Be Excellent To Each Other

Going through the Commons at the moment is a bill to vastly increase the powers of the Scottish Parliament. The bill's page, including its current text and related debates are here.

Out of interest, are you aware of this legislation? What do you think of it?

I'm intrigued by one proposal, which is to slash the grant Scotland receives but give Holyrood the power to raise income tax by the same amount. This would mean that Scotland would have to decide how it wants to fund things itself. Could lead to very interesting policy debates and more diversions from the policies and tax rates across the rest of the Union.

I'm not aware of it. But thanks for the heads up. I'll have a read of it later if I can figure out which link actually contains words saying what the bill proposes

The Scottish Office have a FAQ

Scotland is welcome to all the power it wants, I assume the proposal for an increase in power over themselves, also contains an equal loss in power in the central government...

"Power to regulate air weapons devolved to Scottish Parliament;"

Thinks: Ooh, I wonder if that means we can get rid of Trident? Oh no wait, it probably means air rifles. LOL.

To summarise my thoughts on devolution / this kind of thing:
I vaguely like the idea that Scotland could stand on its own two feet by exploiting the renewable energy resources we have and build up manufacturing on that basis, and perhaps end up in a better economic and social situation than today.

But what would probably happen is that we stop getting money from The UK, all the perks like free hospital parking and bridge tolls vanish overnight, and the parliament sits around in its stupid expensive building arguing about nothing and everything gets worse and shit.

Aye, that's what makes that measure so politically and constitutionally interesting for me. Spending other people's money is easy and fun, but making the Parliament itself find the funds would mean it would have to debate whether they want these benefits etc.

Scottish politics is a terrifying nonsense generally speaking. Fully devolved power is all well and good, but I don't think they should expect any cash from England to prop them up. The impression I get is that half of these idealogical zealots haven't quite factored in how they'll fund running the country from only 5 million people. Scots aren't typically rich either.

It's OK—Scotland will be independent and prop itself up with oil money, forever(!) (Until Shetland decides to wrench itself free of Scotland, take all the oil, go mwahaha and become the richest and one of the smallest countries on the planet—even with the relatively few years of remaining oil.)

Scotland Bill & Ted's Och Aye The Noo Adventure

"It's our oil!" etc

At least one of these people really exist in every normal office/workplace and will tell you every time the topic comes up that we'd all live like Saudi Sheikhs if only we had the oil!!!

As we hand over the oil rigs we should ask them to deposit a cheque covering their construction, which English and corporate money definately funded.