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| Try not to look too posh. They don't like us Tories up here in the badlands |
I'm always suspicious of taxation figures that relate to families, on the basis that families don't, as a rule, have tax accounts. Individuals do. Families pay taxes per member, according to their income and spending patterns (and in the case of some, doubtless the soon to be jobless Mr Alexander knows them better than i do, according to their ability to pay expensive accountants to dodge their tax for them).
Given Westminster's and Whitehall's joint inability to get anything to do with money right, except perhaps for their own expenses (and the word "right" may be considered to be used loosely here), I'm also dubious about the sum, no matter to whatever unit it pertains.
I mean only a few weeks ago members of Mr Hague-Alexander's coalition of Britnats was telling us that the EU wouldn't want us and that it would take years for them to allow us to join, if at all, given that Spain and Gibraltar and Russia would all vote against us. (We weren't supposed to give any thought to the fact that Russia and Gibraltar don't have any vote.)
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| Danny Proud of our Foodbanks Alexander in Scotland |
Everyone knew that that the likelihood of this was around 0%, given that the EU is an expansionist organisation that wants, in principle, every European country to join it from Iceland to the Ukraine. It was hardly likely to reject a modern, rich, democratic state, which complied with all the necessary conditions of membership, and whose citizens already held European passports and driving licences, and where thousands of EU citizens work and study.
And no one ever managed to explain to me why, if they wouldn't let us join, they were at the same time, going to force us to join the Euro.
I can only suspect that it was a case of UKOK having absolutely no respect for their audience and inventing any scare story they thought might discourage change (and their seats in the House of Lords), regardless of whether or not it contradicted any other scare story.
The answer, of course, to the question of whether or not Scotland would be accepted into the EU is one to which the UK government (and only the UK government) could supply the definitive answer right now, if it wanted to. It has only to ask Brussels. They would be obliged to respond.
There must, one suspects, be some reason the UK government is unwilling to do that. The cost of a stamp hasn't risen THAT much!
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| No particular reason for put her up here, except it's a while since 'we in Scotland' have had a patronising look from her. |
Anyway, they seem to have given up on that scare story for now, along with the 'forced Euro' tale, and have replaced it with this family tax figure. Perhaps that's because the Yes side have claimed that everyone would be £600 better off. Everyone, not every family.
I'm sure that the future ex MP for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey knows that most of us run our own finances. It's not like the old days where the man of the household was responsible.
We get individual salaries, we pay our taxes individually, and although our weekly shop may, in some cases, be a family affair, many of our purchases, and therefore our VAT and duty, are individual.
So, what I don't want to know, Dan the Toryman, is what is it going to cost some arbitrary family of indeterminate size, wealth and spending pattern. I might be more interested in what it would cost me, but then again with UKOK's record for telling the truth, I'm not altogether sure I'd believe you.
But while we're on it, would that £750 per family be balanced out by the billion or so pounds that the Uk government stole from the Scottish farming payment from the EU.
tris
ReplyDeletehttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/10575292/Coming-oil-glut-may-push-global-economy-into-deflation.html
One piece of the jigsaw puzzle is missing to complete the deflation landscape across the West: a slide in oil prices. This is becoming more likely each month.
Turmoil across the Middle East and parts of Africa has choked supply over the past two years, keeping Brent crude near $110 a barrel despite a broader commodity slump. Cotton and corn prices have halved, as has the UBS index of industrial metals. Such anomalies rarely last.
"We estimate that crude oil is now the mostly richly priced commodity in the world," says Deutsche Bank in a fresh report.
What will the snp do now????
Probably point out that oil is the icing on the cake. That even without oil, we are a resource rich country, with a thriving food and drinks, agriculture, fishing and tourist industy, and unlike the rest of the UK a fair bit of small manugacturing.
DeleteAlso unlike the rest of the Uk we are popular abroad. The Chinese government, probably the most important in the world, didn't chose to allow a damning editorial in its state controlled newspaper when our first minister was in town.
Of course, the Middle East is pretty unstable. War in Syria ; potential problems in iran; breakdown of society in Libya...
But oil can go down a good way in price before anyone would be worried Niko.
You should remember too that the SNP are not the only party for independence. All the Left Wing parties are for it... Greens, Scottish Socialists and LFI.
It really is only right wing parties that want to retain the imperial power.
tris
Deletethe problem with your attempt at an answer for the snp
whom would completely ignore you.Is the problem with.
redistribution which most left wing agree with and the snp
is against and claim (ridiculously ) you can have a fair
social security system and very low taxes.
Which does not add up only in the nats addled minds
and is a fact the snp in effort to gain votes from the right
wing voters in Scotland (of whom there many) obfuscate.
To have a decent level of social security some will have
to forgo the higher standard of living they unfairly gained
a truth i am happy with but most snp representatives
are terrified off admitting let alone implementing.
to be honest your constant portrayal of the snp as some
kind of left wing builders of fairer and more equal Scotland,
is both laughable and has no basis in fact or reality.
In an snp Scotland the poor will still be poor the rich will still live comfortably in their castles alongside the leadership of the snp.
Niko: Would you say Scottish Labour's policies are to the left or the right of the SNP's policies?
DeleteYou should remember that I'm not a member of the SNP. I just think that they stand the best chance of making the country fairer and getting it freed from an outdated and unequal union which stands for everything I detest: class, imperialism, war making, elitism, and conservatism.
You have to accept that Labour have had the chance to do something about these things but have usually failed. In the 40s and 60s they made progress, but the London establishment (including the King) was always against them. (As Tony Benn said, the Civil Service always made things difficult for Labour.)
In the 90s and 00s Labour simply became the Tories and introduced policies which made life for the people they originally were supposed to help, even more horrible than they had become over 18 years of Conservative rule.
Unfair, unjust in every way.
But I accept that your idea of fair and mine are not the same (at least in many cases).
My natural support is probably somewhere between the Scottish Socialists and what used to be the Liberal Party before they became Tories. I like what Allan Grogan is saying, but all these people are completely powerless.
The only party actually helping people with the Tory excesses (because they are the only party that can) is the SNP, and to that extent I support them fully. And don't say that Lamont's Labour is supporting them, because it's not. They may bleat in parliament about how the Scottish government should make £50 million available to subsidise the Bedroom Tax, but they know that would be illegal. They know that if they did that then London could reasonably take back responsibility and leave the people with nothing. They say they want a no evictions law passed in parliament, but in practical terms, a Labour Council evicted a person in Anas Sarwar's constituency while he was off on a lecture tour of Pakistan, and an SNP councillor had to get her reinstated into her house. So, it's all talk.
I don't, though, support everything they stand for and I'm on record here criticising them.
If I support something they have done, Niko, it's not because they have done it, it's because I support the action.
And I'm on record here for supporting things that Labour has done and even once, I think, the Tories.
ReplyDeleteDeutsche Bank said Saudi Arabia may have to slash its output by a quarter to 7.5m b/d this year to stop the bottom falling out of the marke
The Saudis no longer have such money to spare. They are propping up an elephantine welfare nexus to keep a lid on explosive tensions in the Eastern Province, home to Saudi oil and its aggrieved Shia minority. A cut of this size would push the budget into deep deficit
Umm so Oil cant pay for everything then so does
that mean the snp may have to ask some to pay
a little more..
I refer you to my previous answer. But if Saudi is running out of money, I'd be very worried if I were England. One of the few industries they have is weapons manufacture.
DeleteIt is the reason that Cameron spends so much time in the Middle East pedaling killing materials to the rich oil nations mainly so they can use them on their own people.
If Saudi and the other countries have to scale back, then there's going to be yet another hole in Osborne's budget, so IDS will have to kill off even more sick or old people.
Any reduction is Saudi's output will put the price back up.
But the government never meant for oil to pay for everything, as I said. The oil was the icing on the cake.
Unfortunately the Brits stole it during the good times to make workers redundant, close pits, shipyards, mills , factories and foundries and to make war and kill Muslims, so we missed out on the Norwegian style of life, we could have had.
We can still get some of it back (and of course there will always be wars in the Middle East. You don't seriously think it's going to change while Palestinians are being treated the way they are?
Afghanistan will erupt again when the Americans pull out. Already the Taliban are showing what they can do.
That will spread. It gives me no pleasure to say that, but i see things getting worse. Egypt (how embarrassing for Mr Cameron) is teetering on the brink again. I don;t really expect the oil prices to fall too far.
In boom times (and Mr Osborne tells us that that's what we have) oil prices always go up.
Incidentally, if oil has fallen that far, then there is precious little evidence of it at the pumps.
The Daily (drivel) Record today praised the UK governments 100 page whitepaper, as impressive, comprehensive, and a devastating blow to the SNP. The Daily (drivel) Record added, the UK Governments whitepaper is deeply informative. Pass the sick bucket before I throw up.
ReplyDeleteTalk about groveling wee shites, when the SG whitepaper was released all we got from the Daily (drivel) Record was it was a hefty tome, full of confusing data. This is the kind of anti-independence MSM that we need to suffer, along with being called a cybernat or a cabernat, Scotlands MSM sold out for their 30 pieces of silver, a long time ago.
The English one must be written in three letter words so the journos on the Record could understand it.
DeleteWell I look forward to seeing a copy of the English white paper.
You have to remember that Scotland's msm is The Courier and the Press and Journal, deeply Conservative newspapers.
The rest of the papers that come out here are English newspapers. Even the Record is the Mirror printed in Scotland.
Tris, I'd suspect maliciousness before stupidity on the part of DR journos.
DeleteLOL Craig...I was trying to be even handed!!!
Deleteanon
ReplyDeletebetter day tomorrow. though ....eh
Yes Niko. They are getting better every day.
DeleteOh for an MSM that can question these pure assertions on air what a disgrace for a democracy.
ReplyDeleteArrogance is all Britain has left.
LOL LOL LOL
DeleteI don't know who she is, but she's clearly pretty thick, and he's clearly pretty smart!
How low can they go.
ReplyDeleteProbably even lower than that.
DeleteThey are pretty desperate.
tris
Deletehttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/19/scotland-snp-police-state-justice-secretary
Welcome to Scotland, the SNP's police state
Last week, we discovered what the second part of the SNP's hitherto covert criminalise the punters strategy looked like. Between April and December last year, the police conducted almost 520,000 stop-and-search procedures on members of the Scottish public, almost 2,000 a day and twice as many as are carried out by London's Metropolitan police.
In the meantime, let's put all talk about membership of the EU aside. For, at this rate, if Scotland does gain its independence in September we will merely become the newest member of the confederation of independent police states
Not sure why it's illegal to stop and search as he implies. Labour wanted more of it so they could imprison anyone who had a knife. As most people carrying knives don’t actually have them on display, I imagine that Iain Gray was advocating the stopping and searching of people.
DeleteThe reason that they put more police on the streets was that there was a problem with crime, which as I recall was rising. The Tories demanded 500 more police in return for support with the budget of a minority government. The SNP believes that having police on the streets is a good idea; so does the bulk of the public. The only people who have a problem with their being a lot of police around are criminals.
Labour criticised the Tories in England for cutting police and criticise the SNP for having more police. Terrible easy to criticise when you’re in opposition everywhere. Not so easy to be consistent.
If we are looking at how inefficient the police have been in Scotland, and god knows, they probably are, we can at least be grateful that the police are not run by the Met, who shoot people at random, knock them to the ground and kill them off, ignore anything nasty that happens to black people and even try to fit up cabinet ministers.
And this is not restricted to London, because the policing is so bad in Birmingham that ethnic minorities are unable to trust the police.
At Hillsborough the police fitted up the football fans in the most repugnant way with the backing of the government and in particular the sainted prime minister. So, I doubt there is much you can say about police in Scotland that would be much worse than that. He only mentions right at the end, when most people will have given up reading, how corrupt the British police are quoting some of the above points.
The single police force was backed by Labour. Ony the Liberals thought it was a bad idea.
How do we keep them busy? Well apparently crime figures are dropping so usefully is probably the answer. Does McKenna have a problem with that?
I didn’t particularly like the football sectarian legislation and I thought it was rushed out, but I accepted that something needed doing about the problem. The violence that attends the arguments between two bunches of would be Christians or football fans (in reality thugs) had to be dealt with. I don’t know how to deal with it. Do you?
Did Labour come up with any ideas?
(Same with drink pricing. Bad legislation in my view, but what else are you going to do?)
I note that there was no link to support the accusation of police being more likely to go after cell phone users than rapists… so I can’t comment. Although in my experience, all my life, police, like most other people, have a tendency, given two possibilities, to take the easier of the two.
By and large Scottish police, when I have had to deal with them, have been reasonable.
He complains about crime figures being inaccurate because they are provided by the police… but then so are UK police figures; the police and the Home Office. Teresa May! I say no more except to mention that this is the department that was discovered to be employing illegal immigrants as cleaners and paying them less than the minimum wage some years ago, so we can guess how accurate they might be.
Freemasons and mafia are part of the crime scene that police from Paris to Nuuk; Las Vegas to Berlin have to deal with. It would be surprising if Scottish police didn’t have to deal with them. I imagine that they probably don’t have much of a problem in Tashkent. Boiling people in oil tends to put them off.
I note you didn't answer my earlier questions about the policies of Labour!
tris
ReplyDeleteAs i am not a member of labour why should i
comment on their policies right or wrong.????
what is your answer on this poll
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/poll/2014/jan/19/are-we-all-capitalists-now-chuka-umunna
Are we all capitalists now?
be interesting to know
Dunno. I'm not a member of the SNP but you ask me to comment on their policies. I wondered if you thought Labour was to the left of the SNP.
DeleteI suppose he’s right.
In a way.
But then we probably mainly all were.
I used to be attracted to communism… Jimmy Reid style.
But I think I realised that most of its tenets seemed to be contrary to human nature.
People by and large want more for themselves and for theirs…equality is all very well for others… just not for me.
The you only have to look at how it all worked out in practice, not just one place, but every place, and ask yourself, would you have liked to live in Todor Zhivkiov’s Bulgaria, or even Tito’s Yugoslavia? Much less Enver Hoxha’s Albania?
Mrs Thatcher made capitalism respectable in the UK. Owning a house took away the power of workers to strike. You could get social security for your rent if you ahd no wage, but no help at all with your mortgage.
A house stopped being a home and became an asset. People ended up in the 2000s making more money out of their houses than they did out of working.
Greed in the Thatcher and Blair years became endemic.
So yep, he’s probably right. We are if we have the chance to be. Just a lot of us never get the chance… like the kids you were talking about in that last post.
This is a good comment... from the article:
DeleteYes, I think he sums up the problem beautifully. Was it Gore Vidal that said the US only had right-wing parties? That the Democrats are right-wing, the Republicans are extreme right, and on those lines we can see the Tea Party as off the map. In the UK, we've got NuLabour right-wing, the LibDems even further right, the Conservatives extreme right and UKIP off the map.
Either NuLabour throws out some of its idiots and rebrands or the Greens are about our only hope, and much as I admire Caroline Lucas I don't think her party is up to running a country just yet .....
The trouble is I'm not sure that Labour can rebrand.
DeleteThere are too many privileged career people in it. And the "capitalist" vote in the most highly populated areas is so big that Labour dare not espouse policies for the poor.
"I bought my house for £5,000. It's now worth a quarter of a million. I worked hard. Why do I want to give my taxes to wastrels... ?" attitude. Too many Daily Mail readers.
Someone pointed out to me that in Scotland the biggest selling newspaper is the Sun (right wing Tory); the Record is next (Labour) and the Mail is third (Nut cases, bigots and haters).
the figures for stop.& search show lower figures for the WHOLE of Scotland than there were in 2012 - 2013 JUST in Strathclyde.
ReplyDeleteso the police stop being under the control of a Labour Police Board, stop & searches go down and Niko castigates the SNP by knee-jerk reaction.
Niko's an idiot. Not sure what Kevin McKenna's excuse is
Niko's an idiot. Not sure what Kevin McKenna's excuse is
DeleteHis cousin?
LOL.
DeleteMaybe the've put the knife carrying plan into operation there...
Kevin McKenna... Doesn't he work for the Daily Mail?
Probably says all you need to know about him.
Kevin McKenna does work for the mail
DeleteHe was a strong, Catholic, NO voter, but Labour pissed him off and he was a soft YES.
Looks like Labour are trying to win him back
The spark for this was a Scotsman article, but the figures show that all of Scotland is using this power less than JUST Strathclyde, so he's gone off on one on a false pretext
Thanks Anon.
DeleteI thought he used to write better stuff than that!
Yes, that's poor journalism, if he's not got his facts before using them in such a harsh and cocksure way!
hmm agree with the nats...........be a hero
ReplyDeletedisagree with the nats..........be an idiot.......but a free one
tris not sure on yer argument communism was rotten
ReplyDeleteso capitalism is ok .
No, that wasnt' what I meant...all I was saying was that I used to be a bit of a communist, but I saw the effect of it and decided it didn't work.
DeleteThat doesn't mean that I think that capitalism works. We are seeing that it doesn't!