SNP policy guru Stephen Noon is right to highlight the importance of the recently published Government and Expenditure Revenue Scotland (GERS) figures, not to mention the efficacy of getting the quantification methodology right, although clearly he outlines these matters with a partisan axe to grind.
Similarly, Alex Orr underlines the fact that Scotland's putative public spending deficit is marginally better than that of the UK generally, but at least the Westminster government has acknowledged the need to get this under control.
On the other hand, the SNP wants to see a Scotland with fiscal policies like slashed corporation tax, significantly reduced fuel duty and tax breaks to favoured sectors such as the computer games industry. At the same time it is clearly reluctant to raise income tax or council taxes, or to impose a windfall tax on oil companies. Meanwhile, it makes lavish spending commitments such as free higher education for all students based in Scotland.
In that context it surely ill behoves the Nationalists to favourably compare Scotland's deficit to that of the UK. No wonder the SNP is so keen for Scotland to have borrowing powers.
Moreover, Mr Orr highlights the role of oil revenues in an independent Scotland, but this merely underlines yet another future drain on Scotland's public purse, namely the subsidy-hungry renewables industry and the SNP's barely credible targets in that regard, which would also entail a stealth tax on consumers in the form of rocketing energy bills.
And the SNP's attempts to depict themselves as the planet's environmental saviours while at the same time portraying oil as the key to Scotland's future shows that the party wants to have its renewables cake and eat it.
(The latter part of the above was sent as a response to Mr Orr's letter in the Courier.)
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3 comments:
The Inverclyde result shows that the public are already wary of the SNP's promises. Had the same level of support been out there as we saw in May, they would have trounced Labour. As it is, the Labour vote held up and little wonder since all the SNP seem to do is demand everything from Westminster.
People don't like all this windfarm claptrap either. Hundreds of windmills yet not a single reduction in energy prices to be seen.
Not too sure about the implications of the Inverclyde result, barbarian.
I think both the big players can be encouraged by it, but as is often the case in the grand scheme of things a by-election result is unlikely to have any national or long-term signficance at all.
And indeed, the windmills will presumably raise domestic energy bills rather than reduce them.
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