THERE has been a witty, well-targeted tweet doing the rounds – a picture of rubbish-strewn Paisley Road West with the caption: “Just walk around it, Mr President, and you will be fine”.
We can rest assured that when President Biden and countless global panjandrums descend on Glasgow in November, the city’s cosmetics will have been tarted up, just as they were for the Commonwealth Games, while the underlying issue remains undisturbed.
For a decade, our local authorities faced relentless cuts by the Scottish Government, out of all proportion to any inconvenience suffered by itself. The outcomes are inescapable in filthy streets, pot-holed roads, threatened libraries and much else.
Against this background, witnessable in daily reality, one did not know whether to laugh or cry at this week's prize headline: “SNP claim councils could be up to £6000 better off per person under independence” with supporting quotes from Fiona Hyslop, former business secretary.
The assumptions underpinning this remarkable calculation were so absurd as to defy analysis. However, even the most optimistic separatist cannot dispute that while waiting for the extra £6k a head (plus a free bicycle), between 2013 and 2021 the Scottish Government cut council funding by an average £95 per head, rising to £250 in Glasgow – which explains a lot.
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My own council in the Western Isles was hardest hit of all, losing £522 per head. This is a particularly cruel piece of double jeopardy – the more the population declines, the less an authority needs, which is actually the opposite of the per capita truth.
The £6k a head projection was based on comparative levels of per capita GDP in north-west Europe. With one leap, we could have Scandinavian levels of earnings, presumably unaccompanied by Scandinavian levels of taxation – among the many caveats tastefully avoided in Fiona’s fantasy figures.
As The Herald reported, experts warning against GDP as a reliable indicator of anything included a former head of Ireland’s Central Bank – and he should know. Patrick Honohan warned that using GDP as a measure ignores such matters as debt and inequality. Profits of large multinationals based in Ireland had “flattered Irish GDP for years”.
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The latter point is of particular relevance this week. For years, Ireland was held up as a model to follow. If only we were free of Whitehall’s shackles, we too could offer low taxation to bring investors flocking as our own leg of the Celtic Tiger. That creature was slaughtered by 2010 but the low-tax mentality lingered in Ireland while the SNP’s independence White Paper promised corporation tax at “three per cent below the prevailing UK rate”.
It is therefore worth noting what is going on in Ireland at present as not just the EU but also the OECD seek to limit tax dodging by multinational corporations by setting a minimum corporation tax rate of 15 per cent alongside other measures. Even this is modest since the Biden administration is calling for a 21 per cent minimum.
Ireland is resisting furiously because it has based its whole economic model on offering rock bottom tax rates to multinationals. Just nine of the 139 OECD states declined to sign up to the 15 per cent minimum. Hungary is the only other in the EU while Ireland also finds itself in the company of Barbados, St Vincent and the Grenadines – “tax pirates of the Caribbean” as Finan O’Toole described them.
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In the Irish Times, Mr O’Toole described Ireland’s position as “both immoral and stupid”, explaining: “Immoral because it marks Ireland as a willing enabler of tax avoidance that robs other states of public resources and generates disastrous levels of inequality both between and within countries. Stupid because it is doomed to fail. We are, under both headings, defending the indefensible”.
Which takes us back to the question of per capita GDP. Ireland’s is seventh in the world behind such role models as Monaco, Liechtenstein and the Cayman Islands. Yet it still can’t afford a national health service. Before any nationalist politician puts a name to daft press releases about £6000 a head if only we would roll up for independence, they might account for that single salient fact.
The French finance minister, Clément Beaune, has pleaded with Ireland not to veto EU unity (Hungary apart) on fair taxation. “I would like Ireland to reflect on what it would mean to reject what would constitute great progress for Europe,” he wrote. The problem for Ireland is that, having become so thirled to giving Amazon and Google next-to-free rides, half their GDP is potentially at stake.
I know the day job is pretty boring – fixing pot-holes, keeping libraries open, attracting inward investment on sustainable terms, running a competent education system that produces a workforce with 21st century skills. But that is what politicians are there to do rather than fantasise about everyone winning £6k a head in a phoney GDP lottery.
Which genius decided, I wonder, that Glasgow was so well off in 2013 that it could afford to have £250 per person a year taken away from the provision of public services? I’m sure most Glasgow citizens would now settle for a deal – give them back their £250 a year a head to pay for services and the SNP could keep the whole £6k if it arrives.
But never mind, the dear green place will be all spruced up for COP26.
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