Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Scots Happy To Accept Money Bombshell

Alan Cochran is no fan of the iniquitous Scottish gerrymandering conducted by Labour in Sweaty Sock -land . He does however write in against the assumption that we lob sacks of cash over Hadrian’s via the Barnwell formula .(1)
. Free prescriptions, he points out,have been promised within the four year Parliamentary cycle. This would cost an estimated £70 million which would have to found from the current Scottish Budget. Salmon is writing cheques he cannot cash …now why would that be then ?
The budget for Scotland has doubled since devolution and will be increased to £30 billion next year. I think they could find the £70 million but more likely they won’t and it will be one of many staged clashes with “ The UK Parliament “. This is how we could get out of the EU were the foolish UKIPs not so determined to stay in…. but I digress

Much of this article points at regional variations across the UK in spending which , within a single country is not an issue of course. His main point concerns Oil though .
“ The Nationalists claim that tax revenue from North Sea Oil is a direct subsidy from Scotland to England ..a projected £55 billion over the next five years “OK so that’s £11 billion a year . They get £30 billion a year from us . So even accepting the Oil shtick, it is a £20 billion a year bung ,a thousand quids per household give or take .(2)
Mr. Cochrane assures us that the argument of Oil offseting the Barnett formula, has been “ Largely accepted by the Scottish public but it has not turned them into rabid little Scot-landers “
….It is unclear what point the is making once you divide up the five year figure he gives us . ! In any case the romance of a Free Scotland first blew its Pipes with political vigour about the time the first barrel came ashore. Sorry Alan but we are continuing to throw our money at the Pictish horde Why ? To keep labour in power , same as everything else.



1- Daily Telegraph
2- 2.59 is the average household and ,50,690,000 was the last counted population of England

4 comments:

Old BE said...

N, you have omitted the amount of money raised as taxes in Scotland which are collected in London and put on a train back to Edinburgh.

I think the figures are much more finely balanced that the extremists say.

It really irks me that the unionists boil this argument down to money because it makes both sides look greedy. It's about whether a particular country wants to be able to control its own policies. The EU debate gets caught up in the same thing: is it better to have those mythical 3,000,000 jobs or is it better to have a democratic system?

Newmania said...

N, you have omitted the amount of money raised as taxes in Scotland

True true , but it would not affect the equation much

CityUnslicker said...

too right N. over 60% of the Scottish economy is public sector and so by definition unproductive.

Salmond is playing his cards well at the moment. All to the good for the country too as it has shaken the home of the one party state that GB is so familiar with.

Newmania said...

Its an interesting thought CU that in Scotland the establishment is the Labour Party...eeek

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