The Scottish Tories Are Deservedly Unpopulat Because Of The Callous PM who Deliberately Destroyed Our Industry And Killed Communities

     This is to prove some ideas I have about the fall of the Conservative Party in Scotland (and thus of the apparent fall in support for market freedom so long as there was no other credible free market party here).

   At the start of this Scotland gave the Tories just over 50% of the vote, more than Labour has ever achieved. By comparison Wales was always dodgy ground for them and in fact if you bear in nmind that neither main party hopes to get above 40% of the UK vote now a Tory drop of 4% from 30% to 26% there proportionately counts as a gain - certainly so compared to Labour.

    The first Tory drop here is from 50% to just under 40% over the 15 years between 1955 and 1970. That loss is serious. It covers the period of the Conservative councillors, who used to fight under the name Progressives (a title the left now claim so I assume they think it is attractive) largely dropped that name and became Conservative. This was the end of a particularly Scottish, anti-socialist, political institution which didn't suit the vision of Tory "modernisers" of the time and which incidentally suited the Unionist vote - basically the group of, mainly protestant Liberals who at the end of the 19thC or later, split from them over Irish home rule. They were willing to work with the Tories but were never really were comfortable being them. The protestant unionist vote was a group Tory "modernisers" were embarrassed to have supporting them. Even so, while losing 12% of the vote is a bad fall, remember that this was the period when the SNP first won Hamilton and became something more than a fringe and when the Liberals were rising from the edge of non-existence to 7.5% in 1970 so probably half of this drop can be put down to these factors.

     The 36 years from late 1974 to 2010 shows a drop from 24% to 17%. Again bad but not a disaster, at least as counts the amount of change. There was a UK wide drop up to 2005 of 4% (though they recovered elsewhere in 2010 - Gordon Brown was not as unpopular here  as elsewhere). There was a greater fall here during Thatcher's 2nd and 3rd elections but it was certainly not the "electoral poison" she is claimed to have been. I think some of that can be blamed on their opposition to devolution and some (though the better than UK recovery in 1992 suggests not much) to the coal industry being bigger here.

       The real disaster in Scottish Conservative voting was from 1970 to late 1974. A 4 year period that saw them fall from 38% to 24%. 37% of their voters gone. Now that is the definition of electoral disaster.

      So what was the cause of this. I am going to say it was Ted Heath's selling out of the fishing industry to join the EU. The EU's common fisheries policy, that the fish belonged to the whole EU not the countries in whose waters they were, was cynically cobbled together hours before negotiations with would be new members started. Heath and his supporters made it absolutely clear that they were willing to sell out our industry. It was, after all, an industry concentrated in far away Scotland, in small towns and villages where the metropolitan media never go. In his calculation of the political balance of power these people, their livelihoods and homes were expendable to achieve Heath's dream of membership of the EEC.

      Since fishing was a largely a small business, with captains owning their ships, it was not unionised. These towns and villages, didn't have the support of massive union power (much more massive then than now) and their PR and machines and flying picket thugs. Their fate has barely stirred the surface of the UK political and media class. While media pundits still lament how Thatcher destroyed mining communities (she didn't, economics did) they are simply ignorant of how Heath, quite deliberately and with no economic justification at all, murdered (murder being deliberate planned killing) Scottish fishing communities. But it stirred Scotland into considering that not only were we being ignored by London (we always knew that and being ignored by Westminster is not so bad) but that we were actively expendable and betrayable.

      It may be 40 years on and the party may, or may claim to be, offering us the chance to leave, but the Scottish Tories deserve every single lost vote.

      But the SNP don't deserve any better. The Tories may have murdered the industry but the self styled "Scottish National Party" have kept on mutilating the body. Nobody, not even the LibDems, are more enthusiastic for us staying in the EU. Nobody, certainly not the present Tories, are as keen to pay our membership of the EU in Scotland's fish. Though it is certain the terms of membership of a their "independent" Scotland would involve far more than what the EU already have from Britain. The SNP know the people of Scotland would never support another such sell out - that is why this most unpatriotic of parties has said it would not allow us a vote on rejoining the EU.

       Yet the fishing fields are still there. A fair proportion of the fish are too, despite EU overfishing and they should recover if there were a few years of only the current UK landings taking place. If there were the political will to do so.

       What the people of Scotland, and particularly the coastal fishing regions, need is a genuinely patriotic Scottish party (Scottish and British patriotism being entirely compatible) putting forward a Scottish programme which would include quitting the EU and allowing the British fishing industry to be as good as ever. Or better.

       

Cameron Fails, Abysmally Not Just Badly, To Stop Junker

Dan Hannan, one of the more intelligent Tories has this to say about Cameron not merely failing but being humiliated in  his attempt to get a less centralising EU President:

"The game is up. No one will now believe that the United Kingdom can deliver a substantively different deal in Europe. The FCO's ploy of doing a Harold Wilson – that is, making some piffling changes and presenting them as a significant new deal – has been discredited almost before it began.

If David Cameron couldn't prevent the appointment of Jean-Claude Juncker as President of the European Commission, no one will believe that he can deliver a more flexible EU, with more freedom of action for its member nations.

I suspect this is one of those situations where normal people get the point more easily than Westminster journalists. For those inside the bubble, it's about personalities: Juncker's supposed drink problem; Merkel's supposed treachery; Cameron's supposed humiliation. But the rest of the country will, I think, see the bigger picture. We have just discovered, in the most brutal way, how lightly we weigh in the counsels of the EU. If anything, Britain's opposition to Juncker's appointment – which was common to every political party – served to rally other governments behind him. Our influence in Brussels, in other words, is not just nugatory; it is negative.

As recently as ten days ago, I thought that a compromise would be found. Surely the other members wouldn't actively drive Britain to exit, would they? In the event, they could hardly have been clearer. First, the new Finnish prime minister hectored us, telling us to 'smell the coffee' and realise how dependent we were on the EU, whatever form it took. Then Angela Merkel, coming out of the meeting, gave a press conference in which she said that ever-closer union must apply to all 28 member states"
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  I cannot disagree with a word. I wish I thought Cameron was sincere about renegotiation or that the Lab/Cons were sincere in their "support" of his attempt to stop Junker getting the top job. In which case all 3 would support our right to a referendum - now.
 

Abusive Lying MP Should Apologise

Letter to the press. Note how the press don't so much write stories as all copy them, often word for word, from the party/government spindoctors:

Sir,

      On Sunday Chuka Umunna got BBC airtime to say UKIP supporters are too stupid to use email. Since polls show that on our main policies as much as 70% of the British people agree with UKIP that is a sweeping claim.

      Today a whole train of separate papers have, spontaneously written, in almost exactly the same words, about how he has, allegedly, been "abused" by people he had already abused so disgracefully & dishonestly. It must be coincidence that they all spontaneously wrote in the same words, if our press is as free and independent as it claims.

    As a member of the Labour party he is a supporter war crimes, ethnic cleansing, genocide, child rape and worse actions so obscene you would not publish them, in Kosovo so perhaps more racially abusing than abused.

   The BBC's Charter legally requires them to be "balanced" so if the BBC respected law, they would give at least equal airtime to UKIP voters abused by Umanna. If the  press were attempting impartiality they also should report both sides..

   I can assure readers that I am perfectly capable of using email and take personal exception to Umanna's gratuitous and predjudiced blanket attack on us. I call on him to publicly apologise and on the media to give at least equal coverage to those attacked as  to those engaged in dishonest, gratuitous, fact free vitriol. Or if he refuses, on his party to.

Neil Craig

(by email)

 

Some of the spontaneous stories coincidentally written in similar terms

 

	Chuka Umunna targeted by racist online trolls after saying Ukip supporters LondonNews24 Chuka Umunna, the Labour MP for Streatham, was branded a "spear chucker" and a "cave man" on a Facebook page after he suggested "a lot of" ... Flag as irrelevant
	London News Locker A south London MP has been targeted by racist online trolls after suggesting that Ukip supporters can't use computers. Flag as irrelevant
	Chuka Umunna targeted by racist online trolls after saying Ukip supporters Got News Wire - Got News Wire Chuka Umunna targeted by racist online trolls after saying Ukip supporters 'can't use computers'. A south London MP has been targeted by racist ... Flag as irrelevant
	Chuka Umunna targeted by racist online trolls after saying Ukip supporters CityNewsLine.co.uk A south London MP has been targeted by racist online trolls after suggesting that Ukip supporters can't use computers.... Flag as irrelevant
	Chuka Umunna targeted by racist online trolls after saying Ukip supporters News.nom.co A south London MP has been targeted by racist online trolls after suggesting that Ukip supporters can't use computers., News from standard.co.uk ... Flag as irrelevant
	Chuka Umunna targeted by racist online trolls after saying Ukip supporters World - Top News Today A south London MP has been targeted by racist online trolls after suggesting that Ukip supporters can't use computers. | World | standard.co.uk. Flag as irrelevant
	Chuka Umunna targeted by racist online trolls after saying Ukip supporters World News A south London MP has been targeted by racist online trolls after suggesting that Ukip supporters can't use computers. Chuka Umunna, the Labour ...

  Letter to 30 papers:

Sir,
       This morning I found that, overnight, somebody had plastered a large Yes sticker (5" so much rarer than the button sized ones) on my door. I assume this is because I am well known as a UKIP supporter or because I have asked some pointed questions of the cybernats on the Wings over Scotland site.

      Remember how Alex Salmond went out of his way to endorse the thugs who attacked Nigel Farage last year (& rejected Willie Rennie's call to "call off his dogs" when Nigel visited this year.

      If this is how the "nationalists" behave now, what should we expect if they win?

Neil Craig
 

JK Rowling - Independence Is Not Just For Christmas

     This is JK Rowling's comments on independence. As Mike Haseler pointed out the original was formatted to make it difficult to read, which is a shame because it is about as serious and sensible as anything anybody has said on the subject:

Before you read the following, please be warned that it’s probably of interest only to people who live in Scotland or the UK (and not all of them!)  If you read on regardless, you need to know that there is going to be a referendum on 18th September on whether or not Scotland should leave the United Kingdom.  If you’re only vaguely interested, or pressed for time, there’s a mention of Death Eaters in paragraph 5.

I came to the question of independence with an open mind and an awareness of the seriousness of what we are being asked to decide.  This is not a general election, after which we can curse the result, bide our time and hope to get a better result in four years.  Whatever Scotland decides, we will probably find ourselves justifying our choice to our grandchildren.  I wanted to write this because I always prefer to explain in my own words why I am supporting a cause and it will be made public shortly that I’ve made a substantial donation to the Better Together Campaign, which advocates keeping Scotland part of the United Kingdom.

As everyone living in Scotland will know, we are currently being bombarded with contradictory figures and forecasts/warnings of catastrophe/promises of Utopia as the referendum approaches and I expect we will shortly be enjoying (for want of a better word) wall-to-wall coverage.
In the interests of full disclosure, I should say that I am friendly with individuals involved with both the Better Together Campaign and the Yes Campaign, so I know that there are intelligent, thoughtful people on both sides of this question.  Indeed, I believe that intelligent, thoughtful people predominate.

However, I also know that there is a fringe of nationalists who like to demonise anyone who is not blindly and unquestionably pro-independence and I suspect, notwithstanding the fact that I’ve lived in Scotland for twenty-one years and plan to remain here for the rest of my life, that they might judge me ‘insufficiently Scottish’ to have a valid view.  It is true that I was born in the West Country and grew up on the Welsh border and while I have Scottish blood on my mother’s side, I also have English, French and Flemish ancestry.  However, when people try to make this debate about the purity of your lineage, things start getting a little Death Eaterish for my taste.  By residence, marriage, and out of gratitude for what this country has given me, my allegiance is wholly to Scotland and it is in that spirit that I have been listening to the months of arguments and counter-arguments.

On the one hand, the Yes campaign promises a fairer, greener, richer and more equal society if Scotland leaves the UK, and that sounds highly appealing.  I’m no fan of the current Westminster government and I couldn’t be happier that devolution has protected us from what is being done to health and education south of the border.  I’m also frequently irritated by a London-centric media that can be careless and dismissive in its treatment of Scotland.  On the other hand, I’m mindful of the fact that when RBS needed to be bailed out, membership of the union saved us from economic catastrophe and I worry about whether North Sea oil can, as we are told by the ‘Yes’ campaign, sustain and even improve Scotland’s standard of living.

Some of the most pro-independence people I know think that Scotland need not be afraid of going it alone, because it will excel no matter what.  This romantic outlook strikes a chord with me, because I happen to think that this country is exceptional, too.  Scotland has punched above its weight in just about every field of endeavour you care to mention, pouring out world-class scientists, statesmen, economists, philanthropists, sportsmen, writers, musicians and indeed Westminster Prime Ministers in quantities you would expect from a far larger country.

My hesitance at embracing independence has nothing to do with lack of belief in Scotland’s remarkable people or its achievements.  The simple truth is that Scotland is subject to the same twenty-first century pressures as the rest of the world.  It must compete in the same global markets, defend itself from the same threats and navigate what still feels like a fragile economic recovery.

  The more I listen to the Yes campaign, the more I worry about its minimisation and even denial of risks.  Whenever the big issues are raised – our heavy reliance on oil revenue if we become independent, what currency we’ll use, whether we’ll get back into the EU – reasonable questions are drowned out by accusations of ‘scaremongering.’  Meanwhile, dramatically differing figures and predictions are being slapped in front of us by both campaigns, so that it becomes difficult to know what to believe.

I doubt I’m alone in trying to find as much impartial and non-partisan information as I can, especially regarding the economy.  Of course, some will say that worrying about our economic prospects is poor-spirited, because those people take the view ‘I’ll be skint if I want to and Westminster can’t tell me otherwise’.  I’m afraid that’s a form of ‘patriotism’ that I will never understand.  It places higher importance on ‘sticking it’ to David Cameron, who will be long gone before the full consequences of independence are felt, than to looking after your own.  It prefers the grand ‘up yours’ gesture to considering what you might be doing to the prospects of future generations.

The more I have read from a variety of independent and unbiased sources, the more I have come to the conclusion that while independence might give us opportunities – any change brings opportunities – it also carries serious risks.  The Institute for Fiscal Studies concludes that Alex Salmond has underestimated the long-term impact of our ageing population and the fact that oil and gas reserves are being depleted.  This view is also taken by the independent study ‘Scotland’s Choices: The Referendum and What Happens Afterwards’ by Iain McLean, Jim Gallagher and Guy Lodge, which says that ‘it would be a foolish Scottish government that planned future public expenditure on the basis of current tax receipts from North Sea oil and gas’.

My fears about the economy extend into an area in which I have a very personal interest: Scottish medical research.  Having put a large amount of money into Multiple Sclerosis research here, I was worried to see an open letter from all five of Scotland’s medical schools expressing ‘grave concerns’ that independence could jeopardise what is currently Scotland’s world-class performance in this area.  Fourteen professors put their names to this letter, which says that Alex Salmond’s plans for a common research funding area are ‘fraught with difficulty’ and ‘unlikely to come to fruition’.

According to the professors who signed the letter, ‘it is highly unlikely that the remaining UK would tolerate a situation in which an independent “competitor” country won more money than it contributed.’  In this area, as in many others, I worry that Alex Salmond’s ambition is outstripping his reach.

I’ve heard it said that ‘we’ve got to leave, because they’ll punish us if we don’t’, but my guess is that if we vote to stay, we will be in the heady position of the spouse who looked like walking out, but decided to give things one last go.  All the major political parties are currently wooing us with offers of extra powers, keen to keep Scotland happy so that it does not hold an independence referendum every ten years and cause uncertainty and turmoil all over again.  I doubt whether we will ever have been more popular, or in a better position to dictate terms, than if we vote to stay.

If we leave, though, there will be no going back.  This separation will not be quick and clean: it will take microsurgery to disentangle three centuries of close interdependence, after which we will have to deal with three bitter neighbours.  I doubt that an independent Scotland will be able to bank on its ex-partners’ fond memories of the old relationship once we’ve left.  The rest of the UK will have had no say in the biggest change to the Union in centuries, but will suffer the economic consequences. 

When Alex Salmond tells us that we can keep whatever we’re particularly attached to – be it EU membership, the pound or the Queen, or insists that his preferred arrangements for monetary union or defence will be rubber-stamped by our ex-partners – he is talking about issues that Scotland will need, in every case, to negotiate.  In the words of ‘Scotland’s Choices’ ‘Scotland will be very much the smaller partner seeking arrangements from the UK to meet its own needs, and may not be in a very powerful negotiating position.’

If the majority of people in Scotland want independence I truly hope that it is a resounding success. While a few of our fiercer nationalists might like to drive me forcibly over the border after reading this, I’d prefer to stay and contribute to a country that has given me more than I can easily express.  It is because I love this country that I want it to thrive.  Whatever the outcome of the referendum on 18^th September, it will be a historic moment for Scotland.  I just hope with all my heart that we never have cause to look back and feel that we made a historically bad mistake.

Going Beyond Maurice Saatchi's Cutting Corporation Tax Idea

    Maurice Saatchi has produced for the Centre For Policy Studies (and implicitly for the Tory Party) a proposal to abolish Corporation Tax for all but the 10% of largest companies and also abolish Capital Gains Tax for the same people. Saying

"The Policy outlined in this document will:
 abolish Corporation Tax for 90% of UK companies
 reduce the deficit faster than predicted by the OBR 
 expand employment faster than predicted by the OBR
 increase competition and challenge Cartel Capitalism
 let millions of people grow tall. 
These millions of individuals will enjoy:
 the opportunity to say “I am the captain of my ship”
 more money
 more freedom
 the first step on The Road from Serfdom.
The nation as a whole will benefit from:
 a change in culture as big as “Own your own Home” in the 1980s
 greater economic growth and lower unemployment than forecast by the OBR
 more competitive market places
 more freedom and independence from Big Government and Big Companies."
 

    I have been pushing for CT cuts since before 2004. Basically following the example of Ireland where they cut CT, in a series of steps to 12.5%, and reduced regulation, particularly on housebuilding and achieved a 7% average growth rate.

    So what do I think of Saatchi's slightly different proposal? It is an improvement. His is costed at £10.5 bn. Mine of cutting all CT by slightly more than half would cost just over a billion more. Not much difference. However by concentrating it all on smaller companies he gets some advantages - smaller companies provide more employment growth; smaller companies tend to be more innovative, until they grow into bigger companies; smaller companies have more difficulty borrowing so profits are more important for expansion.

    He also has the advantage of being able to run it through an economic model. Lets take advantage of that.

    The conclusion is that this £10.5 bn cut would increase growth by about 0.8%, though not in the first year because the investment has to work through. That means that by the end of a 5 year Parliament that growth would have replaced all that tax cut. Saatchi says that this 0.8% estimate is "conservative" and I agree. Indeed that is 1 of 3 reasons I believe the position is much better than he offers:

1 - Irish growth was 7% - 4.5% better than ours. Even if we assume more than half was due  to the regulatory cuts (not the common feeling but probably true) and that, because Ireland is so much smaller than us, having lower taxes opened them up to proportionately more investment than us we still come out with the growth potential being around twice the 0.8% given. Also Irish growth did not take a year to take off and this is reasonable if investors see an improved investment opportunity - they will not wait, but start investing immediately, if they can.

2 - Increased national debt is only a problem in relation to the size of the economy. If we have growth of an extra 0.8% in the economy, debt can increase the same without making payment more difficult. Indeed if the size of government is unaltered there is actually proportionately more uncommitted money in the economy, though this is only a marginal effect.

Our current national debt is £1.4 trillion so 0.8% is £11.2 bn, just slightly above initial and maximum borrowing.

3 - If you have a growing economy you need to increase the money supply to keep prices stable. Money in UK circulation is rather larger than 1 year's gdp. In fact it was £2,200 bn in 2010 - presumably about £2,400 bn now. So an extra unexpected 0.8% growth means we can and should print £19 billion extra.
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   This is not estimating conservatively but it is the realistic best estimate and if we don't do it there is no reason to believe reality will be conservative either.

    So clearly we should go with this asap.

   I would go further - promise that the take on CT and other business taxes will not be allowed to rise - if the economy grows, as it will, increasing the tax take, we will raise the level at which CT comes in (& when it is fully abolished, business rated and other such taxes). This means investors can look forward to a stable profitable investment, which is all they need.
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    But I would like to see this as merely the start.

    The formula for economic growth is:     Economic Freedom + Cheap Energy

    Low business tax is only part, the smaller part, of economic freedom. The greater part is not having parasitic state regulation. At least tax money goes back into the economy, albeit in less efficient ways and excluding the cost of government taxing and returning it. Wealth destroyed by regulation, for example 98% of the cost of electricity, is gone forever.

   So we should should cut regulations wherever possible. As a minor effect that also cuts government spending a bit - it costs government all of 1/20th, to regulate, of what it costs the productive economy to be regulated.

75% of housing cost is regulatory - 34% X 75% = 25.5%
(I assume this includes heating it)

The EU regulations come to another 5%
(assuming the cost is equally borne by the people as by the government sector which is an optimistic assumption)

Remaining portion of income that goes to the value of what we actually choose

100% - 25.5% - 5% =69.5%

That 69.5% is, in turn reduced proportionately by all the other factors. Take off commercial building costs (est 2.5%), electricity charges through the rest of the economy (est 2%),accountancy (7.5%), child care (est 2.5%), assorted other (est 10%)

Total 24.5%

Therefore percentage of income we nominally get to spend which we actually get in our pockets & spent on the product not the surrounding regulation

69.5% X (100% - 24.5% = 52.5%

  
     But if the regulatory part of economic freedom costs us more than the tax part the other side of the equation, cheap energy has even more potential. Roger Helmer has written of the advantages of letting decisions on electricity be made on economic not ideological grounds.

    The correlation between growth in energy use and in gdp is undisputable.

        It has been calculated and indeed is undisputed that app 98% of the cost of producing electricity here is governmental parasitism. 

       Nuclear is currently 40% of the average cost of our power basket.
China is building at 0.27 our costs.
Because China is building in three years and us in ten we have seven years foregone income while paying interest – assuming the normal 10% return that is 1.10^7 = 1.95
Assume China is not entirely without state parasitism – say 10% 
VAT and carbon levies 20%
How much could cost be reduced if it was allowed to mass produce reactors - three fold seems a conservative estimate.

60% X 0.27 X 1/1.95 X 90% X 1/1.20% X 1/3 = 0.0208 or 2.08% of current costs.
97.92% parasitism.
       Major reductions, not quite as major, could be done by allowing the market to produce shale gas. Any reduction on electricity costs, not just one as major as this, if the laws of supply and  demand work, would produce a many fold increase in energy use and therefore a many fold increase in gdp.

       Indeed I have previously proposed a 24 point programme to the world's fastest growth, which includes my original CT cutting proposal, and it would work. Theoretically we might expect most of the proposals to increase growth by about an average of 2% a year, Some more, some less.

       In practice we might be limited to a bit above the 20% growth Guandong province in China managed for years. Certainly the theoretical maximum, if we make growth our "Number one priority" (Scottish labour leader Jack McConnell promising at 2 elections - he knew what people want even if he lied about giving it) cannot be lower than the actually achieved maximum.

=================================
      Saatchi's proposal is a very good one, well thought out and verified. But it is only a small fraction of our potential.

Ideas The Other Parties Will Never Adopt

   When I stood 8 years ago for/as the 9% Growth Party I put forward a number of policies. All of them remain undone, though obviously all the other parties have known of them since. So I'll repeat some of them on occasion, particularly Glasgow ones. If you approve of them the one thing we can say for certain is they won't get done by any other party (admittedly if you think they are bad ideas the same applies):

  First one was giving the Red Road flats to their occupants as an alternative to demolition. Ah well, to late now.

2nd - Paint a line along the pavement between Glasgow Central & Queen St stations with the distance in metres written so that strangers know the way.

This seemed then and seems now to be a simple cost free way of making life a little easier for tourists (though I admit I originally suggested the line be orange because that is high visibility :-)  )