UKH

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-nearly-2-000-cases-linked-to-scotland-f...

"Out of the 1,991 cases registered by Public Health Scotland, two-thirds said they had gone to London to watch England v Scotland."

Who'd have thought it ?

Slow motion clown car crash ..................

AP

Wow, how entirely unpredictable!! What a shocker!

I think it is actually quite surprising.

Only ~40% of those cases could be directly connected to stadia or fanzones. Prevalence in London is a bit lower than across the central belt so why did so many travelling fans get infected while those who remained didn't?

jk

Maybe they weren't crammed into small metal tubes for hours on end...?

Quite likely related in part to the trains but they've been running at reasonably high, socially distanced and masked, capacity for a while now and it's not just fans travelling, York's station is busy again with tourists and day trippers pouring off the trains. We aren't hearing of 'covid super spreader trains' creating hundreds of cases elsewhere are we?

I'm just surprised it's so heavily weighted toward travelling fans but I guess they do maybe drink more, travel and socialise together far more than domestic fans who will have more going on in their day than just the pub plus match. Still, I can't help but suspect there's a fair dose of super spreader bad luck at play here too.

jk

Not just happening here:  https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/finlands_covid_cases_rising_with_delta_v...

"The coronavirus Delta variant has also likely started to spread in Finland after hundreds of football fans returning from Russia were allowed into the country without being tested for Covid last week, according to virology professor Ilkka Julkunen.

So far, about 300 of the Finnish football tourists have tested positive for Covid-19 since their return, according to the Institute for Health and Welfare (THL)."

Sounds like Andy Burnham needs to ban Scots from Manchester. 

I mean, presumably the good news is that this suggests that some of the lunatic rate of increase that we've seen in Scotland over the last couple of weeks is basically down to a one-off gigaspreader event, and we can hope that the spread will slacken off to normal-for-delta-variant levels fairly soon?

It's such a "beautiful " game . 

"Well, some of the crowd are on the pitch
Well, some of the crowd will be in the ditch
They think it's all over
Well, it might be soon.

Express yourself
close the space
You know you can't win
Don't give up the chase
Beat the man
Take him on
You should give up
It's covid 101

Express yourself
It's covid 101
Express yourself
Your time is done
Express yourself
You can't be wrong
When something's good
You'll soon be  gone

Prats got the world in motion
And I know what we can do
Covid got the world croaking
And I can believe it's true

Now is the time
Let everyone see
You should  give up
That's how it should be
Don't get caught
dig your own grave
Express yourself
Don't give it away

Express yourself
It's one on one
Express yourself
It's one on one
Express yourself
You can't be wrong
When something's good
It's never gone

Love's got the world in motion
And I know what we can do
Love's got the world in motion
And I can't believe it's true
Love's got the world in motion
And I know what we can do
Love's got the world in motion
And I can't believe it's true

You've got to hold your breath
But do it at the right time
You can be slow or fast
But you must get to the line
They'll always hit you and hurt you
Defend and relax 
There's only one way to beat them
Get 'off the track.
Catch it if you can
'Cause I'm the England man"

Ap

Well, not the Scottish Government apparently, who were to busy banning travel to Manchester whilst allowing the bleeding obvious risks of mass football fan travel in the middle of a rapidly rising pandemic phase.

No doubt the number of school children forced to isolate towards the end of their term is going to rise significantly as a result of this.  A shambolic and shameful tradeoff, and one that the farce of Scotland > Manchester shows us that the Scottish Government had the power to avoid.

Only if everyone who went is contentious and selfless enough to self isolate for the next 14 days, and we all know that ain't going to happen.........

I'm not expecting the case counts to drop again, but I would be surprised if we didn't see the rate of increase more in line with the rest of the UK (albeit from a higher baseline), where previously it had looked a bit like Scotland was on something stupid like a six day doubling time...

So long as people connected to that wave of infection behave and quarantine, I'd guess that might be the case.

It's not that clear to me now how much any of this matters, covid rates are going to be off the charts for a while because politicians have chosen to allow it, growing faster earlier may kill a few more people but a single dose of the vaccine does seem to be good at preventing death and we're approaching the long tail of that phase of the program. It's uncomfortable and the timing of the 4th wave may be a little off but it's where we are, there's no turning back for now at least. Unless policy changes radically, and that seems unlikely, many of us will be either retreating back into our homes or getting covid over the next couple of months, football or football.

jk

Have you seen the difference in behaviour between a train load of drunken footie fans and people commuting, or travelling quietly?

Loud singing & shouting, close personal contact, moving up and down the train, etc.

Still, I'm sure its all part of the 'experiment' to see what happens when you allow sporting and music events to take place. Anyone know the outcome of the Donington festival (where punters were tested beforehand, of course)?

While agreeing with the drift of the thread I must confess my initial reaction is of puzzlement and dismay over the thinking and reasoning ability of the copywriters

"Nearly 2000 cases linked"

summarising facts that link two-thirds of "nearly 2000".  Astonishingly sloppy and undermines credibility of the article.

You can tell I listen to "More or Less" can't you ?

When those fans went to London, Scotland had a waaaay higher Covid rate than London. And I guess most went down for a day or so. So logically, they had Covid already and then went to London?  And chances are they spreaded it between themselves.  

But I’m genuinely not that bothered. We have to move on. 

Have SNP fanatics blamed the Tories yet? 

Pretty sure I saw a statement to the effect that a decent proportion of the Scottish football fan cases were traced to coach travel rather than trains.  And it wouldn't surprise me if a fair few hadn't car shared.

I believe Nicola was implicitly admitting the other day that another contributor to the rise in cases was fans congregating in each other's homes to watch the matches.

For the FA Cup Final everyone with a Leicestershire postcode and a Wembley ticket was required to travel by coach. One person to a double seat and everyone had to sit by the window, masked. As well as a PCR test in advance and afterwards. 

It's all possible, and safe. It just depends how the fans governing body ie SFA wanted to play it. 

Since the majority were just hanging around in London for some reason I doubt the SFA would have had much if any control in the majority of cases.

Anecdotal but living just outside London the next morning was walking past the local premier inn and saw a couple in full patriotic kit staggering out to board the coach parked opposite. Sadly it seemed they were out of Saltire masks and so didnt bother with one at all.

Of course it is the Tories.  They are the ones calling the shots because they control the media (or more accurately the right wing media controls them) and the money and the borders and if they really want they can overrule any decision by devolved governments using their majority at Westminster.  Nicola Sturgeon is being pragmatic and she's not fighting a battle she can't win.  The only way to stop or delay the Tory Covid explosion affecting Scotland would be as an independent country that could shut the border with England and fund its own lockdown rules.

The Tories shouldn't have held the Euros in London or Wimbledon. They definitely shouldn't be having matches with all the seats full and no mask rule at a time when infections are growing exponentially.  When you put this together with Javid's statements and the education secretary dickhead saying next term no more isolation in schools when kids catch it it is fairly clear their policy is that every f*cker can catch Covid because it is faster than waiting until the young people are jagged . 

So the Torys are risking elevated covid spread for economic reasons, but so far the London rate hasn’t gone exponential, having a lower rate per hundred thousand to start with than Glasgow and Dundee, in the run up to the Euros.

Nicola gambled and lost feeding an exponential rise, partly as a result of having substantially higher base rate to start with.
 

But she took this risk for vain popularity reasons……….and ironically most of the economic gain from the fans was spent in England, nothing to see here then!

youtube.com/watch?v=h2QZprRgxDc&

a. give it time.  

b. London had such a sh*tty time in previous waves lots of people still have antibodies.

Scotland had far fewer infections and deaths in the previous waves.   That means when the English let Delta in there were fewer people with antibodies in Scotland. 

What was she supposed to do about it?  She's got specific laws to work within, a hostile media sponsored and funded by Westminster and a substantial number of unionists in the population who are being encouraged by England to ignore her.  England is up to its usual colonial tricks as it used in Ireland trying to turn Independence into a Catholic vs Protestant / Celtic vs Rangers thing and it is that c*nt Gove and his 'union unit' spending taxpayer money on it.  He even got caught using Covid money to fund a contract for a couple of his mates to do political polling on independence.   

When the results came in and he didn't like them he kept them secret.  Never mind that the taxpayer had paid for it.  You can bet the polling results would have been all over the press in time to influence the election if they'd been what he wanted.

Sturgeon could have shut the border, confined people to their counties and so on. She’s done that before but not this time. I suspect she’s doing what she thinks would be popular. She’s not that different to most politicians after all...

There were a lot more people dying when she did it before and England was implementing similar restrictions. 

The difference between Sturgeon and the Tories is that it is the Tory controlled BBC and Tory press barons which are shifting opinion and making it harder to protect public health.   The English made damn sure regulation of the media was not devolved.  They run the BBC, four billionaire's control most of the newspapers and the UK government spent in excess of 300 million pounds on advertising during Covid making sure the rest of the media couldn't afford to go off message either.

Brilliant, you are a parody aren't you? Surely? 

You do realise she doesn't really want independence, it's a show, she'll have no one to blame for her errors. She can keep herself in a job pretending she's fighting for freedom, it's easier than actually having it. 

She could have done a Manchester or Blackburn style travel ban, but chose not to. The buck stops in holyrood with this one. Everyone saw the TV footage of drunk Scots on London streets, there's no where to hide from the truth. 

The English laughed about the Americans and the Irish and the Indians as well when they sought independence and now Ireland is richer per capita than England, the US is a superpower and India has a hell of a lot more influence on English politics than England has on Indian politics.  

It is England that is the global joke. 

Plenty of Scottish people live in London, they've been forced to move there by the centralisation of the economy.  Probably the majority of Scotland supporters you would see in London did not travel from Scotland at all.

Are you forgetting that the Irish economy collapsed very very recently and was bailed out by the uk government, imf and European central Bank?

What are the populations of India and usa? If the uk has no voice compared to them, imagine how little influence Scotland would have? 

Define richer? Companies lodging a business there for tax purposes but having very few employees and paying near zero tax? https://www.politico.eu/article/ireland-gdp-growth-multinationals-misleadin...

Given that Irish gdp per capita is higher than Norway, who do you think has pretty much better everything? Sometimes figures can be misleading if you don't understand them.

Complete bollocks, Tom. Whilst accepting that the tories run the media etc etc etc, just do a google and check out the pictures of train stations disgorging scottish football fans in advance of the match. Or were the pictures photoshopped so the blame could be put at Sturgeons door?

NB - there was no way of stopping them, even if you stopped the trains and shut down the coach companies. They would have travelled by car, and there hasnt been any attempt to stop car travel.

I agree, but I wonder how much of the transmission was down to “pissed train behaviour?”.  It’s hard to have that sort of carry on in a bunch of cars.

Jesus. What a tosser.

Huge amounts of it. I can imagine mask wearing and social distancing lasting a long time amongst that lot on the 08:35 from Glasgow.......

and tom_in_former_northumbria:

it has a higher gdp per head; not necessarily richer; it is only relatively recently that it has exceeded that of England (or the UK, if you prefer.....) in gdp terms.

Again, this is a relatively recent phenomenon; Norway has had a high GDP relative to the Rep of ireland for many years, and because it invested it in the country's future, has a pretty decent infrastructure and financial position.

And Summo - for the introduction of the new poster TifN, its going to be some achievement for anyone to beat that as forum post of the day........

We are all going to catch covid anyway ofc. I firmly believe we should have been more cautious wrt to the India variant far earlier and we should have put back some restrictions until (nearly) everyone over 18 that wanted their first dose had been offered it, and similar for second doses with the over 40's. Its not just deaths which count here is it. It's long covid and being ill enough to be admitted to hospital.

My second dose is next week, I'm just hoping I can make it a few weeks more before catching it. I'm starting to think two doses of AZ and the India variant would be a good time to develop real immunity to the whole virus (rather than just some 1.5+ year old spike protein), before we see further more serious variants emerge. This thing is going to be endemic for the foreseeable future now, and its seems more adept at mutating variants of concern than some were saying early on. There is also no reason to believe it can't recombine when two strains infect one cell. I'm beginning to suspect we are seeing that already. Bare in mind most (all?) other coronaviruses can do this.

I think we could well see vaccine escape soon (something like two doses of the original vaccines only work as well as one dose currently works against detla, and soon after that further escape). Which may not be such a problem if we've mostly had the Delta variant after 2 vaccine doses anyway.

He is entertaining and a brilliant parody. Any good points that he makes are just lost in his daft comments, so in the end he becomes a laughing stock. Pity because he comes up with some good stuff but these days it just becomes lost and not worth the effort.

Rein it in TIE and you will win people over.

If Scots have been forced to move to London because of the centralisation of the economy, how do you account for the many English people living in Scotland? 

You've just made that up, with no evidence whatsoever. 

You do talk the most ridiculous nonsense at times, and you do your cause no good by doing so. 

Drinking.. 

Yes but even he is, that’s also the fault of the English and the Tories, for forcing him to be the way he is! 

I'm wondering if it's a unionist ploy to discredit the nationalists.

And where are those persons who said I was being racist when I said this would happen !!

Plus please note, two thirds of 2000 is just over 1300. Apparently less than 400 of these 2000 had tickets so were outside in the streets.

I think it might be difficult to have the Euros at Wimbledon - wrong kind of nets to start with .....

Fifth columnists trying to undermine the glorious country as part of the evil master plan of the English.

Yes, but at least they would have some help cleaning up all the litter. And I think I know who Tom really is....

I've been to Scotland, they definitely drink there too

I get that away fans spend a lot of hours pissed and shouting in close quarters but it really is still surprising quite so many of them seem to have got covid from the experience. Plenty will have been vaccinated too.

Jk

Is it surprising that a load of people who neither distanced nor masked up spread COVID around?  That seems a bit bears-are-Catholic to me.

Certainly in such settings getting a cold is not rare, and it works the same way (but is more transmissible).

Doesn't stop you catching covid, just gives your immune system a massive head start killing virus cells before they enter your own body's cells. 

Im with you on this. They have no real proof, hence using ambiguous words like ‘linked’.  
There was a Covid case where my son was staying the other week. One of them tested positive and none of the others caught it and I’m fairly sure the infected person did not lock himself in his room. So I get that this a very contagious etc but my gut feeling is those numbers are a bit made up. 

You haven’t addressed my point. Sturgeon could have implemented harsher restrictions to control cases but did not do that this time. I agree the Tories have been a shambles on Covid (and generally) but it’s the SNP who decide on Scottish control measures. As I’ve said before, they all seem to have given up trying to control Covid now.

I don’t think the government control the BBC by the way. Some Tories hate it. As do some left wingers. Can’t please everyone by trying to be objective…

Drink Scots in London weren’t all from Scotland but otherwise agree. 

So the real issue is that the match didn’t take place behind closed doors. My point is far wider though - the SNP are no longer trying to control cases. 

Rubbish as usual, Ireland is 19th in the list of wealth per capita, the UK 15th even after England is pulled down by the money-pits of Scotland, NI and Wales.

Ireland GDP per capita 84,000 US dollars.  UK GDP per capita 40,000 US Dollars.

https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/ireland/uk

Those are 2020 numbers, any effects of the financial crash are included.   If you look at the graph you can see this is a long term trend.   You can see the 2008 financial crash hit both the UK and Ireland, Ireland stayed ahead of the UK in terms of GDP per capita and recovered faster. In fact, Ireland has been consistently outperforming the UK for decades.   Look at the deficit numbers as well as the GDP per capita - the UK has a far larger deficit per head of population.  Not only do they have a higher GDP per capita the money is more fairly distributed across the country and population.

It shows that a small country with a similar population to Scotland within the EU can do massively  better when it is not controlled from London.   No Brexit bullshit, no Covid mismanagement, no £38 billion test and trace, very few foreign wars,  no nuclear weapons or multi billion pound destroyers / aircraft carriers being sent to p*ss off the Russians and Chinese.   

I don’t really have a view on Scottish independence but what I would say is there’s a lot more to the Irish GDP per capita figure than first meets the eye. Ireland is essentially a tax haven with a 12.5% corporation tax rate and, historically, friendly tax deals with large multinational tech companies. This is the government which is trying *not* to collect €13bn in tax from Apple despite the courts ruling that Ireland needed to collect this as it had given illegal tax subsidies to Apple (this is still being litigated, with the latest court decision in Apple’s favour). Not sure if this is what you had in mind for an independent Scotland…

GDP measures are complex and in some ways crude. They include all sorts of things (even government services which are free at the point of use). One of those things is income from intellectual property rights, which is precisely the kind of thing some large companies have historically directed to Ireland. Not much use to most people (it does provide some jobs) and not much tax take from it either. Given that Ireland’s ‘real’ economy and population are relatively small, these kinds of ‘useless’ inflows massively distort its GDP. Given the ongoing changes to the global tax regime (see the news today about a 15% minimum corporation tax rate for example - notably, Ireland was one of the few countries to object to this), I wouldn’t be surprised if Ireland’s headline GDP drops in the current years as these massive corporate flows get ‘redistributed’ to other countries.

https://www.oecd.org/sdd/na/Irish-GDP-up-in-2015-OECD.pdf

Basically Ireland is a country around the same size as Scotland, geographically even further from the population centres of the continent than Scotland and no oil.  It has developed as a tech economy based on the education of its population and it has a tax system that suits tech companies.   The UK has a tax system which suits bankers and landowners.

Intellectual property rights are extremely important to tech companies, and Ireland's tax treatment of intellectual property is something that makes sense for a country with a tech based economy.   If I was them I'd also give massive tax breaks on stock options so the best people in US tech companies would want to work from the Ireland office - but I don't think they actually do that.

Designing your tax system around your key industries is one of the ways countries compete.  It is something Ireland can do and Scotland is disadvantaged by not being allowed to do, because London makes sure the UK tax system suits London industries, not Scottish industries.   

It's also a bit of a cheek for the UK to call Ireland a tax haven when London is the biggest centre of money laundering and tax evasion on the planet and London property prices are driven by Russian oligarchs  and Arab sheiks who have ripped off money from their own countries.

You are completely missing the point. Ireland isn't richer or better off. The UK bailed out Ireland (with others). You simply don't understand what the numbers mean and are some how twisting them in your head to suit your stance. 

 Imagine a big company comes to independent Scotland, sturgeon gives it a very preferential tax rate for putting its hq in Edinburgh (snp centralisation of power and assets), the company puts a little office with a few lawyers and accountants on the 2nd floor of some Charlotte Square building. It has near zero employees and pays near zero haggises(Scotland's new currency) to the Scottish exchequer. However the company has a global turn over of $20 trillion, is Scotland rich? That's why Ireland has a large gdp, but no money. 

Splitting a company into pieces and placing the brand, the logo, the tech rights somewhere cheap, then the parent company in expensive countries who pay for it, to pretend to make a loss or near zero profit isn't important or clever, it's taking tax revenue from governments who then can't afford public services. The winners are the likes of Bezzos, the loser could be health services and kids education. The loser is the public, every time. 

I understand that a GDP of $84,000 per head per year is a hell of a lot more than a GDP of $40,000 per head per year.

I understand that the whole argument that Scotland would somehow be skint if it wasn't managed by England and that England is bailing out Scotland is the exact same sh*t that the English said about the US, Ireland and India and it is completely disproved by the economic development of those countries after they became independent.

The graph of the development of Irish GDP compared with UK GDP over decades is completely devastating to both the unionist argument and the Brexit argument.  The only reason otherwise intelligent people believe this sh*te is because it is continually fed to them by the English media which can't face the fact that England is actually a bit sh*te.

I spent years consulting to Venture Capital firms in Ireland and the UK.  I visited Irish tech companies and contrary to English rascist stereotypes about haggises and potatoes they had top class engineers and were every bit as good as the companies I visited in Cambridge.   The company I used to work for was a traditional silicon valley start up and its first engineering base outside silicon valley was in Ireland.  The reason so many US electronics and pharma firms have large investments in Ireland is that the engineers are very good and Ireland is an enthusiastic member of the EU and an excellent gateway to the European market, the tax breaks are the icing on the cake.

The UK Tories tried to make heath-robinson ventilators for Covid starting from scratch and wasted millions to get nowhere.    Medtronic makes actual ICU ventilators in Ireland and doubled the capacity of its plant - none of your 'plucky English boffin will make one in a month with sticky back plastic and hoover parts' bullshit.   The UK brags about its AZ vaccine and gets it made in India.  Pfizer is putting the first plant outside the US to make the key part of its vaccine in Ireland, not surprisingly because Ireland is a huge base for Pfizer and Ireland is in the EU which just ordered more than 2 billion doses.  Important stuff which people actually need is designed and manufactured in Ireland.

Ireland is significantly better off than the UK as a whole.  It is also better off than most regions of the UK.  It is not better off than London and SE England because the UK has centralised wealth to a ridiculous degree,

But it doesn't mean they are wealthy. It's like the old adage, turnover is vanity, profit is sanity. 

I've never said that, it's it irrelevant to your claim of Irish riches. 

gdp is irrelevant if your tax take is low. Brexit, unions are irrelevant, IRELAND WAS BAILED OUT BY THE UK, IMF, ECB.

you typify many consultants and do a disservice to others.

Flipside: I have worked with lots of very talented developers in Manchester who came over from Ireland as they couldn't find IT jobs there. 

So you're saying that if/when Scotland becomes independent, then Scotland will be able to sort everything out financially by becoming a tax haven.

Furthermore, you're also saying that England (or London/Westminster) is very wrong by NOT allowing the UK to be a tax haven.

I thought the whole problem with the large international companies was that they were "legally fiddling" things to evade paying their fair share of tax - something which 130 countries - yes, 130 countries - have just signed up to prevent.

I await your next view on how Scotland can be great, or why Scotland is being held back by "nasty" England/Westminster with interest - it should provide us with something to either laugh or groan at.

You don't even understand the difference between wealth per capita and GDP per capita. Presumably the companies you advised went bankrupt?

Apple or Facebook have over 300 billion sitting in  a cash account in Dublin( as per Guardian)

I think your figures are a bit skewed and need to be adjusted for thinks like this.

Anybody with a bit of reasonable intelligence can figure out that the GDP of Ireland is not 84,000 USD per head.

Ireland doesn't have massive GDP due to the tech companies that actually make stuff in Ireland, they have massive GDP due to the profit-shifting shell companies and associated finance sector.  Speaking as someone that lives in a so-called tax haven I can tell you that for a fact.  The tech companies you speak of are there because it was an english-speaking low-tax jurisdiction within the EU.  They'd have been in Cambridge or the 'silicon roundabout' if it were cheaper.

Only Ireland and Hungary refused to sign. Keeping great company there! 

Your understanding of international tax is not as good as you think it is. When it comes to Covid, I’m just an armchair punter. However I do know what I’m talking about when it comes to tax matters as that’s my job.

How would you design the tax system of an independent Scotland? Genuine question.

As I said, I don’t really have a view on Scottish independence. I can see arguments either way but at the end of the day I don’t really care either way. I do find your anti-Englishness distasteful though. And I say that as someone who isn’t really ‘English’.

No I am saying that when Scotland becomes independent it will have economic policies designed to suit Scotland, not South East England.   Very likely those policies will encourage tech industry.

One of the problems with the English is they are so obsessed with banking and property ownership they just don't understand countries which are focused on technology and manufacturing.

The UK is a global tax avoidance and money laundering hub.  That is what the city of London is for and why London is full of Arab and Russian money.  One of the reasons we have Brexit is because the money launderers put their money behind the Brexiteers because they were scared of new EU rules which would have f*cked them up if we had stayed in.

Read the details.  It's a lot of fuss about not very much.  That is why everybody is happy to sign up to it.

Laughing at Ireland when it has more than double the GDP per person and assuming that Scotland couldn't do better if it wasn't governed by England just shows how out of touch the English are.  You lot should think about whether your first past the post parliament, House of Lords, monarchy, criminally corrupt government and grossly over inflated ego to think you are still a superpower that should be strutting its stuff against Russia and China is anything other than ridiculous in the 21st century.

Countries like Ireland and Denmark have well educated populations, reasonably competent government, reasonably modern government structures, they appreciate the benefit of membership in a continent wide trading block and they don't piss money away pretending to be a superpower.  The result is they are a lot richer than England and will continue to get richer while England slowly sinks into irrelevance.

I deal with far too many consultants, maybe 1 in 100 is any good. The rest are clueless and can't actually do what they are consulting on but they are good at selling their services. 

Given all the devolved powers(pretty much everything) why can't sturgeon encourage industry? 

There are many tech industries scattered around the uk. 

No one is laughing, we are just educating you that Ireland's gdp is so high because companies offshore their turnover there. It doesn't mean the Irish have more yachts than the average Monaco resident. 

We don't assume anything, it's an unknown, Scotland could do amazingly, it could be the next Greece, or more likely be spectacularly average. 

how Scotland's education record under the snp? 

One minute you suggest Scotland will be a tax haven, next you compare it to Denmark with the 2nd or 3rd highest tax rate in the world. Which is it? 

Pretty much nothing would be closer.  Scotland has no ability to radically diverge from UK policy.   In order to diverge significantly it would need power to borrow or print money, change the structure of the tax system, rejoin the EU and cancel the complete sh*te that England wants to buy so there is money left to buy other things.  No way in hell the Tories would allow that because they would look like complete dicks if Scotland started outperforming England - which it could easily do because they are so sh*t at their job.

Of course there are.  But the UK is slipping back.

Total bullshit.  Nobody said the Irish have more yachts than Monaco residents.  What I said was they are doing better than the English apart from the South East.

Excellent.

You are the one who keeps saying tax haven.

I said Scotland could have a high tech economy and a tax system which is attractive to high tech industries.   That doesn't mean every tax has to be low.  

If you use a low tax to attract an industry you want but don't already have a lot of then it doesn't cost you very much in lost tax.  This is a game which small countries can play with some success.  

Out of interest do you know the number of tech unicorns in U.K. versus the number in Europe?

Look it up.Difference is startling.

You haven’t really engaged with the point that a large portion of Irish GDP is effectively fictional - it doesn’t translate to ‘wealth’, jobs or tax take. You say Ireland is ‘better off’ but what is your evidence for that, other than the fictional GDP figure? Median and mean salaries and unemployment rates would be more instructive (don’t have time to look it up right now), as well as things like healthcare access.

Nor have you answered my question as to how you would design Scotland’s tax system while making sure there is enough money in the bank to pay for the kind of public services you’d like to see.

Incidentally, Ireland has been governed by one of two centre right parties for decades. Currently they’ve even teamed up to keep Sinn Fein (who are left wing) out of power.

As I asked early define Irish wealth, tax revenue per capita, healthcare spending, budget annual surplus, education spending, national debt, pension rate.... ? 

Ask all you like.  If you want to know all these things then do the work yourself.  I'm not about to spend hours on research when your only reply will be to spend five seconds typing in another question.

Because it is no more fictional than anybody else's GDP.  GDP has obvious problems as a metric but in this case carping about GDP is just being used as an excuse for casual racism and english exceptionalism.  What people won't face up to is that the Irish are just as smart, just as hard working and considerably more economically successful than the English.

The chances of me being allowed to design Scotland's tax system are slim to none.  If I did it would probably work well in theory but be politically totally unacceptable and end up with bloody revolution inside a month.

What I am confident of is that Scottish people living in Scotland can design a more successful tax system for Scotland than Tories in London.   I don't think achieving that would be much of a challenge.  Grabbing control of oil taxation would pretty much do it on its own.

It has.   And very possibly independent Scotland could be governed by centre right parties too.  Once you separate the toxic aspects of unionism from economic centre right politics it could be electable same as it is in Ireland.   

I don't consider myself left wing.  I'm primarily interested in technology and where technical trends conflict with economic theories I believe the economic theories need to be changed the same as any other theory that conflicts with facts.

So what you are saying Ireland isn't rich, you made the claim based on zero knowledge and gdp in a tax haven's case is a useless metric. Glad we got there eventually.

I presume you are aware they are one of only two countries that refused to sign the new agreement on corporation taxes? 

No, it was you who tried to use Ireland's fictional mega riches as an example of how Scotland could thrive, only it collapsed because despite being a 'consultant', you were unaware that Ireland was bailed out by the uk, imf and ecb. Plus you had no knowledge of Ireland's tax stance that helps create such a high gdp in a struggling economy. 

No, I am saying your standard debating target is to respond with open ended questions which require no thought on your part and I am not wasting time playing along with that game.

I noticed that Ireland is not in the G7 so doesn't have any vested interest in G7 photocalls.   They are consulting with companies located in Ireland before deciding whether to sign which is fair enough.   They should do whatever they think is best for Ireland.

I don't think it matters much one way or the other.  The actual agreement, when you get into the detail doesn't actually cost multinationals very much and will save them from potentially more annoying rules. introduced by individual countries.  Apple, Google and Facebook have enough influence in the US that they would have been able to neuter anything they really didn't like. 

Out of date as usual. Ireland and Hungary are the only 2 countries that have refused to sign upto the minimum 15% corporation tax. 

Ireland's riches are not fictitious.

Of course I was aware that Ireland needed money after the financial crisis.  So did every other country.   Ireland is in the Euro, what's the big deal about it being 'bailed out' by the ECB.  May as well say England was bailed out by the Bank of England.

As a Euro member Ireland had less opportunity to do QE money printing than the UK so it took some loans.  The UK printed money, stuck it in the Bank of England balance sheet and it is still there.   The UK bullsh*ts about austerity to 'pay down the deficit' but in actual fact it isn't paying down anything, it can't even reduce the deficit never mind repay anything and the Tories keep splurging on complete sh*te.   Ireland has a far smaller deficit per capita than the UK.   

Since there are 195 countries in the world and 130 have signed up to 15% corporation tax I think your maths are off.

There's not that much difference between 15% and 12.5%.  I wouldn't be surprised if Ireland joined in after consulting with the companies located there and made up for the 2.5% headline rate increase with other tweaks.

The UK is worse with its network of tax haven dependencies and its crooked right up to the top with half the Tories and their families involved.

I take it then you are rowing back on your comments on the G7 deal.

I agree our government is full of smoke and mirrors that effectively enables major tax evasion and avoidance, especially in overseas british tax havens, but your point on the wealth in Ireland as seen by its citizens is wrong.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Living_c...

Neither is its debt. 

Nope, doesn't compare. Ireland was far down the pan all normal sources of borrowing were gone, no one thought they'd get their money back. Hence the loans from those institutions.  

Ireland had been over borrowing, over spending prior to the Bank crisis. Many Irish problems were to do with its own economic management, housing problems etc.. the globally events were just the trigger. 

The ECB stepped in because just like with Greece it's not a good look if the Euro collapses. 

I have reservations about this smoke and mirror view. Corporations take advantage of the tax position.  It’s debatable whether they criminally do so. After all putting money say in the Isle of Man or Jersey for example is hardly smoke and mirrors. 
 

people tend to forget that when the money is pulled back into say the U.K. or USa or Germany it’s still liable to tax 

I don’t dispute that Irish GDP is calculated the same as the UK’s. The point is that a far larger proportion of Irish GDP relates to corporate IP related flows which add very little to the ‘real’ economy. See the article I linked above.

I’m not saying the Irish are any more or less successful / educated / etc compared to England or Scotland or Germany and so on. I’m just pointing out that your argument that Ireland is significantly more prosperous based on its GDP per capital being higher is fundamentally flawed given what drives that GDP. As you yourself note, you have to look at the facts.

I don’t think there has been any casual racism in this thread.

Let's look at the numbers.

https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/ireland/uk?sc=XE34

Ireland has higher GDP per capita by a lot.

Ireland has lower government debt per capita by a lot.

Ireland has a lower government deficit per capita by a lot.

Ireland has better ratings on its government debt from two of the three ratings agencies.

Ireland spends more on services, more on education and more on health than the UK

Ireland spends an absolute f*ckton less on defence than the UK.

Not only is Ireland doing better on pretty much every stat, the UK numbers are about to get much worse relative to Ireland because Brexit is kicking in now the transition period is over and the Tories totally f*cked up on Covid.

You might want to have another look at those numbers. Let’s assume they are correct.

You keep ignoring the reasons pointed out above.

2020 numbers would be massively impacted by covid. 

No, all three are worse albeit not massively so. 

Education is marginal. I’ll give you health.

Not surprising for a small country.

Irish unemployment rate is higher.

Average wages a bit lower in Ireland but to be fair given the distortion from the City, looking at the mean may be more appropriate.

Overall, I don’t see that much difference.

Anyway, I’m not sure now how we ended up debating Ireland vs the UK. If you’re using it as a example of how Scotland could do better outside the UK, I’m not sure it really proves your point. I’m not saying Scotland can’t better off, just that it’s not clear either way and no one really knows. There are many arguments in favour of independence but I’m not sure the economy is one of them.

As for the original subject of this thread, there seems to be a bit of a gap opening up around face masks, so that’s something. (I think ditching the mask and SD rules is pretty idiotic at the moment.) Still, Sturgeon isn’t exactly reimposing restrictions or talking about extending existing measures into autumn. She’s not exactly immune to public sentiment...

Because those reasons are being used as a smokescreen.  The UK has a massive dependence on finance and tax evasion as well.

Look at the export numbers Ireland's exports are $179 billion.  The UKs are $403 billion but Ireland has less than 1/10 of the population.  Ireland runs a $80 billion trade surplus, the UK runs a $231 billion trade deficit.

The story is not 'oh look Ireland is just a tax haven' it is 'oh look, Ireland has a tax system which makes it extremely attractive for hi-tech manufacturing and R&D'    Apple have 6,000 employees in Cork and Google have 8,000 in Dublin.  Not letterbox operations.

My mistake, but their deficit is massively lower both per capita and as a % of GDP.  The Tories are increasing debt like there was no tomorrow.

Defence is massively lower per head of population.  It has to do with not trying to justify a seat on the UN security council with nuclear missile subs and not feeling the need to sail aircraft carriers near China or destroyers near Russia.   As a result they can spend more on health and education and they have a more skilled workforce.

Perhaps because the UK hides unemployment in sh*tty zero-hour non jobs and jobs which pay so little you need benefits to live off them.

It shows that a small country very similar to Scotland but without oil can do far better outside the UK than inside it.  Northern Ireland is what you get when you force Ireland to be inside the UK. 

Sturgeon is like someone running a three legged race tied hand and foot to an unfit idiot ten times her size.  She can't run in the direction she wants or at the speed she wants all she can do is force the fat useless b*stard to change course slightly.    The entire media is controlled from London and undermining her at every step.

Now that Javid is in charge of health unless we are incredibly lucky stuff is going to get even worse.  That guy is frightening the way he thinks it is just fine to let Delta variant Covid run riot so people can go to the pub without a mask.

It's irrelevant.

That's hardly a revelation. It's widely known the uk is one of the lowest in Europe. 

If Ireland was so great, why did it need bailing out? 

Or travel for a Scotland game in London and party in the streets.

If England was so great why did it need to print about £1 trillion and since then at least the same again.  And it is still spending printed money like there was no tomorrow, most recently as a bribe to Nissan to stay in the UK despite having its export business f*cked up.   They are borrowing money so the stupid b*stards who voted for Brexit don't need to feel the consequences of Brexit.

The English better hope their team doesn't get any further or there will be a Covid spike of biblical proportions from people watching the game together and getting p*ssed in each others houses.  It's not the street parties that are the main issue it is the time spent in less well ventilated locations such as trains and houses.

I don't know, I'll be pretty chuffed if we get an England win and lifting of restrictions in the same fortnight. Waited long enough for both.

But sturgeon was happy for Scots to do that? Why can't the English travel and party, is it because Scotland is out? 

I've never claimed England was great. I've pointed out Ireland isn't this super wealthy world leading country you claim. 

Maybe Sturgeon should have tried to stop it.  But she didn't and now we have the public health data to show a huge spike in Covid in Scotland and they are saying the primary driver was not people going to London - although that didn't help - but people watching the England game in their friend's houses.  

The definition of intelligence is changing your behaviour according to the data.  You've now got the data about what happened in Scotland after the England game.

Thats why they hold out for tax holidays with far lower repatriation costs. Part of why so much money has been building up overseas since the last one for the US was 2004.

There is also the problem for Scotland that a)Ireland has filled the slot for that particular approach and so either they start a race to the bottom or dont really get in and b) the rest of the EU are starting to show a certain amount of irritation with that approach and are making it harder for one country to benefit at the cost of all the others.

As strategies go it doesnt seem one with a long term future.

Why wasn’t there a biblical spike in England after the England vs Scotland game?  And if this theory (Covid spreading in football houses) is correct, then we should see another biblical spike due to the England vs Germany game. 

I do wonder if the high rates in Dundee and Edinburgh could be due to lower (than Strathclyde etc) infection acquired immunity?

Indeed.Even the Netherlands and Luxembourg have signed the new tax treaty.

More folk should be annoyed about that approach. We now have billionaires who been depriving governments of valuable tax revenue for decades, in some pi$$ing contest over who can pretend they've won some imaginary space race. 

Poor Jeff has got to spend his $207Bn personal wealth on something...

I suspect the Irish exports number is also affected by those IP flows. Otherwise it just doesn’t make sense - it is simply not possible for a country with less than 10% of the UK’s population and a similar level of economic development to have almost half the exports.

I also suspect Ireland has its share of zero hours contracts.

Sturgeon wants her referendum and can’t afford to become unpopular. Call me a cynic but I think that’s a pretty major consideration for the SNP right now. I don’t disagree that they are impacted by what happens in London but they could just say ‘no, we are going to do it differently because we want to do what we think is right’. However, like most politicians, they lack backbone.

You say ‘they’ are borrowing but some of that (more or less pro rata to population) is going towards Scottish needs. How do you think Scottish government support for Covid and furlough are funded? How do you think RBS was bailed out? It’s not ‘they’, it’s ‘we’. Scotland will end up with its share of that debt if it ever becomes independent, by the way. 

2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Cuts_and_Jobs_Act_of_2017

Now that I would agree with. However it’s academic as we’re in for a massive spike anyway. Even Bozo admits it...

It is pretty impressive but I'm not sure it is impossible.  Countries like Taiwan which also focus on high tech manufacturing have pretty good numbers too.

https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/taiwan/uk

She needs to be realistic, she does not have the powers of a national government and she does not have influence on the media which is regulated from and owned by England.   That scummy little runt Gove has a budget of millions for dirty tricks to stop Independence and you can see the effects of it over the last few months.

Sure, Scotland will accept a share of the debt if we also get a proportional share of the assets, including assets located in England if there are a disproportionate fraction of the assets in England,  and compensation for the stolen oil money.

If I was Scotland's negotiator my opening position would be no debt, no assets, clean break.  From there we could try and find a better compromise.  What won't happen is Scotland takes a share of the debt and gets none of the assets.

I like your opening position Tom - so all U.K. assets (all public buildings etc etc) in Scotland remain the property of the rUK and we rent them back to you? Seems a fair swap for the debt. 

Scotland was running a surplus for decades, even before the oil and obviously during the oil period a massive surplus by any fair accounting.  Yet the UK was accumulating debt because Thatcher et al wanted to run down entire industries and fight wars.   Obviously, Scotland should have no share in debt incurred when it was in surplus, or interest accumulated on that debt.

Also, Scotland shouldn't accept that it needs to pay real earned money against fantasy debts created by quantitative easing.   When the UK pays interest on QE debts the Bank of England hands the money straight back.  No way Scotland should pay actual money on its 'share' and not get it back.

You've picked a very narrow window, 30 years at most, to claim Scotland's been in surplus for its 300+ years of union. Didn't the union even start partially due to the precarious state of Scottish finances? 

As I've said before, industries come and go, that's the strength of the uk, all the eggs aren't in one basket and Scotland through the barnet formula currently benefits from others eggs.

Scotland was bailed out in 2008 as much as anyone. Will it be paying back all the furlough money too? 

It often never comes back though, it's spent from wherever it's avoiding tax. Only if it's spent in the UK/USA/Germany etc. and the product not exported (e.g. food) do those countries get consumption tax off it.  Superyachts and supercars get exported for example.

Those pale into insignificance compared with say Apples cash of 300 billion plus which are kept in Eire and so on  

These are in effect shareholders funds( usually pension money) which have at some stage to be brought back in. 

you might be surprised as to how much of your pension fund sits overseas in these offshore havens and how indirectly you benefit on that value.  And that will include public sector pension funds like USS. 
 

So be careful what you wish for.

Is that the local government one? I thought nearly all public sector ones (NHS, police, armed services, civil servants, teachers etc.) were unfunded PAYG schemes. 

It varies depending on the scheme. 
 

It's the university one, not a public sector one. It's invested in binds, shares etc.

Well that negotiation didn’t really work out with Brexit. The UK had a chunky divorce settlement.

I’m not sure what assets you’re talking about. The Bank of England’s assets? That would not be unreasonable. Of course the Bank’s assets are separate to the government’s liabilities… So a share of both perhaps.

I have no idea if Scotland has been running a notional surplus for decades. It would be odd if it was, especially since 2008 and certainly not since March last year! There will be many different ways to calculate this kind of stuff. Some sort of equitable settlement would be reached but assuming that you’d start with a clean sheet is rather naive.

I agree, some form of equitable settlement will be reached but showing you could potentially walk away is a necessary precursor to negotiation.

The obvious 'walk away' settlement which can be imposed unilaterally is Scotland takes every asset in Scotland and accepts no debt.  Scotland can't make England had over assets from the bank of England and short of starting a war England can't get its hands on assets in Scotland or force Scotland to accept debt.   

 Scotland would not really have a walk away option. You'd have to solve many problems instantly, initially small simple looking things, but dozens off them. Shared services that you'd need to have up and running like tax collection, driving licences, pensions, defence, coastguard.... and the biggie - currency. 

A military war is unlikely, but if Scotland seceded unilaterally in such a manner a trade war would be certain.

Scotland isn't exactly the first country to become independent, to become independent unilaterally or to set up a central bank.   

Most of the functions you mention are already provided in Scotland for Scotland.  I'm sure the people doing the work could very quickly adapt to not having a layer of management in London.

Scotland does have a walk away option.  It isn't as good an option as a negotiated settlement but it is an acceptable fallback.    Getting rid of English Tory rule forever, getting back into the EU and starting off with no debt would more than make up for a bit of disruption.

We'd replace England with the EU fairly fast.  Same as Slovakia replaced trade with the Czech Republic with trade with the EU.   When the English coerced Scotland into the treaty of union by threatening trade war they were an actual world power.  Not any more.

Nope, it just has to be up and running instantly. You can't have a months gap between etc.. 

You mean everything isn't run from London and various UK state departments have staff living and working in Scotland, but paid by the uk, I though you said everything was centralised in the south east by the evil English?

You know realistically the zero debt option won't happen.

9 years is about the record from first application to full eu membership. 

So what you are saying is that it would then be ok for the new U.K. to stop paying pensions etc whilst Scotland got its act together. 
 

You are just being daft. 

Says you.  Of course there can be a gap.  Maybe it will be unpleasant but unpleasant stuff happens all the time in this world,

Your opinion is as irrelevant as my opinion on Swedish politics: you don't live in Scotland, you don't have a clue and you don't get a vote.

I'm saying that it would be better to deal with details like that through a negotiation and come to a good compromise.

But if necessary we could just p*ss off, tough it out for a few months and be free from Tory rule forever.

No, I am stating the obvious. 

Do you reckon the Irish or the Indians or the Americans said 'oh f*ck we can't be free because the English won't pay our pensions and we would need to have our own currency'.

There can be a gap in paying people their pension? Benefits? No tax collection? No currency? No coastguard?....... 

Independence regardless of cost, both physical and financial? 

You mean I'm pointing our obvious flaws?

I'll add. There's nothing wrong with a Scottish desire to be independent, I think you are just unrealistic in the complexity involved in starting up, the cost and time scale. Just like the snp, you ignore the biggest challenge of currency. I think it would take 5-7 years to fully exit, then another 8-10 to join the EU, so say 2040 you'd be in the eu, likely on track to take the euro etc. 

I'm sure you would in the medium to long term, but it could cause quite severe short term pain including e.g. food shortages.

A months delay would probably cause a sizeable chunk of Scotland’s pensioners and benefit claimants to starve to death.

Scotland would need a central bank set up before it becomes independent.

You might want independence, but a mad max type society surely isn’t a price worth paying for it?

If Scotland becomes independent you will inevitably take your share of debt, the rUK will end up with a 1000 year lease on Faslane ect. Of course you will get some assets - no one is going to demolish all of the hospitals and police stations in Scotland just to spite you.

I think that's fair.  If I was Scottish I think I'd be in favour of it too, not least because Scottish politics are more like mine than Westminster politics.  But I would want to see a friendly and diplomatic approach to it, not something more akin to going to the cinema to watch Braveheart.

Sometimes good things are worth the wait.  I think things are inevitably progressing towards it and I don't think there is anything really gained by rushing (not least because "zero COVID" was an approach to decide upon over a year ago now - the 6+ month full lockdown required to get back there now would be economically not far off dropping nukes on the Central Belt in its effects).

Let them eat haggis.

There is a remarkable similiarity between your rantings and that of some brexiteers.

The SNP leadership is considerably more relaxed and reasonable than t-in-e, so don't worry, it will be civilised. And the more independence looks real the more even Tom will come to remember how much he likes England and the English really. I can see him holidaying in London in 2040, riding high up on the London Eye, a beatific smile on his face, grandchildren on each knee, gesturing across the city, "see this, bairns? This was once all ours!"

We all need to remember that each of our nations, is populated by real, actual, and mostly decent, human beings - and indeed that this is true for all the nations of the world*. It is never ok to let pensioners starve for the sake of nationhood.

* but especially Denmark obvs😁

I am not sure you would win votes for independence based on that proposal. 

One  of your problems is not scaring voters off who will be concerned about the benefits they receive from the U.K.  

Your wild comments suggest you do not grasp this pretty basic reality. 

This what I don't understand. If the snp produced a detailed 15-20 year plan, to take them through all the stages; assets, debt, shared services, currency etc..  they'd likely landslide indef2 75%+, folk would have faith they were more than just drum banging. Yes, details and timelines would shift a little through negotiations, but it would at least imply some structure behind the initial idea.

The only reason they won't do this is because salmond and now sturgeon want to be the new independent Scottish president, they want to try and rush, fast track, crash out, so they get the glory of being first, regardless of the consequences. Rather than some measured approach, they won't be able to crash into the eu and euro, so playing a longer game is the only option. 

At 670 pages it's a long read.

https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/strate...

Perhaps they need to condense 670 pages down and explain their currency plan in 1 minute, because no one else has clue. 

How many voters are going to plough through 67, never mind 670 pages? Plus the comments they express in the media don't represent an organisation that's done 670 pages of detailed planning. 

I'd suggest 2-3 page plan of timelines, single sentences in services, currency, defence, debt, assets, borders... it's about bring the people with your plan, not dividing a nation. 

That wouldn't be the detailed plan you referred to though.

One clear sentence or paragraph, or side of A4 outlining how they'll deal with currency would suffice. If you can't summarise 670 pages into something digestible they shouldn't be in the job and aren't the politicians to be doing it. 

I expect they did that many times during the campaign, you can go back to the 2014 coverage but that is not the detailed plan you referred to.

They've never answered the currency question properly. They dodge it every time. 

What's the currency plan, you imply it is well known? 

I imply a currency plan is well know? That's a surprise to me. I only mentioned a 670 page pdf.

It's a good resource if you are after detail.

It's 7 years old, 670 pages of buzzwords.

Page 109 says the best option is to keep sterling. So Scotland exits and has no representation in Westminster, the Lords, treasury, but wants to keep using the pound. Which of course it can. It will have zero say, won't be able to borrow, or set interest rates..  that's not how Tom in former Northumbria sees an 'independent' Scotland. That's an arguably worse and less flexible option than the present position. 

True but due to England having a rather larger economy and exports to Scotland being a far smaller proportion of the English economy compared to the other way round, England would have a fair bit of leverage over the financial settlement and walking away will never be an option (just think of all the impediments to cross border trade which could be imposed). Now what does that remind me of...

I think it’s doable and Scotland would be economically viable but the divorce would take years or negotiation and planning. It would be infinitely more complex and involved than Brexit, though in some ways it could be smoother as the SNP would at least have a general idea of what it wants (although divisions will soon appear and with the lack of a majority Sturgeon’s premiership could run into the same kinds of issues that May had). I do think that the idea of a unilateral speedy exit is just silly though.

Anyway, back to the thread title: Covid is definitely coming home! Scottish cases seems to be plateauing now while England is taking off...

ROFL.  The English Tories have already managed that.  Next month they'll be issuing amphetamines to lorry drivers so they can drive even further without a rest.   Probably telling them to keep going even if they have Covid too.  After all its just the flu and its perfectly OK if 50 or 100 or 150 thousand people a day catch it.

This situation so f*cked up, the Westminster government is so incompetent it is worth some short term pain to get rid of English rule forever.

Look at how fast things changed in eastern europe.  The transition to new nations with their own currency is fast.   It is like an earthquake.  Tensions build up for decades but when they hit the critical level they are released very quickly.

Well in Eastern Europe there were no new nations and no new currencies either.

The Baltic states did at least create new currencies and jolly good fun it was too, inflation well past 200%, effectively confiscation of individual wealth (Estonia for example only allowed the equivalent of 19Dm to be exchanged) and massive social and economic depression.

Sound wonderful.

It might look fast and smooth from the outside looking in. Many Eastern block and balkan nations are still full of problems, others like Montenegro are financially up poo creek. For every shining example of success like Estonia there are 2 or 3 that aren't fairing so well. Unlike Scotland many were already stand alone countries, but came under the ussr umbrella, Scotland is way more complex, if only for the fact it's still financially dependent on the treasury.  

You sound uncannily like the swivel eyed loons in the ERG discussing brexit negotiations, and we all know how that worked out.

You sound uncannily like someone who doesn't live in a country where the government have not said they would let Covid infections go to 150,000 a day.  That's potentially 15,000 cases of long covid a day. And they think the way to manage it is to charge for lateral flow tests and stop self-isolation for double vaxed people even though they can still infect others.   Their policy is that every f*cker catches Covid.  And in a few months you get to catch it again. 

A country where the solution for not having enough lorry drivers because of xenophobic immigration policies is to get rid of the safety rules and let the UK ones drive longer hours.  I guess if that doesn't do it they'll issue amphetimines like the US air force in the Gulf War.

The way staying in the UK is working out is so sh*t that it is worth quite a bit of short term pain to stop these c*nts ever running Scotland again.  The Tories are taking us to the 'don't give a f*ck, just want out' moment when independence happens.

I hope for Scotland's sake that those who do end up negotiating a divorce with rUK learn from the mistakes that the ERG /Tories made when leaving the EU. Particularly w.r.t. playing hardball with the bigger player. Assuming of course that you win the next indyref 

I dislike Westminster as much as you do, but if I was them and I received a declaration of independence like that, I would withdraw all cooperation, put a barbed wire fence up along the border and wait for your country to fall to bits.

If you want to negotiate, you have to be at least vaguely nice.

As others have said, look how well Brexit went, and then apply the fact that Westminster is far less accommodating than the EU...

It isn't, and if you live in Sweden you should know it isn't.

Finland were fastest, but they were box ticking, meeting the requirements before they started the formal application. Scotland can't really demonstrate the financial requirements until it's been independent for at least 2 or 3 years, probably more. 

The difference between the Tories and the EU is the EU didn't act like pricks, and they don't have a history of lying.   Scotland should assume the Tories are going to be dicks and focus on getting an accession agreement with the EU.  

So imagine how bad it might have been for the weaker party, if the more powerful party in the brexit talks had acted like dicks.

You're falling into the same mindset as brexiters to whom all the problems of brexit are of the EU's making.

Finland's application was very far from "box ticking" because they were told they couldn't join as a neutral country. They had to change their actual constitution in order to adopt the acquis communautaire. The level of domestic disruption the application process caused is reflected in the relative closeness of the referendum result and the Eurosceptic bloc that has existed across a number of parties since. Likewise the Norwegian referendum loss.  

I'm falling into the same mindset as the Irish, the Americans and all the other countries that  were willing to accept short term problems as the price of getting rid of London rule.

Which wouldn't happen.   We'd buy a few large ferries like the Irish did, to run a connection from the Forth to Rotterdam and get all the stuff we now buy from England from the EU.   What does England make that Scotland wants that the EU doesn't do better?

If you want to negotiate with a dick you need to have something they want and you will do better if you get out their house and get yourself a new and larger friend before you get into the negotiation.

Buckfast.

Lots of oil and gas industry engineering parts are made in England, I'm sure Norway and others could help, but they won't be cheaper. 

Yes, like I said very similar.

How long is "short term"?

The currency...GBP £.

Pretty simple really.

It is definitely the way you tell them.

We would be so much better off with Euros.

Hmm.  So Norway kept its oil and kept more of the engineering work and Scotland had its oil stolen by England and the engineering work also went to England and now it is a disaster for Scotland if the engineering work does not stay in England.

Some of the engineering work can come to Scotland the rest can go to the EU or the US and the highly paid admin jobs for oil in London can come back to Scotland were they belong. 

So, COVID and football then…

Most are hq'd in Scotland. Not London. Of course they might choose to move after independence. 

Since most of the oilfields are outside territorial waters, can you actually claim that they're Scottish. Does/should "ownership" go to the nearest landmass?

I appreciate that all the infrastructure of "landing" the oil is in Scotland, but if for some (incomprehensible) reason all the oil had been landed say near Newcastle, would you still be able to claim that it's Scottish oil?

If Scotland had been independent when the oilfields were developed, then would Scotland have got all of the oilfields that are "owned" by the UK?

I'm not convinced that you could just simply substitute Scotland for the UK in all of this although I can see that Scotland would have had significantly more benefit from the oil if it had been independent at the time.

I actually think the main problem with North sea oil was that the benefits were just basically squandered rather than being ring-fenced into a fund to do something useful - like ensuring UK energy independence once the oil dried up.

The same laws that define where the boundary is between Scotland and Norway's oil would apply to Scotland and England. 

Interestingly Tony Blair decided to redraw the sea border between Scotland and England to put some of the gas on the English side.  That's something I would expect an independent Scotland might go to an international court about.

http://www.oilofscotland.org/scotlands_stolen_sea.html

Boundaries in the north sea between UK and Norway were done using the median method.

The boundary shift that you talk about Tony Blair doing is a red herring.

The "old" boundary was basically an east/west line from the border for deciding whether English or Scottish law should be used. I think this is still in place.

The "new" boundary is the boundary between England and Scotland by the median method and presumably only came up when Scottish independence and devolution became relevant.

So the boundary hasn't been redrawn, different boundaries for different purposes.

Having said all that, any actual boundary has to be determined by negotiation and treaty. The median method is merely one way of doing this and would presumably be the English opening position.

Edit: Using the median method for a boundary would put about 90% of the UK's oilfields and about 60% of the gas fields in Scottish "waters".

Considering norway was in debt many years ago and covered a marriage agreement giving the various Isles to Scotland, if you pick a time to wind history back to, a significant amount of that 'scottish' oil is probably Norwegian(although arguably Danish) too!? So despite you being against monarchy, without a royal wedding in 1472 Scotland wouldn't have no where near as much oil and gas today.

Luckily for England by the time Scotland becomes independent all they will be left with is all the junk in the sea to clear up. Clean break and all that.

Also the uk having oil, isn't the same as norway because of population size, but primarily its mentality. The uk doesn't save for rainy days and wouldn't accept Norwegian tax rates, whilst sitting on a large sovereign wealth fund. 

Even if Scotland was independent it would have squandered the money on vanity projects, or frittered it away like the UK. 

Bump 

The Baltic states aren’t a great example either way. The USSR’s economy was already going down the drain by 1991 and Russia itself had high inflation and unemployment etc for much of the 90s. The Baltic states were always more prosperous than the other republics (they’d only been part of the USSR since the war) and they’ve done well in the medium to long term, including joining the EU. Better off than Russia now, certainly politically and probably economically as well (especially compared to Russia outside Moscow), though still a lot less affluent than the UK or Germany. This doesn’t really prove the economic case either way. 

Give it another 20-30 years and no one will need that oil, if there’s any left... As I’ve said, I’m sure Scotland can be economically viable but I wouldn’t want to rely on the oilfields for that. 

Bet you didn’t think your thread would end up being about North Sea Oil ?!

Fixed that for you 😄

So we can hold the Scots responsible for the global warming it caused?

Ah, now then - England stole it, so it’s Scotland’s loss and England’s fault.

I was a bit slow off the Mark this morning. Ta. 

Scotland has almost the same population as Norway - both about 5.5 million.

If Scotland was independent with all the oil money and the same population as Norway it would be rich as f*ck.   What sort of vanity projects would if fritter that kind of money away with?  Maybe it would do what Norway did and build lots of bridges and tunnels to deal with its geography.  Scotland could easily have had a bit of a splurge on tunnels and there would be plenty left just like in Norway.

England pissed the money away on wars, benefits for people whose industries were shut down by Thatcher and most importantly on tax cuts for the well off.  Guess where most of the well off people live in the UK?   Turning oil money into tax cuts is transferring money from Scotland to London.

It's not your oil money, it's mostly Denmarks and norways, you chose 1706? I choose 1472! 

Mars bar fritters for everyone, on the SHS...?

With IrnBru transfusions straight into the circulatory system. I love this thread. Can we please keep it going for the slow bits of the match tomorrow?

Or Buckie 

Not a problem.

Did you know Thatcher only introduced the Poll Tax into Scotland before England as a specific favour to Scotland?

And who said the Tories never put Scotland first?

Without oil, you would have problems making the ball.  Could go back to heavy dementia friendly leather though

Given that it’s Scottish oil, each time England have scored a small piece of tominedinburgh has gone into the back of the net. Thanks TIE !!!

I think you're all being very unkind to TiE in this thread.  You should spare a thought for how hard this tournament has been on the Scottish fans.  They've supported at least four different teams now and still haven't won a game.