From my post on the Herald - the SNP noise machine tonight is, predictably, saying that any failings in Swinney's budget is, inevitably, all London's fault.
"How can the SNP blame their failure to meet manifesto commitments on the UK government, when:
1) They knew the exact budget increase they would receive for nearly a year before they got it
2) They acquired £900m extra from the Treasury from the budget underspends of previous Executives.
Its silly to blame the decision of Parliament to keep the trams at a cost of £500m, as this was always going to happen, and should thus have figured in the SNP sums. Blaming the trams doesn't make sense when compared with the £900m EXTRA the SNP have got , leaving Swinney with £400m extra to play with when we subtract the tram money. Plus, he has the advantage of knowing how much money they would get from Westminster in advance.
For example, the £70m set aside by Salmond for hiring 1000 NEW police officers was going to be implemented with the budget they already knew they were getting. Now they have failed to provide this (the revised cost of £54m for 500, most of which aren't going to be new, seems like poor costing of the initial pledge), they attempt to blame the UK - who are they trying to kid?"
Wednesday 14 November 2007
Thursday 1 November 2007
Reaganism, Not Thatcherism
From yesterday's Wall Street Journal:
Scotland's Coming Boom
The next country to adopt Reaganite tax reduction policies likely will be Scotland. Alex Salmond, who serves as "First Minister" and heads his government's ruling coalition, was in New York recently to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange and deliver a message to the global investor community that his nation is hungry for investment. The occasion was the Royal Bank of Scotland's new listing on the Big Board.
Mr. Salmond tells me a key part of his agenda is "lowering the corporate income tax from 28% to 10%." He also sounds a lot like the Gipper when he says he aims to break the country's "dependency mentality that is restraining growth."
"I'm a long-time advocate of supply side economics," he tells me. "We need to rekindle our spirit of enterprise and turn Scotland into a Celtic Lion." He says Scotland aims to join the "Arc of Prosperity," a group of fast-growing nations in the region including Ireland, Iceland and Norway. Over the past 25 years Scotland's growth rate has averaged 1.8%, compared to 2.3% for Europe and more than 10% for the economic gazelle of Europe, Ireland.
In 1900, Scotland was one of the world's three richest nations in per capita income, but it turned socialist, as so many European nations did, after World War II. It got rich again the easy way in the 1980s with the discovery of North Sea oil. But high taxes have inhibited capitalizing on the petro-dollars to create a sustained economic expansion.
Scotland's problem now is that it only controls 15% of its tax system. The U.K. has veto power over the rest, including reductions in corporate taxes. But if British P.M. Gordon Brown signs off on the tax cut, Scotland may be able to duplicate the Irish Miracle in the years ahead. "We want to imitate the Irish success story," Mr. Salmond says. Ireland's tax-cutting policies aren't just a model for Scotland but for the U.S., which lately finds itself lagging in global competition because of relatively high tax rates on job creators.
Scotland's Coming Boom
The next country to adopt Reaganite tax reduction policies likely will be Scotland. Alex Salmond, who serves as "First Minister" and heads his government's ruling coalition, was in New York recently to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange and deliver a message to the global investor community that his nation is hungry for investment. The occasion was the Royal Bank of Scotland's new listing on the Big Board.
Mr. Salmond tells me a key part of his agenda is "lowering the corporate income tax from 28% to 10%." He also sounds a lot like the Gipper when he says he aims to break the country's "dependency mentality that is restraining growth."
"I'm a long-time advocate of supply side economics," he tells me. "We need to rekindle our spirit of enterprise and turn Scotland into a Celtic Lion." He says Scotland aims to join the "Arc of Prosperity," a group of fast-growing nations in the region including Ireland, Iceland and Norway. Over the past 25 years Scotland's growth rate has averaged 1.8%, compared to 2.3% for Europe and more than 10% for the economic gazelle of Europe, Ireland.
In 1900, Scotland was one of the world's three richest nations in per capita income, but it turned socialist, as so many European nations did, after World War II. It got rich again the easy way in the 1980s with the discovery of North Sea oil. But high taxes have inhibited capitalizing on the petro-dollars to create a sustained economic expansion.
Scotland's problem now is that it only controls 15% of its tax system. The U.K. has veto power over the rest, including reductions in corporate taxes. But if British P.M. Gordon Brown signs off on the tax cut, Scotland may be able to duplicate the Irish Miracle in the years ahead. "We want to imitate the Irish success story," Mr. Salmond says. Ireland's tax-cutting policies aren't just a model for Scotland but for the U.S., which lately finds itself lagging in global competition because of relatively high tax rates on job creators.
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