From Tom Gordon today:

He offers no balancing view.

In January 2023:

Industry bodies across the retail sector in Scotland have written to Deputy First Minister John Swinney, urging the Scottish Government to match the Chancellor’s commitment of 75% rates relief for retail businesses in 2023/24.

Representatives of the Scottish Grocers’ Federation (SGF), the Scottish Retail Consortium, the British Independent Retailers Association, and the Booksellers Association signed the joint letter, highlighting the significant challenges facing the sector.

SGF Chief Executive Pete Cheema said: “The retail sector in Scotland employs close to 230,000 people and is key player in driving economic growth, both within communities and throughout the country. Producers, suppliers, and households all benefit when local high streets are thriving. However, many retailers are facing an extremely challenging trading environment, and some are struggling to keep the lights on. So, there’s no time to lose, the Scottish Government needs to act now.

https://www.slrmag.co.uk/retail-trade-bodies-call-on-the-scottish-government-to-match-uk-support/

What is this?

Socialism lives in Britain, but only for the rich: the rules of capitalism are for the rest of us. The ideology of the modern establishment, of course, abhors the state. The state is framed as an obstacle to innovation, a destroyer of initiative, a block that needs to be chipped away to allow free enterprise to flourish. “I think that smaller-scale governments, more freedom for business to exist and to operate – that is the right kind of direction for me,” says Simon Walker, the head of the Institute of Directors. For him, the state should be stripped to a “residual government functioning of maintaining law and order, enforcing contracts”. Mainstream politicians don’t generally talk in such stark terms, but when the deputy prime minister Nick Clegg demands “a liberal alternative to the discredited politics of big government”, the echo is evident.

And yet, when the financial system went into meltdown in 2008, it was not expected to stand on its own two feet, or to pull itself up by its bootstraps. Instead, it was saved by the state, becoming Britain’s most lavished benefit claimant. More than £1tn of public money was poured into the banks following the financial collapse. The emergency package came with few government-imposed conditions and with little calling to account. “The urge to punish all bankers has gone far enough,” declared a piece in the Financial Times just six months after the crisis began. 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/29/socialism-for-the-rich

Gordon has lots of previous on this but one will suffice today:

Tom Gordon digs deep into the IFS report on Scotland’s devolved taxation system and pulls out a negative nugget to suit his agenda. Lying scattered and ignored other than in a wee grudging comment, this analysis by the SNP:

A study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has shown that the SNP policies on tax and benefits have created a fairer, more progressive system than is in place in the rest of the UK. The report explains that low-income households across Scotland gain much more from the SNP’s progressive tax and benefit reforms, including a top-up to the carer’s allowance, more generous housing benefit, and extra payments for families with young children. Taken together, these measures will boost the incomes of the poorest fifth of Scottish households by an average of almost 1.5% this year. The analysis shows that the SNP Government has also given Universal Credit recipients more flexibility in how they are paid, and improvements to the process of assessing entitlement to disability benefits will “make life easier for claimants.”

And this from the Cabinet Secretary, Kate Forbes:

This expert analysis makes clear that the SNP has ensured Scotland has the fairest, most progressive income tax in the UK, with a majority of taxpayers paying less than if they lived in England, Wales or Northern Ireland.