Well, I noticed that this was the cover story in Prospect magazine, but as I haven't read it yet, I'm not going to steal its best points and pass them off as my own. Assuming I agree. Hence, have provided the link to get things going.
As for highland/lowland, there are those that are for and against in both, but I suspect there's a higher proportion in the highlands and islands - certainly than in Edinburgh, which is historically pretty unionist.
The SNP MP who brought the loans for honours thing into the spotlight (Angus MacNeil) is a crofter on Barra, and you can't get much further from Westminster than that.
Just to contextualize this within our usual favourite topic - environmental disaster. I feel that progress will be hindered the more there is a fragmentation of governments and sovereign states. This is a global problem requiring collective action, something which would become just that little more difficult if England/Scotland had different policies.
Just read the prospect magazine article and it's interesting stuff, coming from (quite an unconventional) personal perspective.
It's interesting that he says he's going to vote SNP regardless of their economic policies as they'll have to U-turn on them when reality bites. There's a great line about mink farms as well.
Just realised that I should have posted this link to the index page of december issue of Prospect, which has a number of articles (scroll down the web exclusive column), not just that weird old Tory's. Don't like the standpoint that one's coming from.
The only way to destroy this conservative, subsidy-driven culture is by cutting off its financial lifeline to England, which is there because Gordon Brown and other ambitious Scottish Westminster politicians such as John Reid are anxious to protect their domestic base.
Re the 2nd para - it ain't gonna be pretty, not sure I'd want to hang around to watch...
I haven't read the Prospect article in full, but the extract is very uninformed and unfair. Much of Scotland is relatively poor but other bits (e.g Edinburgh) are booming.
Of course, as a whole, Scotland is poorer than London/SE, but economically it's pretty comparable with NE England or Yorkshire. Not surprisingly, as they are former industrial centres experiencing long-term decline. I can't see how the economic profile of Scotland has anything particularly to do with its contemporary politics or supposed subsidy culture.
In one way, I agree with Seumas - the environment will only be dealt with at a much bigger level than just Britain or Scotland, so it probably isn't a great example.
However, it is an instance of how having independent states would make it more difficult to pass good laws. Given that economic assets are so mobile between England + Scotland, their respective governments would become more reluctant to do things like raise green taxes, regulate business malpractice or punish polllution, for fear that businesses would just move across the border. Different legislative conditions in the US states is one of the reasons why businesses can get away with murder over there.
I know that the English/Scottish governments could still talk to each other, but I fear they would also find the temptation to freeload irresistable.
I think Seumas's point about alternative energy is a good one - there is much more potential in Scotland than in the rest of the UK (including places like Cornwall, whose wind turbines don't even deliver 30% of the time, like they were supposed to). But is there any reason why the current Scottish parliament can't adopt different energy policy than the rest of the UK? Is that within its remit? I suppose if Scotland was independent it could sell electricity to england and wales. I think the legislation question is more complicated, and can work both ways. England only decided on an outright ban on smoking, without complicated compromises, after seeing that Scotland and Ireland managed it without fuss. And in the US, individual States' environmental legislation is forcing the country's practice to change, even though the federal govt. wasn't interested. In the EU, would Scotland and England/Wales/NIreland (what would you call that?) have twice as many votes as Britain currently does? They'd probably vote the same on most issues, so that might be quite useful, particularly as the EU enlarges.
I don't think the basic problem I've identified has been dealt with yet - i.e, in a situation where economic assets can move freely (as with UK at the moment), having different tax and regulatory regimes becomes very difficult, and will tend to favour low taxes and feeble regulatory enforcement.
I take Colin's point that having different legislators means that good laws can be pioneered and then rolled out across the country (as with the smoking ban), but this only applies in the case where such laws have a noticeable improvement without any spillover effects on other countries. In the case of lowering fuel taxes, for instance, this would obviously not be the case.
Ireland actually proves my point. Along with all its other problems, one of the difficulties facing the Northern Irish economy is that it has higher tax rates than Eire - as a result capital and skilled labour migrates to the south of the border, leaving N. Ireland's economy entirely dependent on public sector.
Most businesses might be SMEs, but most employment and economic activity is in large, relatively mobile businesses.
10 comments:
Well, I noticed that this was the cover story in Prospect magazine, but as I haven't read it yet, I'm not going to steal its best points and pass them off as my own. Assuming I agree. Hence, have provided the link to get things going.
As for highland/lowland, there are those that are for and against in both, but I suspect there's a higher proportion in the highlands and islands - certainly than in Edinburgh, which is historically pretty unionist.
The SNP MP who brought the loans for honours thing into the spotlight (Angus MacNeil) is a crofter on Barra, and you can't get much further from Westminster than that.
Just to contextualize this within our usual favourite topic - environmental disaster. I feel that progress will be hindered the more there is a fragmentation of governments and sovereign states. This is a global problem requiring collective action, something which would become just that little more difficult if England/Scotland had different policies.
Just read the prospect magazine article and it's interesting stuff, coming from (quite an unconventional) personal perspective.
It's interesting that he says he's going to vote SNP regardless of their economic policies as they'll have to U-turn on them when reality bites. There's a great line about mink farms as well.
Just realised that I should have posted this link to the index page of december issue of Prospect, which has a number of articles (scroll down the web exclusive column), not just that weird old Tory's. Don't like the standpoint that one's coming from.
From this article:
The Scottish electorate and business community, looking over its shoulder at the Celtic tiger in Ireland, expected devolution to modernise the country and its lacklustre economy. Instead they got the ancien régime writ large. Over half of Scottish GDP is now in the state sector, productivity is dire and economic growth glacial. We have the highest per capita health spending in Europe and the worst health under a Stalinist, super-centralised Scottish NHS. Twenty per cent fewer young Scots finish high school (post-16 education) than the European average.
The only way to destroy this conservative, subsidy-driven culture is by cutting off its financial lifeline to England, which is there because Gordon Brown and other ambitious Scottish Westminster politicians such as John Reid are anxious to protect their domestic base.
Re the 2nd para - it ain't gonna be pretty, not sure I'd want to hang around to watch...
I haven't read the Prospect article in full, but the extract is very uninformed and unfair. Much of Scotland is relatively poor but other bits (e.g Edinburgh) are booming.
Of course, as a whole, Scotland is poorer than London/SE, but economically it's pretty comparable with NE England or Yorkshire. Not surprisingly, as they are former industrial centres experiencing long-term decline. I can't see how the economic profile of Scotland has anything particularly to do with its contemporary politics or supposed subsidy culture.
In one way, I agree with Seumas - the environment will only be dealt with at a much bigger level than just Britain or Scotland, so it probably isn't a great example.
However, it is an instance of how having independent states would make it more difficult to pass good laws. Given that economic assets are so mobile between England + Scotland, their respective governments would become more reluctant to do things like raise green taxes, regulate business malpractice or punish polllution, for fear that businesses would just move across the border. Different legislative conditions in the US states is one of the reasons why businesses can get away with murder over there.
I know that the English/Scottish governments could still talk to each other, but I fear they would also find the temptation to freeload irresistable.
I think Seumas's point about alternative energy is a good one - there is much more potential in Scotland than in the rest of the UK (including places like Cornwall, whose wind turbines don't even deliver 30% of the time, like they were supposed to). But is there any reason why the current Scottish parliament can't adopt different energy policy than the rest of the UK? Is that within its remit? I suppose if Scotland was independent it could sell electricity to england and wales. I think the legislation question is more complicated, and can work both ways. England only decided on an outright ban on smoking, without complicated compromises, after seeing that Scotland and Ireland managed it without fuss. And in the US, individual States' environmental legislation is forcing the country's practice to change, even though the federal govt. wasn't interested. In the EU, would Scotland and England/Wales/NIreland (what would you call that?) have twice as many votes as Britain currently does? They'd probably vote the same on most issues, so that might be quite useful, particularly as the EU enlarges.
I don't think the basic problem I've identified has been dealt with yet - i.e, in a situation where economic assets can move freely (as with UK at the moment), having different tax and regulatory regimes becomes very difficult, and will tend to favour low taxes and feeble regulatory enforcement.
I take Colin's point that having different legislators means that good laws can be pioneered and then rolled out across the country
(as with the smoking ban), but this only applies in the case where such laws have a noticeable improvement without any spillover effects on other countries. In the case of lowering fuel taxes, for instance, this would obviously not be the case.
Ireland actually proves my point. Along with all its other problems, one of the difficulties facing the Northern Irish economy is that it has higher tax rates than Eire - as a result capital and skilled labour migrates to the south of the border, leaving N. Ireland's economy entirely dependent on public sector.
Most businesses might be SMEs, but most employment and economic activity is in large, relatively mobile businesses.
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