[0762]

IMO GRR an issue that covers a very small, under-represented group of people here and one of these ones that is never gonna be popular - much like the issue of same-sex marriage that was passed all these years ago and generally forgotten. This issue had been raised in parliament six years ago. Debate and consultation/committee investigation followed in the Scot Parliament. Finally voted for at Holyrood and a cross-party vote it was too. I personally think we have far more important issues to deal with in Scotland. However, it is a decision that required a conclusion after all this time. As for the interference by the Tory-Brexit Viceroy of Scotland? He can GTF!! This is just more interference and undermining of our Scottish Parliament and "stoking up" a culture war!! It's a follow on to their similar shit behaviour in their Brexit campaign and pandering to their Tory heartland support much like their toxic anti-immigrant rhetoric and other toxic RW bullying policies that never actually redress the probs.

[0762]

https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/n...re-4003692

Alan Cumming, a strong supporter of Scottish independence, hands back his OBE while slamming in to the "toxic" empire and the role of the monarchy in slavery and other indiscretions in the name of the Brit Empire!! Well done that man!! I'd love to see Andy Murray do likewise and that would be a massive statement of intent!! Lets face it, Andy was the great Scottish sportsman who was bullied and blackmailed into withdrawing his support for Scottish independence in 2014 - one of the most outrageous examples of said intimidation against a favourite son of Scotland, a guy who still privately favours self-determination.

[0762]

On the anniversary of Scotland's removal from the EU while voting to remain, lotsa torchlit processions happening in Scotland tonight to highlight this fact and endorse the continuing support for re-joining the EU asap.
Note Business for Scotland has declared Brexit a ‘slow motion car crash’, three years after Scotland was removed from the European Union against its will. BFS argues that none of the proposed benefits from the UK Government have come to light and that the only way for Scotland to ‘fix’ the issue of Brexit is to re-join the EU as an independent nation. Bring it on eh!!
The IMF is now forecasting that the UK economy will perform worse than every other major economy in the world, including internationally sanctioned Russia. Brexit is essentially a ‘self imposed sanction’ that is proving to be more damaging than the international community acting to deliberately damage a nation's economy.
Brexit has made Britain a laughing stock. It has sent a signal to the world that Britain is small-minded, that Britain doesn’t want investment, that Britain doesn’t want skilled migrants, that Britain doesn’t want to trade openly and doesn’t want to be part of the European family of nations. But Scotland is not Britain.
Scotland wholeheartedly rejected Brexit in the referendum and Brexit has been an unmitigated disaster for Scotland. A recent poll found that 69% of Scottish voters would vote to re-join the EU and I expect an independent Scotland to do just that. Independence is normal - TELL A FRIEND!!

[0762]

When Shell announced the biggest profits in its history – £32.2 billion pounds for 2022 on Thursday – the BBC morning news flagship, the ‘Today’ programme gave listeners misleading information about how much tax it is paying in the UK compared to other countries.
Amid a public outcry re the obscenely high profits during a time of real crisis in the cost of living etc, the show’s journalists gave the erroneous impression that the UK is getting a similar amount of tax from Shell as elsewhere – but in fact, because of the UK’s tax regime, Shell made no ‘taxable profit’ in the UK in the first three quarters of the year 2022 and paid no windfall tax at all. It may pay a small amount of windfall tax to the UK for the last quarter but the figure is so far unclear. 
Shell produces about 120,000 barrels of oil a day equivalent from the UK continental shelf, 90% of which is in Scottish waters – but it makes no taxable profit on that.
The BBC's Nick Robinson did not mention that Shell, which moved its HQ from the Netherlands to London a year ago, has made no taxable profit in the UK since 2017.  In contrast, Shell paid £3.7 billion to the Norwegian state in 2021 for example, far more than it paid in the UK. where since 2016, its subsidies have outweighed the tax it has paid. 
Shell also distributed $26bn to shareholders in 2022 including $18bn in share buybacks. Tax expert Dan Neidle argues that it would be appropriate for the UK to levy a one-off tax on Shell’s UK-based global HQ. “Shell is crying out to be taxed more,” he told the Financial Times.
Business editor Simon Jack implied that Shell should be allowed to keep its massive profits – the highest a UK headquartered company has ever made – because it “got no subsidy” when oil prices fell!!???
Robinson asked Jack: “How do governments deal with these record energy profits which may be just short term?”
Jack said: “It’s very volatile prices. For example, when the price of oil collapsed, Shell will say ‘No-one offered to subsidise our losses when we lost billions in those years so this is the flipside of that’. There is obvious outrage at these numbers, but, like I say, designing a windfall tax is not straightforward for a UK-domiciled company which makes 95% of its money elsewhere in the world and is taxed elsewhere in the world.” This is not true btw - since the tax regime changed, Shell has benefitted greatly from tax payer support!!!
If you look at GERS, the account of Scotland’s finances, you can see a change coming through after 2015/16, when the UK government started to tax the sector differently. The effect of the UK’s tax changes were that many private companies and their shareholders became net recipients of taxpayers’ money.
This was ostensibly done to increase investment and to protect jobs as the oil price fell – but Aberdeen was hit harder than Norway, which continued to tax energy firms at its usual high rate. Rebates were not specifically linked to any commitment to save jobs. In 2016 Shell, having benefitted from tax rebates from the UK Government and having made many thousands of workers redundant, went on to declare the world’s largest shareholder profit dividend that year.
Could there be a political reason for under-taxing oil production from Scotland?
The UK Government now takes much more tax on oil and gas at the pump or when heating oil is purchased. In 2022-23, fuel duties are expected to raise £25 billion. Very little of that is credited to Scotland’s accounts.
Some suspect that one reason for changing the North Sea tax regime is to lend weight to the Unionist argument that Scotland is too poor to become independent.
Shell is not doing anything illegal – it is the UK government’s political and ideological choice to give Shell tax rebates and subsidies. This is reserved to the UK government – the Scottish Parliament has no say on it!!!!
Westminster gives tax rebates to large oil companies to cover the cost of decommissioning rigs and fields and to explore for new oil fields. These tax deductions include an effective subsidy for any fossil fuel production –  but not for green investment. Writing in the Financial Times, Professor Michael Devereux at the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation argues this has, in effect, created a subsidy for fossil fuel projects that otherwise would not go ahead.
Conclusion: BBC flagship news show sounds like propaganda on behalf of the Brit govt!!
The BBC has come in for criticism recently for being too close to the Conservative Party, and to the world of big business. It has lost the trust of many in Scotland, where 1 in 7 people no longer pay the licence fee. Today’s misleading reporting of Shell’s historic profits, which in the UK came from exploiting Scotland’s energy resources, will do little to rebuild trust.

[theo_luddite]

The answer really is quite simple, the price of oil/gas and the hydrocarbons that are made from them, whether fuel, lubricants or otherwise don't need to be as high in price as they are. They cost no more to get out of the ground or to refine them today than they did 5 years ago.

They cost more to deliver by road/ship because these same companies have put their own fuel prices up, conveniently using Russia/Ukraine as a shield for their greedy shenanigans when they had been merrily raising prices anyway for 2 or 3 years. That just helped them accelerate what was coming. How many UK energy suppliers went bust before Putin invaded Ukraine last year? I went through at least 4 changes of supplier since August 2019 and I've been stuck with the latest one since September 2021.

They don't cost anymore to send down a big fat long pipeline than they did 5 years ago and that is how they are most efficiently moved.

The other thing with "big oil" is they get rich both ways. If crude goes up, they win selling crude to refineries. Then they put the price up at their blended lubes and other chemicals derived from crude in their own plants. Their customers (some of whom are us) don't really have a choice since all the merger and acquisition/globalisation feeding frenzy of the last 20 years has more or less removed any competition. I'd hesitate to call it a cartel, but with so little competition, it's not far off.

All in all, these folks have their finger in the pie at every level. You might want to ask what industry, even if it's a very small niche corner of it - I've worked in for over 40 years? Every time the big boys cough, the little boys catch a cold and what is going on now is no different from the "manufactured" fuel crisis of the 70's and the subsequent overheating of the oil/gas prices 20-30 years ago.

Shell move their HQ from London to Amsterdam and back almost at the flick of a switch, depending on which is most tax efficient to them at the time.

---

PS I agree with you on the BBC. Many friends, family and colleagues globally only get the BBC World News version, which is still highly respected, even if they do far more documentaries than news reporting minutes these days. They don't get the UK version, unless they erm, find an unofficial interweb feed (?), which is now a very sad mouth piece for Tory propaganda, with the occasional dissenting voice.

Hence, to keep up the illusion of impartiality, we will only get the World version too in the not too distant future, with occasional Tory approved local cheerleading stuff that still won't go out on the World feed. They've disguised that as cost savings due to freezing the licence fee. So we will now pay an exorbitant licence fee to receive next to no news about what is going on in our own country and parliament.

Then they wonder why we are globally being seen as "3rd world" and our human rights reputation is falling like a stone.
As for countries running like hell to do trade deals with us before we pull up the rest of the draw bridges ........ I'm expecting a big fat yawn from the good ole USofA again anytime soon.

[0762]

IMO GRR an issue that covers a very small, under-represented group of people here and one of these ones that is never gonna be popular - much like the issue of same-sex marriage that was passed all these years ago and generally forgotten. This issue had been raised in parliament six years ago. Debate and consultation/committee investigation followed in the Scot Parliament. Finally voted for at Holyrood and a cross-party vote it was too. I personally think we have far more important issues to deal with in Scotland. However, it is a decision that required a conclusion after all this time. As for the interference by the Tory-Brexit Viceroy of Scotland? He can GTF!! This is just more interference and undermining of our Scottish Parliament and "stoking up" a culture war!! It's a follow on to their similar shit behaviour in their Brexit campaign and pandering to their Tory heartland support much like their toxic anti-immigrant rhetoric and other toxic RW bullying policies that never actually redress the probs.

I must add that it transpires in a recent study that the UK (particularly England) is deemed the most transphobic country in Europe, even beyond the realms of Russia! IMO this is truly down to the poisonous media/press activity that has clearly been active for a while - such horrible RW press and media in this country that has regularly been debated on this Sb board and I reckon the killing of that poor wee girl, 16 year old Brianna, in Warrington, is down to the toxic narrative between said shit media and politicians who are definitely playing out a cultural war and have no interest in the rights of these people whatsoever - a shocker and a disgrace, unacceptable in any civilised society!!

[themaclad]

She's resigning

[0762]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/sc...021fe9e036

Sad news indeed and the longest serving FM in the history of devolution has had enough - still popular in Scotland in spite of the continuous Unionist media assault up here saying otherwise with their usual anti-Scotland bullshit that is synonymous with the never-ending Brexit bullshit, all relative to the biggest conspiracy in British political history IMO. Nicola still remaining in situ until a successor is voted in. But soon she can "get a life" away from politics a bit more than experienced as the First Minister of Scotland. I see this as the changing face/evolution of devolved governance in Scotland and the most important quest emphasised by the FM herself in today's speech - the quest for Scottish independence! Also a quote by her today: "The cause of independence for Scotland is far bigger than one individual"!!! That was just part of a vg speech in which she also subtly criticised the MS press/media (today even still negatively speculating what happened, a sudden "out of the blue" moment/resignation, and emphasising her failures!!! Shameless bastards as usual!!) in this country re the extreme way they go about their business to hurt people and try to bring them down at every opportunity - no privacy in politics and also the word "brutality" hovering in the background when it comes to journos and politics they don't like. That's the gutter press (with an anti-Scotland agenda) described accurately and at the worst level of reporting I've ever seen in my lifetime. Many people comparing it to the vicious RW reporting that was rife in 1930s Germany before WWII began with homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, xenophobia all chucked "into the mix" in one huge cultural war created as a diversion by the most extreme RW political Tory-Brexit morons ever seen in Brit politics.

[theo_luddite]

When Salmond quit, it was pretty obvious who the successor was going to be. For all his "faults" he'd groomed a woman to take over a position that would carry on where he left off. Where's hers? I don't see one. Then again, living sarf of the border why would I, even if I did last time? Has it all been about her?

[0762]

No clear successor to replace Nicola Sturgeon. However, that may not be such a bad thing as many gleeful political antagonists hope it will be! Note there are some competent individuals in the SNP who will come to the fore and Nicola Sturgeon indicated that is the case in her speech. She said herself that political leaders come and go and that is a fact. However, the choice of a new leader is absolutely important - it has to be the right one!!