Regular readers will be familiar with our Not Hitting The Wall feature. We collect what we feel are important readers' comments from the latest pro-independence blogs.
Occasionally we encounter a comment which stops us in our tracks. One such is reproduced in full, below. It appeared yesterday on Wings Over Scotland's latest, here: Wings Over Scotland | Nothing Changes Here
We don't know who 'James' is or what he does - we have neither the knowledge to confirm that what he writes is accurate nor the time to set about checking the statistics he provides.
And that's why we're publishing his comment as a stand-alone post.
If anyone wants to quibble with any of these figures then we're all ears.
And if no-one can challenge them then we have to ask - why hasn't the SNP been ramming this information into everyone's faces at every opportunity?
In 2022-23 Scotland raised £87.5bn in tax which goes directly to Westminster. However, the Scottish Government only received a budget back of £59.7bn, a difference of £27.8bn staying in London.
64% of revenue is reserved to London and 36% devolved to Edinburgh. While 41% of expenditure is reserved to London and 59% is devolved to Edinburgh.
The Scottish Government can borrow £3 billion for capital expenditure in the term of a parliament with the annual limit for 2023/24 set at £450 million. Resource borrowing is set at £500 million annually. The Scottish Government legally can NOT overspend its budget outside of the agreed borrowing limits, which leads me to my next point.
It was reported for 2022/23 Scotland had a deficit of £19.1bn. The media and unionist politicians mistakenly or deliberately report this as Scot Gov overspending. However, it is a lie. There are some very interesting figures within Scotlands ‘deficit’, for example: the figure of £9.1bn under the name of ‘Reserved public sector debt interest’ is Westminster debt being allocated to Scotland; debt Scotland had no part in creating or spending. That is 47.6% of Scotlands ‘deficit’, almost half is being created by debt loading from Westminster. If this debt was not being allocated to Scotland, the nation’s deficit would go down from 9% of GDP to 4.7%.
I would like to note another interesting point: this debt Scotland is allocated actually stems from the 1707 Union. One of the terms was that Scotland would be paid £398,085 to offset Scotland being allocated a share of England’s debt for all of time. That in 2021 prices is £71,260,439 million. As you can see, that was not nearly enough to offset the burden on Scotland of England’s debt, Scotland has paid more than £9 billion more in one year on their neighbours debt than the whole amount that was supposed to offset it forever.
Scotland is also allocated £4.5 billion for defence, but the UK government only spends £1.9bn on defence in Scotland. £2.6bn of Scotland’s money is being spent outside of Scotland, where it would better be used in the country to bolster the nation’s defence.
Let’s look at this statement: Andrew Bowie, Tory MP for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine admitted in an interview for the BBC “We now tax oil and gas companies 75% on their profits that they make, that 75% tax has gone towards paying for half of everybody in this country’s energy bills over the past winter. Oil and gas is important and it will be with us for the next 25-30 years.”
How can a nation of 5.5 million that has 90% of the UK’s oil reserves and roughly 60-65% of the gas reserves subsidise 34 million peoples energy bills for a whole winter but run a deficit and apparently be subsidised by its southern neighbour? The answer is; it can’t. Someone is lying: it’s the establishment in our neighbour’s capital that benefits tremendously by having Scotland shackled to it.
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