Choosing your comrades
Few details from John Swinney in his statement responding to the chancellor's package of financial measures.
That upset some - with Tavish Scott of the Lib Dems complaining later that the finance secretary had indulged in a whinge with little substance of his own.
Labour's Andy Kerr wanted to know what, where and when with regard to the promised programme of accelerated capital investment.
That is, of course, a classic theme from Mr Kerr, particularly in respect of the Scottish Futures Trust. (He distrusts it and suspects it has little future.)
Up with this Mr Swinney would not put. He had, he said, been "ahead of the game" with regard to speeding up housing investment.
That, he said, lay at the core of the controversy over whether he was or was not invited by the Treasury in September to bring forward investment.
He was, he said - but in a letter which referred specifically to housing money and went on to acknowledge that Scottish ministers had already outlined such a scheme.
Targeted support
Further, it was unreasonable to expect full details of capital investment a couple of days after the chancellor's statement - and prior to talks with local authority partners.
So was there any consensus? Some. Mr Swinney praised elements of the chancellor's package - while noting that he would have preferred to see more targeted support on tackling fuel poverty and reviving the housing sector.
There was an acerbic note of cross-party agreement, advanced by Derek Brownlee for the Conservatives.
Both they and the SNP, he said, now knew what it was like to pick up the pieces after Labour failure.
Probably wisely, Mr Swinney declined to rise to that. He prefers, one suspects, to pick his own fights - and choose his own comrades; however helpful Mr Brownlee has been in the past, for example over last year's Scottish budget.
But to the substance - what little there was at this stage.
Mr Swinney signalled that he would exploit the offer of advanced capital invesment to the full. That means bringing forward £260m.
Cash in pockets
But it won't just go on public value projects. It's plain that the test will also include bolstering the economy.
So that means schools: broader thinking is that Scotland must upskill to be ready for the upturn - when it comes.
It means transport infrastructure: improving economic prospects. It means fuel efficiency and tackling fuel poverty: redressing the impact of recession and putting money in pockets.
It means housing: the construction industry.
However, as with so much in these notably troubled times, this was a holding statement pending further detail: a provisional plan.
I'm 
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Let's just hope that Swinney's Civil Servants are more competent than Darling's!
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It is good to see construction getting some help, they are the victims of this disaster. If half of the money going on helping banks went into construction we would have a boom!
I am also pleased to see the way John Swinney played this, agreeing where he thought appropriate and offering alternatives where he felt it was worthy.
More of this and we can see a way forward.
However the Elephant in the room remains the SFT. They really have to get this moving and fast if we are to achieve a result form this. If they don't the electorate may be very harsh indeed.
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Having today received updates on the value of a couple of my pension funds I have some suggestions.
Firstly I would strongly recommend that for the sake of their health nobody declare their allegiance to Labour in my presence.
Secondly, it seems entirely reasonable to me that in order that civil servants - especially those in the Treasury and FSA - and of course all Labour MPs and MSPs can feel at one with their constituents then their pension funds should also be cut by the 20%, 30% and 22% I have experienced.
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The big problem is that Labour's plans are unravelling as we speak, or type.
VAT, income tax, duty, growth, borrowing, you name it the figures in the PBR have been shown to be bogus. It has been revealed that the Treasury figures were changed at the last minute by Gordon Brown.
You cannot build an economy on Labour's shifting sands.
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Hi,
Have a look at these copies of treasury briefing notes to show that the VAT reduction is a con:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/8418417/Labours-VAT-Bomb-
and:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EQc_hLHXONE/SSxbVyE67bI/AAAAAAAADZQ/dfOxtySS0wI/s1600-h/VAT_bomb.bmp
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#5.
To be fair, Labour are not conning the public. I do believe Labour have been honest that higher taxes would be necessary in future. It's been a matter of what and when.
If you honestly thought that Labour would never find someway of raising taxes to help repay our debts then shame on you.
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You know, if the Chancellor had had the balls to stand up and say "look, I can't afford tax cuts, but I may have to raise some for a short while" people may have not liked it but at least he would have been honest.
I don't know what it going on now. I now believe that the Labour Party are playing pure politics. If the gamble fails and they lose the next election, the Tories will win and then be forced to make massive cuts and raise taxes, which may lose them the following election. But if the gamble pays off Labour get another term and taxes rocket.
But can we get any sensible suggestions from other parties?
Thought not.
Why can't they just be simple and take a penny off income tax, cut unnecessary projects to pay for it ( ie ID card scheme), make an effort to reduce business taxes and then see what happens.
Instead we have this confusing situation where everyone but everyone can clearly see the VAT cut is actually going to put true prices UP.
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If Mr Swinney wants to save money he should dump the ID card that his government is bringing in on behalf of Ms. Jacquie Orwell Smith. Of course it is not called an ID Card in Scotland- up here it the Senior Citizens Entitlement Card (Bus Pass) .
OAP resistance to ID cards has been bought off with a few "free" trips (at taxpayers expense) on Stagecoach/First Buses!
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#7 Neil_Small147
In this crisis, I don't think anyone knows what's happening - the Treasury included.
Although it advantages me - I'm retired, with a pension better than some people's income - I think it totally wrong to raise NIC on working people rather than to raise income tax and corporation tax.
What on earth do they see as the point in giving me (along with those living off unearned income) a tax break, while shafting you guys who are trying to raise a family?
There should be no NIC at all. Your employer's NI contributions should be cancelled and replaced by an increased corporation tax on profit - not the number of employees.
Your NI contributions should be cancelled and replaced by an increased income tax levied on all of us with sufficient income to pay tax.
I pay more, you pay less.
On second thoughts, what a stupid idea! Stuff your generation! :-)
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8 uk abz scot
When completing the form for my "Bus pass", I ticked a box to say that I DID NOT WANT my information to be used as part of a grand scheme to collate library membership, and goodness knows what else for the benefit of the Council and the Scottish Executive as it then was.
So as far as I am concerned all I have is a Bus Pass and not an ID Card. If I find out that any other information about me is contained in the chip on my card there will be trouble.
Say no to ID Cards.
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#8 uk_abz_scot
The Bus Pass was introduced under Labour, and there is an English equivalent.
You forgot to mention the 250 GBP winter heating allowance paid into my account this month, the free prescription that I picked up today etc.
Do I take advantage of all these age-related entitlements? Sure do!
Do I think it fair? No.
Why will no Government change this? More of my generation vote.
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And more on Labour's "fairness".
The Telegraph is reporting that "buried in the small print of the PBR, unveiled by Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, on Monday, is the revelation that the cost of buying back NI contributions will rise from GBP8.10 to GBP12.03 at the start of the new financial year.
That means that any woman who wants to take up their full entitlement of 12 years will be forced to pay an extra GBP2,500."
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I wonder whether Cameron has decided that he doesn't really want the Tories to take power in 2010.
Generous final salary public sector pensions would be phased out by an incoming Conservative government
Regardless of the rights or wrongs of the argument, in political terms this would mean a lot of marginals in England becoming less winnable by the Tories.
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Re 13
If Cameron goes ahead with this he will need to factor another calculation. Private sector salaries are significantly higher than public sector, the argument used to justify this is the pension. So this will create a pressure on salaries as the public sector will become uncompetitive. Okay the next few years will not be a problem but longer term this will cause significant issues providing important services.
This is just another example of the same old tories, kicking the most vulnerable and those least likely to vote for them.
Maybe independance does have some attractions.
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In answering David Cameron, Gordon Brown put forward the following.
The PM admitted ministers considered increasing VAT to 18.5%, or higher, but had now rejected such a move in favour of a VAT cut funded by borrowing.
The above answer does not square with the pre budget document published online as if this was the case they would never have been in the same paragraph.
Gordon Browns statment to David Cameron shows that once again NULAB are lying to the pubic as to NULAB's intentions.
Furthermore, why was Gordon Brown changing the budget statment just before the budget was announced, ? is he the chancelor or a control freak.
If Darling had any concience he would resign from being the chancelor instead of being Browns lapdog.
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Re 15
I think the scale of the tax increases is uncertain and would be no matter what party was in power and what decisions were made just now.
However politicians being what they are, irrespective of what colour they are, never tell the truth.
But that must then mean that we the elctorate want them to behave in this way? Or surely we would have replaced them with something better?
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#14 - northhighlander - Shhh - don't give away Call-me-Dave's get out clause.
Do you seriously think that career politicians will do away with final salary pensions knowing that, by doing so, they could justify their own very generous pensions even less than now? The tories would struggle to get such a scheme through the house. But, he can turn round and say they've changed their manifesto promise because it would mean an unacceptable pressure to increase public sector salaries.
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Everything that has been done at the moment, by many governments across the world to deal with this crisis, is missing the main point.
What the UK government and others are doing is at vast cost artificially sustaining a system which is fundamentally flawed and which has resulted in the present crisis.
We consume more than we produce and make up the difference by inventing huge sums of money which we lend to each other.
( And far Eastern economies produce more than they can possibly consume and have been prospering on our debt selling to us collecting money which, if the worst comes to the worst, will prove to be worthless)
We have just taken drastic action which we will pay for the next twenty to thirty years (if not forever) so we can continue in this nonsense.
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18. We borrowed similar levels (as a % of GDP) during the 1992 recession and we were paying back rapidly by 1997.
Between 1997 and 2001 alone, 25% of the entire UK national debt had been repaid.
Such claims that planned borrowing will absolutely lead to decades of repayments are just not true.
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#18 sneckedagain
Angela Merkel agrees with you! - Merkel sees danger in cheap money
Those simple people who imagine that the latest borrowing will be easily paid back, haven't learned from their school texts that the apparent boom in the late 20th century was illusory, and the finance sector will not produce these leveraged profits again.
It seems unwise to continue with public spending plans which hope for "efficiency" cuts, rather than addressing those expensive programmes which cannot be afforded. However,
"Work to build two giant aircraft carriers in Glasgow may be delayed by the credit crunch, it has emerged.
The Ministry of Defence confirmed all its major programmes were under cost-cutting scrutiny.
Work is scheduled to begin next spring on HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, the biggest warships to be built in the UK. " (Press Association)
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#19 Reluctant-Expat
"Such claims that planned borrowing will absolutely lead to decades of repayments are just not true."
Quite right, with one provisio....
It wasn't manufacturing that predouced the funds to repay debt in the '90s, but oil and the financial sector.
I somehow can't see the financial sector being the UK's savious this time, and if your gloomy projections on oil are right there will not be much joy from that either.
Frankly, I hope you're wrong re oil, as that could help but somehow we're going to need to develop new services and/or produce things competitively again to get out of it this time.
My bet is that renewable technologies will prove the saviour, if there is one.
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#19 RE
Doesn't it? We may have been paying it back but we didn't manage to pay it all back and now we are adding to it again.
Add to that, the runaway growth of the FTSE during the period 1992 - 2000, the increased tax take on the share dividends, capital gains, and higher incomes etc that derived from it swelling the Treasury's coffers.
The FTSE Peaked in March 2000 and 8 and a half years later, has never returned to that level since. Even with Monday's record climb, it is still trading at between 45-55% of the March 2000 high.
Will we have such a meteororic rise again? Possible but I suspect unlikely and, without it, how do you see a government (of any colour or composition) paying off the national debt it inherits quickly?
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#19 Betting on a Cameronian Boom to match Browns Boom and Bust?
Despite your endless list of flaws, I didn't imagine even you would mortgage your childrens future that you might sustain your present comfort.
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20 Oldnat, are you still following Salmond's lead by wrongly assuming 'arrogance' is an adequate substitute for 'knowledge and experience'?
Pride comes before a....what?
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#23 BrianSH
Of RE - "your childrens future".
Now that possibility has to based on a long list of unlikely circumstances :-)
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It's heartwarming to see nationalists actually quoting real history for once, as opposed to nationalist revisionism.
One can only hope you are as wrong about the UK's economic future as you have been about everything else.
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#21 Brownedov
I see from its #26, that as well as not understanding economics, it doesn't understand what history is either.
I didn't understand his reference to biology in its #20 either.
I thought everyone knew that pride comes before the production of baby lions.
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Believe me oldnat, you really shouldn't berate anyone, at all, for "not understanding economics" when you support the SNP's economic masterplan.
Mmm?
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#27 oldnat
His #24 gives the game away; he thinks AS has pinched his modus operandi.
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#21 Brownedov (supplementary)
I note from its #28 that it seems to be enjoying a sweet, at the end of its post.
No doubt an acid drop.
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#27 & #30 oldnat
LOL - but it's a shame to intrude on private grief.
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re your SM#83
The patient is definitely showing insecurity responses, me, me, me and can I be in your gang.
We need to try for another extended session on another topic to uncover more. An external focus to the topic should divulge autistic tendencies and the extent of gang solidarity
It just goes to show what a little love will do
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