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Jock News; tracking the road to independence
Topic Started: May 9 2008, 08:28 AM (14,179 Views)
RevStu	May 9 2008, 08:28 AM Post #1
Laird/Beast Of Glencairn Posts: 18,580 Group: Admin Member #1 Joined: May 6, 2003 Football bias: Aberdeen, Scotland, Man Utd The best videogame ever is: Super Mario Galaxy A good name for a band would be: Most Things Are Awesome If You Think About It	I'm putting this thread (which I'll shortly pin) here largely for my own benefit, to keep some pertinent facts to hand for the ongoing debate over the next couple of years. However, since my English pals are now facing the very real prospect of having a Tory government for the rest of their lives (only ONE Labour Prime Minister in the last 100 years would have had a majority in Westminster if Scotland was independent), you might also be passingly interested. (And it'll keep it from cluttering up the ordinary "news" thread.) Today, I've uncovered a report from the not-notoriously-socialist-or-separatist Adam Smith Institute on Scotland's economic prospects as a separate nation, a subject which attracts much hot dispute over who subsidises who in the UK. http://www.adamsmith.org/briefings/briefin...es-20071120102/ Quote: If an independent Scotland chose to follow the Republic of Ireland's low-tax route, as SNP leader Alex Salmond has indicated it would, Scotland's growth rate might be expected, over a five-year period, to move closer to Ireland's trend growth rate of 7 percent. Given a further five years of Scottish growth at that trend level, and before diminishing returns set in, Scotland's growth over the ten-year period would put its index 71.5 higher, more than a two-thirds increase in GDP. By contrast, says Stein, the rest of the UK would be expected to have grown rather less, by just over a quarter. The result would be dramatic for Scotland. Measured in household income per head, Scotland, which started Ł1,700 behind the rest of the UK, could be expected to be Ł6,000 ahead of it at the end of that period. We believe that the new research study shows just what can be achieved if countries choose to follow the low tax route to prosperity, a route which took the Republic of Ireland from the poorest country in the EU (per head) to the richest. Scotland, it says, could match that performance. Please note that I don't necessarily believe that "growth" is any kind of route to happiness or a fair and decent society. It's just useful data to help people develop an informed view of the debate.



romanista	May 9 2008, 09:03 AM Post #2
Rick Lindeman Posts: 5,759 Group: Subscribers Member #179 Joined: February 26, 2004 Football bias: AFC Ajax, AS Roma, Wallidan, Fluzaő The best videogame ever is: Sensible World of Soccer A good name for a band would be: Door Edel Spel Tot Overwinning	As one could wonder if the growth of ireland has that much to do with the tax rate of the celtic tiger



RevStu	May 9 2008, 09:10 AM Post #3
Laird/Beast Of Glencairn Posts: 18,580 Group: Admin Member #1 Joined: May 6, 2003 Football bias: Aberdeen, Scotland, Man Utd The best videogame ever is: Super Mario Galaxy A good name for a band would be: Most Things Are Awesome If You Think About It	http://www.scotlandoffice.gov.uk/freedom-o...lease.php?id=36 The infamous McCrone Report, which was classified as "secret" and suppressed by the Labour government in the mid-1970s when SNP support was rising. It was released in 2005 after an SNP request under the Freedom Of Information Act, as 30 years had passed. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4238744.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4303750.stm Quick highlights (and bear in mind all these figures are based on much lower oil prices than we have now): Quote: Oil and Revenue Values "So far all that Ministers have said is that they expect North Sea oil to be yielding 70–100m. tons of oil per annum by 1980 and that on that basis the Government revenue from rent and royalties from the whole of the Continental Shelf …may be of the order of Ł100m per annum at that time." - Page 5 "The SNP have countered these figures by claiming that North Sea oil should by 1980 be yielding a Government revenue of approximately Ł800m." By 1980, 80m tons of oil was indeed being extracted from the North Sea, but they were worth some Ł3,800m – some 38 times the Minister’s estimates. "All that is wrong now with the SNP estimate is that it is far too low." - Page 5 Scottish Prosperity with Oil and independence "The net balance of payments gain might be expected to lie very approximately in the range of Ł2,000m to Ł3,500m a year, depending on prices and the share of the Government ‘take’." - Page 6 "What is quite clear is that the balance of payments gain from North Sea oil would easily swamp the existing deficit whatever its size and transform Scotland into a country with a substantial and chronic surplus." - Page 6 "The country would tend to be in chronic surplus to a quite embarrassing degree and its currency would become the hardest in Europe, with the exception perhaps of the Norwegian kroner." - Page 8 "An independent Scotland could now expect to have massive surpluses both on its budget and on its balance of payments and with the proper husbanding of resources this situation could last for a very long time into the future." - Page 16 "Thus, for the first time since the Act of Union was passed, it can now be credibly argued that Scotland’s economic advantage lies in its repeal." - Page 16 "Britain is now counting so heavily on North Sea oil to redress its balance of payments that it is easy to imagine England in dire straits without it… it is now likely that transfer of North Sea oil to Scottish ownership would occasion much bitterness in England if not an attempt to forcibly prevent it." - Page 17 "We English, who are a marvellous people, are really very generous to Scotland." - Margaret Thatcher in The Times, 12 February 1990. "The oil price is likely to stay at about $10 to $12 a barrel at least in the foreseeable future. Therefore, we are worlds removed from the oil prices and production levels of the mid-1980s." - Donald Dewar (the first First Minister of the Scottish Parliament) to the Scottish Grand Committee, 1 February 1999 "We promised Iraq democratic government. We will deliver it. We promised them the chance to use their oil wealth to build prosperity for all their citizens, not a corrupt elite. We will do so." - Tony Blair speaking to US Congress, 18 July 2003.



Targaff	May 9 2008, 09:28 AM Post #4
Posts: 1,159 Group: Subscribers Member #496 Joined: March 21, 2005 Football bias: ACF Fiorentina/Seattle Sounders	RevStu May 9 2008, 09:10 AM "We English, who are a marvellous people, are really very generous to Scotland." - Margaret Thatcher in The Times, 12 February 1990. If the intention of the thread is as a repository for pertinent facts why are they being punctuated with a left-right-left of "ironic" quotes? Facts speak for themselves, which is why there's not a great deal to be said to counter the data. I do find one piece of wording in there a bit iffy, though: it strikes me that the revenue to the government (from rent, royalties and whatever else) could well be a wholly different thing to the oil's gross value. If that's the case, then the comparison of the latter against the estimates of the former is a fairly major piece of misdirection. I'd be curious to see how the different parties arrived at those figures, because at a glance the SNP's figure doesn't look like an unreasonable estimate of the revenue due on that amount of oil.



RevStu	May 9 2008, 09:33 AM Post #5
Laird/Beast Of Glencairn Posts: 18,580 Group: Admin Member #1 Joined: May 6, 2003 Football bias: Aberdeen, Scotland, Man Utd The best videogame ever is: Super Mario Galaxy A good name for a band would be: Most Things Are Awesome If You Think About It	McCrone wasn't an incompetent goon - the figures quoted represent "Government revenue" specifically, not total commercial value. However, the price of oil suddenly rocketed in the mid-70s, as can be seen here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...s_1861_2006.jpg ...tripling almost overnight as a result of the OPEC crisis of 1973, which nobody had been expecting at the time they made the original estimates quoted. The prices kept rising, peaking at over 10 times the pre-1973 price by the early 1980s, and stayed high for a decade, before falling somewhat (to prices that were still typically several times those of the pre-1973 figures) through the 1990s, then exploding upwards again after Bush and Blair's Iraq jaunt.



RevStu	May 9 2008, 09:39 AM Post #6
Laird/Beast Of Glencairn Posts: 18,580 Group: Admin Member #1 Joined: May 6, 2003 Football bias: Aberdeen, Scotland, Man Utd The best videogame ever is: Super Mario Galaxy A good name for a band would be: Most Things Are Awesome If You Think About It	Targaff May 9 2008, 10:28 AM If the intention of the thread is as a repository for pertinent facts why are they being punctuated with a left-right-left of "ironic" quotes? I find the habitual and epic-scale lying of Westminster and the Unionist parties with regards to an independent Scotland's economic prospects to be highly pertinent with regard to whether their statements can be trusted and believed over the coming year or two leading up to (it seems) the referendum vote. The idea that Dewar, for example, really believed that the oil price would remain stable at the freakish low point it very briefly hit in the late 90s is absurd - either he was Earth's biggest idiot, or was lying to try to forestall a surge in SNP support following the creation of the Scottish Parliament.



aldo_14	May 9 2008, 09:58 AM Post #7
Remember remember Posts: 3,189 Group: Members Member #523 Joined: May 4, 2005	RevStu May 9 2008, 09:39 AM Targaff May 9 2008, 10:28 AM If the intention of the thread is as a repository for pertinent facts why are they being punctuated with a left-right-left of "ironic" quotes? I find the habitual and epic-scale lying of Westminster and the Unionist parties with regards to an independent Scotland's economic prospects to be highly pertinent with regard to whether their statements can be trusted and believed over the coming year or two leading up to (it seems) the referendum vote. The idea that Dewar, for example, really believed that the oil price would remain stable at the freakish low point it briefly hit in the late 90s is absurd - either he was Earth's biggest idiot, or was lying to try to forestall a boost in SNP support following the creation of the Scottish Parliament. As an aside, the oil price (crude, per barrel in US$ - so it's skewed by the weak $ perhaps) since 1947 / 1869; 1999 appears to be the lowest price and, whilst you could (tenuously) argue that the earlier periods in the 1st graph indicate oil could hold at a lower (compared to now) price, it seems bizarre to assume that OPEC wouldn't want to raise prices (as they did) and that cheap oil wouldn't equal more consumption and inflation.



RevStu	May 9 2008, 09:59 AM Post #8
Laird/Beast Of Glencairn Posts: 18,580 Group: Admin Member #1 Joined: May 6, 2003 Football bias: Aberdeen, Scotland, Man Utd The best videogame ever is: Super Mario Galaxy A good name for a band would be: Most Things Are Awesome If You Think About It	Opinion poll data: March 2008 poll on the simple yes/no referendum question currently being proposed by both main Holyrood parties (as opposed to a multi-choice referendum also including "increased powers within devolution"): http://www.tns-global.com/corporate/Rooms/...A7970AE7B%5D%5D 41% for independence, 40% against (December 2007 poll on same question: 40% for independence, 44% against) (August 2007 poll on same question: 35% for independence, 50% against) Swing in seven months: 16% to independence. You can see why Wendy Alexander doesn't want to wait any longer.



Targaff	May 9 2008, 02:40 PM Post #9
Posts: 1,159 Group: Subscribers Member #496 Joined: March 21, 2005 Football bias: ACF Fiorentina/Seattle Sounders	RevStu May 9 2008, 09:33 AM However, the price of oil suddenly rocketed in the mid-70s [...] tripling almost overnight as a result of the OPEC crisis of 1973, which nobody had been expecting at the time they made the original estimates quoted. I wasn't suggesting that McCrone was incompetent, more that he knew how to play the numbers game. While the Government's estimates were clearly wildly inaccurate, for example (which I'm not disputing), it's then a facile argument to make that quoting figures that resulted from a crisis nobody could have predicted in a manner designed to make those estimates look that much worse is something of a, let's say, statistical exercise. Good for the goose and all that. As for the quotes, it's not so much that they're irrelevant as that I don't really see that they bring anything more to the table "Parliament lies to further own ends" isn't really something specific to this issue and it's somewhat self-evident from the rest of the text. Not going to belabour the point if that's what you want to do, it just strikes me as a bit odd.



Anonymous X	May 9 2008, 03:26 PM Post #10
Posts: 1,268 Group: Subscribers Member #41 Joined: May 8, 2003	Stu, going back to the ASI report you quoted: "If an independent Scotland chose to follow the Republic of Ireland's low-tax route", etc. That would mean a significantly reduced welfare state compared to the UK as is now. As in really cut-to-the-bone. No proper public health system, as one example. I'd personally prefer an independent Scotland that was pro-welfare state with its oil money, ala Norway, etc. Things on current course, an independent Scotland will lose all the humane social advantages that Scotland currently has over England.



RevStu	May 9 2008, 03:57 PM Post #11
Laird/Beast Of Glencairn Posts: 18,580 Group: Admin Member #1 Joined: May 6, 2003 Football bias: Aberdeen, Scotland, Man Utd The best videogame ever is: Super Mario Galaxy A good name for a band would be: Most Things Are Awesome If You Think About It	Like I said, I'm no fan of the Adam Smith Institute and its fundamentally Thatcherite ideology, just providing the information as a reference. But I think slashing welfare would be political suicide in Scotland, and Alex Salmond is a very clever man (and an economist by profession) - I'm sure he could come up with a sensible balance, helped by the fact that we have a multi-billion-pound resource that Ireland lacks.



caleyjag	May 9 2008, 07:52 PM Post #12
Posts: 584 Group: Subscribers Member #525 Joined: May 10, 2005	I'd love to see an independent Scotland, though I feel we will have to get our finger out if we are to make it an attractive place for foreign businesses to invest. Too many workshy jakey neds walking the streets at the moment, although I'm not convinced it's more than the UK average.



Dave de Vil	May 9 2008, 08:45 PM Post #13
Crafty Bunny Posts: 1,610 Group: Members Member #410 Joined: November 3, 2004 Football bias: Sheffield United The best videogame ever is: Cannon Fodder, 1 not 2	How do things stand regarding Europe? Remember that the UK is one of only two (with Germany) net contributors to the EU. Presumably if independent Scotland was economically succesful it'd continue to give more than it takes; BUT an England/UK rump without the Scots may well head towards withdrawal leaving the likes of Bulgaria and Spain to suck on the Caledonian's well-oiled tits. Two can play at this game.



Steve S	May 9 2008, 08:48 PM Post #14
Posts: 126 Group: Kings Of Excellence Member #1,076 Joined: October 21, 2006 Football bias: Falkirk & Sotland The best videogame ever is: Laser Squad A good name for a band would be: Prince Rupert's Cider Apples	Dave de Vil May 9 2008, 08:45 PM How do things stand regarding Europe? Remember that the UK is one of only two (with Germany) net contributors to the EU. Presumably if independent Scotland was economically succesful it'd continue to give more than it takes; BUT an England/UK rump without the Scots may well head towards withdrawal leaving the likes of Bulgaria and Spain to suck on the Caledonian's well-oiled tits. Two can play at this game. Did you have a point? We've subsidised England for years. Should they withdraw we'd simply be subsidising someone else; I fail to see the drama.



Dudley	May 9 2008, 09:56 PM Post #15
In the angry dome. Posts: 6,376 Group: Members Member #706 Joined: November 20, 2005	Steve S May 9 2008, 08:48 PM We've subsidised England for years. I'd be incredibly interested to see figures supporting this, even the most optimistic I've seen have it as a wash between oil revenue and Scotland's massive extra public spending per head.



RevStu	May 9 2008, 09:59 PM Post #16
Laird/Beast Of Glencairn Posts: 18,580 Group: Admin Member #1 Joined: May 6, 2003 Football bias: Aberdeen, Scotland, Man Utd The best videogame ever is: Super Mario Galaxy A good name for a band would be: Most Things Are Awesome If You Think About It	It's not "massive extra". It's not even as much as London. And it's bigger than most parts of England because the country is so much more widely spread out.



CdrJameson	May 9 2008, 10:02 PM Post #17
Andy Krouwel Posts: 3,678 Group: Subscribers Member #74 Joined: January 8, 2004 The best videogame ever is: UFO: Enemy Unknown	RevStu May 9 2008, 08:28 AM Quote: If an independent Scotland chose to follow the Republic of Ireland's low-tax route...Scotland's growth rate might be expected, over a five-year period, to move closer to Ireland's trend growth rate of 7 percent ... We believe that the new research study shows just what can be achieved if countries choose to follow the low tax route to prosperity. I don't think that's really got anything to do with Scotland per se, it's just the Adam Smith Institute plugging low taxes. They're just saying country X will do better than country Y if it has lower taxes. The Scotland reference just gives it topicality.



Steve S	May 9 2008, 10:21 PM Post #18
Posts: 126 Group: Kings Of Excellence Member #1,076 Joined: October 21, 2006 Football bias: Falkirk & Sotland The best videogame ever is: Laser Squad A good name for a band would be: Prince Rupert's Cider Apples	Dudley May 9 2008, 09:56 PM Steve S May 9 2008, 08:48 PM We've subsidised England for years. I'd be incredibly interested to see figures supporting this, even the most optimistic I've seen have it as a wash between oil revenue and Scotland's massive extra public spending per head. The Gavin McCrone report of 1974 is the document you're looking for.



Dudley	May 9 2008, 10:49 PM Post #19
In the angry dome. Posts: 6,376 Group: Members Member #706 Joined: November 20, 2005	You're going to need something just a tad more recent than that. You said "We've", not "In the past We".



RevStu	May 9 2008, 11:08 PM Post #20
Laird/Beast Of Glencairn Posts: 18,580 Group: Admin Member #1 Joined: May 6, 2003 Football bias: Aberdeen, Scotland, Man Utd The best videogame ever is: Super Mario Galaxy A good name for a band would be: Most Things Are Awesome If You Think About It	It's a good point, what with the price of oil having plunged so much in recent years.



Steve S	May 9 2008, 11:15 PM Post #21
Posts: 126 Group: Kings Of Excellence Member #1,076 Joined: October 21, 2006 Football bias: Falkirk & Sotland The best videogame ever is: Laser Squad A good name for a band would be: Prince Rupert's Cider Apples	Dudley May 9 2008, 10:49 PM You're going to need something just a tad more recent than that. You said "We've", not "In the past We". Blimey Dudley, it isn't like you to argue over pedantic minutiae.....oh, wait. How about the Oxford Economics report of late 2007?



RevStu	May 10 2008, 07:07 AM Post #22
Laird/Beast Of Glencairn Posts: 18,580 Group: Admin Member #1 Joined: May 6, 2003 Football bias: Aberdeen, Scotland, Man Utd The best videogame ever is: Super Mario Galaxy A good name for a band would be: Most Things Are Awesome If You Think About It	Handy explanation in The Times, if anyone's been finding the events of the past week hard to follow: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/poli...icle3904917.ece



Dudley	May 10 2008, 08:32 AM Post #23
In the angry dome. Posts: 6,376 Group: Members Member #706 Joined: November 20, 2005	Steve S May 9 2008, 11:15 PM Dudley May 9 2008, 10:49 PM You're going to need something just a tad more recent than that. You said "We've", not "In the past We". Blimey Dudley, it isn't like you to argue over pedantic minutiae.....oh, wait. How about the Oxford Economics report of late 2007? Pedantic miniature? You made a massive, controversial statement and then backed it up with a 34 year old report, which you didn't even post.



RevStu	May 10 2008, 08:34 AM Post #24
Laird/Beast Of Glencairn Posts: 18,580 Group: Admin Member #1 Joined: May 6, 2003 Football bias: Aberdeen, Scotland, Man Utd The best videogame ever is: Super Mario Galaxy A good name for a band would be: Most Things Are Awesome If You Think About It	Dudley May 10 2008, 09:32 AM Pedantic miniature? You made a massive, controversial statement and then backed it up with a 34 year old report, which you didn't even post. Sigh. Try reading the quotes in the third post, under "Scottish Prosperity with Oil and independence", particularly the last two.



Dudley	May 10 2008, 08:42 AM Post #25
In the angry dome. Posts: 6,376 Group: Members Member #706 Joined: November 20, 2005	EDIT : Wait no, I might need that later, wouldn't want to see it get "lost".



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