Saturday, 19 May 2012

A straight debate


Question 1



















Question 2





















Question 3













Question 4














  1. Hi Dunc. Once again I'm sad to see you haven't been able to resist inserting outright lies into your side of the debate. I didn't "ignore" the minimum wage or tax credits, because you didn't raise them, instead embarking on a bizarre fantasy of a caring, sharing future world straight out of a fairy tale.

    Both are clearly good things in themselves, but tax credits are an appallingly-implemented one which have terrified lots of people out of claiming them for fear of being landed with a huge bill for "overpayments", and the minimum wage is a sticking plaster over a shotgun wound. I imagine my attitude to the LIVING wage is exactly the same as yours - it should be one of the very first priorities for any government - and I'm only sad that after 13 years of Labour there's a gap between the minimum wage and the living wage in the first place. The fact that Labour acknowledges the "minimum wage" isn't - by some distance - a liveable one is one of the lasting legacies of shame of the Blair/Brown years.

    Oh, and given that you accept the gap between rich and poor grew under Labour, where has all this "redistributed wealth" that's lifted children out of poverty been redistributed FROM, since it's not the rich?

  2. And of course, you again dodged my question - in what conceivable way is the Union "on the side of the people"? I accept that you think *Labour* is, even if I disagree, but *the Union* specifically is the thing that brings us regular Tory governments, because it's dominated by Tory-inclined English voters.

    Even if you're sticking to your absurd denial of the empirically-obvious fact that the UK elects more Tory governments than Scotland and will continue to do so, *the Union has a Tory government right now*, one which Scotland overwhelmingly rejected at both Westminster and Holyrood elections. The only conclusion it's factually possible to draw is therefore that you think the Tories are "on the side of the people", which is a little odd.

  3. You ignored them by implying that Labour did nothing to address inequality, which simply isn't true.

    And if you can't understand how wealth can be redistributed from the rich to the poor whilst the gap increases, then you need to brush up on your maths. The very rich got very much richer, but Labour redistributed some of that wealth to ensure that the very poor got richer too. And I'm proud of that.

  4. Oh dear, and we're back to talking about Scotland as a voting bloc. The worst possible argument for independence: if we lose the vote, gerrymander the boundary.

  5. But as a body politic, Scotland does exist - our political values and goals (constitution aside) are clearly differentiated from those of England.

    Now of course there is some ramping at the edges, rather than a sharp discontinuity 2 miles north of Berwick, so you could easily shift the border back and forward quite a bit, but that's true for all geo-socio/political groups (language works the same - German and Dutch are different languages, but listening to them at the border you'd find it hard to know which side you're on)

  6. "implying that Labour did nothing to address inequality"

    I didn't IMPLY they'd done nothing to address inequality, I came right out and said they'd actively made it WORSE, which is a fact even you accept. The details are fairly irrelevant to the point.

    "The very rich got very much richer"

    And if it wasn't from the poor, where did THAT money come from, pray tell? I'm not the one with wonky arithmetic here - if the rich get richer, by definition that extra wealth can only come from the poor. The constant upward siphoning of wealth is the core fundamental principle of capitalism.

    So what you're essentially saying is that under Labour, the rich took £100 from the adult poor, but the government redistributed £5 of it to poor children. The money wasn't redistributed from the rich to the poor, but from the childless poor to poor families, and that certainly WAS a characteristic trait of the last Labour administration.

  7. "But as a body politic, Scotland does exist - our political values and goals (constitution aside) are clearly differentiated from those of England."

    That's the thing - despite decades of staggeringly conclusive evidence, Duncan simply doesn't accept that that's true. As I said in the debate, I'm not claiming there's something in "Scottish DNA" that makes it so, I'm saying that's just the way it's panned out for all manner of social reasons.

    But acknowledging the real-world fact would interfere with Dunc's ideological principles, so he puts his blind eye to the telescope and ends up looking a bit daft by insisting that Scotland is as likely to elect Tory governments as the UK.

  8. So no wealth is ever created in your version of capitalism? Fascinating. You're wrong on this.

    And it is staggeringly obvious that observing what has happened in Scottish politics in the past is not a proof that Scotland is a voting bloc. People change how they vote due to circumstances. They always have. If you think Scots would vote the same as they do now in an independent Scotland you're deluding yourself.

  9. "So no wealth is ever created in your version of capitalism?"

    No. Wealth is like energy - it's based on a finite resource and as such can't be created, only moved around. Very surprised to see a self-styled socialist subscribing to the arch-capitalist myth that you can just invent it out of nothing.

    "what has happened in Scottish politics in the past is not a proof that Scotland is a voting bloc"

    Absolutely nobody said it was - the triumphs of the SNP in 2007 and 2011 are testament to that. But its centre is calibrated significantly to the left of that of the UK, and has been for the entire modern era. Everyone goes on about 1955, but (a) it's the ONLY time the Tories have ever won a plurality of seats in Scotland in the last century, and (b) they still did better in the UK than in Scotland (55% to 51%). There has, as far as I'm aware, NEVER been a SINGLE election in the last 100 years in which the Tories did better in Scotland than in the UK.

    It's always weird to see Labour clinging desperately to the hope of a hypothetical Scottish Tory government as their great defence of the Union.

    1. "So no wealth is ever created in your version of capitalism?"

      An interesting take on wealth / job creation here...

  10. Yikes Stuart. The disconnect with what is written and what you obviously hear once it has entered your head is quite frightening.

  11. Here's how surprised I am that yet again you've dodged the question and the facts and resorted to personal jibes: 0 surprised.

  12. You didn't ask a question. You talked nonsense and pretended I said things I didn't. Again.

  13. What was the "nonsense"? Do you actually believe that wealth can be "created", or do you believe that the Tories HAVE ever done better in Scotland than in the UK? Help me out here.

  14. A total of £53 Billlion was raised in Scotland in the 2010/11 fiscal year.

    A total of £30 Billion was returned to the Scottish government in the same year.

    Debate over; enough said!

  15. Duncan

    Like many others you have mistaken this RevStu fella as a person interested in anything other than his own form of philosophical misanthropy and narcissistic solipsism.

    Your debate followed an inevitable pattern when engaging with the chap.

    1) Exchange of argument/debate
    2) Disagreement over evidence/definitions
    3) Mud slinging ad hominems/insults regarding intelligence and grasp of reality
    4) Playground name calling

    I've taken a look over the net at some of this guy's debates/arguments and they are all tediously similar.
    Some of the insults he throws are nothing short of repugnantly fascist in their extremism. For someone who is over 40 it's nothing short of disturbing.

    Examples on his own site are headlines such as "The Scots are Cringing Pitiful Scum" and refering to Northern Irish people voting for Sinn Fein as "spectacularly retarded."

    Well done for trying to engage him like he had a grounding in humanity. But I have become increasingly convinced that that just isn't possible with this type of hypocritical misanthrope.


  16. Jee Ahdinnaeken,

    No-one could ever accuse you of making ad-hominem attacks or completely ignorig the substantive debate :-p

    Duncan, interesting debate but I got a bit dumbstruck at the part where you thought it was ok that the gap between rich and poor got wider under Labour because even those at the bottom ended up richer than before. Richer than before in absolute terms perhaps but that's not something I would expect a Labour man to be proud of especially not one who argues only Labour can be trusted to address INEQUALITY.

    As for your refusal to accept there may be a separate political will in Scotland, why would you be a devolutionist in that case? Or can there only be a separate will on devolved issues but not in terms of macro-economic and foreign policy etc?


    Now THERE'S an interesting point, especially as Dunc thinks "The last thing we need is more islands of self-interest in the world". Shouldn't we indeed therefore logically reverse devolution and handle everything from Westminster?

    (As a predecessor to Westminster becoming itself a devolved administration in a federal Europe, and presumably so on and so forth until we're all one happy global nation with a single government, sharing all our means of production and resources and hugging.)

  18. I'm a devolutionist.

    What on earth is that?

    1. I believe its a member of the FUD party.

  19. It's hard to say. For example, Johann Lamont says in today's Scotland On Sunday:

    "My Scottish Labour Party is arguably the only party in Scotland which truly believes in the devolution of power, while the SNP continues an increasingly centralist agenda."

    So Johann wants to devolve more power away from the centre, while Duncan wants to increasingly centralise towards a federal Europe and NOT "create any more islands of self-interest". It's a puzzler. I often find myself wondering if Dunc is a member of a completely different Labour Party to the one we read about in the papers.

  20. Just wanted to say fair enough debate; didn't read it all but apart from a few barbed jabs from either side it got me thinking about how both sides think. I am curious about one thing though. I totally agree with what Duncan Hothersall says in the following quote.


    Therefore, I cannot fathom why he goes on to write the following.


    Assuming that he actually agrees with himself in the former is it not actually inconsistent to ask for a firm proposal of what independence will be like in the future? Whatever the actual proposal offered by the SNP Government at the time of the referendum vote I hold the right, as does any citizen in this clearly plural society, to hold whichever parties are in Government to account as long as one lives. The actual proposal by the SNP Government is just one view. The type of Scotland that will surface will change all the time. The relationship with the Rest of the UK will ultimately feature strongly in post independence elections and the people will vote for the party they feel represents their views. It's the principle of independence that is paramount. The actual details will be moulded in time; just as the Union has.

    I actually disagree with the SNP asserting what an independent Scotland would look like. It's plain wrong. It's for all of us to assert our own individual opinions on what it will be.

    My other question is this: What is it that the Scottish Labour Party want with regards to what level of Devolution for Scotland?

    Johann Lamont wrote an article the other day. She's been Leader some seven months, the prospect of how Scotland is governed constitutionally has been saturating the news yet I still don't really know what levers she would like/not like for Scotland. All I hear is "there is a need to have an honest debate", "the acid test should be what is good for Scotland", "we need to use the powers we have now" etc. The things is, nobody on this earth could disagree with any of that. We're having the debate now. Johann Lamont is a leader of a political party and wants people to vote for her to lead Scotland. She must have a broadbrush view of what powers she does or doesn't want. Everyone in Scotland does. She says we should have debate; we need to have her opinion to inform it!

  21. actually reading the comments it seems it did just descend into shouting. However, sometimes in order to gauge truly what people think they need to let their blood boil a bit. Am still interested by the debate, cheers for publishing. I also think that both of you agree on more than you disagree on. If Scotland could only just work together we'd be in a better place.

  22. I also think that RevStu, although perhaps in an inflammatory manner has hit home a good point. If there is no body of Scottish politik (am not saying whether I personally agree or not with that assertion, by the way) what was the point of Devolution in the first place? Surely the Devolution was to allow the people of Scotland to decide things differently from Westminster? But why bother? Why was Scotland so 'special'? The Scottish Labour party has already conceded the principle of devolution to an area called Scotland. Surely, independence is just the extreme variation of this exact same principle?


    Indeed. I've made exactly that point numerous times:

    Independence determines one thing and one thing only: who has the right to elect Scotland's government - Scots, or Tory voters in England?

    "I also think that both of you agree on more than you disagree on"

    No doubt. I certainly consider myself a socialist and I'm sure Dunc does too. It's just a shame the party he's determined to cling blindly to long since abandoned the idea, and that he hates the SNP so much he can't see that - while far from outright socialist - it's now by a significant distance, and by countless impartial assessments, the most left-wing party in the entire UK political mainstream.