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The SNP: Living in the Past

The SNP's Ian Blackford recently made the following statement (presumably to Adam Boulton) on Sky News:"But the simple fact of the matter, Adam, is that if you look back over the course of the last 40...

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Dissecting a Deception

tl;drNicola Sturgeon keeps trying to mislead people by repeating a demonstrably false assertion. The truth is that if the SNP's Growth Commission recommendations had been applied to the conditions as...

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How Much of Scotland's Tax Revenue Does Westminster Keep?

tl;dr More spending occurs in Scotland than tax revenues raised by Scotland.In fact, more money is spent in Scotland than the sum of tax revenues raised by Scotland plus Scotland's per capita share of...

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What GERS can and cannot tell us

This meme is frequently shared by independence supporters as if it's some kind of "gotcha!". The quote comes from a radio interview I did with the perpetually confused Richard Murphy. He was indulging...

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Pooling and Sharing: The English Regions

In a few weeks time I'll be chairing a conference in Newcastle - These Islands: Our Past, Present & FutureThe conference will feature an impressive array of speakers and panelists including:...

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Deficits, Deficit Gaps and Fiscal Transfers

To understand what is going on when we talk about implied fiscal transfers between different parts of the UK (as discussed here), it's perhaps easiest to think of what happens when we split the bill in...

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Kate Forbes' Grievance, Dissected

At the time of writing, in the 24 hours since being posted this tweet from Scottish Finance Secretary Kate Forbes has received around 4 thousand retweets and likesOf the c. £30 billion announced by the...

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Fact Checking a Fact Check

The National today published a 1,000 article rather hilariously labelled as a "Fact Check" which amounted to little more than a personal attack against me. The entire piece is predicated on their view...

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Apples and Pears: GERS

The Scottish Government's economists yesterday published their latest Government Expenditure & Revenue Scotland (GERS) figures. I'll publish a more complete analysis on this blog soon, but the...

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In Other News

I'm conscious that I haven't posted here for a while - so I thought it might be useful to collate here stuff that I've written elsewhere:Daily Herald Article: GERS figures don't lie, despite what...

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What's £7 billion between friends?

In yesterday's Financial Times, Andrew Wilson (Chair of the SNP’s Sustainable Growth Commission) made the following sweeping statement:“Scottish tax revenues cover the equivalent of the entire Scottish...

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Mind The Gap: Critiquing the FT's Fiscal Gap Analysis

tl;drThe FT recently published a figure of £1.8k per person pa. as the tax rises or spending cuts an independent Scotland would need to achieve sustainable deficit levels. By failing to quantify the...

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Analysing Sturgeon's STV Interview

I've just caught up with ITV News’s Peter Smith's interview with Nicola Sturgeon. It's worth watching the full 15 minutes here - it's a masterclass in deflection, evasion and misdirection.The first...

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Sophist's Choice: how Sturgeon dodges questions on the economics of separation

sophistry/ˈsɒfɪstri/noun: the use of clever but false arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving.sophism /sofˈi-zm/noun: a plausibly deceptive fallacysophist /ˈsä-fist/noun: an intentionally...

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Sturgeon on Andrew Marr, 25/04/21

Anybody who read my analysis of Sturgeon's last four TV interviews could be forgiven for feeling a weary sense of déjà vu if they watched her being grilled by Andrew Marr yesterday 1. She sounds like a...

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Richard Murphy on GERS: The Perpetually Baffled Man

I'm writing a serious blog on GERS and really don't want it to get bogged down by engaging with the frankly bonkers claims made by the perpetually baffled GERS-denier in chief, Richard Murphy. To...

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GERS 2021 - So What?

Every year the Scottish Government's Chief Statistician provides an updated analysis of the state of Scotland's public sector finances by publishing the GERS report [Government Expenditure &...

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What devolution of DWP functions tells us about the likely costs of Independence

A few days ago I tweeted about the lack of serious analysis from Scottish nationalists when it comes to the question of what it would cost to replicate the costs of our currently shared machinery of...

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Independence by Gaslight: Pensions

The SNP appear to have decided they would try to use the payment of state pensions in an independent Scotland as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the rest of the UK if Scotland were to...

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Scotland's NI Contributions and the State Pension

SummarySome Scottish nationalists correctly recognise that an independent Scotland would have to fund its own State Pension ... but then incorrectly claim that Scotland's National Insurance...

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We Need to Talk About Scotland

The Scottish Government has just published (under the headline "First Paper in new independence prospectus") the remarkably verbosely titled "Building a New Scotland - Independence in the Modern World....

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Why Not Scotland?

Despite the fact that recent opinion polls (eg. here and here) show that less than a third of Scots actually want it, Nicola Sturgeon has today announced that we are to be treated to a "pretendyref" on...

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GERS 2022 - Here we go again

Every year the Scottish Government's Chief Economist publishes the Government Revenue and Expenditure Scotland (GERS) report and every year the SNP's spin machine goes into over-drive. This year is no...

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Ofgem Price Caps and Scotland

Recent actual and future forecast increases in Ofgem's default energy tariff cap levels are genuinely shocking and have rightly led to widespread calls for government action to deal with an impending...

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Scotland's Renewable Energy Statistics

SummaryFull Fact have concluded that senior SNP politicians have been guilty of making false statements to suggest that Scotland is close to self-sufficient in renewables (see here and here).Nowadays -...

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