The future's bright

[andrewducker]

[Poll #1723692]

Comments

[skington.livejournal.com]

I'd say that Scottish independence (which is far more likely than Welsh or Northern Irish independence) is as likely as Belgium splitting into Wallonia and Flanders. Which is to say that people will keep on talking about it, but it will never actually happen.

[drplokta]

No one cares enough to expend the political capital and Parliamentary time that would be required to stop the non-English MPs from voting on England-only matters. Everyone has more pressing priorities. So nothing will change.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

... Not even the conservatives, who only have one seat north of the border? Given that stopping the Scots voting on English matters will deprive the opposition of around 40 votes, I can certainly see Cameron and his heirs being interested in that particular solution to the East Lothian Question.

[drplokta]

The votes it might help with aren't the things that the Conservatives really care about, like the Budget and foreign relations. As long as they get to set the budget for English public expenditure, they might not be too unhappy about Labour winning a few votes on the actual implementation and getting some of the blame for the inevitable cockups.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

I'm not so sure. In my experience, there is a definite growing resentment down here of the fact more money is spent per capita in Scotland than in England. This has been the case for decades, but nobody knew or cared about it, but it is becoming very visible now that the Scottish government is able to provide a number of services which are no longer available (or no longer free) in England. I can see growing demands for a review of the Barnett formula in the next few years coming from England. Whether any government will be brave enough to do so is another matter.

[feorag.livejournal.com]

More money must be raised here per capita then, if that's the case, because considerably more money leaves Scotland for England than ever comes back.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Do you have any evidence for that? I would be interested if anyone actually had any data on how much tax revenue is raised from different regions of the UK.

The expenditure per capita is higher in Scotland and has been for many years.

Table 9.2: Total identifiable expenditure on services by country and region

England £7971
Scotland £9538
Wales £9162
N.I. £10003

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/pesa_180609.pdf

[drplokta]

At present, the answer to that question is very much dependent on whether or not Scotland is allocated the full bill for bailing out Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS.

[feorag.livejournal.com]

They're multinationals, not Scottish companies. They only keep the "Scotland" in their names due to the perception that Scots are careful with money. Unlike the banks.

[drplokta]

Their head offices are in Scotland. By the same logic, we might as well charge Chile part of the cost of bailing out Lloyds.

[feorag.livejournal.com]

You appear to be counting only income tax, not the total amount of revenue raised here nor the value of exports (Scotland still makes stuff and exports it, you know). Nor is it possible to put a monetary value on the Scots serving the nation as a whole - Scots are vastly overrepresented in the services, yet the cuts to Scottish regiments mean that their income tax will be counted as being from England.

Let me give you a clue regarding the expenditure: Scotland is about the size of England, with a fraction of the population, a remarkably small proportion of which lives in Glasgow or Edinburgh. The rest of the population lives far further away than you think, in the middle of mountains, lochs and bogs. There are bugger all trains north of the central belt, and the roads suck. Some of Scotland is even on islands a long way offshore. So remote is much of Scotland that the nearest railway station to some parts of it is in Norway.

Providing services to these places is ever so slightly more expensive than for London.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Those figures are nothing to do with tax. They are public expenditure figures. I have no idea how much revenue is raised in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK. I would be interested if anyone has an answer to this.

I am familiar with Scotland, I lived there from the age of 6 until I was 27, and I am sure there are reasons why providing some services is more expensive. But it is not the cost of providing services people are noticing, it is that many services are provided in Scotland which are no longer available in England. Lower tuition fees, free prescriptions, free social care for the elderly are just a few examples.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to dig up the figures the COI emitted in 1997 just before John Major was kicked out of Downing Street; they suggested a £40Bn net flow of revenue from North to South during the 1980s, mostly due to tax on oil revenue. Can't find it right now, but stubbed my toe on it and went "ow" at the time it made the newspapers.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

So remote is much of Scotland that the nearest railway station to some parts of it is in Norway.

Alas, I don't believe this.

I'd like to believe it, cos it's a fun fact, but on looking in to it I can't verify it.

However, it is true that there are some parts of Scotland where the nearest railway station *with a direct train to the capital* is in Norway.

I'm focusing on Shetland, because that looks like where we're talking about. (Happy to be corrected here!) The most northerly UK railway station is Thurso; Wick has a station too and might be closer to some parts. Bergen is handily located in Norway and has a station.

A quick measure with Google Maps' measuring tool says:

- Lerwick to Thurso: 145 miles
- Lerwick to Bergen: 220 miles

You can reduce the difference by picking the right bit of Shetland, but the best I could do was from the NE tip of Unst:

- NE tip of Unst to Thurso: 180 miles
- NE tip of Unst to Bergen: 210 miles

I really couldn't make it come out so Bergen was closer. I even tried just measuring to the nearest bit of the Norwegian coast (which actually doesn't gain you much - Bergen is quite handily located for this purpose), but couldn't get there.

But! If we say we're asking for a railway station with a direct service to the capital, we're in better luck. That disregards all the stations on the Far North Line, including Thurso and Wick, and leaves us with Inverness, which does have trains to Edinburgh (and also London). But Bergen has a regular service to Oslo, so it's still in play. And a snap of the tape measure gives us:

- Lerwick to Inverness: 215 miles
- Lerwick to Bergen: 220 miles

Gah! So near. But! If we go right up to the corner:

- NE tip of Unst to Inverness: 260 miles
- NE tip of Unst to Bergen: 210 miles

We have a winner! By a quick inspection, quite a lot of Shetland is closer to Bergen than to Inverness.

So: there are parts of Scotland that are so remote that the nearest railway station with direct service to the (a!) capital are in Norway. Specifically, the NE portion of Shetland is closer to Bergen than to Inverness.

OTOH, the original phrasing isn't quite so compelling when you think about it. I'd be very surprised if there weren't (other!) parts of Scotland where the nearest railway station (of any sort) is in Ireland. And the Channel Islands are very obviously nearer to France than any part of the UK mainland. And if you're being that loose, I think it's probably safe to say that there's no British Overseas Territory where the nearest railway station is on the UK mainland. (Pitcairn! Tristan da Cunha! Which are very probably the inhabited places furthest from *any* railway station.)

A quick glance at the map shows you that Shetland is unequivocally closer to Norway than it is to Edinburgh. Which I can imagine being a useful statement for certain rhetorical purposes.

[drplokta]

They can review the Barnett formula without changing the voting arrangements at Westminster.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Absolutely, but I suspect the latter may well be offered as a concession to avoid having to do the former.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

The SNP don't vote on English-only matters at Westminster but then I guess it is easy for them because they don't exist as a party outside of Scotland whereas non-English MPs of UK wide parties are still expected to tow the party line.

[andrewducker]

It's an odd situation. It's very much in Labour's interests to preserve the union, as a fair number of their MPs are Scottish in origin. The Conservatives would be better off with Scotland separated off, but have a very traditionalist group of supporters that would rather keep the country together.

I suspect we'll end up with non-English MPs being prevented from voting on purely-English matters, but that this will take a lot of shouting...

[feorag.livejournal.com]

Scotland will be made independent, whether she likes it or not, the minute the oil and gas runs out.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

How do you come to that conclusion? Scotland was part of the UK for 200 years before oil/gas was discovered.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

The tax revenues from Scotland from all sources appear to be so closely guarded a secret that they are not compiled in a useful way so as to avoid Freedom of Information requests.

One can only wonder what the Treasury is worried about? Either a massive flow from Scotland to England (cue riots in Glasgow) or a massive flow from England to Scotland (cue riots in London).

The banks are an interesting issue. If I were Treasurer or Business Secretary of an independent Scotland I would remove the explicit and implicit state guarantees (in genuine consultation with the banks and their staff). My offer would be you can stay in a business friendly Scotland and not have to move all your staff and your families to expensive London and we'll do all we can to help you on the bits of Porter's Competivie Diamond the government can but we can't afford to back you financially so if you don't like the offer please leave.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

oil running out is much further away than you'd think.
We're just not using the necessarily expensive methods of getting it out yet. That time will come.

the North Sea fields are nowhere near empty

[pete stevens (from livejournal.com)]

One of

a: Ireland will have joined the newly named United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

b: England, Wales and Scotland will have all separated to become independent countries within the EU and Northen Ireland will have five sets of warring separatists each declaring that the true Northern Ireland is Welsh, Scottish, Irish, English or Independent.

c: Germany will have finished it's project of buying the whole of the EU and we'll technically all be German anyway.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I voted for all three of the last three, because I don't know which will happen: either

- this will stay the same, or
- Non-English MPs won't vote on purely English matters, either by convention or by law, or
- Some cataclysmic change (climate change, Singularity etc) will render the whole thing moot.

I'd rate the first of these as the most likely, but not by much.

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure. Labour don't have an English majority even when they're doing very well and the Conservatives are opposed to devolution so I would expect the status quo to continue for a while, but on the other hand, I think the current system is incredibly broken.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

That is the case under the current arrangements where Labour don't have to win 40 English seats because they win 40 Scottish ones. If Scotland were independent one might expect the Labour party to pitch themselves a little to the right or for English voters, free of the counter-balance of Scottish voters to realise that they want a social democracy really and vote for the English Labour Party.

[matgb]

The current system, where MPs vote on bills that don't affect them will continue

That's not the current system. Methinks some people need to reread Govt of Scotland Act, the definition of the word "devolution" and look up the constitutional silliness that is an Order in Council.

Theoretically, I can explain it, but Ming Campbell does it much much better than me and actually understands it.

[andrewducker]

I could have sworn that Scottish MPs got to vote on purely English matters. Will have a Google later.

[matgb]

There is no such thing as a purely English matter. Merely some Acts that won't be applied to Scotland. Any Act can be retroactively applied to Scotland, and Westminster can overrule Holyrood whenever it feels like it.

Campbell explained this well in an article a few years back, but I didn't link to it.

[andrewducker]

Aah, yes. But this is unlikely to occur in practice, as it would lead to near 100% vote share for the Nationalists at the next election.

[matgb]

Depends on the issue, but yeah. Unlikely. But it can be done, and actually can be done quite simply, ergo there is no such thing as an English only issue.

Yes, it's semantics, but I'm a constitutionalist, that's sort of what it's all about.

FWIW, I favour the Spanish model of devolution, for the most party, and definitely don't want an "English" parliament within the UK--London's got an Assembly with powers similar to Wales already, Yorkshire should have one, as should the Westcountry.

[andrewducker]

If only that hadn't been shot down when they held a referendum.

[matgb]

Nah, Prescott's White Elephant got defeated in an amorphous region with no clear identity. Bunch of Labourites from Yorkshire are beginning to push hard for it now, and I'll likely join with them.

Assume Tories win an overall majority next time, or the Coalition continues (the two most likely options on current reading).

Pissed of northern lefties will, once again, remember that they hate being run by Westminster and southerners.

If they move for Yorkshire to go first, instead of the NE, then there's a much closer historic identity and a clear issue to push for.

Doubt it'll happen, but...

[fub.livejournal.com]

Or the UK will turn into a federal state, where it is clearly demarked what the individual parts can do and what falls under the power of the federation. It works for the US and Germany, amongst others.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I think the drift of powers and responsibilties to the EU on "Big" things like foreign policy, defence policy and large parts of market regulation and economic policy and one "small" things, like criminal law to the most appropriate subsidiary legislature will make the question of Westminster's relationship with Holyrood moot.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

I expect most First World (& many other) nations to be owned/controlled by Corporate Entities within fifty years. But then, I'm a USAn.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

you mean they aren't already?