The Wee Blue Book (of Lies)

From the archive — published in 2014 on the original Chokkablog, kept as it was written.

Everybody's favourite Bath based cybernat,  the "Reverend Stuart Campbell" - erstwhile computer games reviewer and custodian of the separatist cheer-leading site "Wings Over Scotland" - has published a document entitled the "Wee Blue Book: The Facts the Papers Leave Out (Don't vote in the independence referendum until you've read this)". He is embarrassingly pleased with himself.  It feels a little mean to burst his bubble but - well - he deserves a little of his own medicine.

The Wee Blue Book is so riddled with errors, untruths and logical fallacies that it's honestly hard to know where to start a critique.  I think the most glaringly piss-poor section is the one entitled "The Economy": so I'll focus on that one with this post.

Much of his fevered ranting appears predicated on the assumption that a vote for independence will allow us to re-run the 1980's (when the UK experienced it's main economic boost from Oil and Gas).  Going back 30 years to focus on a particular 10 year period (out of 307 years of Union) is a text-book example of selective retrospection (actually I might have just made up that expression - if it's not in a text-book it should be).  After spending two of his three pages of text pointlessly crying over the spilt milk of the 1980's he experiences a fleeting moment of coherence when he states "There's no point crying over spilt milk - that's all in the past". Well quite.

But let's look at the numbers; the "Facts" that the Rev is so keen to clarify.  I include below a table summarising the GERS numbers that he cites as his source (and colour code references in the text to help you find them in the table). I have spent a lot of time with these figures and - trust me - this table is correct. The figures reconcile with statements made by the pro-independence camp (including the ridiculous "we would have been £8bn better off over the last 5 years" claims from the First Minister and Business for Scotland). The numbers here are not in dispute; it's just that the Rev seems to struggle to understand them.  I suspect he's not somebody who knows his way around a spreadsheet.  Let's take this specific statement where he attempts to justify his assertions with data;
First of all we should be clear that all of these figures allocate a geographic share of oil & gas revenues to Scotland using the Scottish Government's (i.e. most favourable) definition of geographic share. Fair enough.

We have to form a view as to what time period he is taking for his "on average" statement.  The GERS figures go back 5 years so it seems reasonable to assume he is talking about 5 year averages - certainly to go back any further is hardly going to give us a representative view of the "run-rate" that we're taking into an independent future.  Just in case; I've added an extra 2 years to the data so that we can see a slightly longer-term perspective.

Sure enough on this basis it's true that on average Scottish spending is £1,200 higher per person than the UK.  Where he veers away from the "Facts" is when he asserts that "on average" we send £1,700 more per person to the UK in taxes.  The actual figure is £1,200 (7 or 5 year average) and more recently £1,100 (4 year average).  

How could he be so far out?  I've been around these figures long enough to know where the £1,700 comes from because it's widely quoted. In the previously reported GERS figures (published 03/13) the Scottish Tax contribution for the then most recent year (2011-12) was £1,688 higher than the UK per capita average.  As is the way with these things, when the most recent numbers were published (03/14) corrections were made to prior years and hence that figure is now more accurately reported as £1,515 - and the most recent year now available (2012-13) actually shows a figure of £797.  It probably shouldn't surprise anybody that the Yes camp continue to quote the £1,700 figure when the most recent figure is actually £800.

So the £1,700 figure has subsequently been corrected (by the Scottish Government) to £1,500 and is for the year before last. The equivalent figure for last year is actually £800. The figure Stu uses is out of date and certainly isn't is any sort of "average".

Now because I'm fussy like this: we should really compare Scottish figures to rUK figures (ie. excluding Scotland from the UK figures so we are comparing "us" versus "them").  On this basis we are remarkable well balanced (remember these analyses all assume we get to "keep our Oil" and not share the tax revenues with the rest of the Union.). Over the last 5 or 7 years we can say that - on average - we generate £1,300 higher tax receipts per person and receive £1,300 higher public spending per person. In fact if you look at the most recent 4 years whilst we still receive £1,300 per head higher expenditure we actually contributed only £1,100 per head higher taxes (or - to use the Rev's phraseology - we get back 15% more than we send to London). 

So not to put too fine a point on it: his statement is bollocks.

Now we've established the correct base figures we can pretty quickly tear through his other attempts to use data;
  • "Scotland's deficit is in fact considerably smaller than the UK's" p.14
This statement is simply wrong.  It was £260 per person smaller in 2011-12 but £510 higher in 2012-13 and averages at the same level over the last 7 years, £160 higher over the last 4.
  • "Scotland can't afford to keep paying ten's of billions of pounds over and above its fair share" p.12 
  • "Scotland subsidises the UK by billions of pounds every year" p.10
As is clear from these numbers that's not whats happening. They are quite simply ludicrous statements.
  • "The extra spending isn't a generous gift from the UK - It's borrowing, taken out by the UK government in Scotland's name" p.13
Errr... yes that's right Stu; when you run a deficit the money to fund it comes from debt. That would be true for an independent Scotland as well.

There is plenty more Bunkum in the Economics chapter (and indeed every other chapter) but I'll leave those to another day.  Frankly anybody who reads this post and still trusts anything the Rev writes needs to have a wee word with themselves - he shows no integrity and lacks any credibility.

***

If you need more convincing then I offer the following antidotes to a couple of the Rev's other poisonous chapters.

  • EU - he's way out on the nature of the negotiation required and the caveats that Graham Avery actually made. For a more thorough account of EU issues try this > Independent Scotland and the EU
  • Currency - he completely misses the point that any currency solution (including the already-ruled-out Currency Union) is a least-worst option, is a major downside of independence.  For detail on currency issues try this > Currency Union & Economic Asymmetry
  • Principles & Politics - his logic is all over the place here, arguments are tautological (we're a country, countries are independent therefore we should be independent) and he appears to fail to understand the basic principles of representative democracy. This was one of the first posts I ever wrote > We should Decide Who Governs Us
  • Oil - his section on oil is very short but - of course - mentions the Oil Fund which I've already covered here > Oil & Gas Part II: The Oil Fund.  He doesn't mention that the Scottish Government's *worst case* projection for Oil and Gas revenue turned out to be around 25% over-optimistic for 2013-14.  
  • Other


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