The Real PapaBear
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Everything posted by The Real PapaBear
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Gersnet Prediction League - World Cup Brazil 2014
The Real PapaBear replied to Zappa's topic in Rangers Chat
cheer up mate, it could have been worse - you coul dhave been Tannochsidebear -
that's some pretty emotive language, there, WBD; "jumping ship" "for sale". I'd be keen to learn how people having a different viewpoint is "jumping ship" and particularly how people's "Britishness" is being sold: who's doing the selling and who's doing the buying?
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What's this I see? Governing bodies making ex-gratia payments for past wrongs done to member organisations? Hmmm, interesting.
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Italy are such a shadow of their former selves and so bereft of talent that they could only scrape a lucky 1-0 win against the group minnows in their opening game.
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congratulations, dB. I won't pretend I wanted you to win it, but you were the best team by a fair distance and deserved it.
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oops: http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/worldcup/youtube-users-duped-by-spoof-news-broadcast-announcing-that-north-korea-had-made-the-world-cup-final-9602611.html
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the most notorious example was the Orgreave colliary where there was an unprovoked attack by mounted police on the miners filmed by the BBC. The BBC reversed the footage and reported it as the police responding to an attack by the miners. This was pretty much par for the course during the strike.
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The first time they were publicly exposed for being the lying, twisted manipulators they are was during the miner's strike of 1984 (irony of the date not lost, one presumes). Ever since then they have been as trustworthy as an Iraqi Information Minister.
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Cosgrove is a cunt and well suited to his gig in an organisation that protected paedophiles for decades and lies every day in its "news" coverage - and I'm not just talking about its coverage of the Indy debate.
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Gersnet Prediction League - World Cup Brazil 2014
The Real PapaBear replied to Zappa's topic in Rangers Chat
after last night there's only one possible outcome to this game: penalties after 120 minutes of turgid 0-0 football. -
Gersnet Prediction League - World Cup Brazil 2014
The Real PapaBear replied to Zappa's topic in Rangers Chat
I had Germany to win 7-0, bloody Oscar cost me 4 points. what? -
how good are you feeling tonight dB? Bloody hell, what a performance - and with some really beautiful football thrown in as well. Hut ab, Kumpel.
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And that's it in a nutshell. You think that the concentration of poltical power and culture in London is fine because that's where the highest numbers are and that the marginalisation of your own country's access to it is 'completely trivial'. Did you ever stop to wonder *why* the numbers are flocking to London? It's in part because of the fantastic cultural offerings that you won't find anywhere else in the UK.
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I rather suspect what's happened here is that while your heart is in the right place, I don't think your ears are. Robertson may have given examples of Afghanistan and Sudan as instances where an Independent Scotland might become involved as part of a wider multinational effort and you have portrayed this as being a committment to send troops to those places. Very different things altogether. Moreover, refusing to have nuclear weapons whilst having conventional forces is not "laughably fluid" - it's simple common sense.
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Thanks for the link, although you're right it is fairly old news and simply trots out the same old skewed figures, i.e that Scotland receives a higher public spend that the rest of the UK but, again, ignores NIPS and the fact that we contribute a higher share of tax than the rest of the UK outwith London and the SE. Once you factor in NIPS, you get a clearer picture of the true amount spent in Scotland and it is far less than we contribute. The rest of the article is an exercise in imagination about what life would be like if there was no oil, the conclusion of which seems to be that we'd be as well or as poorly off as rUK - a view pretty much echoed by the Institute of Fiscal Studies, which says that our current contribution per person to the UK exchequer is £8000, compared to the UK avergae of £7,300. If you remove the oil from the equation, we fall to parity with the rest of the UK. "Thus, excluding North Sea output or when allocating it on a population basis, GDP per capita was very similar in Scotland to that in the UK as a whole." I certainly have to admire you generosity of spirit. I'm afraid i'm a bit less altruistic than yourself, since I tend to get a wee bit annoyed at being called a scrounging jock by the very people I'm subsidising. I'm also more than a little miffed at the fact that in order to visit the cultural treasures I have paid for, I also have to factor in a couple of hundreds pounds extra in travel and accommodation costs. So, you'll forgive me if I don't see how spending vast sums on the cultural life of the SE of England or paying the BBC to promote a London-centric view of the world is to the benefit of Scotland.
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It's working well for those we are subsidising, sure.
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I think we're probably in agreement with regards to fossl fuels and their danger to the planet: less so on the nuclear issue - but lets leave that to another day and focus on the issue of independence, and in particular your final line in which you say that the figures pushed out by Westminster "show" that Scotland has a higher level of public expenditure per head of population; except that they don't. In reality it is we who subsidise the rUK and have done for a generation. We account for 8.9% of the UK population but contribute 9.6% of tax revenue to HMG. The Westminster figures show an identifiable expenditure of 9.3% in Scotland. So, in short we contribute much more than we should and get less back than we contribute - even if we only look at identifiable expenditure. And for this, we are called welfare junkies and scroungers. The reason I highlight identifiable expenditure is because Westminster doesn't. Put simply, identifiable expenditure is what each country/region spends on its own services etc. Non-identiable expenditure is expenditure which is deemed to be for the good of the Uk as a whole; stuff like the civil service, defence, the BBC, interest on debt repayments etc. Conveniently enough, the vast bulk of this non-identifiable expenditure, and I'm talking in the region of 97% is spent in England and in particular in the SE and London. Have a wee look around on Google and find out how much of the 9 % of its income the BBC spends in Scotland (spoiler alert; it"s a number between 2 and 4%); then have a look at how much of defense expenditure takes place in Scotland, then look at the expenditure for 'national' museums, culture etc etc etc. If memory serves, NIPS accounts for somewhere in the region of 30% of all expenditure - so the Westminster figures are doubly agregious. They claim,when in fact the opposite is true, that they are subsidising us and use IPS to "prove' this, conveniently omitting to show how much we contribute in the first place something like 7% more than we receive - even forgetting NIPS. If we were to include NIPS then our subsidy TO rUK would be well into double figures.
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That programme is no longer viewable on iplayer and even if it were, the person being interviewed is not the SNP defense spokesman. If you have a link to a viewable programme or a transcript, I'd be grateful for it.
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yes? and? I don't get your point. the value of oil won't fall because a greater or lesser amount is used for fuel. All it would mean is that we have use of the resource for longer. If the UK govt had any intention of investing in the positive things I mention they would have started decades ago. The UK doesn't do long term investment. Your remarks on securty don't really make a lot of sense, if you'll forgive me. Why would we be any more or less vulnerable than Sweden or Switzerland or any of the other half dozen small uropean members of NATO who don't have nuclear weapon? The number of nations with nuclear technology, if by that you mean a viable weapon, has increased by 2 in the past 35 years, neither of whom are any threat to us. Not all foreign wars are unnecessary, granted - only the ones in our lifetimes. Of course it is. The pie chart, and the other information, was provided in response to your assertion that Scotland does not have a diverse economy outside of the oil industry, which the facts show it clearly does. As you can see from the information provided, oil currently accounts for about 15% of our GDP. It could account for 20% if the price rises significantly, but I'm not sure why you seem to be suggesting that tjis would be a bad thing. Thanks, that's an interesting link (from the virulantly anti-independence BBC) which shows that if we don't get a penny from oil then Scottish GDP falls to being the same as the rest of the UK.
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whatever happened to the former Financial Director?
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You're not still trotting out the same old stuff about Kudryavtsev's abiotic hypothesis are you? Man, change the record - we've heard it all before.
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need more than that if it's to be credible, mate
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Absolutely correct. Anyone who votes for the union and then complains that they don't get the government they voted for should be handed a big tin of "WTF Did You Expect?"
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I'd be interested in the source of these claims, because I don't think the SNP defense spokesman said any such thing.
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Oil isn't only used for producing power you know - and even if/when the day comes that we use alternatives to fossil fuels for power production oil will still be used for its myriad of other uses. The value of oil may one day fall, but I doubt whetehr you or I will be alive to witness it. However, the fact remains, it will one day run out. On that we are agreed. Given that, would you rather spend the remaining decades using the proceeds of the oil revenue to invest in new technologies and developing the nation's education and skills base, as an Independent Scotland would do, or are you happy to watch as the UK continues to waste the revenues from oil down the drain of foreign wars, unemployment benefits and Trident? some bullet point figures here: http://www.businessforscotland.co.uk/10-key-economic-facts-that-prove-scotland-will-be-a-wealthy-independent-nation/ point number 6 answers your question, although I would recommend reading the other 9 points as well and in much more detail here: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2010/12/GCS2009/Q/pno/0, pages 1 - 6