Finally! Niall Aslen replies.

Having been told by Niall Aslen on 27th March that he would reply "when time is available" to my first post on this blog, yesterday I posted on the Herald forum a not-so-subtle reminder to him that I was still waiting for his data. This morning he decided to reply.

Niall's reply is in indented italics, with my comments in plain text.

I do not have the time at present as I have been asked to analyse the 2005/6 Government figures with the remit to examine the viability of Independence based on them. Its an interesting task and one I will relish.

So, Niall evidently no longer intends to give any consideration to critique of his 2004/05 "analysis" before pushing ahead with a 2005/06 version. Might not some contend that such an approach could indicate a political motive rather than concern for the facts of the matter?

As for replying to your blogspot, If I were you, I would wait for the Treasury response to my paper "The Great Deception" The economists and statisticians at the Treasury are well qualified to comment seeing as they have had 13 days to study the paper. So far they have not yet responded which indicates that they are so far in agreement with the figures. I would have expected triumphalist trumpetings if they had discovered any errors.

The Treasury, as a matter of course, do not respond to such submissions. It is ludicrous to imply that for 13 days its economists and statisticians have had little else to do but dissect a letter sent them from a fringe political party (the SEP) and that contradicts well-established methodologies without even providing reasons. Further, to state that their wholly predictable lack of response indicates their agreement (thereby invalidating my findings, of course) is clearly disingenuous.

My time is limited, I get dialysis three times a week and have to run a busy accountancy practice, so you will understand if I do not waste time pulling sheets of data from the folders which contain around 1,800 pages of data, just to satisfy your queries. Your can appreciate the amount of time required just to retype or even cut and paste.

I have already expressed sympathy in respect of the dialysis. But Niall's overall message is clear here: for various reasons, he will be finding time only to repeat the meaningless exercise for 2005/06 and so no more data will be forthcoming. The specific underlying assumptions of even the wildest unsubstantiated claims of The Great Deception (such as a 35.9% allocation of the UK's spirits duty to Scotland, when GERS 2004/05 uses 8.9% and even the SNP only claims 9.5%) must now go unchallenged, as the author is not prepared to devote the requisite time to facilitating such challenges. How convenient.

Finally I despair at the mentality of some supporters of the Union who have got hold of my address. Such a waste of postage stamps and envelopes. Pages from the daily Rectum screaming pure Labour propaganda and hogwash posted to me with "Get to F**k" and "Fenian B*****d" (some of the least nasty comments). I just put them through the office shredder to be used as compost for the potatoes. Hope the ink is not toxic.

I too would despair at such a mentality. However, if there is a next time, instead of destroying all evidence that such hate mail ever existed, perhaps passing it onto the police would be a more appropriate response?

Have a nice day at Labour party HQ, The day of doom is fast approaching when the rotten Labour burghs will be cleansed and Scotland will be rid of the Neu Liebour parasites who regarded them as their private feudal fiefdoms. You will be out of a job and on the buroo whilst the rest of us set about rebuilding Scotland as an Independent Nation.

Airson Alba!
Niall Ban.

This bipolar attempt to cast Scottish politics in terms only of the SNP and Labour, the resultant conspiratorial presumption that as I can't be SNP I must be Labour, the evident historical romanticism, the apocalyptic language and the apparent triumphalism all speak for themselves. I won't open myself to spurious allegations of libel by expanding upon the obvious.

As I said, Niall - message received. I won't ask again.

Scottish companies with business units outside Scotland

The Great Deception claims 100% of all Scottish-headquartered companies’ corporation tax for Scotland. This is demonstrably incorrect.

In 2004-05, the Royal Bank of Scotland paid £2.38 billion corporation tax to the British exchequer. RBS is such a huge company that this was over half of the total non-oil corporation tax for the whole of Scotland!

The Great Deception credits this whole £2.38bn to the Scottish account. But a huge proportion of RBS’s business is outside Scotland (NatWest, Ulster Bank, Direct Line, Coutts etc). If Scotland were to become independent, business units of companies like RBS, HBOS, Standard Life and Abbot Group that are incorporated outside Scotland would pay corporation tax to Scotland only in respect of the small proportions of their operations that were actually within Scotland itself.

The GERS 2004/05 estimate of £2.422bn is therefore a much more reasonable estimate of the non-oil corporation tax revenue than the £4.611bn claimed by The Great Deception. The resulting revenue overestimation amounts to £2.189 billion.

VAT on whisky and fuel exported to England

GERS uses 8.1% as the proportion of UK total VAT revenues that can be attributed to Scotland, thus estimating a credit to the Scottish account of £5.949bn. The SNP suggests 8.5% (£6.50bn).

However, The Great Deception uses 10.3% (£7.497bn) giving as a reason that “this 10.3% distortion is due to the fact that VAT is charged on Bottled Whisky and Hydrocarbon Fuels as soon as they leave the Distillery bonded stores or the Refinery gates”.

But that’s not true for export goods. It's not an issue within the UK of course, but in an independent Scotland, Scotch whisky and Grangemouth-refined fuel exported to be sold in England would pay VAT only to the English exchequer. I would therefore contend that The Great Deception has overestimated Scottish VAT revenues by up to £1.548 billion.