HASTE YE BACK, IAIN

Mr Iain Duncan Smith deigned to come all they way from London to explain his new welfare system which will cut billions off the welfare budget, throw hundreds of thousands of people out on to the street and generally make Britain a much better place for...erm..well nobody.

(I say this because I've been to countries where there is inadequate welfare protection, and everyone, even the rich, suffer as they pick their way to the shops, theatres and night clubs, through the poor who have nowhere else but the streets to live.)

Anyway while he was here in Scotland he couldn't help but put his ill-informed two penny worth in to the independence debate.

An independent Scotland won't be able to afford to pay benefits, he informed us. North Sea Oil won't cover the cost, said the failed Tory leader.

In reply the First Minister pointed out that Scotland contributes 9.6% of the UK's taxation in return for 9.3% of the spending, on 8% of the population. That in fact was a surplus of £2.7 billion, or £500 for every man woman and child in Scotland.

I thought that Mr Duncan Smith might like to consider that without the need to pay from nuclear weapons and the "punching above our weight" that David Cameron is so pleased about, in terms of military strength and foreign aid,  we would have considerably less in the way of expenses.

Also welfare is not paid out of North Sea Revenue. Rather it is paid for from general taxation, which would be likely to rise in terms of the fact that much money currently spent in Scotland is taxed as English (because it is spent in organisations with their head office England ...supermarkets, for example. I buy stuff in Morrison's. Morrison's head office is in Bradford, to which comes all the money spent in Morrison's in the UK and from whence Mr Osborne takes his share in corporation tax: English corporation tax!).

These organisations operating in Scotland, would pay tax to Edinburgh, not London.

The First Minister's rebuttal was backed up by the Centre for Public Policy for Regions.

Mind you, as we have already seen the UK itself is unable to afford the welfare budget it currently has, which is why 88% of people who are sick are now going to have to find work, no matter how ill they are; why the Cameron government removed the right to 6 months on 'contribution based' benefits for people out of work, why they are now proposing to freeze benefits for 2 years and increase them thereafter at a lower rate...

And they say WE can't afford welfare... Oh physician heal thyself.

But please feel free to come back to Scotland and make an idiot of yourself by telling porkies again Mr Duncan Smith. You know you are always more than welcome!

*****

Bravo of the week goes to privately-educated Oxford man, Damian Collins, Conservative, Folkestone, who has said that young unemployed people should busk for money if they can't get a job. Does he, I wonder, have any suggestions for those who are tone deaf?

Aren't you glad we will be shot of cretins like this in the near future? 

PS: Yes, he spells his name with an "a". Must be the posh way.