Benjamin_Nevis Posted March 17, 2017 Share Posted March 17, 2017 https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/uk-regions/scotland/news/84310/excl-scotlands-only-labour-mp-hints-he-would-jk-rowling-leadScotland's only Labour MP believes JK Rowling should lead the "No" campaign.Kez must be delighted [emoji38] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ivo den Bieman Posted March 17, 2017 Share Posted March 17, 2017 The same JK Rowling that's maybe swithering about her vote in a future referendum? great idea Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrewDon Posted March 17, 2017 Share Posted March 17, 2017 I would like JK Rowling to lead the 'No' campaign, just to hear her arguing on live TV as to why Dumbledore would oppose the establishment of a separate Scottish currency. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Stubbs Posted March 17, 2017 Share Posted March 17, 2017 JK ROWLING'S EPIC TWEET ABOUT SCOTLAND'S FISCAL DEFICIT WILL HAVE YOU SCREAMING. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mizfit Posted March 17, 2017 Share Posted March 17, 2017 5 minutes ago, Alan Stubbs said: JK ROWLING'S EPIC TWEET ABOUT SCOTLAND'S FISCAL DEFICIT WILL HAVE YOU SCREAMING. "JK Rowling precisely points out why Dumbledore wouldn't support a second referendum" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ayrmad Posted March 25, 2017 Share Posted March 25, 2017 Surely we can steer a better more prosperous path ourselves. There is no getting away from it, the economy is going to be far more important in the 2018 Scottish referendum than it was in 2014. This is partly because the Tories’ hard Brexit doesn’t just undermine, but completely destroys the economic case for the Union – a fact that will hit home as inflation rises and the Brexit negotiations start to go south for the Empire 2.0 team. Partly also because the only real weapon left to the Unionist campaign is to talk Scotland’s economy down by referring to the indicative financial deficit in the GERS reports. We can invest in renewables, no you can’t Scotland has a deficit, we can build a fairer nation, what with a £15bn deficit… you get the gist. The Unionist mantra is that the fall in oil price has caused Scotland to have a greater deficit than the UK, and this makes sense until you start to realise that oil revenues didn’t fall by the same amount everywhere else in the world. It’s true the oil price slumped by around 55 per cent but Business for Scotland noticed UK Government revenues fell by 99 per cent, even though oil production rose by around 16 per cent during the same period. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that something other than the price of oil, is impacting Scotland’s national accounts. Our research published this week poses the question: If being part of the UK is such an advantage how come Norway, a comparable oil producing nation, only saw a fall in revenues of only about 40 per cent when ours fell by 99 per cent? And more to the point how come small, and independent Norway’s revenues are 411 times larger than the UK’s? Norway generated £17,684 billion from oil and gas in 2015 but the UK Government only generated £43 million in its last published tax year. The oil sector and their representative bodies make overreaching claims about the difference in one part of the north sea verses another and will claim that tax cuts were necessary at this point. However, a £17bn revenue gap cannot be justified without admitting to Westminster’s historical and significant generational economic mismanagement of Scotland’s oil sector. Last year at The Times CEO summit George Osborne explained why the UK is not as rich as Norway when he said: “Four million people live in Norway, 65 million people live in this country, and they have same amount of oil as us”. David Cameron made the same joke on the Andrew Marr Show and the fact that both of them used a 4m figure for Norway when it actually has a population of 5.258m (similar to Scotland), would suggest that is a joke they have shared between themselves and probably shouldn’t have made public. So the bigger fall in Scotland’s revenues came not from the oil price but the tax breaks that the UK Government offered the industry. Of course, industry groups and the oil companies they represent will welcome such tax breaks and claim they are necessary, but when I looked deeper into the numbers it seems the UK has led the way in carving taxation costs out of its oil industry. Looking at how the tax breaks apply to Shell and BP: in the 24 countries where Shell extracts oil and gas, all except the UK made Shell pay taxes. While the UK gave Shell £80m in tax rebates, Shell paid Norway £2.7bn. So, Norway generated 62 times more tax from one company than Westminster generated from the entire UK industry last year reported. Given that Shell alone cut up to 13,000 jobs and paid no corporation tax in the UK in 2015, it might surprise people that Shell paid £7.9 billion in shareholder dividends for that year, and in 2016 Shell paid out bumper £11.1 billion in dividends to its shareholders, more than any other company in the world. BP also paints a familiar story: UK taxpayers paid BP £202 million in tax rebates in 2015 and of the 23 nations where BP extracted oil and gas, the UK was the only one where BP received money rather than paid taxes. Other countries received £10,148 million in taxes. Mass job losses across the UK oil and gas sector coincided with these tax cuts and the SNP should ask the Westminster Government to make clear if it made any attempt to link these corporate tax breaks to protecting ordinary working people’s jobs in the sector. It does appear that Westminster policy is to protects corporations and their shareholder dividends, while not protecting people’s jobs, Scotland’s economy or it’s Government revenues. Aberdeen is clearly the region most directly affected by the oil price drop and when the region asked for help they made the case for £2.9 billion in economic support. In 2016, David Cameron visited the city and announced that Westminster would only offer £125 million. It was David Cameron who said that Scotland needed to rely upon the broad shoulders and deep pockets of the UK to maximise revenues from oil and gas — but I guess the broader the shoulders, the bigger the shrug? So the next time you hear a Unionist saying that the GERS accounts show a deficit and that means Scotland can’t afford to be an independent country remember that Westminster runs Scotland’s economy. It is Westminster incompetence right from the outset in terms of resource governance that generated £17.8bn less oil and gas revenue in the last accounting year than Norway. So if Scotland had Norway’s oil revenues it would have run a multibillion pound surplus in the last financial year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
git-intae-thum Posted March 26, 2017 Share Posted March 26, 2017 Very good post ayrmad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Enigma Posted March 26, 2017 Share Posted March 26, 2017 Gandalf would beat Dumbledore in a fight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D Angelo Barksdale Posted March 29, 2017 Share Posted March 29, 2017 http://www.thenational.scot/politics/15187714.Better_Together_set_to_be_rebranded_as_New_Direction/?ref=mr&lp=1 <snigger> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Granny Danger Posted March 29, 2017 Share Posted March 29, 2017 2 minutes ago, Henderson to deliver ..... said: http://www.thenational.scot/politics/15187714.Better_Together_set_to_be_rebranded_as_New_Direction/?ref=mr&lp=1 <snigger> Isn't that shitty boy band. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D Angelo Barksdale Posted March 29, 2017 Share Posted March 29, 2017 3 minutes ago, Granny Danger said: Isn't that shitty boy band. Lets get the band together again for one last show. We'll play all the old favourites ..... 'Too wee, Too poor, Too stupid' 'The Vow' (Gordon Brown remix) 'Close to full federalism' 'Faster, better, safer change' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arabdownunder Posted March 30, 2017 Share Posted March 30, 2017 12 hours ago, Henderson to deliver ..... said: Lets get the band together again for one last show. We'll play all the old favourites ..... 'Too wee, Too poor, Too stupid' 'The Vow' (Gordon Brown remix) 'Close to full federalism' 'Faster, better, safer change' "EU membership only guaranteed with a No vote" still on the playlist? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loondave1 Posted March 31, 2017 Share Posted March 31, 2017 Im going with this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anonapersona Posted March 31, 2017 Share Posted March 31, 2017 8 minutes ago, Loondave1 said: Im going with this. Did you ask your mum if you could stay up after 9pm? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loondave1 Posted March 31, 2017 Share Posted March 31, 2017 Did you ask your mum if you could stay up after 9pm? Only if i attended a seance sadly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Kincardine Posted March 31, 2017 Share Posted March 31, 2017 On 3/14/2017 at 19:11, LongTimeLurker said: Do we know for sure that Theresa May is going to agree to a referendum yet? Don't let facts get in the way of a good P&B thread, bud, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Black and White Tragic Posted March 31, 2017 Share Posted March 31, 2017 1 minute ago, The_Kincardine said: Don't let facts get in the way of a good P&B thread, bud, She's going to struggle since she used the "polls say Scotland doesn't want it" along with Ruth, Wull and Kez. She'll dig her heels in with "now is not the time to be discussing it". The longer she does that the more likely that folk will be swayed to "get it up ye" when the time comes. If she had any sense she'd agree now in principle with date to be set "at a later date". That would take the heat off, but she won't do it. Suits Yes voters for her to keep with the stonewalling. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Kincardine Posted March 31, 2017 Share Posted March 31, 2017 2 minutes ago, Black and White Tragic said: The longer she does that the more likely that folk will be swayed to "get it up ye" when the time comes. We had the 'roon ye' option in 2014 and made a total Horlicks of it. This leaves Nicola and her acolytes looking like utter dolts. The sane course is to see how Brexit plans go first. Plenty of us will back Indy Scotland if the 'freedoms' aren't endorsed. Until then? Keep one's tinder dry unless one wants to be seen as a complete single-issue drone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Black and White Tragic Posted March 31, 2017 Share Posted March 31, 2017 We had the 'roon ye' option in 2014 and made a total Horlicks of it. This leaves Nicola and her acolytes looking like utter dolts. The sane course is to see how Brexit plans go first. Plenty of us will back Indy Scotland if the 'freedoms' aren't endorsed. Until then? Keep one's tinder dry unless one wants to be seen as a complete single-issue drone. Christ you've sobered up quick. That is the most sensible post I've seen from you today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Kincardine Posted March 31, 2017 Share Posted March 31, 2017 9 minutes ago, Black and White Tragic said: Christ you've sobered up quick. That is the most sensible post I've seen from you today. To quote David Niven: "you think I know f**k nothing, well let me tell you— I know f**k ALL!” Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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