Pensioned off

An interesting table showing comparative pension entitlements in various countries.

Pensions and welfare spending represents a lower proportion of Scotland’s GDP than that of the UK – 14.4% for Scotland and 15.9% for the UK in 2011-12.

Over the next 40 years, the pension age population in the UK is projected to rise by 48%. In Scotland, the projection is 37%.

Scotland raises 9.9% of the UK's tax for Westminster but gets back only 9.3% in public spending. The difference amounted to £4.4bn last year. There's been a similar surplus relative to the UK over the last 30 years, amounting to a total of £19bn.

Amongst the many other things independence would allow us to do, we can well afford safer and fairer pensions for our elderly.

Moving to Yes

This is the kind of thing I've now seen loads of times. There's an audience and a vote of who's Yes, No or don't know. There's then a debate. After that, there's a fresh vote. I have never yet seen there be anything but a big swing to yes. At Abertay, there were 200 first year students. Before the debate, 59% were No and 21% Yes. After it, 51% were Yes and 38% No. That's a 25% swing.

I have never - not once - read of the opposite happening: of the No vote increasing after a debate. When people hear the arguments and engage in the debate, they move to Yes.

Uncertain emotions force an uncertain smile

As someone said on the recent 5 Live debate, Scotland is a "filthy rich" country. By GDP per head, we'd be the eighth richest country in the world. . But what do we do with that wealth? Over the last 30 years the UK has become one of the most unequal countries in the whole world.  That's a concern not just for the bleeding-hearts but anyone who wants economic success. Professor Irwin Stelzer  says that unequal countries do not do as well, do not grow as well and are less stable, economically. That fits with the fact that the most successful and happiest countries are also the most equal (Japan, the Scandinavian countries).

So, wtf is this man smiling? 14,318 people in Scotland were forced to seek help from a food bank last year: twice as many as the one before. As I admitted at the time, much of Danny Boyle's Olympics ceremony was breathtakingly beautiful but it was also halucinatorily self-deluding. Food banks, pay day loans, bedroom tax. Which of those could not have featured if he was doing it today?

Best placard of the day

Best placard of the day.

Back to the future

So. Just how good are Her Majesty's Government at predicting future oil prices?

Turns out, not very. Really not very, at all. You'd almost think they were doing it deliberately.

Reasons to vote no: junkie dogs

Wonder what the best reason for voting one way or the other in the referendum I hear will be. The one the guy beside me on the train gave a minute ago will take some beating. He's a no. Because we'd be left with all the junkies and Salmond is spending £2m (he was very specific) on dogs for all the junkies. I think he might be getting mixed up with dementia sufferers, but anyway. 

"Res ipsa loquitor". I think. Maybe "Quod erat demonstrandum"

Alex Salmond (in a small part of a very reasoned speech) says that the broadcast media try to be fair but the press in Scotland is "heavily stacked against independence" (and, in other breaking news, bears, woods, Pope, Roman Catholic etc).

The Times reports this as Salmond "lashing out" in an "unprecedented attack on the press". It's all terrible, what with "him and his plans for separation".
 
"Irony" isn't the right word but what ever it is, it's that.