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 It's there to guarantee Britain's place as a permanent member of the UN Security Council (itself an outdated body representing the world as it was in 1945, not as it is 71 years later.)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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Dunkirk Spirit and the Royal Palaces

In light of the looming cloud of cuts to be borne by the citizens of this country and in light of the fact that we are constantly being told what the nation can't afford, and of course in the Dunkirk spirit that her majesty has insisted on in her call to her family not to show ostentation. (Trips to the world cup and travel by coach and six aside.) I thought it would be interesting to look at the cost of the royal family itself and see if we could afford that. Well I have to say that it is quite a subject and one which would have occupied thousands of words in the form I had planned. So in order not to bore the readers of this blog I have decided to simplify matters and look at the property services grant that keeps the royals in palaces.

The property services grant-in-aid is the annual funding provided by the DCMS to the royal household to meet the cost of property maintenance, and of certain utilities and related services, at:
. Buckingham Palace;
. St James’s Palace (pictured top), Clarence House and Marlborough House Mews;
. The residential and office areas of Kensington Palace;
. The Royal Mews and Royal Paddocks at Hampton Court;
. Windsor Castle and buildings in the Home and Great Parks at Windsor (pictured middle).

The properties are referred to as the “Occupied Royal Palaces” or the “Estate”. The Estate comprises some 360 individual properties with an aggregate floor area estimated at approximately 160,000 square metres. Buckingham Palace, St James’s Palace and Windsor Castle State Apartments, together with offices, service areas, workshops, stores, coach houses, stables and garages, represent approximately 75 per cent of the total area. In addition, there is the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace, some 271 properties available for residential use, mainly by staff and pensioners, and 12 properties used as communal residential accommodation for staff.

The occupied royal palaces are held by the queen as sovereign. The DCMS has overall responsibility for the maintenance of and provision of services to the occupied royal palaces. With effect from 1 April 1991, however, management and operating responsibility was transferred to the royal household.

Estimates of the queen's wealth often mistakenly include items which are held by the queen as Sovereign on behalf of the nation and are not her private property. These include royal palaces, most of the art treasures from the Royal Collection, heirlooms in The queen's jewellery collection and the Crown Jewels.

The 'inalienable' items held by her majesty as sovereign, rather than as an individual, cannot be disposed of by the queen and must pass to her successor as sovereign. The queen and some members of the royal family past and present have made private collections – such as the stamp collection begun by George V. This is separate to the Royal Collection, although exhibitions and loans of stamps are sometimes made. This is an interesting discussion in its own right. Is property aquired by the royals over the generations, by whatever means, but undoubtedly with the aid of the state really their own personal property?

The queen owns Balmoral and Sandringham (pictured bottom), both inherited from her father. The queen also owns the stud at Sandringham (with a small amount of land in Hampshire). Her majesty owns no property outside the United Kingdom.

So there you go. Quite a property portfolio we have there then. I personally think that if we have to cut things to the bone we could do a lot worse than start here. Do the queen and her family really need 360 individual properties. And do they really need all that accomodation for servants etc, come to think of it do they really need all those butlers, footmen, equerries and so on. Not show ostentation? I think the royal status quo is ostentatious enough.

There are alternatives to the cuts that they will bring down on us

There is a very interesting post across at Forfar Loon’s place. The FT has predicted a certain number of cuts that will have to be made to persuade the money markets of the next government’s good faith, and we wouldn’t want to upset the money markets.

Here are some alternative ideas. Clearly I can’t cost them; I don’t have the means, but they would make a big cut. Are they unthinkable? To them, yes. Is cutting pensioners’ benefits unthinkable? To me, yes. What’s the difference? Them and me.

We could take at least a third of the MPs out of the Commons. They have time for other jobs, as many as 10, so clearly they are under employed. If my boss thought that I had time to do 10 part time jobs, and earn far more from them than I do with my “job”, I’d be given a choice.

We can get rid of the House of Lords and sell off all the artwork to the rich. ‘Oh, but it must be kept for the state’, they will moan. So how many of us get to see the artwork in the House of Lords, remind me.

We can sell off the royal palaces bar one. There must be rich people for whom the dream of living in a royal palace would mean more than holding on to a couple of billion pounds. If they keep Windsor Castle, there is plenty of room for all the many and various royals for whom we are obliged to find luxury accommodation.

We can sell Chequers, Chevening, etc. I know, they were left to the state, and where would the politicos entertain? Well, lawyers can find a way round anything if they have a mind to. Goldsmith certainly could, get him on the job. And as for entertaining, there is space in the ex-House of Lords for a dining room to be made over to politicians for such occasions. No need for them to have country estates.

We can slim down the BBC selling off the nonsense bits and retaining that which a state broadcaster needs to retain. People on nearly a million a year at our expense, who believe that taxis are to be treated like chauffer driven cars, building up massive bills of thousands of pounds per day, are nothing more or less than a joke when we are talking about cutting ordinary people’s jobs and benefits.

Scrap id cards. No, it won’t cause a rise in terrorism. Don’t be silly. Whatever the government does that will cost billions, the crooks will be able to copy within a year, and the government will have to start all over again. You think crooks never heard of biometrics?

Get rid of Trident and don’t replace it. The Generals don’t want it. They have to fight a war on the ground in Afghanistan. They know what they need. Brown, Cameron and Clegg don’t know jack s*** about fighting wars. The nuclear weapon thing is a vanity thing designed to please America and keep these little islands at the top table where they long ago ceased to merit a place. We don’t need them. Germany doesn’t have them and it’s safe; Poland, Italy, Spain, Norway..... and on and on....

Close up all the redundant embassies. I read the other day that we have an Ambassador to the Holy See. What in the same of goodness does he have to do all day with his staff? Apologising for stupid imbeciles in the Foreign Office is not, or at least shouldn’t be, a full time job. Close them down and sell them off. We need embassies in the big and important countries where we do a lot of business and diplomatic work. We do not need them elsewhere. Consulates will do. Remove the massive houses and Rolls Royces from the ones that remain. Sell them. Ambassadors and their staffs are Civil Servants, not royalty.

Empty the cellars of wine in the palaces and government departments. When foreign dignitaries come here it is for business. Of course we need to feed them and feed them well, but the wine could easily be limited and there is no need to be serving stuff that costs hundreds of pounds a bottle.

It’s not 1875. The world has changed.

Pictured: A banquet at Windsor Castle; Chevening, (Miliband's country place); St James's Palace (Home of Princess Beatrice)

TIME TO START MAKING CHANGES IN THE ROYAL FAMILY

The funding of the royal family, which raises its ugly head once every ten years, will be a thorn in the side of whoever is the next Prime Minister. Under the 10-year settlement, agreed between the palace and Mrs Thatcher, the Civil List will have to be renegotiated by the end of this year.

Like everyone else, the Queen wants more money, and like everyone else, except MPs and bankers, she will struggle to get it. And in any case before there is more money paid out to the royals it is important that we look at how they live in the changing world of recession-torn Britain.

In fairness to the Queen, during the 1990’s her accountants saved money from the Civil List to create a contingency fund, however, as time has gone on she has had to draw on that fund. By next year it will be gone. It’s also reasonable to remember that a lot of the Civil List goes to pay salaries and other employment costs of junior staff.

However, there are, within the current system, some startling wastes of money. While the Queen wants more public money to pay for the upkeep of her crumbling palaces she is allowing minor royals and courtiers to live in rent-free accommodation.

This blog believes that an independent Scotland should be a republic. It also accepts that at the moment we live in the United Kingdom, and that the Queen is head of state, but it thinks that it is high time that we brought royalty into the 21st century.

There are five palaces in London and a further one in Edinburgh. We allow Charles, Anne, Andrew, Edward, Kent, Gloucester, Alexandra, Michael, Beatrice, William and Harry....and their wives/husbands to live more of less free of charge. Additionally we provide free accommodation for a raft of senior courtiers, like the Keeper of the Queen’s Pictures and the Mistress of the Robes.

Enough!

We can’t afford all this. You don’t have to be republican to want value for money. The Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Belgian, Luxembourg and Spanish royal families don’t live like this and don’t cost this kind of money.

Providing accommodation for, and extending security to, junior members of the family, as they try to live “normal” lives and undertake no royal duties, is ridiculous. Paying out money for the upkeep of six crumbling palaces, and providing day and night security for the whole family is now beyond our means. It simply must be slimmed down.

Unlike some republicans I can see that some royals do valuable work. Sometimes simply by being royal they can coax rich snobs to part with their money for a good cause, which without royal intervnetion would not happen. Some are genuinely very hard working, making a big difference to their chosen charities.

So let them work and live in Buckingham Palace, which is big enough for all of them to have apartments for which they could pay rent. And let’s pay them a reasonable salary based on the amount of work they do. Everyone else has productivity targets, why not them?

If they don’t care for that they could get a job outside of royal duties and buy their own house. What’s wrong with that? They are no different from you and me and we manage to do it. We no longer believe that they have blue blood and are a different species.

There are likely to be big changes before the next ten-year settlement. Let’s start making the cuts now.


Pictures: State Apartments at Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace, Beatrice and Eugenie, Holyrood House.