Scotland's budget is a disaster – but it's not just the UK's fault

The National

a day ago

There are many things wrong with the current devolution settlement, and Scotland will do immeasurably better as an independent Scotland, but the mantra that Westminster dictates Holyrood's Budget is not borne out by the legislation.
For some reason, which I can only put down to a fear of taking responsibility for our economy, the Scottish Government and its Cosla colleagues spend inordinate time and effort and administrative costs carving out revenue-raising initiatives, the sum total of which may raise at best marginal amounts, via double Council Tax on second homes, licensing short-term tenancies, tourist taxes and now a cruise levy, while cavorting with the UK Government as the junior partner in twisted green (free) ports and levelling-up programmes.
Apart from introducing Land and Buildings Transaction Tax as a tartan tribute act to Westminster's Stamp Duty Land Tax, the Scottish Government has singularly failed to use the powers of devolved taxes in the Scotland Act which even its own senior civil servants agree can be done.
READ MORE: Why the UK media 180 on Gaza is too little, too late
The powers relate to transactions on the acquisition of an interest in land, and as a result give the Scottish Government almost total control over the use of land as a source of public revenue.
With the exception of our people, land is our most valuable and flexible resource which can be used to raise public funds to replace the block grant; to tax the pipes and cables of the energy companies; to lift everyone out of poverty; to transform land ownership both in rural and urban Scotland, and provide the surest of foundations to build our enterprising economy. Instead, we over-concentrate in inward investment which can depart somewhat more quickly than the painstaking efforts and subsidies used to bring it here in the first place. Inward investment extracts value from our economy for the benefit of the home states of the investors.
Scots are a nation of Haves. Our income may buy less than before in comparison with other nations, but within the UK, we have the highest salaries outwith London and the south-east. The social contract between our government and our people provides many benefits and rights not enjoyed by the other three nations and our poverty levels are significantly less than theirs also.
If we are to maintain the Scottish Government's propaganda that we are in some form of straitjacket then that's meat to those Unionists who proclaim that we are better off in the UK and are subsidised by it, precisely because independent analysis shows we are better off than most nations and regions in the UK.
If we are really serious about independence, we must reject the block grant and raise and collect all public revenue in Scotland – then the subsidy claim is buried once and for all.
The powers which we have under devolution can transform all lives and end poverty. Using them to put money in everyone's pocket will set us with self-confidence on the highway to independence as the potholes of Unionism descend into a vortex of despair.
Graeme McCormick
Arden
MY wife and I will shortly make our 32nd visit to the Greek island of Rhodes. We love the Greek people and their determination to be free of the oppression by the Turks for more than 300 years.
We were severely disappointed at the 2014 referendum 'No' vote and more so when we had the embarrassment of being offered the condolences of sympathetic Greek friends after that result. Every Sunday when we are in Rhodes, we witness a military parade to the national monument in which the Greek flag is lowered and their national anthem is sung by the crowd of local people and visitors. The Greeks revere their national flag whose nine stripes represent the nine syllables of their motto, in Greek 'Eleftheria i Thanatos', meaning 'Freedom or Death'!
(Image: Danny Lawson)
The Greeks actually FOUGHT for their independence, as did India, Ireland and almost all of the so-called 'British Empire'. Every time we witness that parade in Rhodes, we feel thoroughly ashamed of our compatriots who couldn't even find the courage to put an X on a ballot paper. Scotland the Brave?
The Scottish people should get up off their knees and establish, not claim, their sovereign independence. It should be remembered that the so-called Union was enabled by a 'Parcel of Rogues', as Rabbie said!
Jim McKenna
East Kilbride
WELL done to Kelly Given on her powerful assessment on the Gaza situation and the very belated criticism of Israel from the UK Government (Doing the right thing now does nothing for the dead, May 22). David Lammy described Israel's continued action as a new dark phase in the conflict. That was the case many months ago, but they said nothing except making weak statements about more aid needing to get in. Nothing about the wanton death and destruction which the UK is helping to facilitate. War crimes are war crimes whoever is responsible.
I suspect UK Government ministers are now getting a bit nervous that they might be complicit if a war crimes trial ever comes to fruition. The UN investigations are ongoing, and even if there were a ceasefire tomorrow, these indictments don't go away. The Benjamin Netanyahu government has been testing how far it can go breaking international law for the past 18 months and has found it can get away with just about anything, shielded as it is by the US, which of course doesn't recognise the ICC.
We're doing our bit out of Akrotiri, providing surveillance, as you highlighted in The National, as well as possibly helping the transport of weapons from the US to Israel. The UK Government said it's suspending trade talks with Israel. I didn't know there were any. Why would you want to trade with a regime guilty of war crimes? We stopped trading with Russia as soon as it invaded Ukraine.
UK exports to Israel are around £3 billion and imports slightly less at £2.5bn, a relatively minor trading partner. While it's currently illegal for institutions to boycott Israeli goods, consumers are free to make their own decisions. Fruit and vegetables is one area to keep an eye on, as the origin is sometimes deliberately concealed. Another consumer area is moulded plastic, and there's quite a lot of plastic garden furniture and storage stocked by DIY stores and garden centres which are made in Israel, but you have to look very carefully to find the origin in the small print.
When will justice be done?
Hugh Walker
Dunfermline
MUCH is said, and rightly so, about large-scale electricity generators bespoiling the landscape. I feel that we would be better served by using marine generators to draw energy from tidal flow, particularly where narrows are formed such as at Corran and the nearby entrance to Loch Leven.
One very good reason for using tidal generation is that the power will be produced for about 18 hours every day and not have downtime like wind generators. They can be small scale to power island or mainland rural communities which ideally will be locally publicly owned and operated, or large scale to feed a new Scotland grid.
Another advantage is that high tides are at different times around Scotland's coast thereby giving a steady flow to the grid. As is the case of the marine generator at Strangford Lough in north-east Ireland, there is no impediment to shipping.
We could also reset our thinking away from the mega size and think more about the micro scale. How many farms et cetera have a large burn flowing down, well capable of a decent output like the one which outlets into Loch Ard but can barely be seen? We could also make better use of our planning laws as I see new houses and buildings going up with perhaps as little as two or no solar panels PV. Or thermal.
M Ross
Aviemore
LES Hunter (Letters, May 23) admirably articulates the Labour Theory of Property as expounded most notably by John Locke. Nobody can claim outright ownership of the gifts of nature (or God, if you will); only artefacts can rightly be deemed legitimate property.
But then the socialist planner in Les takes over, demanding that the whole country be taken into public ownership when this is already the case (the only real landowner is the state, which claims eminent domain). And private hospitals, schools etc should certainly not be exempt from a land-use levy.
We could rely on Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' to regulate land questions fairly, if only the state would create a level playing field, ending monopoly and speculation by fully recovering site values for revenue.
George Morton
Rosyth
'FIVE More Years' of John Swinney would be the death knell of the declining impetus in the independence campaign. The SNP Government should delete the N for National and insert D for Devolution, as they are like nodding dogs towards corrupt Westminster.
We need a political body with the word 'independence' at the forefront of its targeted programme. It is years behind time that the current government will have to reform its attitude if it is to establish Scotland as a country and not a county, being pillaged of its assets by the despicable Unionist governments in England.
Sandy Coghill
Isle of Skye
IT'S time to ditch Crown immunity. No-one is above the law, even government ministers.
When will the British government stop its long history of aiding, abetting and committing genocidal clearance? The list is not exhaustive. Not unlike Gaza ... they spent the 1700s and 1800s either committing genocide or clearance against the Scots, let one million Irish starve in the 1840s by failing to assist them and exporting the little food they had to England (causing en masse emigration), backed the Nigerian government in the 1960s which led to mass starvation and genocide in Biafra.
They pushed for less of a UN troop presence in Rwanda in the 1990s which led to genocide, bombed Iraq on false pretences killing half a million between 2003-2011 for access to oil wells and now Westminster is backing genocide in Palestine. A quarter of MPs have been financially backed by Israel, thus giving Israel massive influence over UK policy-making.
Yet, none of this represents the vast majority of British voters. So, if our MPs are not representing us, who are they representing? If the Northern Irish, Welsh and Scots have any sense, they will make the three devolved governments come together and agree to hold a referendum on freedom on the same day for each nation. It's time to kick the British government out.
R McCallum
Dalry