Strangled By The Purse Strings

October 27, 2024October 27, 2024 / Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“It’s clearly a budget. It’s got lots of numbers in it.” – George W. Bush

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Eyes are on the UK Budget at the moment, and for good reason, but shortly after that we’re going to see what the Scottish Government lays out in its own budget and, given the scope of devolution, that is likely to have much more of an impact on Scottish public services – especially at a local level.

This means that recent news from Shona Robison telling Local Authorities that there’s “no money left” for public sector pay deals should be taken as a threat to local democratic autonomy.

Usually when I write an article like this I start by saying “imagine if Westminster treated Holyrood like this” but in this case I don’t really need to as we have the example of the UK Government’s cut to Winter Fuel Payments in England having a knock-on effect on the Block Grant which put Holyrood in the position of making the choice on whether to cut the equivalent Scottish allowance too. They didn’t have to – the Block Grant is calculated based on how Westminster spends money in England but Scotland is free to spend that Grant as it likes, not just on equivalent policies. In this case though, they did indeed choose to cut the payments.

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Scotland’s Population

October 16, 2024 / Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.” – Carl Sagan

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Every year the National Records of Scotland produces an annual population estimate for the nation. While not quite as comprehensive as the once-per-decade census (at least, when the census isn’t marred by the problems of the 2022 Scottish census), it provides a good rolling picture of Scotland’s population both at a national level and at a more local level both on the scale of Local Authorities and per NHS Health Boards (the latter being important for the allocation of healthcare budgets and is gathered because one of the tools used to estimate population change is the number of people who present to the NHS with an illness or injury in a given year). Indeed, a report was published in March comparing the rolling mid-year estimate to the 2022 census and found that the estimate was within around 1% of the census value (which is a fair bit more precise than, say, the 3.4% margin of uncertainty in the revenue estimates in GERS).

The headline figure you’ll have gathered from the news is that Scotland’s population is growing faster than it has since the end of the Second World War (itself a statistical glitch as many thousands of soldiers returning all at once tended to bump the numbers) and that the growth rate is being driven by immigration to Scotland.
I fully expect that line to get more negative attention than it should given the rabidly anti-migrant stance that the UK is rapidly slipping down, driven by increasingly extreme social media cesspits – certainly a view backed up by the fight going on in the comments section of the BBC article reporting on the new figures – so it’s worth doing the thing I often do with reports like this and taking a dip beneath the headlines for a more detailed and nuanced view of Scotland’s changing demographics.

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September in Common Weal

October 3, 2024October 3, 2024 / Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“This is what ultimately matters: where you end up, not the speed at which you get there, or the number of people you impress with your jittery busyness along the way.” – Cal Newport

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Common Weal is one of Scotland’s most prolific think tanks, especially given our size and shoestring budget (you can help us by throwing us a few more shoestrings here). Since I’ve been a part of the team here we’ve had a target of releasing around one publication per month but every year we completely blow past that target. This year is looking like it’ll be no different, especially given that this month we’re publishing FOUR papers for your reading pleasure. This is a testament to our expert working groups – our stalwart teams of some of the best minds in Scotland who volunteer far more of their time than we have any right to ask for to help produce this work. They really have been the model to follow and one that I hope to spend next year developing in a replicable way.

Of course, both of the groups who did the work I want to talk about this week themselves work in very different ways – our Care Reform Group have met via Zoom almost every week for almost four years now whereas our Energy Group function more as an email forum who form ad hoc cells of specialists when they want to talk about a specific topic (such as National Grid transmission or heating Scottish homes). In both cases, they’ve acted as ambassadors to other stakeholders in their respective fields and the result is that it’s becoming increasingly difficult for the Scottish Government to talk to anyone without encountering our ideas whether they want to or not. I’m immensely grateful for everything our Groups do for us and for the way that they’ve helped make Scotland a better place for All of Us.

As to the papers themselves, since there are so many of them this week, I thought I’d use my newsletter column to give you a quick summary of them and point you to them if you want to read more.

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Ageing For Indy?

September 21, 2024September 21, 2024 / Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.” – Robert Frost

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I’m writing this on the 18th of September 2024. Ten years on from the independence referendum is a day of sober reflection. I certainly have a lot of memories of that day in particular as I spent it under a warm blue sky (much like today, though not quite as warm) going door-to-door to get out the vote amongst folk our campaign group, Yes Clydesdale, had identified as likely to vote Yes. The shattering of my hope was still several hours away, the grief of the following days and the determination to get back on my feet again was a little further away again. I remember many of my conversations that day but two stick out in particular right now.

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Why We Tax Houses

September 20, 2024September 20, 2024 / Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“Money, says the proverb, makes money. When you have got a little, it is often easy to get more. The great difficulty is to get that little.” – Adam Smith

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The past couple of weeks have been incredibly busy with some unprecedented levels of media attention pointing at Common Weal now. As much as I loathe to blow my own trumpet, I ended up appearing in The National five days in a row on various topics like local democracy, ScotWind and our local Property and Land Tax proposals (You can read all of those articles here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

By far the most feedback came from the latter articles on reforming Council Tax (Have you seen our new short video explainers popping up on social media about this and other topics? If so, what do you think of them?) and extending it into land to create a comprehensive Property Tax that would cut taxes for the vast majority of households and bring in over £1 billion a year in new revenue for Scottish Local Authorities.

Of course, not all of the feedback has been entirely positive but much of the rest has been around asking genuine questions about the policy so I thought I’d take the time in my column this week to answer some of them.

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PfG 2024 – Serving Scotland

September 10, 2024September 10, 2024 / Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“When the dispute over the Means Test was in progress there was a disgusting public wrangle about the minimum weekly sum on which a human being could keep alive.” – George Orwell

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Serving Scotland, what exactly?

The Scottish Government’s latest Programme for Government, titled “Serving Scotland”, is little more than a list of platitudes covering some of the most brutal public service cuts in years coupled with a paring back of all sense of ambition in what should be a critical year of laying groundwork for the next election (if you take a short-termist political party view of things) or the rapid ramping up of actions to halt and mitigate climate change (if you’d prefer there to be a liveable biosphere in the next couple of generations).

The PfG is divided into four of the Government’s overarching strategies so it’s worth picking them apart one by one.

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It’s Time To Tax Scottish Land

September 9, 2024September 9, 2024 / Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“All I wish to make clear is that, without any increase in population, the progress of invention constantly tends to give a larger proportion of the produce to the owners of land, and a smaller and smaller proportion to labor and capital.” – Henry George

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Last week, I had the pleasure to address SNP members at the Revive Coalition’s fringe meeting on land reform where I presented Common Weal’s proposal to bring a land tax to Scotland. As the meeting wasn’t filmed, I want to discuss the issue here for the benefit of members (and non-members) who couldn’t be there. I am also delighted that after our fringe, members gave overwhelming support to two motions that would enable such a tax. Taxing land in Scotland is now solidly SNP policy and the Scottish Government should bring forward a Bill to enable it at the earliest opportunity. With the Scottish Government pledging to bring in fresh cuts of in excess of £500 million, to ignore a tool that would almost entirely avoid the need for them is simply unacceptable.

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How Not To Dispose Of Disposable Cups

September 2, 2024September 2, 2024 / Dr Craig Dalzell / 1 Comment

If it can’t be reduced –
If it can’t be reduced
Reused, repaired – REUSED REPAIRED
Rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold
Recycled or composted – OR COMPOSTED
Then it should be – THEN IT SHOULD BE
Restricted, redesigned – RESTRICTED
REDESIGNED or removed – REMOVED!
From production – FROM PRODUCTION
– Pete Seeger

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The Scottish Government still doesn’t understand what a Circular Economy is or how to bring the public with them as they implement it. This has been made clear by their latest ad hoc and misjudged approach to dealing with disposable cups. Their consultation on the levy has been launched here and Common Weal will get our response in in due course, please make sure your voice is heard too.

The proposal shouldn’t be as contentious as this and I should shouldn’t be on the side of fighting it – especially as I both agree with and support the goal behind the policy; to reduce resource use and waste produced by our single-use consumerism.

The policy as it stands, a 25p levy on disposable cups purchased as part of a takeaway drinks order, though risks seeing people as consumers to be punished into doing the “right thing” even as producers are allowed to make it impossible to make the right choice.

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The Devolution Deficit

August 7, 2024August 7, 2024 / Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“Humanity’s true moral test, its fundamental test…consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy” – Milan Kundera

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Despite plenty of warning before the elections, new Chancellor Rachel Reeves has suddenly discovered a massive “hidden” black hole in the UK’s finances and she needs to make “difficult choices” to fix it. This is hardly to excuse the last 14 years of Conservative rule – it’s not as if they made a particular secret about their attempts to hollow the nation out for their own benefit – but as Robin has explained, political figures never seem to make “difficult choices” that would make things difficult for those who can afford it.

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