was necessitated by budget changes that are being forced on the Scottish government this year as a result of significant changes to patterns of expenditure that have been forced upon it since the budget for the current year was set, and since Labour came into office.
I did not especially envy Shona Robison her task. What was apparent was that whatever she said, the combined unionist forces within the Scottish parliament and the Scottish media would criticise whatever she decided to do.
In practice, as she made clear, she had to cut the Scottish equivalent of the winter fuel payment paid by the Westminster government in England because Labour would no longer provide the money to pay for it.
I thought Scotland provided the bulk of the UK’s wealth? Why is it suddenly reliant on English largesse? Isn’t it a viable independent state?
She also had no choice but to find budget savings to pay for the necessary increases in public sector pay in Scotland to ensure that workers, from those in the NHS to teaching and elsewhere, have sufficient rewards to ensure that some people at least still want to undertake these enormously onerous tasks which impose burdens on those undertaking them that most people in the private sector would refuse to endure during the course of their working day.
And, what Shona Robison also had to anticipate was the fact that whatever she said now, things are likely to get very much worse. Rachel Reeves delivers her budget in October because she and Keir Starmer have, with a total absence of political flair, promised more pain thereafter.
What ‘onerous’ task does this most arrogant of fat bastards want to undertake that I would ‘refuse to endure’ ? Restricted hours? Inflation linked final salary pension schemes off limits to almost the entire private sector? Greater holidays? The ability to down tools at the slightest provocation?
I admit that Shona Robison‘s presentation showed little more flare. It is a sad fact that very few politicians are able to display much of that characteristic in Scotland or anywhere else. But that said, she was competent.
She made it clear that Labour is now her problem because that is now true as far as the people of Scotland are concerned.
Did he not see the election results? There’s a fraction of the SNP MPs there were and they won’t be elevating many to the Lords. The Muslim block is more likely to resolve his financial problems.
She also made clear that despite fourteen years of Tory rule, growth and increases in productivity in Scotland have been bigger than they were in England.
And, as she also made very clear, everything that she had to do was the fault of Westminster because it has persistently refused, as a consequence of the tacit agreement between the unionist parties located there, to improve the devolution settlement for Scotland so that it has effective tax powers, or to agree to independence. The result was Robison was able to declare that Scotland is moving into austerity, and it was not her fault.
Most Scottish productivity estimates by independent organizations have productivity as at or near Zero across the public sector in Scotland – indeed the level of Red Tape introduced and the actions of the Greens when in government mean it might actually have a negative impact on overall productivity.
You would never have believed that this was a truthful statement given the reaction of the unionist politicians in the Holyrood chamber.
The Tories denied that they had any responsibility for the dire state of the economy.
Labour claimed that all the problems the Scottish government faced were entirely of its creation and nothing had anything to do with announcements that Labour had already made when that is very obviously completely untrue.
The Liberal Democrats floundered because that is all the Liberal Democrats ever do in Scotland.
There was, perhaps, a hint of conciliation from the Greens, which limited its criticism to cuts that are going to be imposed on capital expenditure, which is bound to impact necessary climate transition spending that must take place in Scotland, as elsewhere.
The SNP and Greens are squarely responsible for Scotland’s dire state – noone else. They have no connection with reality in any aspect and have consistently spent money in ways that are utterly inappropriate. I would characterise their mismanagement as at the level of North Korea, especially under Hamza Yousuf.
What, however, was most surprising was the total absence of any acceptance of responsibility for anything that might be happening in Scotland on the part of the unionist parties who have created the current almost unmanageable devolved financial settlement for that country.
If they are honest (and they are not), they would have to admit that the current devolution settlement is rotten to its core.
Here I agree with him actually. Devolution in both Scotland and Wales has created a class of political harlots who have the simulacrum of power without any sense of responsibility. The Whole rotten edifice needs dismantling and those from the nationalist parties and Labour that colluded in its establishment need to be held accountable for it.
They would also have to accept that it is their neoliberal policies that make it almost impossible for the Scottish government to meet the needs of the people of that country.
And they, tool, would have to admit that if they provide the Scottish government with no borrowing powers of any consequence, it is inevitable that it will not be able to fund the required levels of infrastructure investment that Scotland is desperately in need of.
If Scotland were allowed to borrow it would be even more bankrupt than it already is. English taxpayers fund Scotland almost in totalis. It has virtually no independent wealth of any kind and has been mismanaged by following policy prescriptions from MMT advocates and Tax Justice campaigners that have no basis in objective reality.
They would also have to admit that it is their policies now putting pressure on public services in Scotland, not least by imposing recruitment freezes right across the public sector which are bound to prejudice the quality of services that can be supplied.
They will also have to admit, in the case of Labour, that the punishment being handed out to pensioners is entirely their responsibility.
There is no money out there, and to talk of austerity at a time when the tax burden is at its highest for fifty years shows a complete inability to recognise reality. As John Amos said in the film ‘Coming to America’ – ‘Stay off the drugs’
But that would be all too much for these neoliberal, anti-Scottish parties who want to play politics at Holyrood but who have between them not a single person actually capable of making the decisions that any Scottish government might need to take, most especially if the current settlement continues.
So, what we saw was a total denial of the reality of the British economic malaise by those parties that created it in 2009. In microcosm, we did, as a result, see the whole problem of British politics laid out. There was total denial of responsibility on the part of all those who have created the austerity that Scotland will face; however overwhelming is the evidence of their guilt.
No wonder we’re in a mess. Neoliberalism has reduced politics to the level of farce. No wonder people have had enough of it.
Correct – Shona Davidson, who alongside the Greens is part of a near dictatorial regime that has presided over Scotland since 2010 has run the country into the ground, destroying its health system, education system and much of its infrastructure. There’s no great mystery here. The policies advocated by certain Fringe academics which include:
– The use of Modern Monetary Theory and the Magic Money Tree to suggest money can be created digitally without any lasting impact in terms of inflation
– The advocacy of Net Zero
– The acceptance of unlimited numbers of migrants who have never contributed to the public purse
– The installation of ‘DIE’ (diversity, inclusion and Equity) and various LGBTQIIAA initiatives in the belief that putting fundamental falsehoods in place will have no impact on productivity.
The list is long and endless. All these policies have a long and lasting impact and the SNP/ Green administration responsible for this has caused the resultant austerity. It’s high time those, like certain semi-retired accountants in Ely who supported these absurdities were held accountable for the issues they have created
I wish this repellent, grifting cvnt would keep his stool-sniffing nose out of Scotland. We’ve got enough eejits, grants and research funding parasites and detectorists, and fvckwit polemicists of our our own, thanks.
He’s not a Scottish voter, resident or taxpayer, he’ll not be put up for vermine by the SNP, what’s his aim?
OT – Keir Starmer offers apology ‘on behalf of British state’ to victims of Grenfell Tower fire – as it happened
Grenfell has officially been adopted into their retarded religion.
“Grenfell has officially been adopted into their retarded religion.”
I’d better self-censor here or Tim might get into trouble. I take it that the protection offered by living in Portugal is not infallible.
DM – I assume the arrest of that Russian social media billionaire was merely the warm up to arresting Elon Musk before the American presidential election. (If Elon Musk is foolish enough to set foot on British soil, well, at least the trial will be entertaining.)
If billionaires aren’t safe, none of us are.
I hope not to type anything that might cause any difficulties for our host, admittedly quite a tricky thing these days now that it’s illegal to print out stickers saying “It’s OK to be White”.
But yarp, Grenfell.
Where you or I might think that was a tragic house fire, the kind of thing that – while, like most news items, devastating to the people involved, our hearts go out, etc. etc., – would normally have been relegated to local news not long after the initial reporting and charity drive. Not some sort of collective… national sin? Which is the vibe you get from all the prime ministerial apologising, massive media focus, and Owen Jones sermons:
The Grenfell Tower fire was the hideous consequence of a society which prioritises corporate interests over human needs
Was it, really? No building fires under socialism? It was “society’s” fault that building caught fire, and not the specific individuals involved in the planning chain that led to those poor people dying? How queer.
I find Owen’s hypothesis far-fetched, and believe to the extent it raised questions of national relevance, these might be “did the government’s eco regulations contribute to this disaster?” and “how come there are loads of Sudanese taxi drivers and the like living in tower blocks in London when our government swears blind it’s only bringing in ‘skilled labour’?”
But in Clown World, it’s the new Lourdes. Part of the Secular Pantheon. As always, notice the Whoing and Whoming.
Steve
‘Leave the cocksucking cheese where it f£)ing is’
Anyway – on a serious note I am hoping I live long enough to see Owen Jones thrown off the top of a tall building by his ‘friends’ in the Muslim Block, preferably post a red hot poker being inserted where the sun don’t shine.
What an odious little bastard he is.
Scotland and Wales should keep devolution. If you do not like who the Scots and Welsh elect then get your side to campaign better in their devolved elections. Do not take away the ball just because you lose.
How would you like it if Germany or the USA said they do not like who the UK vote for an imposed another government on them? Or if another country imposed a far left wing government on the USA, even if they voted for a right wing government?
You cannot take away devolution from Scotland and Wales just because YOU do not like who wins the elections.
Van You are inciting violence against innocent people. That is evil.
SD: «How would you like it if Germany or the USA said they do not like who the UK vote for an imposed another government on them?»
Germany, riven by incompatible coalitions at federal and state level, is trying to impose a government on itself and doing a rotten job of it. Meanwhile the US is marshalling the wherewithal to impose a new government on the majority. Again,
« Or if another country imposed a far left wing government on the USA, even if they voted for a right wing government?»
The distictions between left and right are irrelevant here. The apparat reflects the will of the people in a fine soviet tradition.
Support Freedom
Owen Jones has advocated the murder of all
Jewish people in the Middle East for near enough two decades. If that is ‘innocent’ then I think you have a very skewed moral compass indeed.
«How would you like it if Germany or the USA said they do not like who the UK vote for an imposed another government on them?»
I didn’t, which is why I voted Leave.
Steve,
I sometimes read things which do not reflect my recollection of earlier events.
Re Grenfell I thought a major factor was the use of eco-friendly cladding material which fully complied with eu regulations (it’s use might have been a recommendation or even obligatory), while the later decision to do nothing about it once doubts were raised was made by some form of management company whose members included Labour politicos.
I must have imagined it. My memory is not what it was.
Scotland has hadly benefitted at all from the strength and growth of adding millions of net benefit claiming migrants like England has. Imagine the impact on Scotland if we fairly shared that bounty!
Bison – Then on your terms. How would you like it if Biden removed the state elected governors of Texas, Florida, and other Republican states and imposed Democratic leaders.?
As I said you cannot take.away the ball.just because you do not like who devolution elects..
Scotland and Wales have a right to devolution.
Van – Show me the evidence of where Owen has called for genocide in the Middle East..I think you are not correct to state that. I see no evidence ce of Owen calling for all Jews to be killed. Show me the evidence.
Support Devolution said:
“Scotland and Wales have a right to devolution.”
Why? They have a right to independence if they want it, but they don’t want it.
I don’t see that they have any right to self-governance whilst remaining in the UK.
He supported Jeremy Corbyn and supports the continued Palestinian demonstrations in the UK. These are pro Hamas acts which imply he supports Hamas aims, which include Israels complete destruction (which would entail all Jews being murdered)
I doubt even he is stupid enough to overtly call for genocide.
RichardT. They voted for devolution. Would you get rid of county councils, and mayors?
Is it just Scotland and Wales who are refused to have devolution.
It should not be one extreme or the other.
Scotland and Wales should have a balance. Where they can have a level of devolution. Otherwise it is just England bullying Wales and Scotland if they say total governance by London or no co-operation.
Would you say the same for the USA, and have total control by Washington DC, with no elected state governors?
If all the power is held in London and the South East of England that is just going to lead to explotation of the situation by London and the South East of England.
As I said would you get rid of county councils and mayors. That sound like the worst kind of centralised control, like something from the Soviet Union.
Van So you have no evidence for you statement about Owen. You are just making assumptions and saying horrific allegations about someone to justify a support of murder of innocent people.
There is NO evidence that Owen supports all Jews being murdered. End of story.
I support peace for Israel and Palestine.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/11/29/we-mustnt-let-the-left-erase-the-truth-of-7-october/
Owen Jones.
There is no point in the article where it provides evidence that Owen wants Jews killed. End of story.
I support peace between Israel and Palestine. But Owen Jones DOES NOT support murder of Jews. You have NOT provided evidence. You have just shown an article from a strange website.
Support Freedom
A somewhat ironic title I think – ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ – no?
Off you go now – you can find your ideological compadres at ‘The Guardian’ if you put it in Google
John – that’s what I heard.
Sir Kier Starmer will apologise for the British government’s role in protecting the grooming gangs in never.
VAN So you .make up what your opponent believes and then come up with the warped.logic that it is really what they think, they are just too scared what they really think. Utter nonsense. Grow up.
I could equally claim you support the Holocaust, serial.killers, and wife beaters, but that you are just too scared to own up.
Let me state. I am left wing, I don’t support the holocaust. I wat peace for Israel and Palestine. I care equally for Israeli and Palestitinian people. Do you?
Van – You seem to think everyone who disagrees with you is a NAZI. You are sick and childess to think that. Can I accuse you of being a NAZI. Can I accuse you of being Fred West’s buddy?
Grow up.
You are the one who makes unfounded allegations about Own Jones, decides that he just is too scared to say what he really thinks and then calls for him to be killed.
You are the sort who causes war and chaos.
I support peace for Israel and Palestine.
Sidestepping our excitable new visitor and returning to largely unspoken Grenfell details I strongly recommend today’s article from “a strange website”.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/09/05/why-was-grenfell-covered-in-cladding-climate-targets/
John
Good link – as ever Spiked is on the money.
Tim
Obviously the server outage seems to have been a genuine technical failure, but obviously with overtly Fascist and anti – Semitic bloggers operating here then the possibility of A DOS attack certainly exists.
Van – Are you talking about yourself when you refer to overtly fascist people?
I have not made ANY anti-semitic posts you creature.
I want peace in Israel and Palestine. End of story. I do not want any Jews killed. I want the hostages reurtned safely.
You are so low in argument you have to lie about your opponents views. You are low.
You are the only person here who called for an innocent man to be killed. Why?
My view is spiked is attention seeking warped, far right, nonsense. They even had a writer who said it was wrong to call the far right as far right. I hate Spiked magazine
I find them to be like the bully bot right wing trolls
I care equally for Israeli and Palestinian people.
It’s not clear whether Israelis , only Israeli Arabs, or just West Bank Arabs or Gazan Arabs are counted as being Palestinian here, but I would refer Support Freedom to look at the differential in value on Israeli and Palestinian prisoners as assessed by Hamas themselves in their peace offer. Yes, even Hamas do not regard an Palestinian prisoner freed as equivalent to an Israeli prisoner freed. They think that a ratio of 1:50 is appropriate.
Expand that out to deaths (regardless of intent to kill) and even now Hamas are ahead, using their own preferred ratio.
Support Freedom
I shouldn’t do this but call me a glutton for punishment so I am going to go through this nice and slowly, so that even someone as transparently dim as you can understand.
Owen Jones is an overt supporter of Hamas. He also happens to be an overt homosexual. If he were to have gone to Hamas run Gaza prior to 7th October last year and tried to proselytise in favour of homosexuality he would have been thrown off a tall building or stoned to death on account of his sexual orientation. That’s a comment on the complete stupidity of anyone proclaiming ‘Queers for Palestine’
In case you are unaware, Jones was a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn , who also backs Hamas. Hamas are committed to the complete
Destruction of the state of Israel and the removal of all of its inhabitants – given they have nowhere else to go in the Middle East this would in effect mean the destruction of all Jews in the Middle East. This desire extends to all Jews globally. The Nazis also desired the destruction of the entire Jewish race – hence the point that support of Hamas is in no degree different from support for the Nazis. To support them is to indicate you share their goals however you wish to dress them up. This is a war with two sides. Israel and Hamas. It seems clear to me you want there to be A ‘third option’ – Newsflash, there isn’t one.
As John’s article points out, those who question the narrative put out by the IDF, who accept the propaganda put out by Hamas are in effect accomplices to attempted genocide, which is what took place on October 7th. Is the Israeli government without flaws? – no. However given the dichotomy between the two sides thereIs no comparison. By defending the likes of Jones you are saying that you want war and the destruction of the Jewish people.
Now I don’t know from under what stone you crawled, but I suggest you crawl back there.
Bongo – you are getting worked up because I want peace. I want peace. Stop woth your straw man arguments.
Van – I never said I support Hamas. I support peace, that is not supporting Hamas. How are you so worked up and ill, that you think if somebody supports peace then that means they support Hamas. I do not support the Israeli government or Hamas
But I do support peace.
Maybe it gets you excited in some.sick sexual way to have a war that kills Palestinian women and children. You must have a deep issue with Palestinian women and children. What did the women and children do to you, to make you hate them so much?
But that says where your morals are. I do not want Jews or Palestianians to be killed. I want peace. And if you READ the news you will see there could be a chance for peace.
It is evil to kill innocent Palestinian women and children. It is.evil to kill Jews.
I am not the fascist. I think deep down you know that.
Van. Your logic seems to be that if someone supports peace, does not support Hamas and does not support the Israeli government, then THAT means they support Hamas and are actually NAZIs who worship Hitler.
You are insane.
I did not support the Iraq government, Bush Junior or the Iraqi war. But your logic would say that means I supported the Hussain government. You are a deeply offensive oaf.
I support Freedom
You are what would be termed in the Cold War era a ‘useful idiot’ – I’d remove the ‘useful’ from that term
There can be no ‘peace’ with a genocidal cult bent on the death of All Jews still extant unfortunately. To support Peace while Hamas is still in existence is to be at best naive and at worst utterly moronic. Yes there has been collateral damage – largely because Hamas chooses to hide amidst the civilian population and neither Jordan nor Egypt will open its borders to allow the Gazans in as refugees. That is far from an ideal situation but never forget, Hamas and by extension its Iranian paymaster started this war. By defending Owen Jones (who incidentally is a declared supporter of Hamas) you clearly are at least in sympathy with his and their ideology.
Why do you support the party that butchered several thousand Jews in an unprovoked assault, Many of them women and children?
Why do you hate the Jews so much that you want them all killed?
Why do you feel that a genocidal death cult is equivalent to a relatively peaceful democracy?
Perhaps more pertinently – Why have you come to this blog in the first place? There’s probably a hundred thousand accounts on X which you’d be able to link to places far more in line with your ‘peaceful’ nature.
As for being offensive your scarcely literate rantings which would disgrace ‘Der Sturmer ’ are profoundly offensive to my many Jewish friends whose very existence is being threatened by the demonstrations taking place weekly with the tacit or indeed often the overt support of various advocates like yourself who believe that ‘peace’ with an organisation as murderous as Hamas is either possible or desirable,
@Support Freedom
You are not alone in wanting peace. It’s just not an interesting thing to say. The extermination of either side would result in peace if there was no outside intervention. I’m sure you don’t want that.
However if you said specifically whether or not you opposed the peace deal offered by Israel in mid October 2023, then that would indeed be interesting to know in my view.
Van – I do not want Jewish men, women, or children to die. I want peace.
I never said I supported war or Hamas.
You are a hate filled bigot.
I want peace.
People like you on both sides are fuel for the Devil.
You are simply the same as the Hamas extremists who killed Jews. I am the third way. But when you look in the mirror war is what you see.
It is actually both the supporters of the Israeli government and the supporters of Hamas terrorists are on the same side, in terms of result.
Both want war. Both will lead to the deaths of innocent women and children. Both see the war casualties as never enough.
Support Freedom
So rather than answer the question you’d indulge some adolescent fantasy that peace is possible when one side wants to literally murder the other. As I said, I probably succumbed to the temptation to respond to a self – evident troll so that’s on me. But hopefully this is your last foray into this otherwise excellent website, To say you are a moron would be being extremely generous indeed. You’re certainly the most witless contributor we have had here genuinely in years. Just FYI you can Google ‘Owen Jones, Guardian’ and you’ll find the anti semitism you are looking for and feel comfortable with,
Van – you are an offensive bully who insults anyone who disagrees with you. Grow up. I want peace, you don’t. You are one sick puppy.
I am very pleased that the Jews threatened by the appalling ‘Support Freedom’ have survived and an gratefulness that this hate – filled bigot has left the site