And I Thought Scots Didn’t Like Pork
The Telegraph - Pork-barrel Labour
It is not the English who are the true losers from the Barnett formula - the mechanism, introduced in 1978, that reserves for Scotland a proportion of all public spending. In per capita terms, the discrepancy is impressive: £7,346 is spent on each Scot, as against £5,940 on each English person. But the sums involved are tiny as a proportion of public spending that is wasted throughout the United Kingdom.
I thought it was £1400 per Scot?
No, the true losers are the Scots, trapped in the squalor of dependency. A people who were once a byword for enterprise and thrift are now reliant on handouts. More Scots look to the taxpayer for their income than don’t.
I don’t remember if I ever linked to this, but if so, here it is again:
Arthur’s Seat - You in your small corner, and me in mine…
Over at the Corner an inquiry about Scotland. My view is drawn by my old mate, Iain Murray, currently thinking in a tank in Washington DC.
Plaid Attitude [Jonah Goldberg]
Iain - Maybe you could explain something to me, What’s up with Scotland? I was there for the first time last summer on the NR Cruise. My lovely bride and I loved the place, at first. We thought Edinburgh — despite some of the usual Euro-grime — was just fantastic and we immediately hatched a fantasy of spending a year there someday. Then, it was slowly revealed to us that Scotland is becoming the land of kilt-wearing Marxists and environmentalists (hence, I suppose, all the green and red in their plaids). Fireplaces have been banned in Edinburgh and there’s a legalized heroin vibe coming off many a park bench and back alley. It’s the frickn’ birthplace of the good enlightenment for Pete’s sake! And yet, the Irish are going all free market while Adam Smith’s ancestral home is becoming haggis-soaked kibbutz. Okay, I exaggerate, a little. But seriously, what’s the deal?Rush of blood to the head - and my reply to Jonah is below.
June 26th, 2006 at 2:28 am
Arthur’s being his usual sensible and analytical self here and there’s nothing to disagree with. Yet there are one or two additional points one might like to make.
Most Scots, we should remember, don’t work in the financial sector which is doing well. The largest single employer is the health service, and across great swathes of Scotland it and local government are by far the largest employers. When politicians complain about hospital closures they’re as likely as not complaining about the loss of relatively decent jobs rather than any effect a closure might have on patients.
The second point is that the state is having real difficulty spending all the money that’s been thrown at it in recent years. I’ve just spent four days at the Royal Highland Agricultural Show, and it’s clear that while there’s money to be made from agriculture, the last thing you do to get it is farm. Instead you join a government agency. The central food hall (very big shed) had fewer cheese-makers, whisky distillers etc than I’ve seen in 25 years, and the Hall was instead filled with organisations like the Food Standards Agency and assosrted local councils. Elsewhere there was the Centre for Healthy Working Lives, the Health and Safety mob, the Forestry Commission, Scottish Enterprise and various government-funded initiatives including, and here you have to laugh, the Inland Revenue.
So there’s a large number of people making pretty decent livings by telling farmers what to do. Quite often what they say is really insultingly stupid and bleedin’ obvious. Don’t fall off tall buildings. Don’t get trapped in grain siloes (as in “The Witness”). Don’t take your quad bike along too steep a slope. It’s seriously mindless, much of it.
I know what it takes to be a good farmer, and it’s a lot easier to be a mediocre public sector salaryman. On the other hand they’re not really there to help farmers. They’re employed, at the taxpayers’ expense, in the meta-agricultural industries in order to keep them off the unemployment rolls. The result is that the Scottish economy is becoming increasingly sclerotic as money that might have been invested to create productive jobs is instead diverted into the let’s-pretend employment-effect non-jobs in the booming public sector.
At least the East Germams had some cars to show for their money, even if they weren’t very good. All we’ve got are prissy little leaflets telling us to eat our greens. Thank you Mr Chancellor.
June 26th, 2006 at 5:22 am
Good right-up, Red. Give people a free ride and they will generally take it. Ireland (Republic) is a distinct nation, so it can hew its own path, but Scotland and Wales are in the nether-land of nationhood. Not an easy situation.
Have you kept in touch with the Irish developments? The last I heard, they were following through with more low-tax reforms (much to France’s annoyance) while at the same time resisting any attempts to cut down on their stream of Euro-subsidies. I don’t know how long they’ll get away with it.
June 26th, 2006 at 6:16 am
Haven’t really followed it too closely recently, but they seem to have bought into tax-reform in a big way. I remember thinking that the Irish really had changed when I was in Belfast 6 years ago and a protestant - one of the ones who thought they had a work ethic - started telling me about how his company was opening a Dublin office because it wanted a piece of the action and, as he put it, “we might not be the sharpest people on the planet but we’re not fockin’ thick”. The French will of course stop them some time.
June 26th, 2006 at 8:59 am
I was listening to my podcast the other day and the Europe correspondent was updating us on the European constitution (some group of muckety-mucks was meeting, I guess) and he said that that part of the upcoming years’ EU reforms as France and Germany get the rotating presidency is a common tax policy because the French especially want a minimum corporate tax rate because they’re pissed off that “some countries are using lower corporate taxes to attract investment in their countries, which they see as cheating.”
So Peter, he’s sitting on the floor playing Tetris and he looks up and says “What?” and I repeat what the reporter just said and he looks at me and says “That’s hilarious.”
June 26th, 2006 at 9:12 am
Good subsidies make good farmers.
June 26th, 2006 at 9:22 am
Which is precisely the opposite of what the found to be the case in New Zealand - one for you, Brett.
June 14th, 2008 at 9:25 am
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