Understanding Scotland Economy Tracker Response from Scotonomics
Understanding Scotland Economy Tracker - The underlying story of Scotland’s economy is a lack of government spending For the last four years The Understanding Scotland Economy tracker has been tracking the general public’s views on the economy. See the latest report here. Every quarter we get a feel for economic sentiment from a cross section of over 2000 Scots. I attended the releasee of the report in Edinburgh on the 27th May. The survey is wide ranging - designed to be top level for others to look into the details - and provides a good ‘vibe’ of what is going [...]
A quick response to some Project Fear (as part of a series over the coming months)
Project Fear is back - not that it ever went away. The Sunday Times has printed an article (June 12th) that is half PR for an upcoming book and half project fear. Altogether it is a non-story. Before we look at the “shock” headline figure here are some figures for context. Currently, global debt as defined and calculated by the IMF is 256% of Global GDP. The UK Government debt is 143% of GDP. So the shocking figure for Scotland is....... 110% of GDP. The "debt" (although it really isn't a debt) is the cumulative difference between what the UK [...]
Losing out on tax revenue is not the risk
Thankfully it doesn't happen that often. You find a tweet that seems to be specifically designed just to totally piss you off. Like someone knew you were having a good day and decided to puncture it. Thanks Robert Peston. There is a risk for sure. But it is not from losing a few billion in tax. There are three issues in this one tweet. Which I will take in turn. First is Robert's role as a huge figure in the UK mainstream media and should allow him to rise above "cut and paste" reporting. There is no [...]