'CameronDirect' - The Barnet Formula - Swindon 2008

[thehappyhacker1]

accountants on amphetamines. So it's a safe bet that we're not dependent on subsidies from Westminster after all.

[thehappyhacker1]

If Scotland was indeed hopelessly dependent on UK handouts, Westminster would publish all the figures in glorious technicolour and upload videos to YouTube, and there would be a 10 part BBC documentary all about them. This would pretty much kill the independence debate stone dead, as Scots would be able to quantify those so-called Union benefits in precise detail. But instead finding out how much Scotland pays into the Union and how much we get back takes a crack squad of industrial strength

[thehappyhacker1]

A recent study by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) think tank, based on official tax and spending figures, concludes that Scotland's North Sea oil and gas revenues, with other taxes, means it gets no net subsidy from the rest of the UK. And this is based upon shonky Westminster figures, which allocate a notional share of "UK national expenditure" to Scotland even though the money is actually spent in the South East of England.