Britannist

One option which could be offered the people of Scotland is a referendum on the 'regions' or counties of Scotland having devolution of their own from the Scottish Parliament.

Scotland is geographically nearly as large as England and many people in the Highlands/Islands, Clyde/Glasgow and Grampian 'regions' (as well as other parts of Scotland) might vote for power to be transferred from the Scottish Parliament to their local counties/'regions'/county council authorities.

This is something that supporters of the Scottish Parliament would try to stop - but the fact remains that there are people in places like the Shetland/Orkney islands, Aberdeen, Dumfries, Perth etc. who do not wish to be run from Holyrood.

As many readers know, the UKIP policy is that the existing Scottish members of the House of Commons could sit both in London and in the Edinburgh Parliament - thus cutting out the extra (costly) layer of elected members of the Scottish Parliament.

organist

I mean let's have equity here, it isn't just you have your cake and eat it. In Scotland we're taxed just as heavily, and we're due a share back.If the £431m came out of 'English coffers' will we, in Scotland get back our share of the £800m Millennium Dome, our share of the Channel Tunnel, Limehouse Link, High speed rail upgrade and so on.

You'd better get your house in order, we will de due this back come independence negotiation time. If there is refusal on the side of the rump UK, the Vienna Convention on the Succession of States (1983) will come in very handy.

And we'll also have back our £200bn Scottish oil and gas coffers amassed over the last 30 years to pay for Maggie's dole queue, as well please. It's sad to think that Scotland (indeed the UK) has nothing to show for the major deposits of minerals of the coast for the last 30 years. We could have had world-class infrastructure, or we could have invested it (like the Norwegians) to provide an income stream in the future. Sad that the Labourites of the 70's, and more especially the Tories of the 80's blew it. I suppose we were never going to wean them of the teet of Scottish petroleum revenue, when it provided one of their largest sources of income.

BTW The Scottish Parliament is not up for grabs. Just because the LibLabCon have made a mess of it, doesn't mean every party will.

Soddball

We always hear this refrain. Your council taxes are kept artificially low by central government - funded by those rich southerners you sneer at. Your pay less tax because your average wages are lower (even though your cost of living is lower), house prices are lower (so lower stamp duty, death duty and capital gains tax). Because a higher % of Scots are on this lower wage than in England, you claim more council tax rebates, more jobseekers allowance, and get more subsidised housing on average. Were you aware that SE England has the lowest average disposable income in the UK, despite having the highest wages, whilst Scotland is in the reverse position? Because Scots eat and drink so much *****, your healthcare costs per capita are higher and we fund proportionally more of your healthcare as a result. Because your nation is so unpopulated the costs for maintaining its infrastructure per km are higher, and therefore England pays proportionally more to service Scottish infrastructure.

Scots also have a convenient memory block about the Barnett Formula - and the tiny, tiny fact that were those waters to be jigged up according to existing laws most of the water would be outside Scottish control. Not that you could patrol those waters, because you wouldn't have a navy, since that's British. Or any shipyards to build a navy, since they're British. Or any control over the scrap of water you DID control, since the EU runs that and tells you how to fish and maintain it.

And when the insane SNP did take over they'd ramp taxes up and all the call centre companies would jump ship to India or Ireland, leaving Scotland bereft of its only industry apart from being a theme park for dim American tourists.

Anyway, I would imagine that the majority of the mythical money we 'owe' Scotland has been reclaimed over the last 30 years by Scottish MPs through their expenses. Take a look at the latest set of figures to see what I mean. £130k/yr EACH.

organist

Rich southerners, ha. That will be right, rich only through the bucketloads of government subsidy propelled in their direction - or should I say, "essential national investment" or how about "unidentifiable expenditure" (how convenient). Pigs and trough spring to mind. I mean I wonder how much it costs to run the machinery of government in London and the benefits of that spreading to its hinterland? What about all the jobs that has created (all the high paid jobs - at the expense of the rest of Britain). That breeds more jobs in the public sector, which breeds more in the private sector.

As for taxes - proportionally Scotland contributes more in all forms of road tax, petrol duty - even corporation tax. If you look at GERS Scotland contributes 11% of total UK Corporation tax despite having 8% of the population. Council tax, rates and business rates are not kept down artificially up here - business rates are much higher than they are in England.

As for oil:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_Scotland%27s_oil

Read and weep, especially the bit about United Nations, equidistance and international law putting 98% of NS oil in Scottish waters, and then think about how well England has done, at Scotland's expense. I mean how does Norway manage. Scotland has paid for, and is due, its share of all British military assets on independence and will be able to use them to patrol its oil fields, if it wishes, but I doubt that is necessary (Norway manages).

Surely you mean "per capita" or are you just economically illiterate? Per capita it is higher, but that does not mean in total it costs more. Take for example, the Limehouse Link in London. A half mile stretch of road costing MORE than the entire Scottish roads budget. It has have a very low per capita cost, because of the very high population using it. Take building the Glasgow Southern Orbital motorway - it cost significantly less than the Limehouse Link, and even given the smaller population using it - it has a high per capita "cost". Hardly fair is it? At least you are beginning to appreciate the statistical discrepancy of the Barnett Formula.

The SNP proposal is to cut taxes on business, and due to the fact Scotland has a far better qualified population than south of the border (which isn't hard) it may even benefit from England's future problems. As for industry - Scotland's biggest industry is global financial services and unlike England (where most companies operating there in this regard are foreign owned) our companies RBS, Standard Life (with its 2 million overseas asset holders) and all the rest are Scottish owned and operated. That I think, puts us in a rather good position.

According to this:
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1442
[quote]

London and the SE have higher household disposable income, than Scotland. So your assertion that Scotland is somehow better off in this regard, is *****.

Britannist

It is true that less than half of the population Scotland backed the establishment of a Scottish Parliament in the referendum (if one includes those who voted against and those who did not vote at all). There is also the question about why the million or so Scottish people who live in other parts of the UK (and overseas Scottish voters) were not allowed to vote in the referendum. It is clear that europhile EU puppet Blair didn't want these people to have a say because they are largely Unionist (all the Scots I know who live here in London are Unionist and the majority hate the Labour Party).

Nevertheless, it is surely time for the English to be given equality with the Scots in the UK and be given the option of choosing to have an English Parliament and English Executive.

An English Parliament is not part of the EU plan to break up the UK. The last thing the EU wants is English self-determination exercised through a national English Parliament. The EU wants England broken up into EU regions. The official EU map deliberately makes no mention of England.

The EU knows that a national forum for the English such as a united, single English Parliament (representing the voice of the 50 million English), would become the biggest elected anti-EU legislature in the whole of the EU. Which is why the crooked EU is prepared to use its compliant puppets in the UK such as the europhile Labour and Liberal Dim parties (and pro-EU impostors in the Conservative Party) to try to stop an English Parliament being agreed and opened up.

The case for an English Parliament inside the UK is overwhelming.

England has been without its own Parliament since 1707. Despite what Blair, Falconer, Reid and other discredited politicians in the europhile Blair regime say against an English Parliament being set up - the question is not if one will be established. The question is WHEN.

mkpdavies

Explain to me in clear simple terms, what good having an English parliament, full of the same traitors who took us into the EU and the same peopel who CREATED the constitutional crisis in the UK?

Do you really think they will do anything other than continue the handover?

Why do you think they CREATED this crisis in the first place?

If Britain was a fully sovereign nation and the Scots and Welsh parliaments really had some power AND we didn't have a bunch of traitors in place, then I could accept the argument for fighting for an English parliament. It won't make ANY difference though unless we our already out of the EU and the traitors are gone. Indeed, it will just help them slowly digest the full UK, piece by piece.

Don't fall for them playing us of against each other. They are subersive ********.

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Internationalist

An interesting point here:

And:

Thinking of the difference an English Parliament would make, it is instructive to look at election results in England compared to the UK as a whole.

In 2005, the Labour Party secured a majority of constituencies in England, just as they did in the UK as a whole. The same goes for 2001 and 1997.

Prior to that, the Tories would have won in England in 1992, 1987, 1983 and 1979 - just as they did across the UK.

I think I am right in saying that you would have to go back to 1974 to find an example of the English result being different from the UK result. On that occasion the effect would have been to maintain Ted Heath in power.

Of course, we should not damn the EDP for being Ted Heath's standard bearers, but have they actually got anything of substance beyond their anti-Scottish sniping?

(Oh, ED, don't try that trick of saying an English Parliament would be under proportional respresentation and therefore would deliver a different result. That is an argument about PR, not about the benefits of an English Parliament. If you want to make that argument, I could show you the projected outcomes of Westminster elections under PR. They would suggest that the extreme pro-EU Liberal Democrats would have been likely to hold the balance of power virtually throughout the post-war period - not something to advertise on an anti-EU discussion forum.)

Soddball

This looks like proto-nationalist drivel and I'm sure that if we spent time on it, we could both prove to our satisfaction that public sector 'investment' in the South-East is lower than anywhere else in the country. Unless you wish to try to prove this claim, of course.

I've been looking at this report: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/...21/0020630.pdf

Let me quote you some numbers:

Scotland's population as a % of England's: 8.5%
Scottish Expenditure on services: 10.1%
Total Scottish expenditure on defence: £0
Scottish income tax paid as a % of England: 7.3%
Scottish deficit per annum excluding oil revenues: £11.3Bn
Scottish deficit per annum including oil 2003/4: £7Bn

This quote about Corporation Tax from the government document:

"This tax is exceptionally difficult to estimate for Scotland, due to both conceptual difficulties and a lack of data. Therefore, the estimate of Scottish corporation tax should be treated with extra caution. It is obtained by attributing a share of the UK total to Scotland based on
information from the UK Regional Accounts from ONS.

So your claim about corporation tax is proved to be false, since the figures are unprovable and are simply an estimate based on the UK as a whole.

You'll forgive me for not trusting the independence of a Wikipedia link with direct references back to the SNP website. Wikipedia is only as good as its authors and the bias of these ones reeks like a Glaswegian at lunchtime.

Scotland deserves no British military assets. I believe that the popular term would be 'from my cold dead hands'. And of course Norway manages. It never fights anyone. But it has fisheries protection vessels and coastal patrol boats. Scotland won't have that. Nor will it retain the tens of thousands of jobs on the Forth and the Clyde, and at the other naval bases, when the Fleet moves south after independence. Whole communities will be made unemployed because of the obsession of a handful of men in dresses who've watched Braveheart once too often.

I assumed that with your superior Scottish education that would not need to be spelled out. Apparently I was wrong.

Of course it isn't fair. Scotland gets scads of money to pay for a road that about 6 people use. In terms of the amount of use had from a road versus the cost, the Limehouse Link is way ahead of Scotland. You just proved my point.


Sadly, you're wrong. The SNP's obsession with business regulation and its suckling at the teat of the unions will force companies abroad where they can get cheaper labour. Scotland's industry is call centres, not 'global financial services'. It sounds better to call it 'global financial services' - but it's call centres. Scotland made a living out of outsourcing but call centres are a dying business in the UK and Scotland will be no exception. For the SNP to cling on to that like a dangleberry is asking for trouble.

I'm also trying to work out how you can square claiming Standard Life is 'Scottish owned and operated' with its '2 million overseas asset holders'. Are there 2 million patriotic Scots abroad all owning the assets? Or is this just nationalist BS?

You take the classic bureaucrat approach of assuming that, on this basis, the SE is richer. It's wrong.
Firstly, house prices are so much higher down here. As a result, we pay more council tax - because those houses are in a higher bracket. We also pay more stamp duty to buy and sell - and more capital gains as a result. Everything is more expensive - the attitude is much like yours, that 'they can afford it'. Take a spin on the Odeon website if you doubt me. Glasgow Quay £6.25 for a ticket, RTW £8.00.

So people in the South East are less well off than those in Scotland.

I notice you skipped merrily past the healthcare and social services commentary, and the obscene expenses your Scots MPs generate. Hard to argue with those, I know.

Oliver

Thank you Sodball!!!!!!!!!

mkpdavies

Nice one Sodball. You made me laugh out loud a couple of occasions there.

The SNP exposed as the frauds that they are.

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