Scotland's anti-English tax

[dreamingofsun]

In today's Daily Mail (yes i know you all love and believe every word of this paper!) it says that the Scottish Government is drawing up plans to charge students from England 9k a year while those that live in Scotland or anyone coming from europe pay nothing. is this not racist? Is this not against the free movement of people (which I thought the EU objected to?) Could this not be challenged in court?

Hmmm no mention of sharp practice by the City. It's obviously Not Their Fault.

Of course its the Banks' fault, we taxpayers had to bail out..er..the Royal Bank of Scotland. HBOS...now what does that 'S' stand for again?

Funny how the Scots were so proud of their 'celtic tiger' status before the crash but now its blamed on 'the City' and they don't seem to mean Edinburgh.

The fees thing, Mail spin on an old issue.

HabbiBOOOO I thought the endowment was scrapped a couple of years ago.

AS neither the English or the Scots are a race it can't possibly be racist.

Scotland has always had a different education system and it has different funding methods. I went to a Scottish university after living in Scotland and after my course got a bill for £2000 'graduate endowment' (this has now been scrapped and the cost is met by the Scottish Government). I met my (English) husband at the same university and he paid £1,125 for each of the four years of his course.

The Scottish Government chooses to fund university education for Scots students (and that means people who are living in Scotland so if my husband's family had moved north a few weeks earlier and he hadn't arranged his funding through his local authority in the south of England he would've paid the same as me - it's not a discrimination thing it's just about where you live, the same as how any local services are delivered from council to health board). The cost of this is met from the block grant received from Westminster - I must point out that this is NOT a subsidy, it is a share of the money Scots also pay into the Treasury; taxes are not exclusive to England (in fact if you look at the amount that comes to the UK Treasury from oil and gas alone, before you take into account other industry or individual taxes, Scotland actually pays in more than it gets back so if you want to talk about subsidies then you should be thanking your northern neighbours rather than making ill-informed digs).

Sorry, just had to add some fact into the argument. I get so angry about people making false statements that suggest Scots are somehow lesser than English counterparts. As for the DM article - usual misleading shit stirring.

Thanks for that explanation fayc84. I lived in Scotland and went to a Scottish University a long time ago and never really knew what the graduate Endowment that the SNP abolished was when I came back up here.
(A funny term as an endowment sounds like a positive thing that would be bestowed as a gift rather than something that has to be paid back..... The language used to desribe the funding of education, health, welfare etc is a study in itself )

As you say residence is the entitlement, nothing to do with a misplaced notion of 'race'.

"in fact if you look at the amount that comes to the UK Treasury from oil and gas alone, before you take into account other industry or individual taxes, Scotland actually pays in more than it gets back"

I once saw some quick figures that showed that the amount of additional revenue that the UK gains from Oil is about the additional money that is then handed back to Scotland in the form of a higher per person spending then England is given (The Barnet Formula which has the Government spend about £7,100 on each person in England and £8,600 for each person in Scotland).

So right now things just about all balance out. Both the Scottish Nationalists who claim that Westminster bleeds Scotland dry and the Daily Mail who claim that hard working English Tax Payers prop up the Scots are wrong.

And saying that the English should be grateful to the Scots for their financial support is like saying that the people of the North should be thankful to the people of London for their financial support. London generates far more tax than is spent upon it, which allows for more to be spent on the north than is raised in taxation from there.

That's a very dangerous, divisive and nasty road to head down. And I say that as a Londoner who, according to the Daily Mail, looses out through this situation.

Oh and it's worth noting that the Barnet Formula benefits Northern Ireland far more than Scotland with more than £9,300 spent on each person an incredible 30% more than is spent on each English person. And that's with no Irish Oil.

Yet you won't hear that in the Daily Mail, I wonder why...