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Full Fiscal Autonomy


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I probably read this somewhere at some time but does anyone know what percentage Scotland's deficit would be against GDP with this £7.6bn deficit, the blackhole that everyone keeps banging on about compared to the UK with its £100bn deficit?

Max Kaiser done a post on it a while back. From memory the share of the deficit is roughly the same, but he backs up Business for Scotland's claims that it would reduce quicker under FFA. With a Tory government in Westminster I don't find that hard to believe.

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Max Kaiser done a post on it a while back. From memory the share of the deficit is roughly the same, but he backs up Business for Scotland's claims that it would reduce quicker under FFA. With a Tory government in Westminster I don't find that hard to believe.

I must see if I can get some details because if this is the case if has to be sharply thumped home.

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That's the business for Scotland one, the Kaiser one was on RT.com. The business for Scotland one is worth very little in the process of debate, kaiser on the other hand can be argued to be fairly independent.

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That's the business for Scotland one, the Kaiser one was on RT.com. The business for Scotland one is worth very little in the process of debate, kaiser on the other hand can be argued to be fairly independent.

u got a copy/link?

ps just noticed new signature..

2016 Katy Clark for Holyrude.. would turn round your losing streak methinx....

Edited by stocky
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u got a copy/link?

ps just noticed new signature..

2016 Katy Clark for Holyrude.. would turn round your losing streak methinx....

Not yet, RT.com threw up a blank and Kaisers twitter feed is a congested mess of capitalist gobbledygook. If I come across my SNP'er friends will be the first to know :)

You're desperately flogging that donkey :lol:

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Today we seen the full force of what the SNP are up against

Is it just a coincidence that on the day the SNP submit their amendment to the Scotland Bill for FFA/FFR , Oil revenues are downgraded by 94% ?

Radio Scotland news was an absolute disgrace so much so that i couldnt be bothered watching Reporting Scotland as i guessed what would be it's headlines

They dont even seem to care now that their reporting can be seen for the biased bile and lies that it is and it's going to be like this ad nauseum for months

How on earth do they get down to estimates of only making £2bn over a 20-year period?

Can only assume that it is a combination of lower $ per barrel, lower production and any profits balanced against investment tax breaks and decommissioning costs which leads them to an estimate averaging at only £100m a year?!!!

Edited by AlfieMoon
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It is also due to the fact that a lot of oil is coming out but not contributing (in tax) as the IOC is making a loss / just covering costs. For example the Premier OIl Solan field wll now tak around 18 years before it pay back its initial investment. Premier would not have touched this at 60$ per barrel....thats why the middle east is full of investment the start up costs are buttons compared the the NS. Chevron were losing 3$ per month at the turn of the year.

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IMO, the SNP are fighting an FFA battle even if they suspect they will lose. Because if "everything except defence and foreign affairs" is proven to the electorate to be worse than the status quo and worse than independence, that sizeable chunk of the electorate who wanted it, have to re-consider their position on the UK and independence. As it stands, FFA is only ever going to be a theoretical battle - it has little chance of ever seeing the light of day in the real world. Avoiding having the current discussion around FFA will only allow those who want DevoMax to continue to sit on the fence hoping it would actually be pretty decent.

This is a necessary evil for the SNP IMO and it's all about positioning themselves for the next referendum when more people will realise DevoMax is dead, and at this rate, so too is federalism.

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Apart from him just making an article on the back of Unionist statistics

Id take more notice if it was from Stiglitz or other economists

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He rather loses credibility when dragging up the old trope about increases in the minimum wage also increasing unemployment. Exactly the same thing which was argued before the minimum wage was introduced. It's simply not true (or, at least, not provable).

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/288841/The_National_Minimum_Wage_LPC_Report_2014.pdf

I'm no economist, but I also don't understand this bit:

"Of course the figures for a Scottish deficit of £7.6bn – and rising over the course of this parliament – are in addition to the Scottish share of the overall UK budget deficit." (emphasis in original article)

Under FFA, why would Scotland be responsible for a part of the UK's budget deficit?

Annoyingly, I've just realised I forgot to archive.is the url before I read the article - contributing to the Spectator, dammit!

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there are many lies at the heart of this discussion...

We all agree we can't go on increasing our debt, it must be reduced. However we have a debt whether we make our own decisions or not - deal with it. We dont get 'let off' our share of the debt as part of the UK and it doesn't magically get any bigger or smaller if you let Scotland manage its economy.

There is no significantly greater or smaller black hole regardless of who makes decisions.

There are however reasons why we must make these decisions in Scotland

1. we will make better decisions for our own economy rather than live with the byproducts of decisions largely for the city & south east

2. austerity is a failed economic policy and we can only grow our way out of debt. Growth requires investment. Investment requires us to run a deficit for long enough to make that investment.

3. our GDP per person is no better or worse than the UK if you exclude oil - oil will become expensive again and will be a major asset. The oil & gas industry said yesterday there are 26Bn barrels left and 43Bn extracted from known sites. The oil industry is on the verge of a £40Bn decommissioning boom as old wells run to the end of their life.

4. relocating the 10% (crude approx) of jobs from London to run our own economy will provide a major boost to our economy. The loss of those jobs is one of Londons major reasons for screaming about how poor we are

5. Its all p!sh - just ignore them.

the BBC is not running uninteresting OBR forecasts about oil (which they have got wrong 100% of the time) immediately after stories about FFA by accident......

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BBC does a decent job of summarising here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-scotland-32154462

In short ..... we would have our part of the current UK deficit (our share of about £70bn), but on top of that - the fact that we get higher public spending along with a combination of collapse of oil price and a English economy growing faster than Scotland's - this all adds up to a much higher deficit for Scotland under FFA.

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BBC does a decent job of summarising here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-scotland-32154462

In short ..... we would have our part of the current UK deficit (our share of about £70bn), but on top of that - the fact that we get higher public spending along with a combination of collapse of oil price and a English economy growing faster than Scotland's - this all adds up to a much higher deficit for Scotland under FFA.

Fair enough, that answers my second question above, which on reflection was a bit thick!

It's still based on the assumption that spending priorities would remain the same in Scotland as in rUK as well as, presumably, still including our share of things like HS2.

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Pretty much. And when you consider the numbers involved, the relatively small savings you could make and the detail you'd have to go into to convince someone the Unionists are at-it, it's easy to see how this becomes a Better-Together-esque exercise in making things sound pretty depressing and difficult. FFA also suffers from fact we cant even point to Trident and defence spending as means of saving a big chunk as that will remain reserved (and why independence will probably look slightly more attractive once FFA is given a good soak.

As I said earlier though, if the SNP stay well away from FFA, support for DevoMax will remain high - eating into support for independence. It's clear that middle ground is far more difficult (and expensive) than many people probably assumed, so if nothing else, forcing people out of that comfort zone is probably a good thing. The challenge is making sure they come down in support of independence rather than opting for Devo-Something-Else.

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John Jappy worked in the Uk treasury

http://fullfiscalautonomy.blogspot.co.uk/

On 7 September 2014 Gordon Brown, with the explicit and full authority of David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband, promised the Scottish electorate, if we voted ‘No’ to Independence in the Referendum of 18 September, that all the main UK parties - Tory, Labour and Lib-Dem - were united in promising “Home Rule” for Scotland “as close to a federal state as you can be.” That is why the SNP are campaigning in this 2015 General Election for Full Fiscal Autonomy (FFA), that is to say Holyrood being given the power to keep, and spend as we wish, all taxes raised in Scotland.
But now we are seeing the same desperate scare stories that we saw in the later stages of the Independence Referendum campaign to prevent us achieving this. Why should this be so? The Unionists know that achieving FFA at Holyrood will result in huge benefits for Scotland - leading to an unstoppable surge for full Independence.
Before each Westminster Election, the Party in opposition always says the same thing, namely "once we get our hands on the books we will be able to tell you what we will do". This of course to a large extent is true and we can only consider pre-election promises of major changes in policy as "speculative". Politicians are not accountants and can often ignore sound advice given to them by Civil Servants, and at the highest level can often panic when things don’t work out as expected. One incident comes to mind which shows how easily this can happen.
Whilst a Civil Servant and working on taxation figures for the National Budget, I received a phone call from a very anxious Chancellor of the Exchequer, who enquired why the Tax Revenues collected to date were only 50% of the expected figure of 60%. It gave me much pleasure to tell him that due to a Scottish bank holiday the figure of revenues from the Scottish Whisky Industry had failed to arrive in time to be included in the current total. The next week the figure shot up to 72%.
Whilst times have greatly changed and payments from most large companies go directly to London, (which will cause some disentangling problems when we get Full Fiscal Autonomy) but the bottom line is always the same: Only be getting full control of both tax raising and spending powers will Scotland thrive. The unionist media are scared stiff of this happening and, as they do know the position of Scotland's hidden wealth, we will see an even wider fear campaign leading up to the 7th May.
Some facts that emerged prior to the Referendum are worth recalling.
Firstly. Scottish taxpayers have for the last 33 years paid more tax per head of population than their counterparts south of the Border.
Secondly. The "Financial Times", a newspaper which values its international reputation for honesty and integrity above any political expediency, published in detail on 2 February 2014 how much better off Scotland would be from Day 1 of gaining Independence (my article was printed in the Scots Independent of February 2014 and can also be viewed on my blog at http://scotlandowntwofeet.blogspot.co.uk).
Most senior Westminster politicians that I encountered during my career had scant knowledge of how the financial system works. One of the best current examples is Danny Alexander, whom in a letter I sent to all Highland local newspapers he was described by me as "a mere puppet, reading from a script given to him, whilst his Tory masters pulled the strings" (only the Danny loving "Inverness Courier" failed to publish).
Now we are back to pre-referendum scare mongering in a last ditch effort by the pals Labour and the Tories to prevent the SNP from sweeping the boards on May 7th and lead the way to fiscal autonomy with our powerful presence in Westminster.
Let us take one example of their false manipulations. The fall in oil prices has been seized upon with glee to claim that this would bankrupt an Independent Scotland. Nothing could be further from the truth. From the start of the "Oil Boom", some £250 billion of Scottish Tax Revenues have gone directly to the London Exchequer and added directly to the Consolidated Fund which contains taxes from all other sources.

Scotland, with a mere twelfth of the UK population, has therefore received through the Barnett Formula only a minor share of this. If it had either Full Fiscal Autonomy or Independence, every penny would have belonged to Scotland, making it a very rich country. Even in the future, were there to be a 50 per cent drop in oil revenues, it would still be a big bonus for Scotland.

This is just one example of why the Unionists will not give Scotland full fiscal control.
Where are you hiding Gordon Brown?
Edited by Ally Bongo
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Apart from him just making an article on the back of Unionist statistics

Id take more notice if it was from Stiglitz or other economists

Very few on here took notice when Stiglitz called the SNP corporation tax plans as "Nothing but a gift to corporate, further increasing inequality in society". Some of the comments made at the time were rather quite hurtful!

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Very few on here took notice when Stiglitz called the SNP corporation tax plans as "Nothing but a gift to corporate, further increasing inequality in society". Some of the comments made at the time were rather quite hurtful!

dog-bone.jpg

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I think much is underestimated by particularly the professional middle classes in Scotland about what FFA would mean in practice... right now all the thousands of jobs to support tax collection, civil service, infra-structure, government departments etc are in London. They would be in Scotland. It would have a massive positive impact on our economy not only because of the transfer of jobs themselves but the people who cut their hair, sell them lattes etc....

there are many lies at the heart of this discussion...

We all agree we can't go on increasing our debt, it must be reduced. However we have a debt whether we make our own decisions or not - deal with it. We dont get 'let off' our share of the debt as part of the UK and it doesn't magically get any bigger or smaller if you let Scotland manage its economy.

There is no significantly greater or smaller black hole regardless of who makes decisions.

There are however reasons why we must make these decisions in Scotland

1. we will make better decisions for our own economy rather than live with the byproducts of decisions largely for the city & south east

2. austerity is a failed economic policy and we can only grow our way out of debt. Growth requires investment. Investment requires us to run a deficit for long enough to make that investment.

3. our GDP per person is no better or worse than the UK if you exclude oil - oil will become expensive again and will be a major asset. The oil & gas industry said yesterday there are 26Bn barrels left and 43Bn extracted from known sites. The oil industry is on the verge of a £40Bn decommissioning boom as old wells run to the end of their life.

4. relocating the 10% (crude approx) of jobs from London to run our own economy will provide a major boost to our economy. The loss of those jobs is one of Londons major reasons for screaming about how poor we are

5. Its all p!sh - just ignore them.

the BBC is not running uninteresting OBR forecasts about oil (which they have got wrong 100% of the time) immediately after stories about FFA by accident......

Two very good posts, Uproar.

I work for the civil service and one of my pre-referendum 'sales pitches' to sceptical or undecided colleagues was the potential of more interesting and more varied jobs that would come in an independent Scotland. Some bought it, others didn't. Many of those who didn't are the ones who complain that their job is shite. People are strange.

We all know that the oil will run out eventually. What people need to ask themselves is which government is more likely to make that eventuality a top priority. Let's face it, Westminster's track record in dealing with declining or ailing industries isn't great.

BBC does a decent job of summarising here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-scotland-32154462

In short ..... we would have our part of the current UK deficit (our share of about £70bn), but on top of that - the fact that we get higher public spending along with a combination of collapse of oil price and a English economy growing faster than Scotland's - this all adds up to a much higher deficit for Scotland under FFA.

I can completely understand people's anxiety over FFA but if England's economy is growing faster than Scotland's you have to ask why it is growing faster, what it will take to bring it up to speed, and who might be best placed to bring it up to speed.

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