Political Crossfire Forums

[Snow Patrol]

antonio62 wrote: Kal'thzar wrote: Not intrested in Independnce, Don't see it as adventagous at all.
The main arguement for it is that we don't need the same policys as South East of England or Wales.
We have have control of our own policy to a large degree already, and i would prefer to see this extended through greater degrees of autonomy rather than full independence. As i believe independence would be more symbolic than practical.

antonio62 wrote: Immigration would be a good example currently Britain as a whole needs not to much but certainly some immigration Scotland on the other hand needs mass immigration. The same thing applys to basically every issue. If you look at the most successful countrys in the world they are all small countrys.
While obviously there is a need for immigration, especially in certain skill areas, i don't believe Scotland particularly needs any sudden mass immigration.

Doing more to prevent the intermittent mass exodus of Scots to elsewhere and encouraging people to return would probably be more helpful. There are after all significant numbers of Scots residing in other parts of the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada in particular.

Stopping so many English people retiring up here might improve the number of strapping young workers on incapacity benefit to old fogeys as well. :wink:

[antonio62]

Snow Patrol wrote: We have have control of our own policy to a large degree already, and i would prefer to see this extended through greater degrees of autonomy rather than full independence. As i believe independence would be more symbolic than practical.

Yes we have a lot of autonomy but we cant control taxation, interest rates, spending to a degree as we don't have control over how much we get and pensions.

There is also an accountability thing where the Scottish parliament doesn’t have to tax what it spends so is less likely to spend it wisely. If they had to start taxing people Scots would be more unhappy with the Scottish politicians mismanagement of funds when its them taxing them as well.

Quote: While obviously there is a need for immigration, especially in certain skill areas, i don't believe Scotland particularly needs any sudden mass immigration.

Doing more to prevent the intermittent mass exodus of Scots to elsewhere and encouraging people to return would probably be more helpful. There are after all significant numbers of Scots residing in other parts of the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada in particular.

Stopping so many English people retiring up here might improve the number of strapping young workers on incapacity benefit to old fogeys as well. :wink:

Yes getting the Scots from abroad to come home would be a good step and I would be happy for them to come back but how many realistically whatever we do would come back? I doubt it is going to be enough. I'm also not entirely sure we negative migration. I have no statistics but when you look at how many English both retirees and students who come here as well as younger people who come to work in mainly Edinburgh and Aberdeen there cant be that much of a problem with migration away from Scotland. Our main problem is that our birth rate is far to low and doesn't replace the people who are dieing.

[Snow Patrol]

antonio62 wrote: Snow Patrol wrote: We have have control of our own policy to a large degree already, and i would prefer to see this extended through greater degrees of autonomy rather than full independence. As i believe independence would be more symbolic than practical.

Yes we have a lot of autonomy but we cant control taxation, interest rates, spending to a degree as we don't have control over how much we get and pensions.

There is also an accountability thing where the Scottish parliament doesn’t have to tax what it spends so is less likely to spend it wisely. If they had to start taxing people Scots would be more unhappy with the Scottish politicians mismanagement of funds when its them taxing them as well.
Well we do have some control over variation in our tax rate at the moment and i'm pretty sure we have power to overhaul local tax systems such as the council tax, and yes i agree i would rather have more control over that and a number of issues. However again i feel this could be achieved more practically through more autonomy rather than having independence.

If we become independent we will have a drop in tax revenue because we will no longer receive money from the general British taxation and, despite what the SNP says, Scotland isn't going to get all the oil wealth. We would get to keep all the money for our whiskey exports stamp duty but i doubt this would offset the tax revenue loss to any major degree. So we're going to have raise taxes to make up the short fall, because lets face it Scotland's a pretty centre-left country and i doubt people are going to want to see a large reduction in public services.

Plus we would have to pay for the administration costs of independence, setting up new Government offices and agencies, possibly a second chamber to the Scottish parliament? new independent Scottish army? applying for EU, UN, etc?.

So in effect we wouldn't really hold politicians to account by cutting the funds available to them, we would just force them to raise taxes.

There are other ways to hold politicians to account without having to go those kind of lengths, the public information acts and transparency in MSP expenses is a good start. Though more has to be done.

antonio62 wrote: Quote: While obviously there is a need for immigration, especially in certain skill areas, i don't believe Scotland particularly needs any sudden mass immigration.

Doing more to prevent the intermittent mass exodus of Scots to elsewhere and encouraging people to return would probably be more helpful. There are after all significant numbers of Scots residing in other parts of the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada in particular.

Stopping so many English people retiring up here might improve the number of strapping young workers on incapacity benefit to old fogeys as well. :wink:
Yes getting the Scots from abroad to come home would be a good step and I would be happy for them to come back but how many realistically whatever we do would come back? I doubt it is going to be enough. I'm also not entirely sure we negative migration. I have no statistics but when you look at how many English both retirees and students who come here as well as younger people who come to work in mainly Edinburgh and Aberdeen there cant be that much of a problem with migration away from Scotland. Our main problem is that our birth rate is far to low and doesn't replace the people who are dieing.
Well obviously we're not suddenly going to have 2 millions Scots returning to the homeland, maybe hiring pinky and the brain to build some weather machine to improve the weather over here or something. I dunno, never really thought that one through.

Being overrun by English students isn't really a problem, unless you want to go to Engerland... i mean St Andrews. Scotland traditionally has a high proportion of foriegn students, but the problem is trying to encourage them to stay in the country after they graduate. The Executive launched a bunch of stuff to try and encourage students and others to come and work here, but there are problems and more has to be done.

As for the birth rate, well it has been increasing over the last few rates, whether that will continue or not is the question that remains to be seen though. There's a good report on the whole issue here.

When it comes old people retiring up here i don't think it's really a major problem at the moment, maybe it will be in the long run. If it does i suppose you could limit the availability of free care for the elderly to Scottish people or something, doubt that would go down well though.

[antonio62]

Snow Patrol wrote: Well we do have some control over variation in our tax rate at the moment and i'm pretty sure we have power to overhaul local tax systems such as the council tax, and yes i agree i would rather have more control over that and a number of issues. However again i feel this could be achieved more practically through more autonomy rather than having independence.

I didn't actually know about the income tax but that is only one tax and a lot of people wont realise that it is the Scottish parliment taxing them. We do have the power to change the council tax but it is ineffeciant to have the inland revenue trying to collect two different types of tax and in all honesty I think council tax should eb scrapped and replaced with a higher national tax.

Quote: If we become independent we will have a drop in tax revenue because we will no longer receive money from the general British taxation and, despite what the SNP says, Scotland isn't going to get all the oil wealth. We would get to keep all the money for our whiskey exports stamp duty but i doubt this would offset the tax revenue loss to any major degree. So we're going to have raise taxes to make up the short fall, because lets face it Scotland's a pretty centre-left country and i doubt people are going to want to see a large reduction in public services.

Well Scotland should in theory get most of the oil if the game is played fairly and England almost all the natural gas. I don't think we would have a drop ion revenue per head to below what people in Englans currently receive. We get more and spend more on things like health care but we aren't getting a better service than them if anything its worse. I don't think we would get a reduction oin services we would just need to become more effeciant.

Quote: Plus we would have to pay for the administration costs of independence, setting up new Government offices and agencies, possibly a second chamber to the Scottish parliament? new independent Scottish army? applying for EU, UN, etc?.

Would we need that many more government offices? We already have most of the ones that we would after independence. The new foreign office wouldn't cost that much. The army would be quite expensive but it woudln't be to the detriment of services. The armed forces brings up an interesting point though what would happen to them. Would all the Scots soldeirs become Scottish soldiers even if they were based in England or would English soldeirs in Scottish regiments become part of the Scottish army. Also what happens to the equipment. A few things that would need some serious thinking about.

Quote: So in effect we wouldn't really hold politicians to account by cutting the funds available to them, we would just force them to raise taxes.

There are other ways to hold politicians to account without having to go those kind of lengths, the public information acts and transparency in MSP expenses is a good start. Though more has to be done.

The problem with things like that is that the average person doesn't know about/doesn't care about things like that. The things they notice is what they get taxed and how services are.

Quote: Being overrun by English students isn't really a problem, unless you want to go to Engerland... i mean St Andrews. Scotland traditionally has a high proportion of foriegn students, but the problem is trying to encourage them to stay in the country after they graduate. The Executive launched a bunch of stuff to try and encourage students and others to come and work here, but there are problems and more has to be done.

There is a porblem keeping them here especially when they are the age group we need to come. The other arguement for immigration ofcourse is it is good for the ecconomy.

Quote: As for the birth rate, well it has been increasing over the last few rates, whether that will continue or not is the question that remains to be seen though. There's a good report on the whole issue here.

We are getting an increase in birth rates but the death rate still is larger than it. The birth rate growth has also decreased over the last few years. In the long term we aren't going to have an increase withput a lot of immigration. The population will continue to age and the working population will start to decrease. That isn't a good mix and will probably lead to the younger generation leaving to avoid having to pay for the older generation.

Quote: When it comes old people retiring up here i don't think it's really a major problem at the moment, maybe it will be in the long run. If it does i suppose you could limit the availability of free care for the elderly to Scottish people or something, doubt that would go down well though.

Its not much of a problem now but I would think it could become one if we got independence. We get given a lot of extra cash from the Westminster which can pay for things like that but without that we'd have to pay for them ourselves.

[Snow Patrol]

antonio62 wrote: Snow Patrol wrote: Well we do have some control over variation in our tax rate at the moment and i'm pretty sure we have power to overhaul local tax systems such as the council tax, and yes i agree i would rather have more control over that and a number of issues. However again i feel this could be achieved more practically through more autonomy rather than having independence.
I didn't actually know about the income tax but that is only one tax and a lot of people wont realise that it is the Scottish parliment taxing them. We do have the power to change the council tax but it is ineffeciant to have the inland revenue trying to collect two different types of tax and in all honesty I think council tax should eb scrapped and replaced with a higher national tax.
Well i would hope most people know about it, they did vote for it. In the devolution referendum of 1997 the second proposal that people were to vote on was for a Scottish parliament to have limited tax varying powers.

In general i'm not a great fan of the council tax an i would rather see it scrapped as well, to be replaced with what i don't know, i still haven't made my mind up on the other options yet. Scrapping it for an increased national doesn't really make much sense though. Council tax funds your local authority and is collected directly by them, by changing that to a national tax you would have to have the national authority divvy up the taxes between the local councils which would probably lead to favouritism and a number of other problems. It would also be unfair as everyone would pay the same taxes, even though some councils provide more services than others.

antonio62 wrote: Quote: If we become independent we will have a drop in tax revenue because we will no longer receive money from the general British taxation and, despite what the SNP says, Scotland isn't going to get all the oil wealth. We would get to keep all the money for our whiskey exports stamp duty but i doubt this would offset the tax revenue loss to any major degree. So we're going to have raise taxes to make up the short fall, because lets face it Scotland's a pretty centre-left country and i doubt people are going to want to see a large reduction in public services.
Well Scotland should in theory get most of the oil if the game is played fairly and England almost all the natural gas. I don't think we would have a drop ion revenue per head to below what people in Englans currently receive. We get more and spend more on things like health care but we aren't getting a better service than them if anything its worse. I don't think we would get a reduction oin services we would just need to become more effeciant.
Well i've been looking abit more into the oil thing and it varies from source to source exactly how much of it Scotland would recieve. However the figure is probably about 55-60% at least, rough averaging from sources. The problem with this is alot of the processing infrastructure, as Thundertaker said is in England, and North Sea oil production is already peaked and will be in decline from now so would be of limited benefit anyway.

Quote: North Sea production is declining at an increasing rate, having peaked in 1999.

Not at the predicted flat rate of decline of 7%, but gradually accelerating from 7% to 8.5% to 11%
Source

We recieve more because per head than England because we spend more, but it comes out of the general taxation for the whole UK. If we're independent we lose the ability to receive money from Westminister so we would have to raise already moderately high taxes or cut services. At least i reckon so, i could be wrong. I'll investigate the matter more thoroughly after the weekend.

antonio62 wrote: Quote: Plus we would have to pay for the administration costs of independence, setting up new Government offices and agencies, possibly a second chamber to the Scottish parliament? new independent Scottish army? applying for EU, UN, etc?.
Would we need that many more government offices? We already have most of the ones that we would after independence. The new foreign office wouldn't cost that much. The army would be quite expensive but it woudln't be to the detriment of services. The armed forces brings up an interesting point though what would happen to them. Would all the Scots soldeirs become Scottish soldiers even if they were based in England or would English soldeirs in Scottish regiments become part of the Scottish army. Also what happens to the equipment. A few things that would need some serious thinking about.
Well we would need new Government departments to cover all the matters dealt for currently at the Uk level:

Quote: Reserved matters: subjects that are reserved to and dealt with at Westminster (and where Ministerial functions usually lie with UK Government ministers). These include abortion, broadcasting policy, civil service, common markets for UK goods and services, constitution, electricity, coal, oil, gas, nuclear energy, defence and national security, drug policy, employment, foreign policy and relations with Europe, most aspects of transport safety and regulation, National Lottery, protection of borders, social security and stability of UK's fiscal, economic and monetary system.
Source

Which is actually quite alot.

Yeah, the army is an interesting one. I don't think i've ever seen any literature on it before either, not even basic proposals from the SNP. We would probably inherit some basic stuff from the UK forces, i don't know, need to look more into it.

antonio62 wrote: Quote: So in effect we wouldn't really hold politicians to account by cutting the funds available to them, we would just force them to raise taxes.
There are other ways to hold politicians to account without having to go those kind of lengths, the public information acts and transparency in MSP expenses is a good start. Though more has to be done.
The problem with things like that is that the average person doesn't know about/doesn't care about things like that. The things they notice is what they get taxed and how services are.
That's my point though, people aren't going to want to be independent if it means increased taxation and possible decreases in quality or quantity of public services.

antonio62 wrote: Quote: Being overrun by English students isn't really a problem, unless you want to go to Engerland... i mean St Andrews. Scotland traditionally has a high proportion of foriegn students, but the problem is trying to encourage them to stay in the country after they graduate. The Executive launched a bunch of stuff to try and encourage students and others to come and work here, but there are problems and more has to be done.
There is a porblem keeping them here especially when they are the age group we need to come. The other arguement for immigration ofcourse is it is good for the ecconomy.
Well as i already pointed out they are actually trying to address the matter, just need to see if the measures introduced are effective. The new freedom of movement legislation from the EU could benefit Scotland in the long run by allowing workers and students from eastern Europe to fill skills gap. Could do, could not, just need to see how that one pans out i suppose.

As i admitted, immigration is certainly needed by Scotland, i just had doubts sudden mass immigration would be that beneficial.

antonio62 wrote: Quote: As for the birth rate, well it has been increasing over the last few rates, whether that will continue or not is the question that remains to be seen though. There's a good report on the whole issue here.
We are getting an increase in birth rates but the death rate still is larger than it. The birth rate growth has also decreased over the last few years. In the long term we aren't going to have an increase withput a lot of immigration. The population will continue to age and the working population will start to decrease. That isn't a good mix and will probably lead to the younger generation leaving to avoid having to pay for the older generation.
The whole of western Europe has similar problems though, it's just not symptomatic of Scotland. It's a complex problem that will probably need a whole of multitude of factors, such as increased immigration, improve birth rates, etc, to solve to an acceptable level.

antonio62 wrote: Quote: When it comes old people retiring up here i don't think it's really a major problem at the moment, maybe it will be in the long run. If it does i suppose you could limit the availability of free care for the elderly to Scottish people or something, doubt that would go down well though.
Its not much of a problem now but I would think it could become one if we got independence. We get given a lot of extra cash from the Westminster which can pay for things like that but without that we'd have to pay for them ourselves.
Yup, go us. 8:)

[antonio62]

Snow Patrol wrote: Well i would hope most people know about it, they did vote for it. In the devolution referendum of 1997 the second proposal that people were to vote on was for a Scottish parliament to have limited tax varying powers.

In general i'm not a great fan of the council tax an i would rather see it scrapped as well, to be replaced with what i don't know, i still haven't made my mind up on the other options yet. Scrapping it for an increased national doesn't really make much sense though. Council tax funds your local authority and is collected directly by them, by changing that to a national tax you would have to have the national authority divvy up the taxes between the local councils which would probably lead to favouritism and a number of other problems. It would also be unfair as everyone would pay the same taxes, even though some councils provide more services than others.

Only a quarter of council spending comes from council tax so its already been mainly introduced and to me it doesn't make much sense having two different taxes. Having only one would be more effeciant. You could force all councils to porvide the same services.

Quote: Well i've been looking abit more into the oil thing and it varies from source to source exactly how much of it Scotland would recieve. However the figure is probably about 55-60% at least, rough averaging from sources. The problem with this is alot of the processing infrastructure, as Thundertaker said is in England, and North Sea oil production is already peaked and will be in decline from now so would be of limited benefit anyway.

Quote: North Sea production is declining at an increasing rate, having peaked in 1999.

Not at the predicted flat rate of decline of 7%, but gradually accelerating from 7% to 8.5% to 11%
Source

We recieve more because per head than England because we spend more, but it comes out of the general taxation for the whole UK. If we're independent we lose the ability to receive money from Westminister so we would have to raise already moderately high taxes or cut services. At least i reckon so, i could be wrong. I'll investigate the matter more thoroughly after the weekend.

Well the oil is almost all in Scottish waters. Only a little bit that England would definatly get would be the little bit next to Wales. They would probably get the bit thats near the border as they're bigger but the rest of it is north of Aberdeen and another roughly half north of the Shetlands. I know oil production has peaked and it wont make Scotland into the next Norway but we should get a good sum of money to help fund us.

http://www.energyinst.org.uk/education/natural/5.htm

Theres a map of the oil feilds at that link.

I don't think we would need to cut services that much. We spend more but do we get more for our money? I don't think we do apart from the cheaper university fees and free care for the elderly. Both of which I've heard aren't working out like that in reality but I don't really know the details. Our health service despite higher funding is generally coming out worse than englands on waiting times and the like. Spending more doesn't bring a better service as shown with the American health service. We could raise around the same level of tax as Sweeden. We have a slightly higher gdp per capita although my statistics are a few years old. Sweden certainly doesn't have a poor level of services.

Quote: Well we would need new Government departments to cover all the matters dealt for currently at the Uk level:

Quote: Reserved matters: subjects that are reserved to and dealt with at Westminster (and where Ministerial functions usually lie with UK Government ministers). These include abortion, broadcasting policy, civil service, common markets for UK goods and services, constitution, electricity, coal, oil, gas, nuclear energy, defence and national security, drug policy, employment, foreign policy and relations with Europe, most aspects of transport safety and regulation, National Lottery, protection of borders, social security and stability of UK's fiscal, economic and monetary system.
Source

Which is actually quite alot.

I would be suprised if we didn't already have adimistrative departments covering a lot of those already. Whether we pay for them or not I don't know most likely a few of them we will and we not.

Quote: Yeah, the army is an interesting one. I don't think i've ever seen any literature on it before either, not even basic proposals from the SNP. We would probably inherit some basic stuff from the UK forces, i don't know, need to look more into it.

It would probably be something like that. I don't think I've seen any matieral written on it either.



Quote: Well as i already pointed out they are actually trying to address the matter, just need to see if the measures introduced are effective. The new freedom of movement legislation from the EU could benefit Scotland in the long run by allowing workers and students from eastern Europe to fill skills gap. Could do, could not, just need to see how that one pans out i suppose.

Well in the short term yes but they are facing a population decline in almost every country in eastern europe worse than ours so in the long term they cant sustain that.

Quote: As i admitted, immigration is certainly needed by Scotland, i just had doubts sudden mass immigration would be that beneficial.

PErhaps mass immigration was the wrong way of describing it. We need long term sustainable immigration at quite high levels to maintain our population.


Quote: The whole of western Europe has similar problems though, it's just not symptomatic of Scotland. It's a complex problem that will probably need a whole of multitude of factors, such as increased immigration, improve birth rates, etc, to solve to an acceptable level.

Yes increasing birth rate would also sort it out but its hard to actually get it up to the replacement levels. We also are in a different situation to other western European countrys we have a lot of space for extra people where as most western European countrys don't have a lot of space.