Economics

Profit Extraction Makes Scotland Poorer

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“A system is corrupt when it is strictly profit-driven, not driven to serve the best interests of its people.”
– Suzy Kassem

(This blog post previously appeared in ROSE Magazine.)

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Scotland is one of the most foreign-owned countries in the developed world and the consequence of this is the loss of more than £10 billion pounds every year mostly as a result of shareholder dividends and other forms of profit extraction.

This is the conclusion of my latest policy paper for Common Weal titled Profit Extraction: How foreign ownership drains Scotland’s wealth and is based on recently updated data from the Scottish Government as well as data from the World Bank.

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Glue Traps And Globalisation

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“Defining who is to be protected is in effect defining who is not to be protected” – Stephen D. King

(This blog post previously appeared in Common Weal’s weekly newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter here.)

The UK Government has announced that they are invoking the Internal Market Act to prevent the Scottish Government from banning the sale of glue traps in Scotland. These horrific devices are have been banned as part of broader concerns around protecting animals from cruel deaths and on the responsible management of land. It’s entirely right that the Scottish Government has acted to ban – rather than merely restrict or licence – these traps.

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Freeports Don’t Come For Free

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.” – Toni Morrison

(This blog post previously appeared in The National.)

red and blue crane under blue sky during daytime

The National dedicated last week to the issue of Freeports and I’m glad they did. These deregulated tax havens have not been interrogated nearly well enough by our politicians or our media and the information coming from the ports themselves – even when asked directly – has been too little and too vague. This hasn’t allowed for a proper democratic debate around their merits or demerits, has allowed their failures to go unreported and, perhaps worse, has allowed outright conspiracy theories to rise up to replace the information vacuum which has, in turn, made it harder to campaign against them on the basis of the facts on the ground (something which suits their proponents whose agenda thrives equally in an empty well of information as it does in a polluted one).

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Submerged In Leith

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“And so castles made of sand slips into the sea, eventually.” – Jimi Hendrix

(This blog post previously appeared in Common Weal’s weekly newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter here.)

Why is Edinburgh considering building housing on land that may be underwater before their mortgages are paid off?

In the Herald this week, a plan was announced to build 300-odd houses in a currently brownfield site at Edinburgh Harbour in Leith. This comes just over a year after approval was granted for a 600 home development at the other end of the harbour. Scotland has a housing crisis and the only way out of it is to build up housing stock so that it exceeds demand and begins to bring house prices down to actually affordable levels again and we build them in a way that doesn’t subject the residents to fuel poverty or, as may be the case here, assets stranded as a result of poor construction or the climate emergency. Scotland may have been one of the first countries in the world to declare a climate emergency but we’re still far from acting like it when it comes to policy.

In 2019, Edinburgh Council followed Holyrood in accepting that climate emergency and soon after they published a climate readiness plan on what they planned to do about it. It’s actually pretty good in terms of the policies it lays out and from what I’ve seen of Edinburgh lately, they seem to be making a decent shout of making progress towards the goals as stated, however there is one glaring omission to the plan and it pains this resident of a land-locked Local Authority to point it out – the plan only mentions the threat of sea level rise once, only does so in passing and does not recommend any policies or actions to address it. I’ve discussed this issue before with respect to Scotland’s airports, but it’s obviously time to look at it again.

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The Eternal Workforce

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“Austerity should not be a death sentence. Every person should be able to retire with the benefits they’ve earned and dignity they deserve.” – Fuad Alakbarov

(This blog post previously appeared in Common Weal’s weekly newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter here.)

Last week, while everyone else was watching a septuagenarian finally start the job he was born to do, some stats were released by the ONS that revealed that he is not alone in the “grey workforce”. An increasing number of older people in the UK are entering, re-entering or remaining within the workforce. It paints a picture of the older workforce that reveals underlying weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the UK economy.

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Work For Life

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / 1 Comment

“Somewhere along the way we’ve gotten the message that the more we struggle and the more we suffer, the more valuable we will become and the more successful we’ll eventually be. And so we overwork ourselves, overschedule ourselves, and become “busier than thou” because we think there’s some sort of prize on the other side of the pain we cause ourselves. And you know what? There’s no prize. All you get from suffering is more suffering.” – Kate Northrup

(This blog post previously appeared in Common Weal’s weekly newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter here.)

We’re currently living through an era of great change – “Interesting Times”, as the old curse goes – and the way we work is changing with it. During these moments of change we often wonder what it would take to make things go “back to normal” even if there is no “normal” to go back to – or whether we should even try given the problems we all knew existed in that “old normal”.

During the Covid lockdowns of the last few years many of us were suddenly thrust into a new normal when it came to work as our offices were closed and we started working from home (and yes, I’m one of the lucky ones who were able to do this. Not every job can be worked from home. Not every home can be easily worked from).

For many, the transition was a difficult one. For many others though, the transition to home working brought many positives, including no longer having to spend several hours a day commuting. One of the advantages I’ve personally found is the increased flexibility to step away from my desk for a few moments to take a break or get something done around the house (even if it’s just to put a load of washing on) rather than having to wait till I’m home, knackered and would rather do anything else.

image_2022-09-05_103902942(Image Source: The Centre for Ageing Better)

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It’s GERSmas!!

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / 1 Comment

With apologies to Slade!

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Are you drawing up your spreadsheet on the wall?
The Economist is gazing into his ball.
Does he predict recession?
Or a sunlit upland session?
Do the numbers keep him blootered for the day?

So here it is, Merry GERSmas.
Nobody is having fun.
Look to the future now.
Try to see what is to come.

Are you waiting for the trendlines to all rise?
Are you sure that your assumptions are the right size?
Does the media always tell ya,
That your plans are just the worst?
When you fix them then their headlines just reversed.

So here it is, Merry GERSmas.
Nobody is having fun.
Look to the future now.
Try to see what is to come.

What will your budget do when it sees your taxes going to London-town?
A-ha

Are you balancing tax in with spending sprawl?
Are you hoping that deficits will start to fall?
Will you tax that grouse moor hillside
With the land reforms you’ve made?
Or subsidise the sector?
(you’ve bin played)

So here it is, Merry GERSmas
Nobody is having fun.
Look to the future now.
Try to see what is to come.
So here it is, Merry GERSmas
Nobody is having fun.
Look to the future now.
Try to see what is to come.
So here it is, Merry GERSmas
Nobody is having fun.
(It’s GERSmas!!!)
Look to the future now.
Try to see what is to come.

See my previous GERSmas Carols here.
2017
2018
2019
2020

TCG Logo 2019

What Kind of Scene Are We Setting?

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“It is politically easier to rev up GDP and hope some of it trickles down to the poor than it is to distribute existing income more fairly.” – Jason Hickel

(This blog post previously appeared in Common Weal’s weekly newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter here.)

Last week the Scottish Government, represented by Nicola Sturgeon and Patrick Harvie, launched the first paper in a series of papers framing their view of the next stage of the Scottish Independence campaign. This first paper – Independence in the Modern World. Wealthier, Happier, Fairer: Why Not Scotland? – is described as a “scene setter” and a description of the world as it is now rather than what it could be under independence. As such, it probably raised more questions from than delivered answers to the journalists at the press conference. It does nothing to answer or advance arguments around currency, borders or pensions or any of the other topics that I and other independence activists have been immersed in for a decade now but it wasn’t ever supposed to. All this paper has done is take several economic metrics such as GDP and inequality and compared the UK to several other countries in Europe. We’ve seen this approach before:– this paper is essentially an abbreviated and updated version of the first third of the 2018 report by Andrew Wilson’s Sustainable Growth Commission and the ideology that informed that report is woven throughout this new one.

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How to Give Money to Everyone

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / 3 Comments

“The conditional programs inherently use poverty as a threat. That’s Cruel. Shouldn’t we be ashamed of ourselves?” ― Karl Widerquist

The mounting crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing countries to adopt unprecedented measures to combat it. In addition to the public health measures such as physical distancing (not social distancing. At times like this we need MORE social solidarity) we’re also seeing unprecidented measures being deployed to salvage an economy that has practically ground to a halt. Unlike any economic recession since possibly the 1930s we’re seeing a combined demand and supply shock. The virus makes it hard to make and sell things and everyone is at home in quarantine so no-one is buying the things anyway.

This isn’t true of all sectors of course and a great deal of effort is being expended to keep essential services like food deliveries running. In addition to my friends working in the health service and my family working in the care sector, my hat goes absolutely off to my friends working in the food sector. When the day comes that we’re allowed to buy a round for each other again, they’ve all more than earned a few from me.

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