One of the great financial rackets of our time has been something called the Barnett formula. For the best part of six decades, the English taxpayer has been subsidising the good people of 'Jockestan'.
Thanks to Nigel Farage, that may well be coming to an end. Hoobloodyray. Right now, every person north of the Border receives an average of £2,400 more in public spending than the rest of the UK.
It’s always been hugely unfair, but no politician until Farage turned up has had the courage to say so. It has led to the bizarre situation where Scottish students receive free education at Scottish universities, whereas if English students go to say an Edinburgh or Glasgow uni, they have to pay.
The only reason the Scots can offer free education (bought in by the SNP in 2008) is due to a lot of English wealth shipped up to the Scottish treasury every year under a system devised by Joel Barnett, a Labour treasury minister in the Seventies.
Another irksome freebie under Barnett is that the Scots receive free prescriptions. Allegedly, it was brought in to bolster the nation’s health. Well, that’s turned out to be a waste of our money.
The average age for the English to die is 79.1 years, while for the free prescription mob in Scotland it’s 76.8years. So, they would be better off if they started charging for them.
Throw in free care for the elderly and free dental care (none available or affordable for the funders) and you can understand how we now send £50billion a year up there. This is madness.
The spending of our money by the Scots has gone off the scale. Back in 2020-21 the figure was £1,376 per person, now it’s almost twice that.
Finally, a politician brave enough to go after one of the great financial rackets of our time — Kelvin MacKenzie
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Not sure it would have done his electoral chances much good among the skint, but on a visit to Scotland, he proposed scrapping the formula but would allow Holyrood to raise more of its own revenues through taxation.
That would be great news for us in England, but not welcomed by anybody who has made anything of themselves in Jockestan. Both the SNP and Labour hate the wealthy – anybody who can afford to eat haggis twice a month.
If you make £110,000 a year in Scotland, your take-home pay will be the same amount as somebody in England who earns £100,000. A £10,000 penalty or working hard. Shocking.
Why anybody with the slightest ambition would hang around in Scotland to be treated by the Lefties as a mobile bank is quite beyond me.
Anyway, congratulations to Farage for being prepared to signal the end of the subsidy to an ungrateful nation. It might well lead to the Scots voting for Independence. A surprising bonus.
Once again, the Tories have got on the wrong side of the argument, saying Farage’s idea would be a ‘’wrecking ball’’ to public services. The reason Scotland is skint is due to their ‘’welfare dependency’’.
If the Scots faced that truth, and if the Tories up there acted like Tories, they might make something of their country, rather than it becoming North Korea without the hope.
P.s. Not wishing to sound like an unpaid PR for Reform, but I like Richard Tice’s undertaking that in the councils where they have control, they will no longer allow new hires to join the massively over-generous local government pension scheme which has meant 50 per cent of all council tax revenues now goes to fund these scheme in Hackney, South Oxfordshire, Newcastle-under-Lyme and the Orkneys.
Another 19 councils put in 33 per cent or more, and I think if you look at the whole country, 25 per cent of your money is allowing these people to retire early on inflation-proof pensions not available in the private sector.
Delighted to see at least one political party recognises this is quite wrong. Why doesn’t Kemi have some policies which grab the headlines? She says she needs time – neither she nor the Tories has got time.
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