…and all the other inequalities between the rest of Britain which are contributing to the exponential growth in the public borrowing deficit.

Things like subsidised care for the elderly who have to go into a care home.

Free car parking in hospitals.

Free prescriptions.

I see that universities in the rest of the country are facing big cutbacks, so why is Scotland allowed to get by as a special case?

Come on Gordon Brown, grow some balls and tell Mr Salmond to make some cuts, or are you biased? Is an independent Scotland where your headed after you have finished wrecking the rest of Britain?

We need to gain control over the runaway train of public spending and the only way for this to be fair is to apply the same rules to everyone in Britain.

We live under a hand-outs focused administration which is fine if the country is making money. What we need is a commercially focused wealth generating administration.

spongebob pictured earlier:

EDIT: I'm English

Great thread, really well done. 0/10

Anybody who contributes to this thread should state location before comment.

English – agree totally with OP

Free parking at scottish hospitals?

Free student loans?

Free Prescriptions?

That's a lot to get wrong in your initial rant mate.

Fail. Och aye a fail…

EDIT – I'm Scottish, I live in Scotland. None of the above actually take place.

how does it go ….

"you are a troll and i claim my 5 quid" ??

you aint never been to scotland then ? ninewells – 5 quid a day parking in the far out carparks , prescriptions are 7 quid odds – unless your terminal – ie my dad has to take tabs for the rest of his life to thin his blood etc he gets free prescriptions – i do not

free loans – not at all.

freee tuition fees yes – i agree with that BUT i think that it should be made alot harder to get into uni ! to many people just going for the craik

raciscm?

have to wonder if they discriminate against the south/east asian students as well?

What free student loans? Isn't "free student loan" an oxymoron anyway? If it doesn't have to be paid back then surely it's a grant?

Prescriptions aren't free in Scotland.

Total public spending in Scotland is calculated by a specific formula and is related to spending in the rest of the UK. If that goes down then so does spending in Scotland. It might be divided differently but total spending still goes down.

You really will need to try harder than that.

I agree with trail_rat.

University fees should be free. But university places should be harder to obtain.

Before long it will be back to the bad old days when only the rich could afford to send their kids to uni.

Prescriptions aren't free in Scotland.

Agree, but £4.00 in Scotland:

http://www.infoscotland.com/prescriptions/

And £7.20 in England:

http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/Healthcosts/Pages/Prescriptioncosts.aspx

Why FFS is their a difference, we all pay the same rates of tax and NI!

So one of us is subsidising the other – as I don't know of anything that is Government related that is dearer in Scotland than England?

instead of making Scotland give them up, we should make the government give them to us too. The access rights would go down a treat! 🙂

I don't know of anything that is Government related that is dearer in Scotland than England?

I am guessing you may not have done the most comprehensive search possible?

There seem to be quite a lot of English students poncing around Scottish Universities too. And Welsh people parking in the free hospital car parks.

Tell you what – we'll bugger off and take Brown with us if you let us have all the oil money back ?

(thats about the level of how silly this all is, but kind of fun)

And, to sweeten the deal we will throw in Fred Goodwin. Offer you can't refuse, that.

It's all smoke and mirrors anyway. Who gives a flying **** if a prescription is £4 or £7? Car parking fees given here, average lifespan much shorter there.

How many free prescriptions could be given out with what is being squandered on 2 weeks of sport in 2012?

I am guessing you may not have done the most comprehensive search possible?

cynic-al

I didn't say I'd searched, just that I didn't know – but happy to be corrected – is there anything?

My point is that just because you don't know something, doesn't make it's negative a fact.

You do the work!

What we need is a commercially focused wealth generating administration.

Because us ordinary folk are really are going to reap the rewards of all that wealth creation like we did last time round. 🙄

Things like subsidised care for the elderly who have to go into a care home.

Free car parking in hospitals.

Free prescriptions.

Quite the opposite. I would say that these should be UK wide.

Elderly people who need to go into a care home should not have to worry about paying for it. Most will have paid into the system for many years. What is your solution? Dying rooms for the poor?

Charging for hospital car parking is an obsenity and there is no argument for it. There are measures that could be taken to ensure that people not using the hospital don't take the piss.

Free prescriptions? Can be argued for I suppose but some in society simply cannot afford to pay without making cutbacks in other areas. The question is where do you draw the line between can / can't afford?

There are other areas where cutbacks could be made but the high level of corruption / incompetance in goverment will ensure that these are never investigated.

Free car parking in hospitals.

Oh that's another one that's BS.

I get free prescriptions…but if I live anywhere in the UK – I'd still get free prescriptions…not all hospitals offer free parking…a few in Glasgow and Fife charge for parking (unless you are staff)…

I kind of agree with the sentiment but your facts are so far up your own @rse that it makes it hard to agree completely…rant attempt wasn't too shabby, but the actual content was utter mince…please try harder.

I haven't charged you for this advice – it's free as I offer my advice for free to anyone and everyone – it's non-taxable as I don't take any money for it…however if you are suggestion we abolish free everything I'll need your address so I can send my invoice to you.

"…and think of the good, decent, righteous English money that goes to subsidising those bloody scotch land access laws as well…blah, blah, blah…"

Some things are cheaper here because it is so terrible living here. Anyone considering it should think again. Have you looked at Wrexham?

Spongebob (and b r, and the rest) rather than complaining on a MTB forum about such grave injustice, shouldn't you be out campaigning to rid your green and pleasant land, England, of the foul, dependency-culture welfare addicts contained across the border in the north British holo-arctic.
After all, even if we Scots all vote for independence, nothing will happen until middle England decides its more sick of us than our oil..

These things do not increase any part of English taxation. Every year Scotland gets a smaller and smaller part of the UK tax take – thats how the Barnet formula works and the flow of money is from Scotland to England. Scotland has a fixed amount of money anyway. It just decides on the priorities. Scotland does not waste money of foundation hospitals and city academies for a start off.

I actually disagree with the free personal care for people in Nursing Homes- it only benefits the children of middle claws parents – it make no difference to the old folk

Edit – the hospitals that are not PFI funded have moved to free parking.

These things do not increase any part of English taxation. Every year Scotland gets a smaller and smaller part of the UK tax take

And when it gets to 100% we'll be happy!

and the flow of money is from Scotland to England

WTF do you get that from?

Aye, more seriously, I'll repeat the fact that the Scottish parliament, that decides these things, chooses its priorities in a more democratic locally focussed way.
If there was the will, the regions of England could have had their own parliaments, which could have also decided such things, but you lot seem to prefer Westminister…
(BTW, according to a report in the paper today, 41 % of students at Edinburgh are from England)

WTF do you get that from?

Tax revenue on oil gets booked in London. Even if you only pro-rata it over the uk then the Scottish deficit is lower than the rest of the UK (this being from official government figures).

Thinly veiled racism covered by a rant regarding "you've got something i've not got, waah"

1. Free parking in hospitals – why shouldn't that be the case exactly?
2. Free Student Loans – think you need to educate yourself on the word "free"
3. Free prescriptions – yes this will be happening but at the moment the flat rate is £4.00, now the argument i would throw back would be why should people have to pay for human rights such as health (because the pharma companies make a profit on people dying

Can't help but notice that you failed to mention other parts of the UK and the benefits that they receive (go Wiki it, i'll wait)

Spongebob, next time you want to moan about something leave the racism out of it. If you are so against Scotland and what it gets over England then you'll quite happily stay away and not grace our trails.

Scottish, proud

As steve says If you add all the oil revenue to the tax revenue raised in scotland and subtract the amount of tax money spent in Scotland you find that there is a net contribution to the UK from Scotland. There are many ways to add these figures up but the overall effect is Scotland is a net contributor. Scotland exports electricity to England as well.

Obviously if Scotland decides to throw its money at different things to the rest of the UK that's for Scotland to decide, as long as they can afford it (arguments about whether they receive a disproportionate amount of funding to begin with are a separate thing). And I thought the reason most hospitals give for charing for parking is so that the car parks aren't full all day preventing people getting in (good old 'demand management' again).

However:

according to a report in the paper today, 41 % of students at Edinburgh are from England

The point here is that the English students at Scottish universities are paying more for their tuition than their Scottish classmates.

Agree with others – university should be free for anyone clever enough to go there – the current mania for sending everyone there if they can afford it even if they are as thick as mince is nuts.

Scotland exports electricity to England as well.

And politicians…

Sorry porterclough, I had actually assumed that the source of the OPs resentment was stories today about English students being alledgedly selected against. Didn't realise it was just a general day-to-day prejudice.
Again though, Rather than bitching about us, shouldn't he be trying to get his government to do the same? (top tip; you can save a bit of money for education by not getting involved in American oil-wars)

Typical bitter Pommy rant.

Sees that there is a place to live in this island with better conditions, so instead of agitating for improvement in his area, he wants the better conditions destroyed.

Sad, sad mentality.

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1292
see chart at bottom

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=285
read the last para

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=407
read the rhs of the graph

And that is supposed to say what? Private sector earnings will be higher to reflect the higher number of skilled workers. if you compare like for like public sector workers are paid less. That is skewed by the large % of manual workers in the private sector. Yo don't get many graduate entry only skilled roles in the private sector paying less than average earnings – common in the public sector – nurse for example.

No chance of getting you to change your opinion, Spongebob?
One thing's for sure, your paranoid theory about Brown being able to bail out back to here once he's 'ruined Britain/England' is a pile of mince. Most Scots recognise Brown for what he is; a transatlanticist, one-nation tory (who really means his Britishness BTW!)
He'd be about as welcome in the Scottish parliament as Ebola.

In its annual survey of the Scottish economy, the Executive said the government spent £45.3 billion in 2003-4, putting Scotland in a rare club of countries where state spending is more than half of the entire economy.

But only £34 billion was generated in tax. This leaves an £11.3 billion gap, which has to be filled by tax collected in England, as Wales and Northern Ireland are also heavily subsidised.

The figures do not include North Sea oil and gas; but the study shows that even if Scotland had collected every penny of tax raised offshore, it would still have required a £7 billion subsidy from England.

Source

I think the thing that really makes me wish for Scottish Independence is the idea that as soon as things would be better for them outside of the Union ( let's face it, highly questionable ) they want out. Like all partnerships it's about give and take, sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down. That has to be a two way process and as they're clearly not interested then we're better off without them regardless of whose figures are right and whose are wrong.

The Scots may well get a better deal than their neighbours, but just look at who those neighbours are.

Scotsman living in England.

it would still have required a £7 billion subsidy from England.

This is a poor way to spin it. What it really means is that Scotland needs £7 billion on the cash borrowed by the UK as England doesn't have a spare £7 billion to give to Scotland. Given that the UK as a whole was expecting to borrow way more than £100 billion in 2009/2010 then even if the oil revenue is just pro-rata across the UK as a whole then it's clear that Scotland is not a drain on England's finances – quite the reverse in fact…