A PENNY FOR SCOTLAND MARK II

At Munguin's Republic, we're very much for increasing public spending to the point where our services operate efficiently and provide safety and security for all Scots.

We are wary of raising taxes to do this, but agree that sometimes it is the only way to provide the wherewithal, especially in a country where the state assets have already been stripped to the bone and sold off cheap. Anybody ever wonder what Harold Macmillan would have thought of the fact that we are now down to selling off the family's clothes, never mind silver?

Anyway, clearly we'd like to see education better resourced, along with more generous funding for healthcare, social care, policing and law and order in general, roads, transport, decent pensions and benefits, getting rid of the need for food banks, etc..

Saving money on unneeded expenditure is clearly a much better way of providing funds for necessities than taking more money from individuals, so before taxes are raised, every possible way of saving money should be explored.

We'd like to see less waste and less money spent on things we really don't need. From big things costing the earth, to little things that add together to make big sums.

'So what would you save money on, Munguin', we hear you ask, and 'isn't that exactly what Westminster is doing?'  Well, in a way, but Westminster has got it all wrong. It's trying to save money by destroying the very public services that we would raise money for. We would do it differently! Trident might be a good starting place. What on earth is it for? What would happen to us if we didn't have it? 

We reckon it is there to make Britain look like it is still an important world power which we really don't think it is. It's there to guarantee Britain's place as a permanent member of the UN Security Council (itself an outdated body representing the world as it was in 1945, not as it is 71 years later.) It has no place there. Britain can't afford it. it has £1.6 trillion of debt.

Along with that there is a vast amount of money that could be saved in the MoD in general. Planes without ships; ships without planes; 260 captains for 19 ships;  more admirals than ships; equipment that is useless before it's done a day's work; light bulbs in the MoD at £22 a shout, more admin staff than soldiers.... and on and on.

But there is so much else that is wasteful. £7 billion and rising to do up Westminster has got to be near the top of the list, and don't get us started on one über-rich family living in 6 palaces in the London region and one in Edinburgh. 

That's only a couple of departments, and there are many more.

But if taxes must rise, then they must. The trouble is that to make tax rises fair a government have have control of a wide range of them. It's not much of an asset to simply be able to vary income tax, without balancing that with other large yield taxes like duty or VAT. That is the Scottish government's problem, and always has been.

That said, in the early days of Scottish devolution, the SNP proposed "a penny for Scotland". It went down like the Titanic, with Labour being its chief critic. Strange then that they appear to have had the same idea, using powers which the Scottish government does not yet have... and indeed may never have. 

Many questions remain to be answered about Labour's "Penny for Scotland", not least how they would make a rebate to people earning under £20,000, when they have no powers to do so, either under tax or social security powers (yet to be granted to them) and whether their proposal of a £100 rebate paid by local councils (which have no information on which to base their calculations) would itself attract tax, whether at 20% UK rate or 21% Scottish rate, or indeed a reduction in any in-work benefits paid to them. And who would pay for the admin?

There will be a great deal of analysis done over the next few weeks, I'm sure, but at the moment it doesn't sound like its a practical proposal and it already seems to be unravelling.

And Niko, before you say it, yes, I know they are proposing to put up the tax on those earning over £150,000 and I think that that is a very good idea, but people are already saying that they can simply change their taxable addresses to England or Wales to avoid it. Remember when the French put up their top level of tax, didn't Mr Cameron offer an open invitation to rich French folk to go live in London? Won't he just do that with Scots?
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