Today’s Scotsman’s editorial (April 1) acknowledges the positive correlation between poverty and ill health but ignores the causes of that poverty in a supposedly advanced economy.
Thank you for this excellent article, Leah. Why has the SNP failed to communicate this information to the electorate? Only yesterday I read a comment from a person who thinks that in 2014 we voted against bankrupting ourselves. People need to be told again and again and again until they begin to fully understand the harms being done to us by remaining in this toxic union.
Excellent piece. I'm particularly interested in the statement that Westminster "takes half of Scottish revenues to spend outside Scotland on projects that don’t benefit us." What was the source? It could be a very useful counter-argument to the "better together" claims of the Unionists.
The UK stopped published the accounts after Irish independence.
One of the problems with estimating how much Scottish revenue gets returned to Scotland after Westminster takes its 'share' is that there are no accurate financial accounts for Scotland. GERS is a joke - riddled with estimates and the 'deficit' is fake because so much of our wealth is 'recorded' in England and never attributed to us. e.g., rents from English landlords are recorded in England, VAT.
For example, our oil revenues were siphoned off entirely by Westminster - hundreds of billions of pounds. The same thing is occurring with our renewables - billions of pounds worth are being cabled to England with Scots not seeing a penny. And we are charged £4.5 billion a year for our population 'share' of UK debt - something we haven't created nor benefit from. Same goes for our 'share' of nukes, English infrastructure projects, etc.
A huge frustration with the Scottish administration is that it has done nothing to improve our economic statistics and it persists with GERS that hands the unionists a stick with which to beat us every August. I can only conclude that's because 'ScotGov' is a colonial administration - devolution is a creature of the union - and won't do anything to upset their Westminster bosses. Furthermore, it's probably the SNP has been successfully infiltrated. Why else has independence taken a back seat to legislation that divides us? GRA, Hate Crime, Juryless trials ....
So sorry for this long, rambling reply. But if there were a single source revealing how we are ripped off by our colonial overlords, everyone would be using it. There's not because it's not in the British State's interest that we know how they are robbing us blind.
Thank you for this excellent article, Leah. Why has the SNP failed to communicate this information to the electorate? Only yesterday I read a comment from a person who thinks that in 2014 we voted against bankrupting ourselves. People need to be told again and again and again until they begin to fully understand the harms being done to us by remaining in this toxic union.
"welfare" spending used to be "social security" under the auspices of the Dept of Health & Social Security (DHSS).
Excellent piece. I'm particularly interested in the statement that Westminster "takes half of Scottish revenues to spend outside Scotland on projects that don’t benefit us." What was the source? It could be a very useful counter-argument to the "better together" claims of the Unionists.
Hi Ken,
Check out this post I made in January about Scotland's contribution to the UK Treasury from 1900-1921: https://dearscotland.substack.com/p/what-the-uk-doesnt-want-scots-to
The UK stopped published the accounts after Irish independence.
One of the problems with estimating how much Scottish revenue gets returned to Scotland after Westminster takes its 'share' is that there are no accurate financial accounts for Scotland. GERS is a joke - riddled with estimates and the 'deficit' is fake because so much of our wealth is 'recorded' in England and never attributed to us. e.g., rents from English landlords are recorded in England, VAT.
For example, our oil revenues were siphoned off entirely by Westminster - hundreds of billions of pounds. The same thing is occurring with our renewables - billions of pounds worth are being cabled to England with Scots not seeing a penny. And we are charged £4.5 billion a year for our population 'share' of UK debt - something we haven't created nor benefit from. Same goes for our 'share' of nukes, English infrastructure projects, etc.
Here's an excerpt from an earlier post I did (https://dearscotland.substack.com/p/viceroy-jack-is-at-it-again?utm_source=%2Fsearch%2Frenewables%2520revenue&utm_medium=reader2): "But why develop a plan when the UK can just steal from Scotland? 35 TWh of renewables worth £600 billion a year are being cabled to England with no compensation for the Scottish People. By 2030, the UK plans to increase this to 124 TWh, worth an estimated £2.12 trillion."
The source is here: https://www.albaparty.org/end_the_great_scottish_renewables_energy_swindle
I also did this post on the Barnet Formula: https://dearscotland.substack.com/p/why-the-barnett-formula-is-not-a
A huge frustration with the Scottish administration is that it has done nothing to improve our economic statistics and it persists with GERS that hands the unionists a stick with which to beat us every August. I can only conclude that's because 'ScotGov' is a colonial administration - devolution is a creature of the union - and won't do anything to upset their Westminster bosses. Furthermore, it's probably the SNP has been successfully infiltrated. Why else has independence taken a back seat to legislation that divides us? GRA, Hate Crime, Juryless trials ....
I also did this post on how the union has robbed Scotland, which has lots of sourced data: https://dearscotland.substack.com/p/how-the-union-has-robbed-the-scottish
So sorry for this long, rambling reply. But if there were a single source revealing how we are ripped off by our colonial overlords, everyone would be using it. There's not because it's not in the British State's interest that we know how they are robbing us blind.