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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.
