Allister Heath reckons the tories have trashed Thatcherism and embraced the European politics of decline.
Yep.
WTF else are the Tories going to do? Tell the Red Wall seats (which they need) to get on their bikes and find work.
I'm confused why contrarian isn't happy about the budget. The deficit, which he has been going on about for months now, will be entirely gone in a few years.
I don;t think so.
The economy is not and will not be big enough to support the weight of debt and spending that has been piled on it now and in the future.
It simply won't yield enough revenues, no matter how high taxes are.
The weight of debt? A significant chunk of that is QE, so it isn't really owed to anyone at all. As for spending being pilled on, that's not what the OBR forecasts suggest.
YOu may have noticed that lockdown goes on until June, furlough til October and the government itself does not think the economy will be back up to pre covid speed until summer 2022.
How much extra are we borrowing between now and then on top of the 2.1tn we already owe? and at what rates FFS? US long rates are already rising.
We simply are not going to sustain this. Especially as Johnson had decreed that every pound of spending is sacred. We are going to fall short. Far short.
Relaxation starts before June, doesn't it, and furlough will only be for those companies that are compelled to cease operation. It isn't as if the scheme is going to be utilised by everyone, and then suddenly by no one.
As for sustaining it, no one is suggesting that will happen.
Look what the tories have done to the private sector of Great Britain in the last year. Not covid, the tories. Via enforced closure of business by fiat, something that has never happened in our country.
Now Look what you and that idiot Johnson are expecting that private sector to do in the next 18 months.
Its like asking a jet engine you hammered with a sledgehammer to power you into the stratosphere, after you added massive weight to the cargo bay.
It. is.going.to.crash.and.burn.
Any government of any colour would have done the same. You seem to imply they are relishing the opportunity to shut down businesses and keep everyone in their homes. An utterly ridiculous suggestion.
I thought that until I heard Ron de Santis. If you have a business, we have your back. IF you want to send your child to school, you can. We are not shutting down. And that was through the winter
We are now in spring and we have the vaccine.
If Johnson opened up tomorrow, he might have saved something. But he is going to continue with this for months. The real damage is being done now. its insanity.
Ron DeSantis - likely GOP nominee in 2024
Hell I wish we had him. The gonads to defy lockdown through the winter!
He has given us a template for how conservatives should have always handled the pandemic. And it makes our 'conservatives' look like sh8t.
Looking at that eye-watering US deficit, it looks as if the yanks did even worse.
Though I believe that the Republican line is that deficits only matter when the Democrats are in charge.
Weirdly there are a lot more seats beginning with North and South than there are seats which begin with East or West. Something about the way towns or counties can naturally be divided, or coincidental?
It'll be because they're named after one of eight points on the compass, three of which are or begin with North, three with South, whereas East and West are evidently only one each. We have Coventry North East, but no Norfolk West North
I’m worried about HYUFD. All the Scottish Independence posts today, and I don’t think he’s been on. If anyone is passing through Epping tonight, could they knock his door and check he’s ok?
Allister Heath reckons the tories have trashed Thatcherism and embraced the European politics of decline.
Yep.
WTF else are the Tories going to do? Tell the Red Wall seats (which they need) to get on their bikes and find work.
I'm confused why contrarian isn't happy about the budget. The deficit, which he has been going on about for months now, will be entirely gone in a few years.
I don;t think so.
The economy is not and will not be big enough to support the weight of debt and spending that has been piled on it now and in the future.
It simply won't yield enough revenues, no matter how high taxes are.
The weight of debt? A significant chunk of that is QE, so it isn't really owed to anyone at all. As for spending being pilled on, that's not what the OBR forecasts suggest.
YOu may have noticed that lockdown goes on until June, furlough til October and the government itself does not think the economy will be back up to pre covid speed until summer 2022.
How much extra are we borrowing between now and then on top of the 2.1tn we already owe? and at what rates FFS? US long rates are already rising.
We simply are not going to sustain this. Especially as Johnson had decreed that every pound of spending is sacred. We are going to fall short. Far short.
Relaxation starts before June, doesn't it, and furlough will only be for those companies that are compelled to cease operation. It isn't as if the scheme is going to be utilised by everyone, and then suddenly by no one.
As for sustaining it, no one is suggesting that will happen.
Look what the tories have done to the private sector of Great Britain in the last year. Not covid, the tories. Via enforced closure of business by fiat, something that has never happened in our country.
Now Look what you and that idiot Johnson are expecting that private sector to do in the next 18 months.
Its like asking a jet engine you hammered with a sledgehammer to power you into the stratosphere, after you added massive weight to the cargo bay.
It. is.going.to.crash.and.burn.
Any government of any colour would have done the same. You seem to imply they are relishing the opportunity to shut down businesses and keep everyone in their homes. An utterly ridiculous suggestion.
What’s more most of the businesses would have closed (permanently) anyway unless Contrarian is suggesting that the existence of the novel coronavirus could have been somehow kept secret. People were (and largely still are) crapping themselves. They would have voted with their feet. Not to mention the staggering effects on the economy of so many working age people being off sick from work, with a not insignificant number actually dying.
Nobody is remotely suggesting that our economy, just like every economy, would not have taken a big hit. We are simply talking about the size, appropriacy and length of the response.
One factor that I think is worth bearing in mind is if Sunak's sums are right and the UK has eliminated its deficit in one swoop today then there should be no further tax rises to come.
Other countries that haven't done this yet will have to either raise their taxes or cut spending to fix their deficits at some point so comparing tax rates across countries might be slightly premature.
Are we confident they are correct? Doesn't smell right to me. Because, as we all know, the Corporation Tax rises will lead to a huge fall in revenue, won't they?
Well yes that is what a lot of us are saying . . .
I think its a stupid, stupid, stupid tax rise that should be reversed.
I agree. But where does the money come from, then?
Borrowing and growth.
We've just been through a WWII style epoch changing event which has revealed more technological and scientific discoveries and changes to working conditions than had been seen in years. The potential for investment and productivity gains is tremendous and the OBR is forecasting the earth shattering growth rates of *check notes* 1.6% in 2023 . . .
Allister Heath reckons the tories have trashed Thatcherism and embraced the European politics of decline.
Yep.
WTF else are the Tories going to do? Tell the Red Wall seats (which they need) to get on their bikes and find work.
I'm confused why contrarian isn't happy about the budget. The deficit, which he has been going on about for months now, will be entirely gone in a few years.
I don;t think so.
The economy is not and will not be big enough to support the weight of debt and spending that has been piled on it now and in the future.
It simply won't yield enough revenues, no matter how high taxes are.
The weight of debt? A significant chunk of that is QE, so it isn't really owed to anyone at all. As for spending being pilled on, that's not what the OBR forecasts suggest.
YOu may have noticed that lockdown goes on until June, furlough til October and the government itself does not think the economy will be back up to pre covid speed until summer 2022.
How much extra are we borrowing between now and then on top of the 2.1tn we already owe? and at what rates FFS? US long rates are already rising.
We simply are not going to sustain this. Especially as Johnson had decreed that every pound of spending is sacred. We are going to fall short. Far short.
Relaxation starts before June, doesn't it, and furlough will only be for those companies that are compelled to cease operation. It isn't as if the scheme is going to be utilised by everyone, and then suddenly by no one.
As for sustaining it, no one is suggesting that will happen.
Look what the tories have done to the private sector of Great Britain in the last year. Not covid, the tories. Via enforced closure of business by fiat, something that has never happened in our country.
Now Look what you and that idiot Johnson are expecting that private sector to do in the next 18 months.
Its like asking a jet engine you hammered with a sledgehammer to power you into the stratosphere, after you added massive weight to the cargo bay.
It. is.going.to.crash.and.burn.
Any government of any colour would have done the same. You seem to imply they are relishing the opportunity to shut down businesses and keep everyone in their homes. An utterly ridiculous suggestion.
I thought that until I heard Ron de Santis. If you have a business, we have your back. IF you want to send your child to school, you can. We are not shutting down. And that was through the winter
We are now in spring and we have the vaccine.
If Johnson opened up tomorrow, he might have saved something. But he is going to continue with this for months. The real damage is being done now. its insanity.
Ron DeSantis - likely GOP nominee in 2024
Hell I wish we had him. The gonads to defy lockdown through the winter!
He has given us a template for how conservatives should have always handled the pandemic. And it makes our 'conservatives' look like sh8t.
That's a little misleading, because DeSantis - unlike some other Governors - gave counties and cities wide latitude to set their own Covid rules.
I’m worried about HYUFD. All the Scottish Independence posts today, and I don’t think he’s been on. If anyone is passing through Epping tonight, could they knock his door and check he’s ok?
Don't worry. Those tanks don't service themselves you know.
And why do some counties e.g., Northumberland, Lancashire, have town/district names, whilst others e.g. Cambs, Norfolk, Dorset have lots of county plus compass points?
Weirdly there are a lot more seats beginning with North and South than there are seats which begin with East or West. Something about the way towns or counties can naturally be divided, or coincidental?
It'll be because they're named after one of eight points on the compass, three of which are or begin with North, three with South, whereas East and West are evidently only one each. We have Coventry North East, but no Norfolk West North
Well now I just feel stupid
Nevetheless, I've always preferred Place North to North Place, as it means it's easier to find all places for a town/ area alphabetically. So I'm still mad at North Swindon and South Swindon not being Swindon North and Swindon South.
Allister Heath reckons the tories have trashed Thatcherism and embraced the European politics of decline.
Yep.
WTF else are the Tories going to do? Tell the Red Wall seats (which they need) to get on their bikes and find work.
I'm confused why contrarian isn't happy about the budget. The deficit, which he has been going on about for months now, will be entirely gone in a few years.
I don;t think so.
The economy is not and will not be big enough to support the weight of debt and spending that has been piled on it now and in the future.
It simply won't yield enough revenues, no matter how high taxes are.
The weight of debt? A significant chunk of that is QE, so it isn't really owed to anyone at all. As for spending being pilled on, that's not what the OBR forecasts suggest.
YOu may have noticed that lockdown goes on until June, furlough til October and the government itself does not think the economy will be back up to pre covid speed until summer 2022.
How much extra are we borrowing between now and then on top of the 2.1tn we already owe? and at what rates FFS? US long rates are already rising.
We simply are not going to sustain this. Especially as Johnson had decreed that every pound of spending is sacred. We are going to fall short. Far short.
Relaxation starts before June, doesn't it, and furlough will only be for those companies that are compelled to cease operation. It isn't as if the scheme is going to be utilised by everyone, and then suddenly by no one.
As for sustaining it, no one is suggesting that will happen.
Look what the tories have done to the private sector of Great Britain in the last year. Not covid, the tories. Via enforced closure of business by fiat, something that has never happened in our country.
Now Look what you and that idiot Johnson are expecting that private sector to do in the next 18 months.
Its like asking a jet engine you hammered with a sledgehammer to power you into the stratosphere, after you added massive weight to the cargo bay.
It. is.going.to.crash.and.burn.
Any government of any colour would have done the same. You seem to imply they are relishing the opportunity to shut down businesses and keep everyone in their homes. An utterly ridiculous suggestion.
The critics are right tho. Hiking Corp tax so drastically is self harming.
Yes, there have to be taxes. But not this.
A tax on property was probably the best way, along with 2-3 points on Corp tax, keeping us symbolically and importantly below most of Europe.
Yes, 22% would be a reasonable level. My fear about such a hike is that it will be self defeating.
How much does an employee pay in income tax and NI ?
Difficult to convince them that 'bosses' should pay a lower rate.
All taxation falls ultimately on individuals. If you are willing to change income tax so that you can reclaim corporation tax paid, then that's one thing, otherwise you're going to be taxing the same profits repeatedly.
But which individuals.
"Why should people like me be paying more than people like them ..."
You'll struggle to convince the average voter that 25% corporation tax on profits over 250k is too high when income tax is 40% on earnings over £50k.
But corporation tax has to be less than income tax.
Imagine you are the only shareholder in A-R Ltd. A-R makes £100 of pre-tax profit. It pays 40% tax on its profits. It now has £60 available to distribute to its shareholder. You receive £60, and then you pay 40% on the dividend income, meaning that £100 of profits results in £66 in tax and just £34 ending up with the business owner.
Now, you could make taxes on dividends zero, but that creates a different set of issues.
High levels of corporation tax also encourage businesses to borrow money, because interest expense is paid out of pre-tax earnings. Better to borrow and pay yourself now ("Hello!" says Philip Green), which means you have an economy that is more fragile becomes firms have no incentive to keep any retained earnings whatsoever.
Won't it get attention? I've only paid the barest attention and that particular policy is one of the few I could list, so any cost to it will get picked up.
Weirdly there are a lot more seats beginning with North and South than there are seats which begin with East or West. Something about the way towns or counties can naturally be divided, or coincidental?
I am a fan of the regular complaints around election time of constituency names in cities where there are cardinal directions, but for one, so you get cities without a south. Newcastle seems to have an East, North and Central.
We're a long thin island oriented around north/south.
Allister Heath reckons the tories have trashed Thatcherism and embraced the European politics of decline.
Yep.
WTF else are the Tories going to do? Tell the Red Wall seats (which they need) to get on their bikes and find work.
I'm confused why contrarian isn't happy about the budget. The deficit, which he has been going on about for months now, will be entirely gone in a few years.
I don;t think so.
The economy is not and will not be big enough to support the weight of debt and spending that has been piled on it now and in the future.
It simply won't yield enough revenues, no matter how high taxes are.
The weight of debt? A significant chunk of that is QE, so it isn't really owed to anyone at all. As for spending being pilled on, that's not what the OBR forecasts suggest.
YOu may have noticed that lockdown goes on until June, furlough til October and the government itself does not think the economy will be back up to pre covid speed until summer 2022.
How much extra are we borrowing between now and then on top of the 2.1tn we already owe? and at what rates FFS? US long rates are already rising.
We simply are not going to sustain this. Especially as Johnson had decreed that every pound of spending is sacred. We are going to fall short. Far short.
Relaxation starts before June, doesn't it, and furlough will only be for those companies that are compelled to cease operation. It isn't as if the scheme is going to be utilised by everyone, and then suddenly by no one.
As for sustaining it, no one is suggesting that will happen.
Look what the tories have done to the private sector of Great Britain in the last year. Not covid, the tories. Via enforced closure of business by fiat, something that has never happened in our country.
Now Look what you and that idiot Johnson are expecting that private sector to do in the next 18 months.
Its like asking a jet engine you hammered with a sledgehammer to power you into the stratosphere, after you added massive weight to the cargo bay.
It. is.going.to.crash.and.burn.
Any government of any colour would have done the same. You seem to imply they are relishing the opportunity to shut down businesses and keep everyone in their homes. An utterly ridiculous suggestion.
I thought that until I heard Ron de Santis. If you have a business, we have your back. IF you want to send your child to school, you can. We are not shutting down. And that was through the winter
We are now in spring and we have the vaccine.
If Johnson opened up tomorrow, he might have saved something. But he is going to continue with this for months. The real damage is being done now. its insanity.
Ron DeSantis - likely GOP nominee in 2024
Hell I wish we had him. The gonads to defy lockdown through the winter!
He has given us a template for how conservatives should have always handled the pandemic. And it makes our 'conservatives' look like sh8t.
That's a little misleading, because DeSantis - unlike some other Governors - gave counties and cities wide latitude to set their own Covid rules.
Good point.
I would note, though, that it was also the right policy. Rural Florida - and there's a lot of rural Florida - should not be dancing to the same tune as Orlando or Miami.
Weirdly there are a lot more seats beginning with North and South than there are seats which begin with East or West. Something about the way towns or counties can naturally be divided, or coincidental?
I am a fan of the regular complaints around election time of constituency names in cities where there are cardinal directions, but for one, so you get cities without a south. Newcastle seems to have an East, North and Central.
We're a long thin island oriented around north/south.
Hence our constituent parts - South Britain, North Britain and Britain over the Sea (formerly Ireland)
Edit: Maybe Japanese constituency names are far more East/West in that case.
Allister Heath reckons the tories have trashed Thatcherism and embraced the European politics of decline.
Yep.
WTF else are the Tories going to do? Tell the Red Wall seats (which they need) to get on their bikes and find work.
I'm confused why contrarian isn't happy about the budget. The deficit, which he has been going on about for months now, will be entirely gone in a few years.
I don;t think so.
The economy is not and will not be big enough to support the weight of debt and spending that has been piled on it now and in the future.
It simply won't yield enough revenues, no matter how high taxes are.
The weight of debt? A significant chunk of that is QE, so it isn't really owed to anyone at all. As for spending being pilled on, that's not what the OBR forecasts suggest.
YOu may have noticed that lockdown goes on until June, furlough til October and the government itself does not think the economy will be back up to pre covid speed until summer 2022.
How much extra are we borrowing between now and then on top of the 2.1tn we already owe? and at what rates FFS? US long rates are already rising.
We simply are not going to sustain this. Especially as Johnson had decreed that every pound of spending is sacred. We are going to fall short. Far short.
Relaxation starts before June, doesn't it, and furlough will only be for those companies that are compelled to cease operation. It isn't as if the scheme is going to be utilised by everyone, and then suddenly by no one.
As for sustaining it, no one is suggesting that will happen.
Look what the tories have done to the private sector of Great Britain in the last year. Not covid, the tories. Via enforced closure of business by fiat, something that has never happened in our country.
Now Look what you and that idiot Johnson are expecting that private sector to do in the next 18 months.
Its like asking a jet engine you hammered with a sledgehammer to power you into the stratosphere, after you added massive weight to the cargo bay.
It. is.going.to.crash.and.burn.
Any government of any colour would have done the same. You seem to imply they are relishing the opportunity to shut down businesses and keep everyone in their homes. An utterly ridiculous suggestion.
I thought that until I heard Ron de Santis. If you have a business, we have your back. IF you want to send your child to school, you can. We are not shutting down. And that was through the winter
We are now in spring and we have the vaccine.
If Johnson opened up tomorrow, he might have saved something. But he is going to continue with this for months. The real damage is being done now. its insanity.
Ron DeSantis - likely GOP nominee in 2024
Hell I wish we had him. The gonads to defy lockdown through the winter!
He has given us a template for how conservatives should have always handled the pandemic. And it makes our 'conservatives' look like sh8t.
Looking at that eye-watering US deficit, it looks as if the yanks did even worse.
Though I believe that the Republican line is that deficits only matter when the Democrats are in charge.
Won't it get attention? I've only paid the barest attention and that particular policy is one of the few I could list, so any cost to it will get picked up.
The thing I'm surprised that there hasn't been more notice is off is the (possible) linkage between the investment tax give away and the tax on profits.
I've had 3 people I know comment - variations on - "so he wants us to put all the profits into investment?"
As I've said, there is an opening for a party that is committed to staying in the Union, but is not a branch of a UK party, and is only loosely affiliated, or not at all, with another UK party.
The main opposition parties seem to have realised this to an extent, and you see a lot of things like Douglas Ross saying that his 'demands' for Sunak's budget have all been met (as opposed to just cheerleading for the budget), however, it lacks credibility.
There is a new party that actually fits this model - Alliance for Unity, George Galloway's latest project, but at the moment they are not using their unique set up as a Scottish Unionist Party as a selling point, and they probably won't field candidates for Westminster, where this type of party would make the most sense.
I think the SCons should detach, at least for Holyrood. Westminster can be different.
The Unionists did the best in Scotland when they were a distinctly Scottish party, and I think SCons and SLabour are both limited whilst they are wholly owned subsidiaries of the UK versions.
Westminster specifically cannot be different. The SNP deride the SCONS as lobby fodder.
If you’re a largish company in Northern Ireland, facing a 25% Corporation Tax, why wouldn’t you move a few miles south, to Ireland and pay literally half that. 12%
Same language, same island. No border. You’d do it
Allister Heath reckons the tories have trashed Thatcherism and embraced the European politics of decline.
Yep.
WTF else are the Tories going to do? Tell the Red Wall seats (which they need) to get on their bikes and find work.
I'm confused why contrarian isn't happy about the budget. The deficit, which he has been going on about for months now, will be entirely gone in a few years.
I don;t think so.
The economy is not and will not be big enough to support the weight of debt and spending that has been piled on it now and in the future.
It simply won't yield enough revenues, no matter how high taxes are.
The weight of debt? A significant chunk of that is QE, so it isn't really owed to anyone at all. As for spending being pilled on, that's not what the OBR forecasts suggest.
YOu may have noticed that lockdown goes on until June, furlough til October and the government itself does not think the economy will be back up to pre covid speed until summer 2022.
How much extra are we borrowing between now and then on top of the 2.1tn we already owe? and at what rates FFS? US long rates are already rising.
We simply are not going to sustain this. Especially as Johnson had decreed that every pound of spending is sacred. We are going to fall short. Far short.
Relaxation starts before June, doesn't it, and furlough will only be for those companies that are compelled to cease operation. It isn't as if the scheme is going to be utilised by everyone, and then suddenly by no one.
As for sustaining it, no one is suggesting that will happen.
Look what the tories have done to the private sector of Great Britain in the last year. Not covid, the tories. Via enforced closure of business by fiat, something that has never happened in our country.
Now Look what you and that idiot Johnson are expecting that private sector to do in the next 18 months.
Its like asking a jet engine you hammered with a sledgehammer to power you into the stratosphere, after you added massive weight to the cargo bay.
It. is.going.to.crash.and.burn.
Any government of any colour would have done the same. You seem to imply they are relishing the opportunity to shut down businesses and keep everyone in their homes. An utterly ridiculous suggestion.
The critics are right tho. Hiking Corp tax so drastically is self harming.
Yes, there have to be taxes. But not this.
A tax on property was probably the best way, along with 2-3 points on Corp tax, keeping us symbolically and importantly below most of Europe.
Yes, 22% would be a reasonable level. My fear about such a hike is that it will be self defeating.
How much does an employee pay in income tax and NI ?
Difficult to convince them that 'bosses' should pay a lower rate.
All taxation falls ultimately on individuals. If you are willing to change income tax so that you can reclaim corporation tax paid, then that's one thing, otherwise you're going to be taxing the same profits repeatedly.
But which individuals.
"Why should people like me be paying more than people like them ..."
You'll struggle to convince the average voter that 25% corporation tax on profits over 250k is too high when income tax is 40% on earnings over £50k.
But corporation tax has to be less than income tax.
Imagine you are the only shareholder in A-R Ltd. A-R makes £100 of pre-tax profit. It pays 40% tax on its profits. It now has £60 available to distribute to its shareholder. You receive £60, and then you pay 40% on the dividend income, meaning that £100 of profits results in £66 in tax and just £34 ending up with the business owner.
Now, you could make taxes on dividends zero, but that creates a different set of issues.
High levels of corporation tax also encourage businesses to borrow money, because interest expense is paid out of pre-tax earnings. Better to borrow and pay yourself now ("Hello!" says Philip Green), which means you have an economy that is more fragile becomes firms have no incentive to keep any retained earnings whatsoever.
To the average voter you lost the argument with your first ten words.
The rest were just blah, blah, blah.
And I do know what you're saying
Mentioning Philip Green is not likely to endear 'the fatcats' to the average voter either.
There's a Bradford East, a Bradford West, and a Bradford South, but no bloody Bradford North.
It triggers my OCD something bad.
You think that's bad - I've none things at town level where, due to various changes causing boundaries to not line up, someone might be an a town ward east for one election, but county ward (named for town) north for another, on the same day.
If you’re a largish company in Northern Ireland, facing a 25% Corporation Tax, why wouldn’t you move a few miles south, to Ireland and pay literally half that. 12%
Same language, same island. No border. You’d do it
I came into this discussion thinking that the legacy UK parties were permafucked and the SNP would simply romp to yet another victory.
However, I granted our guest authors the courtesy of reading their piece in full, anyway.
The legacy UK parties are probably* permafucked and the SNP is probably* going to romp to yet another victory.
*By probably I mean certainly, of course. The Conservatives and Labour don't merely have 'a lot of work to do in the next two months' to make significant progress. They need to build, test and commission a mind-control field generator that can successfully reprogram the brains of the entire population. Not even the Chinese have figured out how to make that happen.
You could gave written that about Labour in Scotland 30 years ago
So maybe the SNP only has thirty years left in power? You may very well be right. It depends rather on how long it actually takes them to get independence over the finishing line.
I don't doubt that there are Scots who still feel British but they're a minority and, I think you'll find, a shrinking one at that - something that will be brutally laid bare by the results of this year's census, when I expect that the ratio of British to English/Scottish/Welsh/(Northern) Irish identification will have changed markedly all over the UK since 2011.
The only thing that's holding the Union together now is money. If the average Scottish voter thought that she would be £1 per year better off out than in, she'd be off like a shot.
The most recent poll was 50/50 and independence falling in the polls and this before these hearings
It is no means certain that Scotland will vote for independence
Well, there's a long way to go, and we shall see.
The Achilles' heel of the independence movement is, as I said before, money. If a large part of the Scottish electorate didn't believe that separation would put their taxes up then they'd have voted to go in 2014. And it could yet do for the nationalists again - although quite why the maintenance of a state that's held together mainly by bribery is something that is either morally healthy or to be desired is never adequately explained.
OTOH 'you will be poorer if you do this' was the central theme of David Cameron's campaign to vanquish Brexit, and look what became of him.
You’re somewhat ignoring the 30-40% of Scots who are passionately Unionist. There’s plenty of them. Probably about the same as there are passionate Nats.
This is one reason I believe Indy would be a tragedy - for Scotland. It would make Brexit look like a harmonious decision which brought peace to the nation. Indy would unleash demons, and sow decades of bitterness. Ending a 300 year old union would be emotionally explosive (and economically ruinous)
Scotland is not Ireland in 1921 when the large majority of Catholics had a settled will for secession. Scotland is grievously divided.
If Sturgeon gets her maj and seeks Indy, Boris must be the statesman, which will be hard for him. Even as he refuses a vote he must search for compromise, to save Scots and Brits from many more years of rancour
62% of the Scottish population answered the national identity question in the 2011 census as "Scottish only" and the number will only have moved in one direction in the subsequent decade. I don't believe that there's this vast reservoir of committed unionists. There will certainly be some committed unionists, and another tranche of pragmatic unionists, and a fair number of people who just sort of sit around in the middle as well, but I somehow doubt that there's this ocean of pro-Union sentiment out there in Scotland, any more than there was of pro-EU sentiment in Britain in 2016. It's a niche interest.
As I said, the swing vote in Scotland consists of middle-class waverers who fear that independence will hit them in their bank balances and pension pots. It's why the campaign in 2014 revolved principally around sterling, state pensions and the Barnett formula. Britain is held together by money. There is nothing else left.
Sturgeon just has to convince enough that the Brussels money tree will replace London's. (It won't of course but by the time they realise that it will be too late).
I suspect too many of us are thinking of the SNP as a mere political party rather than an African style liberation movement. Corruption and incompetence are irrelevant to the faithful, only the cause matters. Hatred of the Tories (i.e. the English) has become for nationalists a defining characteristic of Scottish identity just as Anglophobia is in Ireland. If independence comes to pass the SNP will continue to blame London for Scotland's problems (probably successfully) for at least 30 years.
I am surprised how sanguine so many others are at the prospect of the break up of the UK. If Lincoln had had the same attitude in 1861 we might still have actual slave traders today rather than just old statues of them.
The relaxed attitude amazes me as well. Oh, Scottish independence, no problem
Scottish independence would guarantee political chaos for a decade. As we disentangle 300 years of union. More immediately it means instant economic emergency. Sindy Scotland would default immediately, and be plunged into Depression. rUK would follow with an intense recession, or worse. All this as we try to recover from the worst crisis since WW2. With debt over 100%
London might itself default, or be forced to print money like Mugabe
It is insane
Worth it if we don't have to listen to the whinging whining Scots any more...
Well, you could argue that if you wanted to stir the pot, but more to the point the difficulty of unpicking the Union is overdone - at least from the point of view of the remainder of the UK, which is about 11 or 12 times the size of Scotland.
Apart from having to move many thousands of admin jobs South (a lot of central Government work in pensions and overseas aid administration is located in and around Glasgow, IIRC,) the main source of disruption to Westminster is what on Earth to do with Trident. Who knows what it might decide? The Government could lease the base whilst it built a new one in England, ask the Americans if we could park the submarines over there whilst we built a new base in England, or it could disarm.
And that's it. The main problem. The rest of it is all down to the division of assets and liabilities, which would either be done on a population proportionate basis, or with the UK taking on the lot and Scotland starting with a clean slate. What's left of the UK could then proceed on its way; other thorny issues such as what to do about the currency, the budget deficit and relations with the EU would self-evidently be matters for the Scots to worry about, not us.
None of this is to understate the level of disruption that the separation process would entail, or the potential for it to turn poisonous. After all, the moment Scotland votes to secede then Westminster's responsibility becomes securing the best terms for the remainder of the country, and the Scottish Government is well used to nursing grievances against Westminster to bolster its own popularity. But it is manageable, and would most definitely not constitute an 'economic emergency.' If we can survive Brexit without imploding then we can certainly survive, say, a hard border with Scotland, which is vastly less important than the EU as a trading partner.
If things are more awkward for them, well, under those circumstances that would no longer be our problem.
If you’re a largish company in Northern Ireland, facing a 25% Corporation Tax, why wouldn’t you move a few miles south, to Ireland and pay literally half that. 12%
Same language, same island. No border. You’d do it
They would have done it already?
Possibly. But it’s a wrench. There comes a point, however, at which the cost outweighs the hassle, and you move. I can see this pushing quite a few businesses from Belfast to Dublin
Britain seems determined to enrich the Irish. Quite an irony, given how much they resent us
Allister Heath reckons the tories have trashed Thatcherism and embraced the European politics of decline.
Yep.
WTF else are the Tories going to do? Tell the Red Wall seats (which they need) to get on their bikes and find work.
I don't see that they'll have a choice once the rest of the developed world starts picking at the carcass of the UK economy in 2023 when big businesses desert for lower tax countries.
The 25% rate is worse than anything I had imagined. Unless the 100% investment allowance is made permanent then it's going to result in significant job losses, even the OBR have forecast a huge slowdown in business investment in 2023 to a contraction of -1.5%, it will mean job losses in the run up to an election.
It's genuinely rubbish and shows Rishi isn't fit for the office of chancellor.
Our economists and financial modellers have been working on this, the government's plans are what we call a 'Katie Price's boobs.'
A massive figure blown out of all proportion, with no visible means of support, and so fucking artificial.
Yup, it's the same conclusion we've come to as well. I think by the weekend the budget is going to look a lot less good. The corporation tax rise especially should be seized by Labour as jobs and investment killing. I'm honestly shocked the chancellor doesn't have the political foresight to see just how badly job losses are going to play in the run up to 2024.
The other area is business rates where there's basically fuck all in terms of a step change for high street retail having to compete with online.
I agree with this.
The key point is that we're supposed to be differentiating ourselves from the EU right now. This removes one of our areas of differentiation, and sends exactly the wrong message about being open for business.
(From a business perspective, this slightly increases the chance that we add engineering resource in Lisbon rather than London.)
There's not the slightest chance that business won't have to pay for covid. There's actually no other tax. The Sunak solution, unpleasant though it is, is actually sound.
Everyone will be paying for Covid. But increasing our corporation tax by a fifth, just after France cut theirs, seems like a dumb move.
It's above a quarter.
I've no idea as to how France imagines it'll balance its books, but eventually it's business that funds government.
There's no way round this. Admittedly there are huge reserves of capital that a state can tap into vampire-like. Sometimes that's the right thing to do,
There's a Bradford East, a Bradford West, and a Bradford South, but no bloody Bradford North.
It triggers my OCD something bad.
You think that's bad - I've none things at town level where, due to various changes causing boundaries to not line up, someone might be an a town ward east for one election, but county ward (named for town) north for another, on the same day.
If you’re a largish company in Northern Ireland, facing a 25% Corporation Tax, why wouldn’t you move a few miles south, to Ireland and pay literally half that. 12%
Same language, same island. No border. You’d do it
Weren’t you the genius that kept telling us NI had it made as the best of both worlds?
If you’re a largish company in Northern Ireland, facing a 25% Corporation Tax, why wouldn’t you move a few miles south, to Ireland and pay literally half that. 12%
Same language, same island. No border. You’d do it
Weirdly there are a lot more seats beginning with North and South than there are seats which begin with East or West. Something about the way towns or counties can naturally be divided, or coincidental?
It'll be because they're named after one of eight points on the compass, three of which are or begin with North, three with South, whereas East and West are evidently only one each. We have Coventry North East, but no Norfolk West North
Well now I just feel stupid
Nevetheless, I've always preferred Place North to North Place, as it means it's easier to find all places for a town/ area alphabetically. So I'm still mad at North Swindon and South Swindon not being Swindon North and Swindon South.
100% this. Compass points should always be suffixes IMO.
It should only be North Place if that is actually the place name, you're not adding a compass point to it. Eg if you're building a monorail then you might put it into North Haverbrook.
I came into this discussion thinking that the legacy UK parties were permafucked and the SNP would simply romp to yet another victory.
However, I granted our guest authors the courtesy of reading their piece in full, anyway.
The legacy UK parties are probably* permafucked and the SNP is probably* going to romp to yet another victory.
*By probably I mean certainly, of course. The Conservatives and Labour don't merely have 'a lot of work to do in the next two months' to make significant progress. They need to build, test and commission a mind-control field generator that can successfully reprogram the brains of the entire population. Not even the Chinese have figured out how to make that happen.
You could gave written that about Labour in Scotland 30 years ago
So maybe the SNP only has thirty years left in power? You may very well be right. It depends rather on how long it actually takes them to get independence over the finishing line.
I don't doubt that there are Scots who still feel British but they're a minority and, I think you'll find, a shrinking one at that - something that will be brutally laid bare by the results of this year's census, when I expect that the ratio of British to English/Scottish/Welsh/(Northern) Irish identification will have changed markedly all over the UK since 2011.
The only thing that's holding the Union together now is money. If the average Scottish voter thought that she would be £1 per year better off out than in, she'd be off like a shot.
The most recent poll was 50/50 and independence falling in the polls and this before these hearings
It is no means certain that Scotland will vote for independence
Well, there's a long way to go, and we shall see.
The Achilles' heel of the independence movement is, as I said before, money. If a large part of the Scottish electorate didn't believe that separation would put their taxes up then they'd have voted to go in 2014. And it could yet do for the nationalists again - although quite why the maintenance of a state that's held together mainly by bribery is something that is either morally healthy or to be desired is never adequately explained.
OTOH 'you will be poorer if you do this' was the central theme of David Cameron's campaign to vanquish Brexit, and look what became of him.
You’re somewhat ignoring the 30-40% of Scots who are passionately Unionist. There’s plenty of them. Probably about the same as there are passionate Nats.
This is one reason I believe Indy would be a tragedy - for Scotland. It would make Brexit look like a harmonious decision which brought peace to the nation. Indy would unleash demons, and sow decades of bitterness. Ending a 300 year old union would be emotionally explosive (and economically ruinous)
Scotland is not Ireland in 1921 when the large majority of Catholics had a settled will for secession. Scotland is grievously divided.
If Sturgeon gets her maj and seeks Indy, Boris must be the statesman, which will be hard for him. Even as he refuses a vote he must search for compromise, to save Scots and Brits from many more years of rancour
62% of the Scottish population answered the national identity question in the 2011 census as "Scottish only" and the number will only have moved in one direction in the subsequent decade. I don't believe that there's this vast reservoir of committed unionists. There will certainly be some committed unionists, and another tranche of pragmatic unionists, and a fair number of people who just sort of sit around in the middle as well, but I somehow doubt that there's this ocean of pro-Union sentiment out there in Scotland, any more than there was of pro-EU sentiment in Britain in 2016. It's a niche interest.
As I said, the swing vote in Scotland consists of middle-class waverers who fear that independence will hit them in their bank balances and pension pots. It's why the campaign in 2014 revolved principally around sterling, state pensions and the Barnett formula. Britain is held together by money. There is nothing else left.
Sturgeon just has to convince enough that the Brussels money tree will replace London's. (It won't of course but by the time they realise that it will be too late).
I suspect too many of us are thinking of the SNP as a mere political party rather than an African style liberation movement. Corruption and incompetence are irrelevant to the faithful, only the cause matters. Hatred of the Tories (i.e. the English) has become for nationalists a defining characteristic of Scottish identity just as Anglophobia is in Ireland. If independence comes to pass the SNP will continue to blame London for Scotland's problems (probably successfully) for at least 30 years.
I am surprised how sanguine so many others are at the prospect of the break up of the UK. If Lincoln had had the same attitude in 1861 we might still have actual slave traders today rather than just old statues of them.
The relaxed attitude amazes me as well. Oh, Scottish independence, no problem
Scottish independence would guarantee political chaos for a decade. As we disentangle 300 years of union. More immediately it means instant economic emergency. Sindy Scotland would default immediately, and be plunged into Depression. rUK would follow with an intense recession, or worse. All this as we try to recover from the worst crisis since WW2. With debt over 100%
London might itself default, or be forced to print money like Mugabe
It is insane
Worth it if we don't have to listen to the whinging whining Scots any more...
Well, you could argue that if you wanted to stir the pot, but more to the point the difficulty of unpicking the Union is overdone - at least from the point of view of the remainder of the UK, which is about 11 or 12 times the size of Scotland.
Apart from having to move many thousands of admin jobs South (a lot of central Government work in pensions and overseas aid administration is located in and around Glasgow, IIRC,) the main source of disruption to Westminster is what on Earth to do with Trident. Who knows what it might decide? The Government could lease the base whilst it built a new one in England, ask the Americans if we could park the submarines over there whilst we built a new base in England, or it could disarm.
And that's it. The main problem. The rest of it is all down to the division of assets and liabilities, which would either be done on a population proportionate basis, or with the UK taking on the lot and Scotland starting with a clean slate. What's left of the UK could then proceed on its way; other thorny issues such as what to do about the currency, the budget deficit and relations with the EU would self-evidently be matters for the Scots to worry about, not us.
None of this is to understate the level of disruption that the separation process would entail, or the potential for it to turn poisonous. After all, the moment Scotland votes to secede then Westminster's responsibility becomes securing the best terms for the remainder of the country, and the Scottish Government is well used to nursing grievances against Westminster to bolster its own popularity. But it is manageable, and would most definitely not constitute an 'economic emergency.' If we can survive Brexit without imploding then we can certainly survive, say, a hard border with Scotland, which is vastly less important than the EU as a trading partner.
If things are more awkward for them, well, under those circumstances that would no longer be our problem.
You don’t understand. A bankrupt Scotland using sterling would oblige us to help out. We’d have to, even tho we wouldn’t want to.
Moreover, the UK will be reliant on the kindness of strangers - AKA ‘borrowing’ - for the next decade. Debt over 100%
Will people still be happy to lend to us at generous interest rates, as we lose a third of the nation by size, and exhibit signs of chronic instability? Because all this will come on top of Covid and Brexit.
Personally I’d only lend to us if I could exact a stiff premium. We will pay more to borrow at a time when we are borrowing trillions. It is the exact recipe for disaster, for Scots and English alike
If you’re a largish company in Northern Ireland, facing a 25% Corporation Tax, why wouldn’t you move a few miles south, to Ireland and pay literally half that. 12%
Same language, same island. No border. You’d do it
Weren’t you the genius that kept telling us NI had it made as the best of both worlds?
With today's announcement, the EU won't have to worry about the Tories trying to make the UK into Singapore on Thames. I thought one of the big selling points for Brexit was supposed be to enable the UK to become much more attractive to global business?
There's a Bradford East, a Bradford West, and a Bradford South, but no bloody Bradford North.
It triggers my OCD something bad.
You think that's bad - I've none things at town level where, due to various changes causing boundaries to not line up, someone might be an a town ward east for one election, but county ward (named for town) north for another, on the same day.
Make it stop.
The next time you can bring yourself to do a little tourism in Oxford, make sure to drop in to the pleasant little row of shops and cafes on North Parade, before strolling a bit further north to do the same in the shops and restaurants of South Parade...
With today's announcement, the EU won't have to worry about the Tories trying to make the UK into Singapore on Thames. I thought one of the big selling points for Brexit was supposed be to enable the UK to become much more attractive to global business?
Good heavens no. Singapore on Thames would involve doing things that would be seriously unpopular with voters. Cutting government spending, brining in lots of low-paid immigrants, that sort of thing. The big selling point for Brexit was to enable Boris to become Prime Minister. Which is why May's plans were, by definition, rubbish.
I came into this discussion thinking that the legacy UK parties were permafucked and the SNP would simply romp to yet another victory.
However, I granted our guest authors the courtesy of reading their piece in full, anyway.
The legacy UK parties are probably* permafucked and the SNP is probably* going to romp to yet another victory.
*By probably I mean certainly, of course. The Conservatives and Labour don't merely have 'a lot of work to do in the next two months' to make significant progress. They need to build, test and commission a mind-control field generator that can successfully reprogram the brains of the entire population. Not even the Chinese have figured out how to make that happen.
You could gave written that about Labour in Scotland 30 years ago
So maybe the SNP only has thirty years left in power? You may very well be right. It depends rather on how long it actually takes them to get independence over the finishing line.
I don't doubt that there are Scots who still feel British but they're a minority and, I think you'll find, a shrinking one at that - something that will be brutally laid bare by the results of this year's census, when I expect that the ratio of British to English/Scottish/Welsh/(Northern) Irish identification will have changed markedly all over the UK since 2011.
The only thing that's holding the Union together now is money. If the average Scottish voter thought that she would be £1 per year better off out than in, she'd be off like a shot.
The most recent poll was 50/50 and independence falling in the polls and this before these hearings
It is no means certain that Scotland will vote for independence
Well, there's a long way to go, and we shall see.
The Achilles' heel of the independence movement is, as I said before, money. If a large part of the Scottish electorate didn't believe that separation would put their taxes up then they'd have voted to go in 2014. And it could yet do for the nationalists again - although quite why the maintenance of a state that's held together mainly by bribery is something that is either morally healthy or to be desired is never adequately explained.
OTOH 'you will be poorer if you do this' was the central theme of David Cameron's campaign to vanquish Brexit, and look what became of him.
You’re somewhat ignoring the 30-40% of Scots who are passionately Unionist. There’s plenty of them. Probably about the same as there are passionate Nats.
This is one reason I believe Indy would be a tragedy - for Scotland. It would make Brexit look like a harmonious decision which brought peace to the nation. Indy would unleash demons, and sow decades of bitterness. Ending a 300 year old union would be emotionally explosive (and economically ruinous)
Scotland is not Ireland in 1921 when the large majority of Catholics had a settled will for secession. Scotland is grievously divided.
If Sturgeon gets her maj and seeks Indy, Boris must be the statesman, which will be hard for him. Even as he refuses a vote he must search for compromise, to save Scots and Brits from many more years of rancour
62% of the Scottish population answered the national identity question in the 2011 census as "Scottish only" and the number will only have moved in one direction in the subsequent decade. I don't believe that there's this vast reservoir of committed unionists. There will certainly be some committed unionists, and another tranche of pragmatic unionists, and a fair number of people who just sort of sit around in the middle as well, but I somehow doubt that there's this ocean of pro-Union sentiment out there in Scotland, any more than there was of pro-EU sentiment in Britain in 2016. It's a niche interest.
As I said, the swing vote in Scotland consists of middle-class waverers who fear that independence will hit them in their bank balances and pension pots. It's why the campaign in 2014 revolved principally around sterling, state pensions and the Barnett formula. Britain is held together by money. There is nothing else left.
Sturgeon just has to convince enough that the Brussels money tree will replace London's. (It won't of course but by the time they realise that it will be too late).
I suspect too many of us are thinking of the SNP as a mere political party rather than an African style liberation movement. Corruption and incompetence are irrelevant to the faithful, only the cause matters. Hatred of the Tories (i.e. the English) has become for nationalists a defining characteristic of Scottish identity just as Anglophobia is in Ireland. If independence comes to pass the SNP will continue to blame London for Scotland's problems (probably successfully) for at least 30 years.
I am surprised how sanguine so many others are at the prospect of the break up of the UK. If Lincoln had had the same attitude in 1861 we might still have actual slave traders today rather than just old statues of them.
The relaxed attitude amazes me as well. Oh, Scottish independence, no problem
Scottish independence would guarantee political chaos for a decade. As we disentangle 300 years of union. More immediately it means instant economic emergency. Sindy Scotland would default immediately, and be plunged into Depression. rUK would follow with an intense recession, or worse. All this as we try to recover from the worst crisis since WW2. With debt over 100%
London might itself default, or be forced to print money like Mugabe
It is insane
Worth it if we don't have to listen to the whinging whining Scots any more...
Well, you could argue that if you wanted to stir the pot, but more to the point the difficulty of unpicking the Union is overdone - at least from the point of view of the remainder of the UK, which is about 11 or 12 times the size of Scotland.
Apart from having to move many thousands of admin jobs South (a lot of central Government work in pensions and overseas aid administration is located in and around Glasgow, IIRC,) the main source of disruption to Westminster is what on Earth to do with Trident. Who knows what it might decide? The Government could lease the base whilst it built a new one in England, ask the Americans if we could park the submarines over there whilst we built a new base in England, or it could disarm.
And that's it. The main problem. The rest of it is all down to the division of assets and liabilities, which would either be done on a population proportionate basis, or with the UK taking on the lot and Scotland starting with a clean slate. What's left of the UK could then proceed on its way; other thorny issues such as what to do about the currency, the budget deficit and relations with the EU would self-evidently be matters for the Scots to worry about, not us.
None of this is to understate the level of disruption that the separation process would entail, or the potential for it to turn poisonous. After all, the moment Scotland votes to secede then Westminster's responsibility becomes securing the best terms for the remainder of the country, and the Scottish Government is well used to nursing grievances against Westminster to bolster its own popularity. But it is manageable, and would most definitely not constitute an 'economic emergency.' If we can survive Brexit without imploding then we can certainly survive, say, a hard border with Scotland, which is vastly less important than the EU as a trading partner.
If things are more awkward for them, well, under those circumstances that would no longer be our problem.
You don’t understand. A bankrupt Scotland using sterling would oblige us to help out. We’d have to, even tho we wouldn’t want to.
Moreover, the UK will be reliant on the kindness of strangers - AKA ‘borrowing’ - for the next decade. Debt over 100%
Will people still be happy to lend to us at generous interest rates, as we lose a third of the nation by size, and exhibit signs of chronic instability? Because all this will come on top of Covid and Brexit.
Personally I’d only lend to us if I could exact a stiff premium. We will pay more to borrow at a time when we are borrowing trillions. It is the exact recipe for disaster, for Scots and English alike
Your arguments don't hold water.
Firstly, London only becomes responsible for rescuing Edinburgh if (1) it screws its finances up *and* (2) we agree a currency union, like the Eurozone. Which we would be mad to do, and wouldn't do. States like Panama that adopt a policy of dollarization are obliged to manage their finances very carefully, because the United States is quite explicitly not expected to bail them out if they get into trouble. If Scotland attempted sterlingisation (which I wouldn't expect it to do, because that would be extremely silly) then it would find itself in the same position.
Secondly, there is no reason why the UK's borrowing costs should suddenly spike when it sheds a territory that's a net drain on the resources of the Treasury. If Wessex became a thing again and left then it might cause that sort of problem. Not so Scotland.
If you’re a largish company in Northern Ireland, facing a 25% Corporation Tax, why wouldn’t you move a few miles south, to Ireland and pay literally half that. 12%
Same language, same island. No border. You’d do it
They would have done it already?
Yep 19% v 12% is still a good reason to move.
In reality most Irish firms I know already have north and south subsidies with profits directed as most appropriate
With today's announcement, the EU won't have to worry about the Tories trying to make the UK into Singapore on Thames. I thought one of the big selling points for Brexit was supposed be to enable the UK to become much more attractive to global business?
For balance, I wonder if this is smoke and mirrors from Sunak
By predicting zero deficit (via this delayed Corp tax) he can calm the markets, which might otherwise get spooked by our present, enormous borrowing and debt
Meanwhile he is pump-priming the economy with investment incentives. Perhaps he therefore hopes growth will turn out better than anticipated, thus allowing him to increase Corp tax by less, when the time comes.
Despite the high vaccination rate, Israel figures do seem stubbornly high (multiply by 9 for the UK). Certainly they too have antivaxers in the Arab and Haredi communities, but even so, shouldn't rates be dropping faster?
Despite the high vaccination rate, Israel figures do seem stubbornly high (multiply by 9 for the UK). Certainly they too have antivaxers in the Arab and Haredi communities, but even so, shouldn't rates be dropping faster?
I think part of the issue is that - now older people are increasingly protected - younger people are abandoning all social distancing.
Despite the high vaccination rate, Israel figures do seem stubbornly high (multiply by 9 for the UK). Certainly they too have antivaxers in the Arab and Haredi communities, but even so, shouldn't rates be dropping faster?
I read somewhere that Haredi are ~12% of the population, but 40% of cases.
OK then. What's the largest town NOT named in a constituency?
Until 1983 Milton Keynes was in the Buckingham seat without being named, despite having a population of about 100,000 at the time compared to about 5,000 for Buckingham.
I came into this discussion thinking that the legacy UK parties were permafucked and the SNP would simply romp to yet another victory.
However, I granted our guest authors the courtesy of reading their piece in full, anyway.
The legacy UK parties are probably* permafucked and the SNP is probably* going to romp to yet another victory.
*By probably I mean certainly, of course. The Conservatives and Labour don't merely have 'a lot of work to do in the next two months' to make significant progress. They need to build, test and commission a mind-control field generator that can successfully reprogram the brains of the entire population. Not even the Chinese have figured out how to make that happen.
You could gave written that about Labour in Scotland 30 years ago
So maybe the SNP only has thirty years left in power? You may very well be right. It depends rather on how long it actually takes them to get independence over the finishing line.
I don't doubt that there are Scots who still feel British but they're a minority and, I think you'll find, a shrinking one at that - something that will be brutally laid bare by the results of this year's census, when I expect that the ratio of British to English/Scottish/Welsh/(Northern) Irish identification will have changed markedly all over the UK since 2011.
The only thing that's holding the Union together now is money. If the average Scottish voter thought that she would be £1 per year better off out than in, she'd be off like a shot.
The most recent poll was 50/50 and independence falling in the polls and this before these hearings
It is no means certain that Scotland will vote for independence
Well, there's a long way to go, and we shall see.
The Achilles' heel of the independence movement is, as I said before, money. If a large part of the Scottish electorate didn't believe that separation would put their taxes up then they'd have voted to go in 2014. And it could yet do for the nationalists again - although quite why the maintenance of a state that's held together mainly by bribery is something that is either morally healthy or to be desired is never adequately explained.
OTOH 'you will be poorer if you do this' was the central theme of David Cameron's campaign to vanquish Brexit, and look what became of him.
You’re somewhat ignoring the 30-40% of Scots who are passionately Unionist. There’s plenty of them. Probably about the same as there are passionate Nats.
This is one reason I believe Indy would be a tragedy - for Scotland. It would make Brexit look like a harmonious decision which brought peace to the nation. Indy would unleash demons, and sow decades of bitterness. Ending a 300 year old union would be emotionally explosive (and economically ruinous)
Scotland is not Ireland in 1921 when the large majority of Catholics had a settled will for secession. Scotland is grievously divided.
If Sturgeon gets her maj and seeks Indy, Boris must be the statesman, which will be hard for him. Even as he refuses a vote he must search for compromise, to save Scots and Brits from many more years of rancour
62% of the Scottish population answered the national identity question in the 2011 census as "Scottish only" and the number will only have moved in one direction in the subsequent decade. I don't believe that there's this vast reservoir of committed unionists. There will certainly be some committed unionists, and another tranche of pragmatic unionists, and a fair number of people who just sort of sit around in the middle as well, but I somehow doubt that there's this ocean of pro-Union sentiment out there in Scotland, any more than there was of pro-EU sentiment in Britain in 2016. It's a niche interest.
As I said, the swing vote in Scotland consists of middle-class waverers who fear that independence will hit them in their bank balances and pension pots. It's why the campaign in 2014 revolved principally around sterling, state pensions and the Barnett formula. Britain is held together by money. There is nothing else left.
Sturgeon just has to convince enough that the Brussels money tree will replace London's. (It won't of course but by the time they realise that it will be too late).
I suspect too many of us are thinking of the SNP as a mere political party rather than an African style liberation movement. Corruption and incompetence are irrelevant to the faithful, only the cause matters. Hatred of the Tories (i.e. the English) has become for nationalists a defining characteristic of Scottish identity just as Anglophobia is in Ireland. If independence comes to pass the SNP will continue to blame London for Scotland's problems (probably successfully) for at least 30 years.
I am surprised how sanguine so many others are at the prospect of the break up of the UK. If Lincoln had had the same attitude in 1861 we might still have actual slave traders today rather than just old statues of them.
The relaxed attitude amazes me as well. Oh, Scottish independence, no problem
Scottish independence would guarantee political chaos for a decade. As we disentangle 300 years of union. More immediately it means instant economic emergency. Sindy Scotland would default immediately, and be plunged into Depression. rUK would follow with an intense recession, or worse. All this as we try to recover from the worst crisis since WW2. With debt over 100%
London might itself default, or be forced to print money like Mugabe
It is insane
Worth it if we don't have to listen to the whinging whining Scots any more...
Well, you could argue that if you wanted to stir the pot, but more to the point the difficulty of unpicking the Union is overdone - at least from the point of view of the remainder of the UK, which is about 11 or 12 times the size of Scotland.
Apart from having to move many thousands of admin jobs South (a lot of central Government work in pensions and overseas aid administration is located in and around Glasgow, IIRC,) the main source of disruption to Westminster is what on Earth to do with Trident. Who knows what it might decide? The Government could lease the base whilst it built a new one in England, ask the Americans if we could park the submarines over there whilst we built a new base in England, or it could disarm.
And that's it. The main problem. The rest of it is all down to the division of assets and liabilities, which would either be done on a population proportionate basis, or with the UK taking on the lot and Scotland starting with a clean slate. What's left of the UK could then proceed on its way; other thorny issues such as what to do about the currency, the budget deficit and relations with the EU would self-evidently be matters for the Scots to worry about, not us.
None of this is to understate the level of disruption that the separation process would entail, or the potential for it to turn poisonous. After all, the moment Scotland votes to secede then Westminster's responsibility becomes securing the best terms for the remainder of the country, and the Scottish Government is well used to nursing grievances against Westminster to bolster its own popularity. But it is manageable, and would most definitely not constitute an 'economic emergency.' If we can survive Brexit without imploding then we can certainly survive, say, a hard border with Scotland, which is vastly less important than the EU as a trading partner.
If things are more awkward for them, well, under those circumstances that would no longer be our problem.
You don’t understand. A bankrupt Scotland using sterling would oblige us to help out. We’d have to, even tho we wouldn’t want to.
Moreover, the UK will be reliant on the kindness of strangers - AKA ‘borrowing’ - for the next decade. Debt over 100%
Will people still be happy to lend to us at generous interest rates, as we lose a third of the nation by size, and exhibit signs of chronic instability? Because all this will come on top of Covid and Brexit.
Personally I’d only lend to us if I could exact a stiff premium. We will pay more to borrow at a time when we are borrowing trillions. It is the exact recipe for disaster, for Scots and English alike
Your arguments don't hold water.
Firstly, London only becomes responsible for rescuing Edinburgh if (1) it screws its finances up *and* (2) we agree a currency union, like the Eurozone. Which we would be mad to do, and wouldn't do. States like Panama that adopt a policy of dollarization are obliged to manage their finances very carefully, because the United States is quite explicitly not expected to bail them out if they get into trouble. If Scotland attempted sterlingisation (which I wouldn't expect it to do, because that would be extremely silly) then it would find itself in the same position.
Secondly, there is no reason why the UK's borrowing costs should suddenly spike when it sheds a territory that's a net drain on the resources of the Treasury. If Wessex became a thing again and left then it might cause that sort of problem. Not so Scotland.
Looking at Scottish spending surely (1)is a given so we better not agree to 2.
After all the reason Scotland is in union with England was due to (1) occurring from 1698 onwards
With today's announcement, the EU won't have to worry about the Tories trying to make the UK into Singapore on Thames. I thought one of the big selling points for Brexit was supposed be to enable the UK to become much more attractive to global business?
For balance, I wonder if this is smoke and mirrors from Sunak
By predicting zero deficit (via this delayed Corp tax) he can calm the markets, which might otherwise get spooked by our present, enormous borrowing and debt
Meanwhile he is pump-priming the economy with investment incentives. Perhaps he therefore hopes growth will turn out better than anticipated, thus allowing him to increase Corp tax by less, when the time comes.
A bit of legerdemain. Possible.
France can currently borrow for 10 years for...
Ah yes, less than zero. You are literally guaranteed to lose money if you buy 10 year French government bonds. It's return free risk.
The markets didn't need to be convinced that the UK government was getting tough on deficits. Because the market will currently fund any deficit with a big smile on its face.
"Our expectation for the level of house prices in 2021 and 2022 is 10 per cent higher on average than in November"
Somebody here will tell me that the Tories care about making housing more affordable! It's a bubble - and they are reinflating it. Dreadful.
All recently retired couples in the stockbroker belt now have to do is wait one more year before signing that equity release agreement, then they'll be able to gift their youngest a deposit to buy their own place *and* afford that round the world cruise.
Wonderful! Thank you Rishi!
Votes secured for the next election, marginal seat saved from Lib Dem challenge. Job done.
With today's announcement, the EU won't have to worry about the Tories trying to make the UK into Singapore on Thames. I thought one of the big selling points for Brexit was supposed be to enable the UK to become much more attractive to global business?
For balance, I wonder if this is smoke and mirrors from Sunak
By predicting zero deficit (via this delayed Corp tax) he can calm the markets, which might otherwise get spooked by our present, enormous borrowing and debt
Meanwhile he is pump-priming the economy with investment incentives. Perhaps he therefore hopes growth will turn out better than anticipated, thus allowing him to increase Corp tax by less, when the time comes.
A bit of legerdemain. Possible.
Oddly plausible. He's made a gesture about dealing with things, in order to enable those who care to continue on calmly.
I came into this discussion thinking that the legacy UK parties were permafucked and the SNP would simply romp to yet another victory.
However, I granted our guest authors the courtesy of reading their piece in full, anyway.
The legacy UK parties are probably* permafucked and the SNP is probably* going to romp to yet another victory.
*By probably I mean certainly, of course. The Conservatives and Labour don't merely have 'a lot of work to do in the next two months' to make significant progress. They need to build, test and commission a mind-control field generator that can successfully reprogram the brains of the entire population. Not even the Chinese have figured out how to make that happen.
You could gave written that about Labour in Scotland 30 years ago
So maybe the SNP only has thirty years left in power? You may very well be right. It depends rather on how long it actually takes them to get independence over the finishing line.
I don't doubt that there are Scots who still feel British but they're a minority and, I think you'll find, a shrinking one at that - something that will be brutally laid bare by the results of this year's census, when I expect that the ratio of British to English/Scottish/Welsh/(Northern) Irish identification will have changed markedly all over the UK since 2011.
The only thing that's holding the Union together now is money. If the average Scottish voter thought that she would be £1 per year better off out than in, she'd be off like a shot.
The most recent poll was 50/50 and independence falling in the polls and this before these hearings
It is no means certain that Scotland will vote for independence
Well, there's a long way to go, and we shall see.
The Achilles' heel of the independence movement is, as I said before, money. If a large part of the Scottish electorate didn't believe that separation would put their taxes up then they'd have voted to go in 2014. And it could yet do for the nationalists again - although quite why the maintenance of a state that's held together mainly by bribery is something that is either morally healthy or to be desired is never adequately explained.
OTOH 'you will be poorer if you do this' was the central theme of David Cameron's campaign to vanquish Brexit, and look what became of him.
You’re somewhat ignoring the 30-40% of Scots who are passionately Unionist. There’s plenty of them. Probably about the same as there are passionate Nats.
This is one reason I believe Indy would be a tragedy - for Scotland. It would make Brexit look like a harmonious decision which brought peace to the nation. Indy would unleash demons, and sow decades of bitterness. Ending a 300 year old union would be emotionally explosive (and economically ruinous)
Scotland is not Ireland in 1921 when the large majority of Catholics had a settled will for secession. Scotland is grievously divided.
If Sturgeon gets her maj and seeks Indy, Boris must be the statesman, which will be hard for him. Even as he refuses a vote he must search for compromise, to save Scots and Brits from many more years of rancour
62% of the Scottish population answered the national identity question in the 2011 census as "Scottish only" and the number will only have moved in one direction in the subsequent decade. I don't believe that there's this vast reservoir of committed unionists. There will certainly be some committed unionists, and another tranche of pragmatic unionists, and a fair number of people who just sort of sit around in the middle as well, but I somehow doubt that there's this ocean of pro-Union sentiment out there in Scotland, any more than there was of pro-EU sentiment in Britain in 2016. It's a niche interest.
As I said, the swing vote in Scotland consists of middle-class waverers who fear that independence will hit them in their bank balances and pension pots. It's why the campaign in 2014 revolved principally around sterling, state pensions and the Barnett formula. Britain is held together by money. There is nothing else left.
Sturgeon just has to convince enough that the Brussels money tree will replace London's. (It won't of course but by the time they realise that it will be too late).
I suspect too many of us are thinking of the SNP as a mere political party rather than an African style liberation movement. Corruption and incompetence are irrelevant to the faithful, only the cause matters. Hatred of the Tories (i.e. the English) has become for nationalists a defining characteristic of Scottish identity just as Anglophobia is in Ireland. If independence comes to pass the SNP will continue to blame London for Scotland's problems (probably successfully) for at least 30 years.
I am surprised how sanguine so many others are at the prospect of the break up of the UK. If Lincoln had had the same attitude in 1861 we might still have actual slave traders today rather than just old statues of them.
The relaxed attitude amazes me as well. Oh, Scottish independence, no problem
Scottish independence would guarantee political chaos for a decade. As we disentangle 300 years of union. More immediately it means instant economic emergency. Sindy Scotland would default immediately, and be plunged into Depression. rUK would follow with an intense recession, or worse. All this as we try to recover from the worst crisis since WW2. With debt over 100%
London might itself default, or be forced to print money like Mugabe
It is insane
Worth it if we don't have to listen to the whinging whining Scots any more...
Well, you could argue that if you wanted to stir the pot, but more to the point the difficulty of unpicking the Union is overdone - at least from the point of view of the remainder of the UK, which is about 11 or 12 times the size of Scotland.
Apart from having to move many thousands of admin jobs South (a lot of central Government work in pensions and overseas aid administration is located in and around Glasgow, IIRC,) the main source of disruption to Westminster is what on Earth to do with Trident. Who knows what it might decide? The Government could lease the base whilst it built a new one in England, ask the Americans if we could park the submarines over there whilst we built a new base in England, or it could disarm.
And that's it. The main problem. The rest of it is all down to the division of assets and liabilities, which would either be done on a population proportionate basis, or with the UK taking on the lot and Scotland starting with a clean slate. What's left of the UK could then proceed on its way; other thorny issues such as what to do about the currency, the budget deficit and relations with the EU would self-evidently be matters for the Scots to worry about, not us.
None of this is to understate the level of disruption that the separation process would entail, or the potential for it to turn poisonous. After all, the moment Scotland votes to secede then Westminster's responsibility becomes securing the best terms for the remainder of the country, and the Scottish Government is well used to nursing grievances against Westminster to bolster its own popularity. But it is manageable, and would most definitely not constitute an 'economic emergency.' If we can survive Brexit without imploding then we can certainly survive, say, a hard border with Scotland, which is vastly less important than the EU as a trading partner.
If things are more awkward for them, well, under those circumstances that would no longer be our problem.
You don’t understand. A bankrupt Scotland using sterling would oblige us to help out. We’d have to, even tho we wouldn’t want to.
Moreover, the UK will be reliant on the kindness of strangers - AKA ‘borrowing’ - for the next decade. Debt over 100%
Will people still be happy to lend to us at generous interest rates, as we lose a third of the nation by size, and exhibit signs of chronic instability? Because all this will come on top of Covid and Brexit.
Personally I’d only lend to us if I could exact a stiff premium. We will pay more to borrow at a time when we are borrowing trillions. It is the exact recipe for disaster, for Scots and English alike
Your arguments don't hold water.
Firstly, London only becomes responsible for rescuing Edinburgh if (1) it screws its finances up *and* (2) we agree a currency union, like the Eurozone. Which we would be mad to do, and wouldn't do. States like Panama that adopt a policy of dollarization are obliged to manage their finances very carefully, because the United States is quite explicitly not expected to bail them out if they get into trouble. If Scotland attempted sterlingisation (which I wouldn't expect it to do, because that would be extremely silly) then it would find itself in the same position.
Secondly, there is no reason why the UK's borrowing costs should suddenly spike when it sheds a territory that's a net drain on the resources of the Treasury. If Wessex became a thing again and left then it might cause that sort of problem. Not so Scotland.
It's worth reading the analysis of the Mexican government debt crisis of the early 1990s. Basically, bailing out Mexico was considered to be far cheaper than letting it fail. I suspect a similar analysis would play out here.
With today's announcement, the EU won't have to worry about the Tories trying to make the UK into Singapore on Thames. I thought one of the big selling points for Brexit was supposed be to enable the UK to become much more attractive to global business?
For balance, I wonder if this is smoke and mirrors from Sunak
By predicting zero deficit (via this delayed Corp tax) he can calm the markets, which might otherwise get spooked by our present, enormous borrowing and debt
Meanwhile he is pump-priming the economy with investment incentives. Perhaps he therefore hopes growth will turn out better than anticipated, thus allowing him to increase Corp tax by less, when the time comes.
A bit of legerdemain. Possible.
Its totally the wrong signal for business post Brexit...so Britain have done this Brexit thing and it makes trading with rest of Europe trickier, not impossible, but going to be some extra pain in the ass for the foreseeable future....what and now they say they will jack corporation tax up as well....get Ireland on the phone instead.
Even if smoke and mirrors, businesses plan years ahead, they will spend the next 2 years working on the assumption this big jump in corporation tax is coming and decide accordingly.
I came into this discussion thinking that the legacy UK parties were permafucked and the SNP would simply romp to yet another victory.
However, I granted our guest authors the courtesy of reading their piece in full, anyway.
The legacy UK parties are probably* permafucked and the SNP is probably* going to romp to yet another victory.
*By probably I mean certainly, of course. The Conservatives and Labour don't merely have 'a lot of work to do in the next two months' to make significant progress. They need to build, test and commission a mind-control field generator that can successfully reprogram the brains of the entire population. Not even the Chinese have figured out how to make that happen.
You could gave written that about Labour in Scotland 30 years ago
So maybe the SNP only has thirty years left in power? You may very well be right. It depends rather on how long it actually takes them to get independence over the finishing line.
I don't doubt that there are Scots who still feel British but they're a minority and, I think you'll find, a shrinking one at that - something that will be brutally laid bare by the results of this year's census, when I expect that the ratio of British to English/Scottish/Welsh/(Northern) Irish identification will have changed markedly all over the UK since 2011.
The only thing that's holding the Union together now is money. If the average Scottish voter thought that she would be £1 per year better off out than in, she'd be off like a shot.
The most recent poll was 50/50 and independence falling in the polls and this before these hearings
It is no means certain that Scotland will vote for independence
Well, there's a long way to go, and we shall see.
The Achilles' heel of the independence movement is, as I said before, money. If a large part of the Scottish electorate didn't believe that separation would put their taxes up then they'd have voted to go in 2014. And it could yet do for the nationalists again - although quite why the maintenance of a state that's held together mainly by bribery is something that is either morally healthy or to be desired is never adequately explained.
OTOH 'you will be poorer if you do this' was the central theme of David Cameron's campaign to vanquish Brexit, and look what became of him.
You’re somewhat ignoring the 30-40% of Scots who are passionately Unionist. There’s plenty of them. Probably about the same as there are passionate Nats.
This is one reason I believe Indy would be a tragedy - for Scotland. It would make Brexit look like a harmonious decision which brought peace to the nation. Indy would unleash demons, and sow decades of bitterness. Ending a 300 year old union would be emotionally explosive (and economically ruinous)
Scotland is not Ireland in 1921 when the large majority of Catholics had a settled will for secession. Scotland is grievously divided.
If Sturgeon gets her maj and seeks Indy, Boris must be the statesman, which will be hard for him. Even as he refuses a vote he must search for compromise, to save Scots and Brits from many more years of rancour
62% of the Scottish population answered the national identity question in the 2011 census as "Scottish only" and the number will only have moved in one direction in the subsequent decade. I don't believe that there's this vast reservoir of committed unionists. There will certainly be some committed unionists, and another tranche of pragmatic unionists, and a fair number of people who just sort of sit around in the middle as well, but I somehow doubt that there's this ocean of pro-Union sentiment out there in Scotland, any more than there was of pro-EU sentiment in Britain in 2016. It's a niche interest.
As I said, the swing vote in Scotland consists of middle-class waverers who fear that independence will hit them in their bank balances and pension pots. It's why the campaign in 2014 revolved principally around sterling, state pensions and the Barnett formula. Britain is held together by money. There is nothing else left.
Sturgeon just has to convince enough that the Brussels money tree will replace London's. (It won't of course but by the time they realise that it will be too late).
I suspect too many of us are thinking of the SNP as a mere political party rather than an African style liberation movement. Corruption and incompetence are irrelevant to the faithful, only the cause matters. Hatred of the Tories (i.e. the English) has become for nationalists a defining characteristic of Scottish identity just as Anglophobia is in Ireland. If independence comes to pass the SNP will continue to blame London for Scotland's problems (probably successfully) for at least 30 years.
I am surprised how sanguine so many others are at the prospect of the break up of the UK. If Lincoln had had the same attitude in 1861 we might still have actual slave traders today rather than just old statues of them.
The relaxed attitude amazes me as well. Oh, Scottish independence, no problem
Scottish independence would guarantee political chaos for a decade. As we disentangle 300 years of union. More immediately it means instant economic emergency. Sindy Scotland would default immediately, and be plunged into Depression. rUK would follow with an intense recession, or worse. All this as we try to recover from the worst crisis since WW2. With debt over 100%
London might itself default, or be forced to print money like Mugabe
It is insane
Worth it if we don't have to listen to the whinging whining Scots any more...
Well, you could argue that if you wanted to stir the pot, but more to the point the difficulty of unpicking the Union is overdone - at least from the point of view of the remainder of the UK, which is about 11 or 12 times the size of Scotland.
Apart from having to move many thousands of admin jobs South (a lot of central Government work in pensions and overseas aid administration is located in and around Glasgow, IIRC,) the main source of disruption to Westminster is what on Earth to do with Trident. Who knows what it might decide? The Government could lease the base whilst it built a new one in England, ask the Americans if we could park the submarines over there whilst we built a new base in England, or it could disarm.
And that's it. The main problem. The rest of it is all down to the division of assets and liabilities, which would either be done on a population proportionate basis, or with the UK taking on the lot and Scotland starting with a clean slate. What's left of the UK could then proceed on its way; other thorny issues such as what to do about the currency, the budget deficit and relations with the EU would self-evidently be matters for the Scots to worry about, not us.
None of this is to understate the level of disruption that the separation process would entail, or the potential for it to turn poisonous. After all, the moment Scotland votes to secede then Westminster's responsibility becomes securing the best terms for the remainder of the country, and the Scottish Government is well used to nursing grievances against Westminster to bolster its own popularity. But it is manageable, and would most definitely not constitute an 'economic emergency.' If we can survive Brexit without imploding then we can certainly survive, say, a hard border with Scotland, which is vastly less important than the EU as a trading partner.
If things are more awkward for them, well, under those circumstances that would no longer be our problem.
You don’t understand. A bankrupt Scotland using sterling would oblige us to help out. We’d have to, even tho we wouldn’t want to.
Moreover, the UK will be reliant on the kindness of strangers - AKA ‘borrowing’ - for the next decade. Debt over 100%
Will people still be happy to lend to us at generous interest rates, as we lose a third of the nation by size, and exhibit signs of chronic instability? Because all this will come on top of Covid and Brexit.
Personally I’d only lend to us if I could exact a stiff premium. We will pay more to borrow at a time when we are borrowing trillions. It is the exact recipe for disaster, for Scots and English alike
Your arguments don't hold water.
Firstly, London only becomes responsible for rescuing Edinburgh if (1) it screws its finances up *and* (2) we agree a currency union, like the Eurozone. Which we would be mad to do, and wouldn't do. States like Panama that adopt a policy of dollarization are obliged to manage their finances very carefully, because the United States is quite explicitly not expected to bail them out if they get into trouble. If Scotland attempted sterlingisation (which I wouldn't expect it to do, because that would be extremely silly) then it would find itself in the same position.
Secondly, there is no reason why the UK's borrowing costs should suddenly spike when it sheds a territory that's a net drain on the resources of the Treasury. If Wessex became a thing again and left then it might cause that sort of problem. Not so Scotland.
Remember we had to help bail out Ireland during the eurocrisis. We weren’t legally obliged to, but in economic terms, pragmatically, we had to. Because we are so interlinked
‘Osborne told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "But we have also made a commitment to consider a bilateral loan that reflects the fact we are not part of the euro… but Ireland is our very closest economic neighbour."’
With today's announcement, the EU won't have to worry about the Tories trying to make the UK into Singapore on Thames. I thought one of the big selling points for Brexit was supposed be to enable the UK to become much more attractive to global business?
For balance, I wonder if this is smoke and mirrors from Sunak
By predicting zero deficit (via this delayed Corp tax) he can calm the markets, which might otherwise get spooked by our present, enormous borrowing and debt
Meanwhile he is pump-priming the economy with investment incentives. Perhaps he therefore hopes growth will turn out better than anticipated, thus allowing him to increase Corp tax by less, when the time comes.
A bit of legerdemain. Possible.
France can currently borrow for 10 years for...
Ah yes, less than zero. You are literally guaranteed to lose money if you buy 10 year French government bonds. It's return free risk.
The markets didn't need to be convinced that the UK government was getting tough on deficits. Because the market will currently fund any deficit with a big smile on its face.
But the bond guys are getting nervous somewhere in the process - isn't 10 year US debt yield notching up at the moment?
I came into this discussion thinking that the legacy UK parties were permafucked and the SNP would simply romp to yet another victory.
However, I granted our guest authors the courtesy of reading their piece in full, anyway.
The legacy UK parties are probably* permafucked and the SNP is probably* going to romp to yet another victory.
*By probably I mean certainly, of course. The Conservatives and Labour don't merely have 'a lot of work to do in the next two months' to make significant progress. They need to build, test and commission a mind-control field generator that can successfully reprogram the brains of the entire population. Not even the Chinese have figured out how to make that happen.
You could gave written that about Labour in Scotland 30 years ago
So maybe the SNP only has thirty years left in power? You may very well be right. It depends rather on how long it actually takes them to get independence over the finishing line.
I don't doubt that there are Scots who still feel British but they're a minority and, I think you'll find, a shrinking one at that - something that will be brutally laid bare by the results of this year's census, when I expect that the ratio of British to English/Scottish/Welsh/(Northern) Irish identification will have changed markedly all over the UK since 2011.
The only thing that's holding the Union together now is money. If the average Scottish voter thought that she would be £1 per year better off out than in, she'd be off like a shot.
The most recent poll was 50/50 and independence falling in the polls and this before these hearings
It is no means certain that Scotland will vote for independence
Well, there's a long way to go, and we shall see.
The Achilles' heel of the independence movement is, as I said before, money. If a large part of the Scottish electorate didn't believe that separation would put their taxes up then they'd have voted to go in 2014. And it could yet do for the nationalists again - although quite why the maintenance of a state that's held together mainly by bribery is something that is either morally healthy or to be desired is never adequately explained.
OTOH 'you will be poorer if you do this' was the central theme of David Cameron's campaign to vanquish Brexit, and look what became of him.
You’re somewhat ignoring the 30-40% of Scots who are passionately Unionist. There’s plenty of them. Probably about the same as there are passionate Nats.
This is one reason I believe Indy would be a tragedy - for Scotland. It would make Brexit look like a harmonious decision which brought peace to the nation. Indy would unleash demons, and sow decades of bitterness. Ending a 300 year old union would be emotionally explosive (and economically ruinous)
Scotland is not Ireland in 1921 when the large majority of Catholics had a settled will for secession. Scotland is grievously divided.
If Sturgeon gets her maj and seeks Indy, Boris must be the statesman, which will be hard for him. Even as he refuses a vote he must search for compromise, to save Scots and Brits from many more years of rancour
62% of the Scottish population answered the national identity question in the 2011 census as "Scottish only" and the number will only have moved in one direction in the subsequent decade. I don't believe that there's this vast reservoir of committed unionists. There will certainly be some committed unionists, and another tranche of pragmatic unionists, and a fair number of people who just sort of sit around in the middle as well, but I somehow doubt that there's this ocean of pro-Union sentiment out there in Scotland, any more than there was of pro-EU sentiment in Britain in 2016. It's a niche interest.
As I said, the swing vote in Scotland consists of middle-class waverers who fear that independence will hit them in their bank balances and pension pots. It's why the campaign in 2014 revolved principally around sterling, state pensions and the Barnett formula. Britain is held together by money. There is nothing else left.
Sturgeon just has to convince enough that the Brussels money tree will replace London's. (It won't of course but by the time they realise that it will be too late).
I suspect too many of us are thinking of the SNP as a mere political party rather than an African style liberation movement. Corruption and incompetence are irrelevant to the faithful, only the cause matters. Hatred of the Tories (i.e. the English) has become for nationalists a defining characteristic of Scottish identity just as Anglophobia is in Ireland. If independence comes to pass the SNP will continue to blame London for Scotland's problems (probably successfully) for at least 30 years.
I am surprised how sanguine so many others are at the prospect of the break up of the UK. If Lincoln had had the same attitude in 1861 we might still have actual slave traders today rather than just old statues of them.
The relaxed attitude amazes me as well. Oh, Scottish independence, no problem
Scottish independence would guarantee political chaos for a decade. As we disentangle 300 years of union. More immediately it means instant economic emergency. Sindy Scotland would default immediately, and be plunged into Depression. rUK would follow with an intense recession, or worse. All this as we try to recover from the worst crisis since WW2. With debt over 100%
London might itself default, or be forced to print money like Mugabe
It is insane
Worth it if we don't have to listen to the whinging whining Scots any more...
Well, you could argue that if you wanted to stir the pot, but more to the point the difficulty of unpicking the Union is overdone - at least from the point of view of the remainder of the UK, which is about 11 or 12 times the size of Scotland.
Apart from having to move many thousands of admin jobs South (a lot of central Government work in pensions and overseas aid administration is located in and around Glasgow, IIRC,) the main source of disruption to Westminster is what on Earth to do with Trident. Who knows what it might decide? The Government could lease the base whilst it built a new one in England, ask the Americans if we could park the submarines over there whilst we built a new base in England, or it could disarm.
And that's it. The main problem. The rest of it is all down to the division of assets and liabilities, which would either be done on a population proportionate basis, or with the UK taking on the lot and Scotland starting with a clean slate. What's left of the UK could then proceed on its way; other thorny issues such as what to do about the currency, the budget deficit and relations with the EU would self-evidently be matters for the Scots to worry about, not us.
None of this is to understate the level of disruption that the separation process would entail, or the potential for it to turn poisonous. After all, the moment Scotland votes to secede then Westminster's responsibility becomes securing the best terms for the remainder of the country, and the Scottish Government is well used to nursing grievances against Westminster to bolster its own popularity. But it is manageable, and would most definitely not constitute an 'economic emergency.' If we can survive Brexit without imploding then we can certainly survive, say, a hard border with Scotland, which is vastly less important than the EU as a trading partner.
If things are more awkward for them, well, under those circumstances that would no longer be our problem.
You don’t understand. A bankrupt Scotland using sterling would oblige us to help out. We’d have to, even tho we wouldn’t want to.
Moreover, the UK will be reliant on the kindness of strangers - AKA ‘borrowing’ - for the next decade. Debt over 100%
Will people still be happy to lend to us at generous interest rates, as we lose a third of the nation by size, and exhibit signs of chronic instability? Because all this will come on top of Covid and Brexit.
Personally I’d only lend to us if I could exact a stiff premium. We will pay more to borrow at a time when we are borrowing trillions. It is the exact recipe for disaster, for Scots and English alike
Your arguments don't hold water.
Firstly, London only becomes responsible for rescuing Edinburgh if (1) it screws its finances up *and* (2) we agree a currency union, like the Eurozone. Which we would be mad to do, and wouldn't do. States like Panama that adopt a policy of dollarization are obliged to manage their finances very carefully, because the United States is quite explicitly not expected to bail them out if they get into trouble. If Scotland attempted sterlingisation (which I wouldn't expect it to do, because that would be extremely silly) then it would find itself in the same position.
Secondly, there is no reason why the UK's borrowing costs should suddenly spike when it sheds a territory that's a net drain on the resources of the Treasury. If Wessex became a thing again and left then it might cause that sort of problem. Not so Scotland.
It's worth reading the analysis of the Mexican government debt crisis of the early 1990s. Basically, bailing out Mexico was considered to be far cheaper than letting it fail. I suspect a similar analysis would play out here.
Isn't that essentially why we helped bail out Ireland during the Euro crisis (while telling the Eurozone we weren't helping the rest of the PIIGS)?
Despite the high vaccination rate, Israel figures do seem stubbornly high (multiply by 9 for the UK). Certainly they too have antivaxers in the Arab and Haredi communities, but even so, shouldn't rates be dropping faster?
I read somewhere that Haredi are ~12% of the population, but 40% of cases.
German doctors are reportedly concerned about the large proportion of people from minority ethnic backgrounds among coronavirus patients in intensive care, citing a lack of proper communication with Muslim communities in particular about the dangers of the disease.
Lothar Wieler, the head of the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s disease control agency, confirmed that the issue was discussed with senior medical consultants last month, though he stressed the meeting was informal.
...
He is quoted as saying Muslims make up 4.8% of Germany’s population, “but amongst those lying on the intensive care wards, this group makes up considerably more than 50%”.
With today's announcement, the EU won't have to worry about the Tories trying to make the UK into Singapore on Thames. I thought one of the big selling points for Brexit was supposed be to enable the UK to become much more attractive to global business?
For balance, I wonder if this is smoke and mirrors from Sunak
By predicting zero deficit (via this delayed Corp tax) he can calm the markets, which might otherwise get spooked by our present, enormous borrowing and debt
Meanwhile he is pump-priming the economy with investment incentives. Perhaps he therefore hopes growth will turn out better than anticipated, thus allowing him to increase Corp tax by less, when the time comes.
A bit of legerdemain. Possible.
Its totally the wrong signal for business post Brexit...so Britain have done this Brexit thing and it makes trading with rest of Europe trickier, not impossible, but going to be some extra pain in the ass for the foreseeable future....what and now they say they will jack corporation tax up as well....get Ireland on the phone instead.
Even if smoke and mirrors, businesses plan years ahead, they will spend the next 2 years working on the assumption this big jump in corporation tax is coming and decide accordingly.
Lord Frost spoke to European Commission Vice President Maroš Šefčovič this evening.
This was their first meeting since Lord Frost took up the role as Minister co-chairing the Partnership Council and the Withdrawal Agreement Joint Committee with the EU.
He underlined, as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster had in his letter of 2 February, that progress still needed to be urgently made to address the direct and often disproportionate impact that aspects of the Protocol are having on the citizens of Northern Ireland, contrary to its intended purpose. He acknowledged the work of the Joint Committee over the last few weeks since the Commission’s triggering of Article 16 of the Protocol on 29 January, but noted that these discussions had not yet resolved the current difficulties.
Lord Frost explained that the measures announced today, following official-level notification to the Commission earlier this week, were temporary technical steps, which largely continued measures already in place, to provide more time for businesses such as supermarkets and parcel operators to adapt to and implement the new requirements in the Protocol. He underlined that these were needed for operational reasons and were the minimum necessary steps to allow time for constructive discussions in the Joint Committee to continue without the prospect of disruption to the everyday life of people in Northern Ireland in the coming weeks.
He noted that such operational measures were well precedented in other international trade arrangements, and that they were entirely consistent with our intention to discharge our obligations under the Protocol in good faith.
That unknown testee who came through France should probably be shot. It'd send a message at any rate. Brazil's test rate is appalling, only 13% of the population tested so far in the pandemic, though not as bad as Mexico @ 42k tests/million !
Northern Ireland: in the absence of politics taking their concerns about an Irish sea border seriously (as opposed to the Irish land border, which is taken very seriously) I suspect some hardline loyalists have concluded that threatening to destabilise the peace process is the only credible tool they have left.
This is what happens when you play games with NI, which the EU has tried to do since 2017 to crowbar the UK into close alignment with it.
There's no way out of it other than a giant fudge that addresses the concerns of both nationalist and unionist communities, and recognises they voted different ways. Eire knows this and the EU should listen.
With today's announcement, the EU won't have to worry about the Tories trying to make the UK into Singapore on Thames. I thought one of the big selling points for Brexit was supposed be to enable the UK to become much more attractive to global business?
For balance, I wonder if this is smoke and mirrors from Sunak
By predicting zero deficit (via this delayed Corp tax) he can calm the markets, which might otherwise get spooked by our present, enormous borrowing and debt
Meanwhile he is pump-priming the economy with investment incentives. Perhaps he therefore hopes growth will turn out better than anticipated, thus allowing him to increase Corp tax by less, when the time comes.
A bit of legerdemain. Possible.
He also might be lucky with higher inflation leading to greater increase in tax receipts from fiscal drag.
That's one of my main worries with the plan to freeze rates and allowances for five years. It's a huge tax increase with modest inflation, but if we have a couple of years with more inflation, then it will be humongous.
If compound inflation adds up to 20% then it's equivalent to a cut of £2,550 in the personal allowance, or £10,000 in the higher rate tax band.
I came into this discussion thinking that the legacy UK parties were permafucked and the SNP would simply romp to yet another victory.
However, I granted our guest authors the courtesy of reading their piece in full, anyway.
The legacy UK parties are probably* permafucked and the SNP is probably* going to romp to yet another victory.
*By probably I mean certainly, of course. The Conservatives and Labour don't merely have 'a lot of work to do in the next two months' to make significant progress. They need to build, test and commission a mind-control field generator that can successfully reprogram the brains of the entire population. Not even the Chinese have figured out how to make that happen.
You could gave written that about Labour in Scotland 30 years ago
So maybe the SNP only has thirty years left in power? You may very well be right. It depends rather on how long it actually takes them to get independence over the finishing line.
I don't doubt that there are Scots who still feel British but they're a minority and, I think you'll find, a shrinking one at that - something that will be brutally laid bare by the results of this year's census, when I expect that the ratio of British to English/Scottish/Welsh/(Northern) Irish identification will have changed markedly all over the UK since 2011.
The only thing that's holding the Union together now is money. If the average Scottish voter thought that she would be £1 per year better off out than in, she'd be off like a shot.
The most recent poll was 50/50 and independence falling in the polls and this before these hearings
It is no means certain that Scotland will vote for independence
Well, there's a long way to go, and we shall see.
The Achilles' heel of the independence movement is, as I said before, money. If a large part of the Scottish electorate didn't believe that separation would put their taxes up then they'd have voted to go in 2014. And it could yet do for the nationalists again - although quite why the maintenance of a state that's held together mainly by bribery is something that is either morally healthy or to be desired is never adequately explained.
OTOH 'you will be poorer if you do this' was the central theme of David Cameron's campaign to vanquish Brexit, and look what became of him.
You’re somewhat ignoring the 30-40% of Scots who are passionately Unionist. There’s plenty of them. Probably about the same as there are passionate Nats.
This is one reason I believe Indy would be a tragedy - for Scotland. It would make Brexit look like a harmonious decision which brought peace to the nation. Indy would unleash demons, and sow decades of bitterness. Ending a 300 year old union would be emotionally explosive (and economically ruinous)
Scotland is not Ireland in 1921 when the large majority of Catholics had a settled will for secession. Scotland is grievously divided.
If Sturgeon gets her maj and seeks Indy, Boris must be the statesman, which will be hard for him. Even as he refuses a vote he must search for compromise, to save Scots and Brits from many more years of rancour
62% of the Scottish population answered the national identity question in the 2011 census as "Scottish only" and the number will only have moved in one direction in the subsequent decade. I don't believe that there's this vast reservoir of committed unionists. There will certainly be some committed unionists, and another tranche of pragmatic unionists, and a fair number of people who just sort of sit around in the middle as well, but I somehow doubt that there's this ocean of pro-Union sentiment out there in Scotland, any more than there was of pro-EU sentiment in Britain in 2016. It's a niche interest.
As I said, the swing vote in Scotland consists of middle-class waverers who fear that independence will hit them in their bank balances and pension pots. It's why the campaign in 2014 revolved principally around sterling, state pensions and the Barnett formula. Britain is held together by money. There is nothing else left.
Sturgeon just has to convince enough that the Brussels money tree will replace London's. (It won't of course but by the time they realise that it will be too late).
I suspect too many of us are thinking of the SNP as a mere political party rather than an African style liberation movement. Corruption and incompetence are irrelevant to the faithful, only the cause matters. Hatred of the Tories (i.e. the English) has become for nationalists a defining characteristic of Scottish identity just as Anglophobia is in Ireland. If independence comes to pass the SNP will continue to blame London for Scotland's problems (probably successfully) for at least 30 years.
I am surprised how sanguine so many others are at the prospect of the break up of the UK. If Lincoln had had the same attitude in 1861 we might still have actual slave traders today rather than just old statues of them.
The relaxed attitude amazes me as well. Oh, Scottish independence, no problem
Scottish independence would guarantee political chaos for a decade. As we disentangle 300 years of union. More immediately it means instant economic emergency. Sindy Scotland would default immediately, and be plunged into Depression. rUK would follow with an intense recession, or worse. All this as we try to recover from the worst crisis since WW2. With debt over 100%
London might itself default, or be forced to print money like Mugabe
It is insane
Worth it if we don't have to listen to the whinging whining Scots any more...
Well, you could argue that if you wanted to stir the pot, but more to the point the difficulty of unpicking the Union is overdone - at least from the point of view of the remainder of the UK, which is about 11 or 12 times the size of Scotland.
Apart from having to move many thousands of admin jobs South (a lot of central Government work in pensions and overseas aid administration is located in and around Glasgow, IIRC,) the main source of disruption to Westminster is what on Earth to do with Trident. Who knows what it might decide? The Government could lease the base whilst it built a new one in England, ask the Americans if we could park the submarines over there whilst we built a new base in England, or it could disarm.
And that's it. The main problem. The rest of it is all down to the division of assets and liabilities, which would either be done on a population proportionate basis, or with the UK taking on the lot and Scotland starting with a clean slate. What's left of the UK could then proceed on its way; other thorny issues such as what to do about the currency, the budget deficit and relations with the EU would self-evidently be matters for the Scots to worry about, not us.
None of this is to understate the level of disruption that the separation process would entail, or the potential for it to turn poisonous. After all, the moment Scotland votes to secede then Westminster's responsibility becomes securing the best terms for the remainder of the country, and the Scottish Government is well used to nursing grievances against Westminster to bolster its own popularity. But it is manageable, and would most definitely not constitute an 'economic emergency.' If we can survive Brexit without imploding then we can certainly survive, say, a hard border with Scotland, which is vastly less important than the EU as a trading partner.
If things are more awkward for them, well, under those circumstances that would no longer be our problem.
You don’t understand. A bankrupt Scotland using sterling would oblige us to help out. We’d have to, even tho we wouldn’t want to.
Moreover, the UK will be reliant on the kindness of strangers - AKA ‘borrowing’ - for the next decade. Debt over 100%
Will people still be happy to lend to us at generous interest rates, as we lose a third of the nation by size, and exhibit signs of chronic instability? Because all this will come on top of Covid and Brexit.
Personally I’d only lend to us if I could exact a stiff premium. We will pay more to borrow at a time when we are borrowing trillions. It is the exact recipe for disaster, for Scots and English alike
Your arguments don't hold water.
Firstly, London only becomes responsible for rescuing Edinburgh if (1) it screws its finances up *and* (2) we agree a currency union, like the Eurozone. Which we would be mad to do, and wouldn't do. States like Panama that adopt a policy of dollarization are obliged to manage their finances very carefully, because the United States is quite explicitly not expected to bail them out if they get into trouble. If Scotland attempted sterlingisation (which I wouldn't expect it to do, because that would be extremely silly) then it would find itself in the same position.
Secondly, there is no reason why the UK's borrowing costs should suddenly spike when it sheds a territory that's a net drain on the resources of the Treasury. If Wessex became a thing again and left then it might cause that sort of problem. Not so Scotland.
It's worth reading the analysis of the Mexican government debt crisis of the early 1990s. Basically, bailing out Mexico was considered to be far cheaper than letting it fail. I suspect a similar analysis would play out here.
Isn't that essentially why we helped bail out Ireland during the Euro crisis (while telling the Eurozone we weren't helping the rest of the PIIGS)?
I doubt that headline 25% rate of corporation tax will ever happen.
Today was about to signalling to the markets and the general public that the Government is deadly serious about rebalancing the books in the medium-term.
There's a Bradford East, a Bradford West, and a Bradford South, but no bloody Bradford North.
It triggers my OCD something bad.
You think that's bad - I've none things at town level where, due to various changes causing boundaries to not line up, someone might be an a town ward east for one election, but county ward (named for town) north for another, on the same day.
Make it stop.
The next time you can bring yourself to do a little tourism in Oxford, make sure to drop in to the pleasant little row of shops and cafes on North Parade, before strolling a bit further north to do the same in the shops and restaurants of South Parade...
North Parade was the northernmost part of the Royalist defences in the Civil War. Guess what South Parade was?
Northern Ireland: in the absence of politics taking their concerns about an Irish sea border seriously (as opposed to the Irish land border, which is taken very seriously) I suspect some hardline loyalists have concluded that threatening to destabilise the peace process is the only credible tool they have left.
This is what happens when you play games with NI, which the EU has tried to do since 2017 to crowbar the UK into close alignment with it.
There's no way out of it other than a giant fudge that addresses the concerns of both nationalist and unionist communities, and recognises they voted different ways. Eire knows this and the EU should listen.
100% this.
The EU have fucked this up and they've not been helped by their useful idiots in this country smarmily assuming that the border has to be put in the Irish Sea if not the land border as a way to blackmail the UK into being in the EFTA.
No, the spirit of the GFA was to fudge these issues away. That is the solution. The sooner it is adopted the better.
I came into this discussion thinking that the legacy UK parties were permafucked and the SNP would simply romp to yet another victory.
However, I granted our guest authors the courtesy of reading their piece in full, anyway.
The legacy UK parties are probably* permafucked and the SNP is probably* going to romp to yet another victory.
*By probably I mean certainly, of course. The Conservatives and Labour don't merely have 'a lot of work to do in the next two months' to make significant progress. They need to build, test and commission a mind-control field generator that can successfully reprogram the brains of the entire population. Not even the Chinese have figured out how to make that happen.
You could gave written that about Labour in Scotland 30 years ago
So maybe the SNP only has thirty years left in power? You may very well be right. It depends rather on how long it actually takes them to get independence over the finishing line.
I don't doubt that there are Scots who still feel British but they're a minority and, I think you'll find, a shrinking one at that - something that will be brutally laid bare by the results of this year's census, when I expect that the ratio of British to English/Scottish/Welsh/(Northern) Irish identification will have changed markedly all over the UK since 2011.
The only thing that's holding the Union together now is money. If the average Scottish voter thought that she would be £1 per year better off out than in, she'd be off like a shot.
The most recent poll was 50/50 and independence falling in the polls and this before these hearings
It is no means certain that Scotland will vote for independence
Well, there's a long way to go, and we shall see.
The Achilles' heel of the independence movement is, as I said before, money. If a large part of the Scottish electorate didn't believe that separation would put their taxes up then they'd have voted to go in 2014. And it could yet do for the nationalists again - although quite why the maintenance of a state that's held together mainly by bribery is something that is either morally healthy or to be desired is never adequately explained.
OTOH 'you will be poorer if you do this' was the central theme of David Cameron's campaign to vanquish Brexit, and look what became of him.
You’re somewhat ignoring the 30-40% of Scots who are passionately Unionist. There’s plenty of them. Probably about the same as there are passionate Nats.
This is one reason I believe Indy would be a tragedy - for Scotland. It would make Brexit look like a harmonious decision which brought peace to the nation. Indy would unleash demons, and sow decades of bitterness. Ending a 300 year old union would be emotionally explosive (and economically ruinous)
Scotland is not Ireland in 1921 when the large majority of Catholics had a settled will for secession. Scotland is grievously divided.
If Sturgeon gets her maj and seeks Indy, Boris must be the statesman, which will be hard for him. Even as he refuses a vote he must search for compromise, to save Scots and Brits from many more years of rancour
62% of the Scottish population answered the national identity question in the 2011 census as "Scottish only" and the number will only have moved in one direction in the subsequent decade. I don't believe that there's this vast reservoir of committed unionists. There will certainly be some committed unionists, and another tranche of pragmatic unionists, and a fair number of people who just sort of sit around in the middle as well, but I somehow doubt that there's this ocean of pro-Union sentiment out there in Scotland, any more than there was of pro-EU sentiment in Britain in 2016. It's a niche interest.
As I said, the swing vote in Scotland consists of middle-class waverers who fear that independence will hit them in their bank balances and pension pots. It's why the campaign in 2014 revolved principally around sterling, state pensions and the Barnett formula. Britain is held together by money. There is nothing else left.
Sturgeon just has to convince enough that the Brussels money tree will replace London's. (It won't of course but by the time they realise that it will be too late).
I suspect too many of us are thinking of the SNP as a mere political party rather than an African style liberation movement. Corruption and incompetence are irrelevant to the faithful, only the cause matters. Hatred of the Tories (i.e. the English) has become for nationalists a defining characteristic of Scottish identity just as Anglophobia is in Ireland. If independence comes to pass the SNP will continue to blame London for Scotland's problems (probably successfully) for at least 30 years.
I am surprised how sanguine so many others are at the prospect of the break up of the UK. If Lincoln had had the same attitude in 1861 we might still have actual slave traders today rather than just old statues of them.
The relaxed attitude amazes me as well. Oh, Scottish independence, no problem
Scottish independence would guarantee political chaos for a decade. As we disentangle 300 years of union. More immediately it means instant economic emergency. Sindy Scotland would default immediately, and be plunged into Depression. rUK would follow with an intense recession, or worse. All this as we try to recover from the worst crisis since WW2. With debt over 100%
London might itself default, or be forced to print money like Mugabe
It is insane
Worth it if we don't have to listen to the whinging whining Scots any more...
Well, you could argue that if you wanted to stir the pot, but more to the point the difficulty of unpicking the Union is overdone - at least from the point of view of the remainder of the UK, which is about 11 or 12 times the size of Scotland.
Apart from having to move many thousands of admin jobs South (a lot of central Government work in pensions and overseas aid administration is located in and around Glasgow, IIRC,) the main source of disruption to Westminster is what on Earth to do with Trident. Who knows what it might decide? The Government could lease the base whilst it built a new one in England, ask the Americans if we could park the submarines over there whilst we built a new base in England, or it could disarm.
And that's it. The main problem. The rest of it is all down to the division of assets and liabilities, which would either be done on a population proportionate basis, or with the UK taking on the lot and Scotland starting with a clean slate. What's left of the UK could then proceed on its way; other thorny issues such as what to do about the currency, the budget deficit and relations with the EU would self-evidently be matters for the Scots to worry about, not us.
None of this is to understate the level of disruption that the separation process would entail, or the potential for it to turn poisonous. After all, the moment Scotland votes to secede then Westminster's responsibility becomes securing the best terms for the remainder of the country, and the Scottish Government is well used to nursing grievances against Westminster to bolster its own popularity. But it is manageable, and would most definitely not constitute an 'economic emergency.' If we can survive Brexit without imploding then we can certainly survive, say, a hard border with Scotland, which is vastly less important than the EU as a trading partner.
If things are more awkward for them, well, under those circumstances that would no longer be our problem.
You don’t understand. A bankrupt Scotland using sterling would oblige us to help out. We’d have to, even tho we wouldn’t want to.
Moreover, the UK will be reliant on the kindness of strangers - AKA ‘borrowing’ - for the next decade. Debt over 100%
Will people still be happy to lend to us at generous interest rates, as we lose a third of the nation by size, and exhibit signs of chronic instability? Because all this will come on top of Covid and Brexit.
Personally I’d only lend to us if I could exact a stiff premium. We will pay more to borrow at a time when we are borrowing trillions. It is the exact recipe for disaster, for Scots and English alike
Your arguments don't hold water.
Firstly, London only becomes responsible for rescuing Edinburgh if (1) it screws its finances up *and* (2) we agree a currency union, like the Eurozone. Which we would be mad to do, and wouldn't do. States like Panama that adopt a policy of dollarization are obliged to manage their finances very carefully, because the United States is quite explicitly not expected to bail them out if they get into trouble. If Scotland attempted sterlingisation (which I wouldn't expect it to do, because that would be extremely silly) then it would find itself in the same position.
Secondly, there is no reason why the UK's borrowing costs should suddenly spike when it sheds a territory that's a net drain on the resources of the Treasury. If Wessex became a thing again and left then it might cause that sort of problem. Not so Scotland.
Remember we had to help bail out Ireland during the eurocrisis. We weren’t legally obliged to, but in economic terms, pragmatically, we had to. Because we are so interlinked
‘Osborne told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "But we have also made a commitment to consider a bilateral loan that reflects the fact we are not part of the euro… but Ireland is our very closest economic neighbour."’
A bankrupt Scotland using the £ would be five times worse
It was primarily an act of solidarity towards a neighbour that was also a fellow member of the EU at the time.
Denmark and Sweden also made similar bilateral loans to Dublin IIRC. Ireland isn't, insofar as I'm aware, particularly closely entangled with the Scandinavian financial system.
I am confident that Scotland won't go bankrupt because it will be obliged to adjust its balance of taxation, spending and borrowing to suit its circumstances once its public spending is no longer supported by fiscal transfers. The Scottish Government isn't wholly incapable. It will have to make decisions that voters don't like, and will probably get away with them by finding an excuse to keep on blaming us, but the fundamental fact is that the ship is highly unlikely to sink. Scotland is wealthy. Independence wouldn't magically transform it into a Grecian basket case.
However, even if it did, not our problem to solve.
With today's announcement, the EU won't have to worry about the Tories trying to make the UK into Singapore on Thames. I thought one of the big selling points for Brexit was supposed be to enable the UK to become much more attractive to global business?
For balance, I wonder if this is smoke and mirrors from Sunak
By predicting zero deficit (via this delayed Corp tax) he can calm the markets, which might otherwise get spooked by our present, enormous borrowing and debt
Meanwhile he is pump-priming the economy with investment incentives. Perhaps he therefore hopes growth will turn out better than anticipated, thus allowing him to increase Corp tax by less, when the time comes.
A bit of legerdemain. Possible.
Oddly plausible. He's made a gesture about dealing with things, in order to enable those who care to continue on calmly.
And remember there is a large set of consultations on tax to appear and kick off on March 23rd
I doubt that headline 25% rate of corporation tax will ever happen.
Today was about to signalling to the markets and the general public that the Government is deadly serious about rebalancing the books in the medium-term.
Despite the high vaccination rate, Israel figures do seem stubbornly high (multiply by 9 for the UK). Certainly they too have antivaxers in the Arab and Haredi communities, but even so, shouldn't rates be dropping faster?
Cases or hospitalisations? What does it matter if people test positive for covid but don’t get ill from it?
I doubt that headline 25% rate of corporation tax will ever happen.
Today was about to signalling to the markets and the general public that the Government is deadly serious about rebalancing the books in the medium-term.
Are there not other ways of signalling such desire without potentially scaring off new business, while the likes of Amazon who have had a bumper Covid are largely uneffected either way.
I sound like Jezza Corbyn banging on about Amazon :-)
I came into this discussion thinking that the legacy UK parties were permafucked and the SNP would simply romp to yet another victory.
However, I granted our guest authors the courtesy of reading their piece in full, anyway.
The legacy UK parties are probably* permafucked and the SNP is probably* going to romp to yet another victory.
*By probably I mean certainly, of course. The Conservatives and Labour don't merely have 'a lot of work to do in the next two months' to make significant progress. They need to build, test and commission a mind-control field generator that can successfully reprogram the brains of the entire population. Not even the Chinese have figured out how to make that happen.
You could gave written that about Labour in Scotland 30 years ago
So maybe the SNP only has thirty years left in power? You may very well be right. It depends rather on how long it actually takes them to get independence over the finishing line.
I don't doubt that there are Scots who still feel British but they're a minority and, I think you'll find, a shrinking one at that - something that will be brutally laid bare by the results of this year's census, when I expect that the ratio of British to English/Scottish/Welsh/(Northern) Irish identification will have changed markedly all over the UK since 2011.
The only thing that's holding the Union together now is money. If the average Scottish voter thought that she would be £1 per year better off out than in, she'd be off like a shot.
The most recent poll was 50/50 and independence falling in the polls and this before these hearings
It is no means certain that Scotland will vote for independence
Well, there's a long way to go, and we shall see.
The Achilles' heel of the independence movement is, as I said before, money. If a large part of the Scottish electorate didn't believe that separation would put their taxes up then they'd have voted to go in 2014. And it could yet do for the nationalists again - although quite why the maintenance of a state that's held together mainly by bribery is something that is either morally healthy or to be desired is never adequately explained.
OTOH 'you will be poorer if you do this' was the central theme of David Cameron's campaign to vanquish Brexit, and look what became of him.
You’re somewhat ignoring the 30-40% of Scots who are passionately Unionist. There’s plenty of them. Probably about the same as there are passionate Nats.
This is one reason I believe Indy would be a tragedy - for Scotland. It would make Brexit look like a harmonious decision which brought peace to the nation. Indy would unleash demons, and sow decades of bitterness. Ending a 300 year old union would be emotionally explosive (and economically ruinous)
Scotland is not Ireland in 1921 when the large majority of Catholics had a settled will for secession. Scotland is grievously divided.
If Sturgeon gets her maj and seeks Indy, Boris must be the statesman, which will be hard for him. Even as he refuses a vote he must search for compromise, to save Scots and Brits from many more years of rancour
62% of the Scottish population answered the national identity question in the 2011 census as "Scottish only" and the number will only have moved in one direction in the subsequent decade. I don't believe that there's this vast reservoir of committed unionists. There will certainly be some committed unionists, and another tranche of pragmatic unionists, and a fair number of people who just sort of sit around in the middle as well, but I somehow doubt that there's this ocean of pro-Union sentiment out there in Scotland, any more than there was of pro-EU sentiment in Britain in 2016. It's a niche interest.
As I said, the swing vote in Scotland consists of middle-class waverers who fear that independence will hit them in their bank balances and pension pots. It's why the campaign in 2014 revolved principally around sterling, state pensions and the Barnett formula. Britain is held together by money. There is nothing else left.
Sturgeon just has to convince enough that the Brussels money tree will replace London's. (It won't of course but by the time they realise that it will be too late).
I suspect too many of us are thinking of the SNP as a mere political party rather than an African style liberation movement. Corruption and incompetence are irrelevant to the faithful, only the cause matters. Hatred of the Tories (i.e. the English) has become for nationalists a defining characteristic of Scottish identity just as Anglophobia is in Ireland. If independence comes to pass the SNP will continue to blame London for Scotland's problems (probably successfully) for at least 30 years.
I am surprised how sanguine so many others are at the prospect of the break up of the UK. If Lincoln had had the same attitude in 1861 we might still have actual slave traders today rather than just old statues of them.
The relaxed attitude amazes me as well. Oh, Scottish independence, no problem
Scottish independence would guarantee political chaos for a decade. As we disentangle 300 years of union. More immediately it means instant economic emergency. Sindy Scotland would default immediately, and be plunged into Depression. rUK would follow with an intense recession, or worse. All this as we try to recover from the worst crisis since WW2. With debt over 100%
London might itself default, or be forced to print money like Mugabe
It is insane
Worth it if we don't have to listen to the whinging whining Scots any more...
Well, you could argue that if you wanted to stir the pot, but more to the point the difficulty of unpicking the Union is overdone - at least from the point of view of the remainder of the UK, which is about 11 or 12 times the size of Scotland.
Apart from having to move many thousands of admin jobs South (a lot of central Government work in pensions and overseas aid administration is located in and around Glasgow, IIRC,) the main source of disruption to Westminster is what on Earth to do with Trident. Who knows what it might decide? The Government could lease the base whilst it built a new one in England, ask the Americans if we could park the submarines over there whilst we built a new base in England, or it could disarm.
And that's it. The main problem. The rest of it is all down to the division of assets and liabilities, which would either be done on a population proportionate basis, or with the UK taking on the lot and Scotland starting with a clean slate. What's left of the UK could then proceed on its way; other thorny issues such as what to do about the currency, the budget deficit and relations with the EU would self-evidently be matters for the Scots to worry about, not us.
None of this is to understate the level of disruption that the separation process would entail, or the potential for it to turn poisonous. After all, the moment Scotland votes to secede then Westminster's responsibility becomes securing the best terms for the remainder of the country, and the Scottish Government is well used to nursing grievances against Westminster to bolster its own popularity. But it is manageable, and would most definitely not constitute an 'economic emergency.' If we can survive Brexit without imploding then we can certainly survive, say, a hard border with Scotland, which is vastly less important than the EU as a trading partner.
If things are more awkward for them, well, under those circumstances that would no longer be our problem.
You don’t understand. A bankrupt Scotland using sterling would oblige us to help out. We’d have to, even tho we wouldn’t want to.
Moreover, the UK will be reliant on the kindness of strangers - AKA ‘borrowing’ - for the next decade. Debt over 100%
Will people still be happy to lend to us at generous interest rates, as we lose a third of the nation by size, and exhibit signs of chronic instability? Because all this will come on top of Covid and Brexit.
Personally I’d only lend to us if I could exact a stiff premium. We will pay more to borrow at a time when we are borrowing trillions. It is the exact recipe for disaster, for Scots and English alike
Your arguments don't hold water.
Firstly, London only becomes responsible for rescuing Edinburgh if (1) it screws its finances up *and* (2) we agree a currency union, like the Eurozone. Which we would be mad to do, and wouldn't do. States like Panama that adopt a policy of dollarization are obliged to manage their finances very carefully, because the United States is quite explicitly not expected to bail them out if they get into trouble. If Scotland attempted sterlingisation (which I wouldn't expect it to do, because that would be extremely silly) then it would find itself in the same position.
Secondly, there is no reason why the UK's borrowing costs should suddenly spike when it sheds a territory that's a net drain on the resources of the Treasury. If Wessex became a thing again and left then it might cause that sort of problem. Not so Scotland.
Remember we had to help bail out Ireland during the eurocrisis. We weren’t legally obliged to, but in economic terms, pragmatically, we had to. Because we are so interlinked
‘Osborne told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "But we have also made a commitment to consider a bilateral loan that reflects the fact we are not part of the euro… but Ireland is our very closest economic neighbour."’
A bankrupt Scotland using the £ would be five times worse
It was primarily an act of solidarity towards a neighbour that was also a fellow member of the EU at the time.
Denmark and Sweden also made similar bilateral loans to Dublin IIRC. Ireland isn't, insofar as I'm aware, particularly closely entangled with the Scandinavian financial system.
I am confident that Scotland won't go bankrupt because it will be obliged to adjust its balance of taxation, spending and borrowing to suit its circumstances once its public spending is no longer supported by fiscal transfers. The Scottish Government isn't wholly incapable. It will have to make decisions that voters don't like, and will probably get away with them by finding an excuse to keep on blaming us, but the fundamental fact is that the ship is highly unlikely to sink. Scotland is wealthy. Independence wouldn't magically transform it into a Grecian basket case.
However, even if it did, not our problem to solve.
"fellow member of the EU at the time" had nothing to do with it.
Portugal, Greece, Italy and Spain were the other ones needing bailouts and we told them that it was not our problem and we weren't helping them. They were our fellow EU members too.
We helped Ireland because it was cheaper to help Ireland than see Ireland fail.
I doubt that headline 25% rate of corporation tax will ever happen.
Today was about to signalling to the markets and the general public that the Government is deadly serious about rebalancing the books in the medium-term.
I hope you're right.
Been working too hard today to pay close attention to Rishi... but...
The hike to 25% is eye-watering and among the stupidest headline Budget policies seen in modern times. I need to read the small print, but my hot take is that raiding business when we are trying to drive the country forward from Brexit and a pandemic is madness. I’m interested in the investment package, but need to learn more.
That's the equivalent of 600 deaths in the UK though.
Though I'm sure the actual count in Brazil (excess deaths), is far higher. I saw one chart that suggested the UK was one of the few countries whose Covid death toll was actually on par with our excess death toll, making our outbreak look worse compared to other countries'.
I wonder whether we're ever going to find out why the experts recommended not shutting down international travel last March/April. That was obviously the wrong decision but I haven't heard any explanations for it so far.
With today's announcement, the EU won't have to worry about the Tories trying to make the UK into Singapore on Thames. I thought one of the big selling points for Brexit was supposed be to enable the UK to become much more attractive to global business?
Good heavens no. Singapore on Thames would involve doing things that would be seriously unpopular with voters. Cutting government spending, brining in lots of low-paid immigrants, that sort of thing. The big selling point for Brexit was to enable Boris to become Prime Minister. Which is why May's plans were, by definition, rubbish.
Singapore on Thames would never work because we're a large country and not a city state.
I think EIT explained it well when he explained that if you're small then the investment you can attract from big international corporates with rock bottom taxation rate works because that revenue is way greater than the inland revenue you otherwise forego.
Works for countries and city states up to 5 million people, perhaps, with niche positioning.
It doesn't work for countries with 50-100 million people plus - because you blow off the other end of the Laffer Curve.
Comments
Lowestoft perhaps ? 71k population according to wiki.
Though I believe that the Republican line is that deficits only matter when the Democrats are in charge.
We've just been through a WWII style epoch changing event which has revealed more technological and scientific discoveries and changes to working conditions than had been seen in years. The potential for investment and productivity gains is tremendous and the OBR is forecasting the earth shattering growth rates of *check notes* 1.6% in 2023 . . .
I’m more convinced we’re looking at the next prime minister. And quite an influential one at that.
Nevetheless, I've always preferred Place North to North Place, as it means it's easier to find all places for a town/ area alphabetically. So I'm still mad at North Swindon and South Swindon not being Swindon North and Swindon South.
102k population according to wiki.
Imagine you are the only shareholder in A-R Ltd. A-R makes £100 of pre-tax profit. It pays 40% tax on its profits. It now has £60 available to distribute to its shareholder. You receive £60, and then you pay 40% on the dividend income, meaning that £100 of profits results in £66 in tax and just £34 ending up with the business owner.
Now, you could make taxes on dividends zero, but that creates a different set of issues.
High levels of corporation tax also encourage businesses to borrow money, because interest expense is paid out of pre-tax earnings. Better to borrow and pay yourself now ("Hello!" says Philip Green), which means you have an economy that is more fragile becomes firms have no incentive to keep any retained earnings whatsoever.
Edit: Maybe Japanese constituency names are far more East/West in that case.
I've had 3 people I know comment - variations on - "so he wants us to put all the profits into investment?"
https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1367229842048118784?s=19
There's a Bradford East, a Bradford West, and a Bradford South, but no bloody Bradford North.
It triggers my OCD something bad.
Same language, same island. No border. You’d do it
The rest were just blah, blah, blah.
And I do know what you're saying
Mentioning Philip Green is not likely to endear 'the fatcats' to the average voter either.
Apart from having to move many thousands of admin jobs South (a lot of central Government work in pensions and overseas aid administration is located in and around Glasgow, IIRC,) the main source of disruption to Westminster is what on Earth to do with Trident. Who knows what it might decide? The Government could lease the base whilst it built a new one in England, ask the Americans if we could park the submarines over there whilst we built a new base in England, or it could disarm.
And that's it. The main problem. The rest of it is all down to the division of assets and liabilities, which would either be done on a population proportionate basis, or with the UK taking on the lot and Scotland starting with a clean slate. What's left of the UK could then proceed on its way; other thorny issues such as what to do about the currency, the budget deficit and relations with the EU would self-evidently be matters for the Scots to worry about, not us.
None of this is to understate the level of disruption that the separation process would entail, or the potential for it to turn poisonous. After all, the moment Scotland votes to secede then Westminster's responsibility becomes securing the best terms for the remainder of the country, and the Scottish Government is well used to nursing grievances against Westminster to bolster its own popularity. But it is manageable, and would most definitely not constitute an 'economic emergency.' If we can survive Brexit without imploding then we can certainly survive, say, a hard border with Scotland, which is vastly less important than the EU as a trading partner.
If things are more awkward for them, well, under those circumstances that would no longer be our problem.
I only see one Johnson.
Britain seems determined to enrich the Irish. Quite an irony, given how much they resent us
I've no idea as to how France imagines it'll balance its books, but eventually it's business that funds government.
There's no way round this. Admittedly there are huge reserves of capital that a state can tap into vampire-like. Sometimes that's the right thing to do,
There was a Bradford North until 2010 but no Bradford East.
Maybe next time it will be Bradford South to miss out with Bradford North reappearing.
Sheffield is worse for OCD:
Brightside & Hillsbrough
Central
Hallam
Heeley
South East
with a double location name and a compass name.
It should only be North Place if that is actually the place name, you're not adding a compass point to it. Eg if you're building a monorail then you might put it into North Haverbrook.
Moreover, the UK will be reliant on the kindness of strangers - AKA ‘borrowing’ - for the next decade. Debt over 100%
Will people still be happy to lend to us at generous interest rates, as we lose a third of the nation by size, and exhibit signs of chronic instability? Because all this will come on top of Covid and Brexit.
Personally I’d only lend to us if I could exact a stiff premium. We will pay more to borrow at a time when we are borrowing trillions. It is the exact recipe for disaster, for Scots and English alike
Station formerly known as Fenchurch St is now ‘London Fenchurch St’
Victoria is ‘London Victoria’, Waterloo became ‘London Waterloo’... so what did ‘London Bridge’ used to be known as?
Firstly, London only becomes responsible for rescuing Edinburgh if (1) it screws its finances up *and* (2) we agree a currency union, like the Eurozone. Which we would be mad to do, and wouldn't do. States like Panama that adopt a policy of dollarization are obliged to manage their finances very carefully, because the United States is quite explicitly not expected to bail them out if they get into trouble. If Scotland attempted sterlingisation (which I wouldn't expect it to do, because that would be extremely silly) then it would find itself in the same position.
Secondly, there is no reason why the UK's borrowing costs should suddenly spike when it sheds a territory that's a net drain on the resources of the Treasury. If Wessex became a thing again and left then it might cause that sort of problem. Not so Scotland.
"Our expectation for the level of house prices in 2021 and 2022 is 10 per cent higher on average than in November"
Somebody here will tell me that the Tories care about making housing more affordable! It's a bubble - and they are reinflating it. Dreadful.
In reality most Irish firms I know already have north and south subsidies with profits directed as most appropriate
By predicting zero deficit (via this delayed Corp tax) he can calm the markets, which might otherwise get spooked by our present, enormous borrowing and debt
Meanwhile he is pump-priming the economy with investment incentives. Perhaps he therefore hopes growth will turn out better than anticipated, thus allowing him to increase Corp tax by less, when the time comes.
A bit of legerdemain. Possible.
Despite the high vaccination rate, Israel figures do seem stubbornly high (multiply by 9 for the UK). Certainly they too have antivaxers in the Arab and Haredi communities, but even so, shouldn't rates be dropping faster?
This should cheer you: https://www.timesofisrael.com/from-israel-with-hope-best-data-yet-suggests-vaccines-will-empty-covid-wards/
You posted earlier today that by removing a tax on buyers they were making it harder for buyers - without explaining your logic in that one. 😕
Your graph actually shows house price to earnings ratios falling then stabilising.
Also Bedford was in North Beds until 1997.
https://unherd.com/2021/03/we-will-never-defeat-the-taliban/
After all the reason Scotland is in union with England was due to (1) occurring from 1698 onwards
Ah yes, less than zero. You are literally guaranteed to lose money if you buy 10 year French government bonds. It's return free risk.
The markets didn't need to be convinced that the UK government was getting tough on deficits. Because the market will currently fund any deficit with a big smile on its face.
Wonderful! Thank you Rishi!
Votes secured for the next election, marginal seat saved from Lib Dem challenge. Job done.
Even if smoke and mirrors, businesses plan years ahead, they will spend the next 2 years working on the assumption this big jump in corporation tax is coming and decide accordingly.
‘Osborne told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "But we have also made a commitment to consider a bilateral loan that reflects the fact we are not part of the euro… but Ireland is our very closest economic neighbour."’
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2010/nov/22/ireland-bailout-uk-lends-seven-billion?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
A bankrupt Scotland using the £ would be five times worse
Lothar Wieler, the head of the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s disease control agency, confirmed that the issue was discussed with senior medical consultants last month, though he stressed the meeting was informal.
...
He is quoted as saying Muslims make up 4.8% of Germany’s population, “but amongst those lying on the intensive care wards, this group makes up considerably more than 50%”.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/03/german-doctors-broach-taboo-subject-of-covid-toll-on-minority-groups
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/03/brazil-covid-global-threat-new-more-lethal-variants-miguel-nicolelis?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR190Nnhj5T4S8gLXmn4X9bfajGohA3CU0G2hsJqLHCy5mc0RPdrkeIsyIY#Echobox=1614792042
https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1367235663888809993
This was their first meeting since Lord Frost took up the role as Minister co-chairing the Partnership Council and the Withdrawal Agreement Joint Committee with the EU.
He underlined, as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster had in his letter of 2 February, that progress still needed to be urgently made to address the direct and often disproportionate impact that aspects of the Protocol are having on the citizens of Northern Ireland, contrary to its intended purpose. He acknowledged the work of the Joint Committee over the last few weeks since the Commission’s triggering of Article 16 of the Protocol on 29 January, but noted that these discussions had not yet resolved the current difficulties.
Lord Frost explained that the measures announced today, following official-level notification to the Commission earlier this week, were temporary technical steps, which largely continued measures already in place, to provide more time for businesses such as supermarkets and parcel operators to adapt to and implement the new requirements in the Protocol. He underlined that these were needed for operational reasons and were the minimum necessary steps to allow time for constructive discussions in the Joint Committee to continue without the prospect of disruption to the everyday life of people in Northern Ireland in the coming weeks.
He noted that such operational measures were well precedented in other international trade arrangements, and that they were entirely consistent with our intention to discharge our obligations under the Protocol in good faith.
https://twitter.com/DavidGHFrost/status/1367229579816013824
Brazil's test rate is appalling, only 13% of the population tested so far in the pandemic, though not as bad as Mexico @ 42k tests/million !
This is what happens when you play games with NI, which the EU has tried to do since 2017 to crowbar the UK into close alignment with it.
There's no way out of it other than a giant fudge that addresses the concerns of both nationalist and unionist communities, and recognises they voted different ways. Eire knows this and the EU should listen.
That's one of my main worries with the plan to freeze rates and allowances for five years. It's a huge tax increase with modest inflation, but if we have a couple of years with more inflation, then it will be humongous.
If compound inflation adds up to 20% then it's equivalent to a cut of £2,550 in the personal allowance, or £10,000 in the higher rate tax band.
Today was about to signalling to the markets and the general public that the Government is deadly serious about rebalancing the books in the medium-term.
Although maybe not such a good year if your estate is liable for IHT.
The EU have fucked this up and they've not been helped by their useful idiots in this country smarmily assuming that the border has to be put in the Irish Sea if not the land border as a way to blackmail the UK into being in the EFTA.
No, the spirit of the GFA was to fudge these issues away. That is the solution. The sooner it is adopted the better.
Denmark and Sweden also made similar bilateral loans to Dublin IIRC. Ireland isn't, insofar as I'm aware, particularly closely entangled with the Scandinavian financial system.
I am confident that Scotland won't go bankrupt because it will be obliged to adjust its balance of taxation, spending and borrowing to suit its circumstances once its public spending is no longer supported by fiscal transfers. The Scottish Government isn't wholly incapable. It will have to make decisions that voters don't like, and will probably get away with them by finding an excuse to keep on blaming us, but the fundamental fact is that the ship is highly unlikely to sink. Scotland is wealthy. Independence wouldn't magically transform it into a Grecian basket case.
However, even if it did, not our problem to solve.
I sound like Jezza Corbyn banging on about Amazon :-)
Portugal, Greece, Italy and Spain were the other ones needing bailouts and we told them that it was not our problem and we weren't helping them. They were our fellow EU members too.
We helped Ireland because it was cheaper to help Ireland than see Ireland fail.
The hike to 25% is eye-watering and among the stupidest headline Budget policies seen in modern times. I need to read the small print, but my hot take is that raiding business when we are trying to drive the country forward from Brexit and a pandemic is madness. I’m interested in the investment package, but need to learn more.
Though I'm sure the actual count in Brazil (excess deaths), is far higher. I saw one chart that suggested the UK was one of the few countries whose Covid death toll was actually on par with our excess death toll, making our outbreak look worse compared to other countries'.
There's no particular reason why great chunks of the civil service couldn't be relocated out of London.
I think EIT explained it well when he explained that if you're small then the investment you can attract from big international corporates with rock bottom taxation rate works because that revenue is way greater than the inland revenue you otherwise forego.
Works for countries and city states up to 5 million people, perhaps, with niche positioning.
It doesn't work for countries with 50-100 million people plus - because you blow off the other end of the Laffer Curve.