Letters / Speculation and propaganda
In his letter (Independence is affordable; SN 15/12/13) Douglas Young said. “To debate the financial position in relation to Scotland and independence you must give both sides of the argument in order to allow voters to make up their own minds”.
If that be the case then the truth is that if the total revenue is shared equally among the nations of the UK according to their population size, then the statistics show that Scotland would have been taking out more than it had been putting in, compared to the other countries in the UK.
There’s a similar story to be told if we look at budget deficits. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies notes: “Without oil and gas revenues, or, equivalently, assigning them on a population basis, there has been a bigger gap between spending and tax receipts in recent years than in the UK as a whole”.
Of course it’s too early to say whether either of these positions would bear any resemblance to a deal struck for an independent Scotland.
Should Alex Salmond ever get to sit around the negotiating table with a mandate from the Scottish people for independence, it’s likely that there will be a range of ‘compromise’ options.
Until we reach that point, these figures are rooted in speculation, propaganda and most of all nationalist rhetoric.
It is a fact that recording Scottish data is complicated, not least because of the effects of devolution.
Some data is recorded at a UK level, some at a Scotland level, some with oil revenues, some without. Some are not identifiable, meaning either side can manipulate the figures to suit their own argument.
Just to make a point, Douglas’s figures come from Gordon Macintyre-Kemp, a sworn nationalist and a member of Business for Scotland, a nationalist propaganda machine.
He is also a wiz with figures, a manipulator of the same and one of the SNP’s most vociferous spin doctors.
Gordon Harmer
Brae
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