Go Lassie Go

Sir Iain Noble: The man who gave banking a good name

Sad to hear of the death of Iain Noble, the merchant banker who spent much of his life and personal fortune promoting Gaelic culture and fostering enterprise in the Western highlands. He funded the Gaelic College on Skye, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, as well as many other local businesses that - backed through his boutique banking group. His was the good face of capitalism and certainly a man who gave banking a good name.

Ben Thomson, who knew Sir Iain and recently retired as the head of The Noble group said of him:

"He was always looking to see how he could help develop a sector or develop something new based in Scotland. 

"He was an inspiration to many about how you could develop Scottish companies. He was a great ideas man; he had lots of them, and threw himself into them all enthusiastically. Some of them were 50 years ahead of their time and still haven't come to see the light of day.

"He believed entirely in Scotland empowering itself ... that Scotland (would] thrive under its own steam."

There is a full report here in The Scotsman

 

Kevin the Teenager can never lead Scotland

Oh dear. Kevin the Teenager (aged 53 and a half) is over excited again. Iain Gray, according to an interview in Scotland on Sunday,thinks  he can win a personality contest with The First Minister Alex Salmond. Mmm, I guess it depends on what takes your fancy. If leaden delivery of scripted speeches is your bag, then I guess the Labour leader wins hands down. If a total lack of any ambition for your country gets you going, then look no further than the man who has nothing: no policies, no solutions, no positives.  The worst Gray seems able to throw at Salmond in the interview is an ill-advised photo-opp in a sun hat at the Commonwealth Games in India this year. Someone should tell him gently that, even in silly hats, Salmond is a more serious politician than he can ever hope to be. Indeed this is proved by the newspaper itself. While Gray splutters desperately about sunhats, elsewhere in Scotland on Sunday the SNP First Minister has written a column outlining his vision for Scotland's renewables industry and how it might take our economy to another level (100% of our energy from renewables by 2025)

My first and lasting impression of Iain Gray was when he spoke at a Fabian Society conference I attended several years ago. He opened his comments on the financial sector by saying he knew nothing about economics. Salmond is an economist by profession. This contrast wouldn't matter if Gray's lack of experience on such matters was compensated by charm, vision and ideas. Gray has none of these. He has risen without trace, assuming the leadership of the Scottish Party not because he was an inspiring figure, but because he was close to Gordon Brown and nobody else seemed up to much. So what if Salmond has a guid conceit of himself?  Isn't that what you want in a leader? Who would you rather have represent your country? Someone clever and forceful who  answered only to the people of Scotland, or someone lacking in knowledge, confidence and fluency who needed to check everything with his bosses in London?

Gray's interview in Scotland on Sunday today berates the SNP government on the spurious grounds that they should have created more construction jobs during the worst recession for generations. Bad timing, given that Scotland's unemployment figures are better than the UK as a whole and the SNP just announced the funding for a new Forth Crossing. Wasn't it the SNP who postponed Tory cuts and brought forward capital spending in order to stimulate construction in the Scottish economy? And wasn't it the case  that Labour in Holyrood was less than enthusiastic about this approach and at one point appeared to suggest that we should front load the cuts to "get them out of the way",so to speak? Might it not be the case that the SNP's determination to stimulate the economy is the reason for those encouraging employment figures? The last Labour government in Westminster also opposed giving the Scottish parliament workable borrowing powers to finance major construction projects.

If the Labour Party really care about creating jobs in Scotland, why are they so keen on a Tory Scotland Bill which gives us no powers to grow the economy and actually reduces the income of future Scottish governments, including any Gray aspires to lead? Then again, Gray knows little of economics. Like many frustrated teenagers, he is more comfortable with self-delusion. And like any adolescent who is defeated by cool reasoning, he is liable to erupt into petulant displays of rage for no good reason.

English students, racist slurs, and Green opportunism

 I am grateful to my daughter Grace for pointing me to this cartoon. She kept coming through with cups of tea to see how I was getting on with my Scotsman article only to find me on Twitter. But I wasn't Tweeting about The Apprentice (great that Stella won though!)

An irritating but sadly typical Green tweeter claimed the SNP was racist for suggesting that English students could be charged fees at Scottish universities. This person refused to respond to the fact that English families living in Scotland could be confident that their children's fees would be paid under this arrangement. Where's the racism there? Everyone living in Scotland will be treated the same whatever their cultural or ethnic background. The support of undergraduates from outside Scotland is the responsibility of their own governments - which include Northern Ireland and Wales as well as Westminster, another fact the Green Tweeter ignored in his determination to paint nationalists as anti-English. The Welsh are paying the fees of their own students. Westminster refuses to do the same for English students and it is at Westminster that protests should be directed.

When someone gets it wrong online it is hard to let go. But how do you argue with individuals who refuse to engage with the facts? I am particularly concerned about the attitude of Green Tweeters to the SNP, which does little service to the values of their movement. Their accusations need to be countered at some length and their motives scrutinised. 

I think this charge - racism - is so serious that we need to challenge it whenever it is thrown at us. As a supporter of Scottish independence all my life - and the belief that voting SNP is the best way to achieve that - I find such comments deeply offensive. My black friends find them ludicrous.  I am personally offended as someone who has lived and worked in England, has many English friends and admires many aspects of that culture. The SNP has English and non-white members, but that's just another inconvenient fact for those who seek to gain political advantage by name-calling and smears.  The SNP was, along with the SSP, at the centre of the campaign against the detention of asylum seekers' children - when the Labour-Liberal Dem government refused to challenge a regime in Dungavel which punished mothers for hoarding breakfast cereal in order to feed their babies outwith canteen hours. It was an SNP MSP, Anne McLaughlin, who alerted the rest of Scotland to the plight of Precious Mhango and her mother, victims of the UK Borders Agency, first under Labour then The Con Dem Coalition. Alex Salmond personally intervened in the Mhango case.

The fees issue is not of Scotland's making and certainly not the fault of the SNP.  The grant Scotland receives from Westminster ( a tiny proportion of the taxes we actually sent to London) does not cover the education of people outside Scotland. But our doughty Green, along with other unthinking protesters, believes that this money should be used to subsidize anyone who gains a place at a Scottish University. Fine in a hypothetical, ideal world. But Scotland is not the Big Rock Candy Mountain, especially not with Tory Liberal cuts to contend with. Universities are in charge of their own admissions and will quite naturally give places to the best qualified candidates. England has ten times the population of Scotland so would, numerically, have more well qualified applicants who will apply to universities with no fees. Who can blame them?  This will result in thousands of Scottish students failing to get a place at university, something that concerns many people such as the commentator Kenny Farquharson, who is hardly SNP. 

I should also deal here with the anomaly that EU students are entitled to a free education in Scotland, even when English under-graduates are charged.  Indeed English students already pay more than Scottish and EU students under this odd rule, a situation put in place by Labour. This is a legal position which the SNP education secretary Michael Russell says is unfair and which he is trying to challenge. However it should also be pointed out that EU students do not face the same £9000 per annum fees as their English counterparts. In many countries tuition remains free. Therefore there is not the same incentive for Europeans to come here, other than for a brief exchange term to experience another country. Even so, Scotland is prepared to subsidize English students to some extent. Their own government will charge £9000, while we will only charge them £6000 if the plans goes ahead - a £3000 shortfall that will come out of other Scottish budgets. That seems to me like a generous goodwill gesture. 

This is a practical problem of stretching budgets, nothing to do with racism. In the United States, the big state universities charge students more if they live outside the state. Their state budgets are intended for people who live within their boundaries. No racism there. My daughter Grace is a student at the private university MIT, where the financial aid is extremely generous. All students are treated the same for financial aid, but for that reason MIT restricts the admitted number of foreign undergraduates to 100 a year out of 1300. The scholarships on which its endowment is built are mainly intended for US students. Much of the research is funded by the US government, so there is an expectation that the brightest American students will be the main beneficiaries. Nobody thinks that is racist.

Why are green activists trying to exploit the SNP's genuine attempts to find a solution to a problem made in Westminster? Nobody who respects and understands Scottish politics, culture and history thinks the SNP is racist. Far left parties in Scotland, such as the Scottish Socialist Party, long ago accepted  Scottish Nationalism as a progressive movement. Even where they disagree with aspects of the SNP's social democratic programme, there are no accusations of racism.  

The Greens are more opportunistic. It is quite inconceivable that Greens would accuse a national liberation movement of "racism" because it sought to extract its people from a larger, more exploitative state. The Union has exploited Scotland's natural resources and its people for hundreds of years - whether through the disproportionate number of Scottish infantry soldiers fighting British wars, the coal, iron and industrial wealth built on the backs of workers with the lowest average wages and poorest housing in the UK, the vast areas of Highland land bought up and emptied of indigenous people for the recreation of the ruling classes, or the billions of pounds worth of oil revenues that continue to disappear into the UK Treasury.  To challenge the UK state responsible for such injustices is not racist.

Of course Scotland's position is, historically, more complex than a former colony because of its special status as "junior partner" in the British Empire. Its elites benefited from The Union - which is why they are often the most vociferous in defending it and doing their own country down. But that is a fairly universal example of manufactured consensus. Centralising states will often recruit members from the fringe to high profile positions in order to obtain a veneer of legitimacy. How many times did you hear that Scotland was well represented in the UK because of Scots in the cabinet? But the true nature of power lies not in personal influence but the arithmetic of the UK parliament, which controls all the major economic decisions. Scotland will always be out numbered and out voted. Our natural resources continue to subsidize the UK. If we were such a drag, the establishment would have ditched us long ago. 

So why are supposedly radical Greens, quick to protest against every other injustice, so resistant to these facts? As a party, they claim to support Scottish independence, but I see little evidence of this in their campaigning. In most recent matters they throw in their lot with the establishment unionist parties who work together against Scotland's interests. Their tweeters, some employed by the party, joined in the politicised hysteria around the snow story - although Patrick Harvie's later comments in the Transport Committee were a bit more encouraging. But where is the Green support for the SNP campaign for real economic power for the parliament? Where is the support for John Swinney's supermarket tax?  Where is the acknowledgement of the Scottish government commitment to renewables? The Greens clearly feel that they have more votes to gain from carping and smearing the SNP along with the conservative mainstream. Perhaps because they see themselves battling for the same votes next May. So much for the new politics.  

 

Stevenson's departure offers opportunity for women

It's better for the government that Stewart Stevenson has resigned, even if a lot of people out there - including me - thought it ridiculous to blame one man for the weather. The resignation letter said he had gone because of the failure to communicate with motorists, but we all know he's really gone because of his failure to communicate on Newsnight. As Iain MacWhirter said this morning on Newsweek Scotland, Stevenson just wasn't an "I feel your pain" sort of person. You can read his resignation letter and First Minister's acceptance here

The opposition will crow about getting a scalp - but may live to regret that. The resignation offers Alex Salmond the opportunity to replace an older, unmedia-friendly man with a bright young woman. Two candidates come to mind. Shirley-Anne Somerville and Angela Constance.

Somerville, who I believe is a new mother, is a politics and economics graduate who has worked in media relations for various organisations including the Royal College of Nursing. She's a member of Holyrood's Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee and co-convenor of the cross party group on climate change, both of which fall into Stevenson's brief. (She has already commented on the resignation here) And she has done a great job of exposing the debacle of the Edinburgh trams. I cannot imagine her being caught out on Newsnight, where she is already a regular and confident performer. She is a member of Friends of the Earth and could get on swimmingly with the small Green Group in parliament, who, according to TwoDoctors, didn't find Stevenson particularly chummy.  Somerville also has an interest in gender issues such as domestic violence and equal opportunities, which will help in terms of the female vote. 

 Angela Constance is also a young mother who worked as a social worker in the state hospital of Carstairs before entering politics. A Livingston councillor before she was elected to Holyrood in 2007, she has less parliamentary experience than Somerville but is highly regarded. She is a member of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee and lists her hobbies as jogging and running marathons. Either woman would be a breath of fresh air and give the team a better gender balance.  One of the SNP's trump cards over the Labour opposition is the high quality of its front bench, something acknowledged by media commentators.  Stevenson's difficulties offered the opposition an opportunity to undermine this widely held view. Now he's gone and a weak link has disappeared with him.  What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. 

____________________

Off piste on Arthur's Seat

 

Authorities have warned of an avalanche danger on Arthur's Seat

so I propably shouldn't be posting this. Still, doesn't Scotland's latest

piste look good fun! And so accessible for the airport...if

only the airport wasn't snowed in... I'm just envious because a thaw seems to

have started here in Glasgow. The cold hasn't lasted long enough for

outdoor skating on Bingham Pond, like last winter,

but we live in hope.

 

Snow show for schools. Safety first or just a duvet day?

 
My wee Mini Cooper navigated the river of brown sludge that is Great Western Road before nine this morning. Drivers needed to be particularly vigilant as they glided along. As well as all the usual hazards -black ice,  idiots with skyscrapers of snow atop their cars, there were very young teenagers everywhere. They cavorted on traffic islands and skytted across slippery roads the way kids do in the snow, oblivious to danger. Most Glasgow parents did not hear until 8.30 this morning that all the city's schools were to close. Many kids had already arrived. This included the children of the council's deputy leader who was a guest on Call Kaye and didn't sound too happy that his teenager was still not home. At least his director didn't discriminate. But is this the best planning Glasgow could manage? The schools were open Monday and Tuesday when the weather was even worse. If problems were identified yesterday officials had all night to make and publicise the decision. All the private schools in the city are open, along with hospitals, supermarkets, restaurants and everything else. The buses are running if you cannot drive and the main routes are gritted. When my daughter had a dance exam on Sunday afternoon, there was no way we could get the car out, so we wrapped up, loaded the pointe shoes et al into a baby bath sledge, trekked for nearly an hour till we got to Yorkhill. 

But it seems that some folk are made of less stern stuff than us ballet mums. Glasgow's sudden schools closures sounded like a bit of a duvet day to many of the listeners who called Kaye, especially the older people who remembered going to school "even when you had to brush snaw aff the lavvy seats"

Not sure I'd wish that on the kids. But Glasgow's decision exposes the pointlessness of having a large education bureacracy trying to justify its existence.What purpose do they serve?  Did the timing and manner of today's decision show the sort of leadership/managerial skills you expect from folk of six figure salaries? Why not leave it to individual head teachers  to make decisions about their own schools?

What is unforgiveable is the timing, which left many kids to make their own way home. Yet one of the reasons given for school closures is that the children and staff cannot make safe journeys. 

"Our decision to close schools was taken in the interests of the safety of both children and staff," said a council spokesperson.

"We announced the decision as quickly as possible once problems caused by the adverse weather came to light this morning."

They have only just noticed?!?

The spokesperson added: "The safety of children and staff must come first."

Aye right. 

Moore's St Andrew's Day disappointment

I though Gordon Brewer, Ken Macdonald and the Newsnight Scotland team did an excellent job of exposing the flaws of Calman, oops, The Scotland Bill, tonight. The First Minister was given time to explain his concerns in a robust but respectful interview. Robert Brown MSP, David Mundell MP and Pauline McNeill MSP, made less than convincing attempts to talk up  "The greatest transfer of fiscal power etc etc". Shame that this "mission to explain" was absent from the rest of the day's broadcast news. Reporting Scotland in particular is knuckle dragging in its approach to any form of policy, even developments it describes as historic. Is there a bar on intelligent discussion before 11pm?

It was good to see Ken Macdonald's report illustrated with a pie chart of all the taxes at the disposal of the UK Treasury, something that I also used to inform my Scotsman column on the matter today. (The illustration from below is from 2008). Some people will swallow the line that "tax powers" equals "income tax" because that's what they see on their payslip. In fact income tax is a small proportion of the revenue which Scotland raises and sends south.

We should control all our own revenue then hand a cheque to London for joint services the way the Basques operate. Until such times as the Scottish people see sense and vote for independence that is. I noticed that when McNeill and Mundell were stumped by Brewer's question along the lines of "where is the incentive for the Scottish government to raise money if any revenue from economic growth goes straight to London?" they both conceded that improvements could be considered during the process of "scrutiny". I wonder...the control freaks in Whitehall who drew up this bill are determined to keep a tight hold of the UK's centralised state power.

Another point that really ought to be challenged with rigour is the suggestion that a separate Scottish tax collection system would make things more complicated - a point made by Brown and Mundell. Firstly, the duplication currently proposed for income tax by Moore is complicated just to explain to a tv audience, never mind actually levy. Second, the current HMRC system is unfit for purpose and has over-charged and under-charged thousands of people. Third, Scotland could create a simpler, cheaper and more streamlined Tax Agency of its own. This could cut red tape for businesses and individuals, and end anomalies such as the crazy National Insurance. NI no longer bears any relationship to insurance and, as the Centre for Public Policy Research recently pointed out, is just a way of taxing citizens by the back door. 

 Here's the link to my column tomorrow in The Scotsman. The paper's editorial line is sceptical of the limitations of Moore's bill with a leader titled "New powers over income tax do not go far enough 

I will blog later on the bill's failure to tackle the scandal of the Crown Estate revenues.

 

It's a big World Wide Web out there, so let's support dotscot on St Andrew's Day

Dot Scot is the campaign to get Scotland its own domain name on the internet.  It shouldn't really be too difficult, with the proliferation of .nets and .orgs.

Catalonia already has its own, which is great for business, culture and tourism. It's a big world wide web out there and the more distinctive you are the better. It's also a great way of uniting the Scottish diaspora, linking a world wide family with affinity to the country.

If the campaign is successful then this site's url could be www.golassiego.scot

That would be a particular boon to me as the .com version of golassiego has been snapped up by an Irish tourism initiative. (the site's current url is www.joanmcalpine.com) 

To celebrate St Andrew's Day the campaign Dot Scot Registry has launched a new website to track support. The site also answers the most frequently asked questions about '.scot'. 

The site can be found at http://www.dotscot.net/ .

The more supporters they can sign up the better so please do register...and send the link on to your friends and encourage them to support '.scot'.

Honest John v the toadies

The Scottish parliament debate on the Tartan Tax was dispiriting to watch. Far from seeking clarification in the interests of the people they serve, the opposition parties all indulged in point scoring about an issue they didn't actually care about. Far from "allowing the Scottish tax powers to lapse", it seems that the SNP in 2007 inherited a system which was inoperable, at least according to what HMRC told them at the time. I think the word used was "mothballed". But rather than address this rather important new fact, the opposition ploughed on with pre-prepared spontaneous hysteria.

It is pretty obvious from John Swinney's statement that there was a long and protracted row between his officials and those at HMRC over the latter's demands that the Scottish government should pay for a portion of the upgrade of the tax authority's IT systems. The convention normally is that when a Whitehall department makes a change that affects devolved administrations, it is the Whitehall department who pays for it. There are important issues here. To concede to HMRC demands would have set a dangerous precedent. For example can HMRC think-of-a-number any time they like in relation to Scotland? What will they charge to implement Calman, which is based on income tax collected in Scotland (not, of course the important stuff like corporation tax, whisky and oil revenue). So the London Treasury continues to rob us blind and then charge us whatever they like.  If Scotland moved to full economic powers with taxes still collected by HMRC, would they hold us over a barrel again? The Revenue is clunky, confused and tangled - and  will fight to control every twisted tentacle of its operation.

Perhaps the opposition parties believe you do business by gifting your opponent a gun to hold to your head. After all, that's how Labour and Liberal Democrat gave us a parliament building which over-ran its original cost by several hundred million. The contract was open ended. Same goes for the Edinburgh trams, another Labour/ Lib Dem pet project. Nor did Labour, Liberal Democrat and Tory have any problem handing public contracts to PFI consortiums who will charge us from here to eternity for schools and hospitals. Good Housekeeping is not their strong point.

The other completely duplicitous aspect of opposition argument today was the accusation that Swinney had somehow conspired to strip the parliament of its miniscule tax power and then stage a cover-up. What on earth would the nationalists have to gain from this? What could their motive possibly be? As the opposition well know there was no ulterior motive. Going public would have been a winner for the SNP politically. But Swinney is not in the business of picking fights and breaching confidential negotiations for political gain. Even when the row culminated in a £7m demand by London this year, Swinney felt it would have been discourteous to speak out on the disagreement, clearly hoping it could be resolved. This says a lot about the man and how he operates. He earned the nickname Honest John for a reason. It's something his opponents today could learn from. Calling him a liar is totally unacceptable and will be seen as such. Swinney's budget statement contained a formal phrase about the SVR. So did the budget statements of Gordon Brown, Alastair Darling and the Comprehensive Spending Review of George Osborne. All mentioned the tartan tax as an option. If Swinney was "lying" so were they, as they too knew about the HMRC position. They were all telling the truth because the tax power still exists, it has not lapsed. London is refusing us the machinery to exercise that power (if we wanted, which we don't).

The Scottish Secretary Michael Moore proved himself a far less honourable man than Swinney when he delibrately triggered this row with his "open letter". Ostensibly, his job is to represent Scotland in Westminster - something he has done singularly badly as he is about to present a Scotland Bill that will cut our budget by another £900m a year. But this pretendy part of the job is a figleaf anyway. Moore's raison d'etre is to undermine the Scottish government at every turn, no matter the level of duplicity involved. Moore is trying to distract attention from the cost and flaws of Calman. On several occasions Tavish Scott has tried to spin tartan tax row into an attack on fiscal autonomy eg "the SNP, which bangs on about giving more powers to this parliament, give away the one it already has etc etc..." Given that fiscal autonomy is about taking full control of the economic levers in a way that benefits the people of Scotland, there is no comparison. The tartan tax is so small, that some estimate the cost of implementing it would cancel out any money it raised.

This week the Liberal Democrats had an even more pressing embarrassment than Calman to cope with - the student demonstrations against tuition fees in England. Tavish Scott fulminated away about SVR as students in London were prevented by massed police lines from demonstrating outside the Liberal Democrat head quarters. (Didn't hear much LibDem talk of civil liberties then, eh?)

This was one occasion to be pleased that the BBC national news led with an England-only issue. Nick Clegg's hypocrisy was the big UK story of the day. They even demonstrated on his home turf of Sheffield where at the General Election, students had queued outside polling stations for hours to back him. Then came Reporting Scotland whose viewers must have wondered what on earth was going on in their own parliament. All this sound and fury about nothing more significant than an obsolete,  tax...which Labour and The Tories never wanted the Scots to have in the first place.

Any viewer who persevered may have been more struck by Swinney's edited highlight - he didn't want to hand £7m of Scotland's money to HMRC, an organisation whose incompetence had lead to tens of thousands of people paying the wrong amounts of tax. Sounds reasonable to me...and millions of others I imagine.  

For a detailed narrative on how the tartan tax story has been distorted day-to-day please go to Moridura 

 Alan Trench at Devolution Matters has just filed an excellent explanation about how The Treasury deals with devolved governments  inadequately. Trench is an academic and politically non aligned. He is incredibly knowledgable about the detail of how government works and this piece is invaluable.

 

Budget for a better nation

I have a piece in The Guardian today responding to the Scottish budget statement by John Swinney. It was originally commissioned as a post for Comment is Free, but they then promoted it to the main paper. Bear in mind it is written for a readership unfamiliar with the nuts and bolts of devolved politics...but I was pleased that Libby Brooks, the paper's deputy comment editor, tweeted it as Scotland showing what a progressive budget could look like.

There is a more detailed look at the budget, explaining the agreement Swinney has reached with local authorities, at Newsnet Scotland. It also usefully details some percentage cuts across various departments. On a related topic, Peter Curran at Moridura looks at how the budget was explained on television and asks pertinent questions about interviewing techniques. 

John Swinney's assertion that Scotland must get full fiscal powers was the most important part of his statement for me. The finance secretary made a good a fist of what he got, but we're worth more than that. Anyway here is the McAlpine Budget, as outlined in a Scotsman column published on Wednesday morning before the speech to parliament. I think Mr Swinney's job is safe, but the point is to illustrate how flexible and creative we could be with real economic power. Let's face it, Britain is bankrupt. What do we have to lose? It would be great if others could suggest alternative budgets of their own for an independent Scotland. Five policies that would make things better.
 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 

By Joan McAlpine

There’s little point in a pocket money parliament when the pocket money runs out.  That line got resounding cheers for Alex Salmond at the SNP conference. But for John Swinney, who must today eke out the sweeties from that reduced allowance, those words must be as bittersweet as a bag of soor plooms.

The cabinet secretary for finance is a meticulous man, and we have already had some hints as to how he will manage the hand-out from Big Daddy down south. Further speculation is pointless, as you will know the details some time today.

If Scotland is treated as a child under the current arrangements, it’s more like the successful teen star whose earnings are appropriated by controlling parents “for the good of the family”. The Government Expenditure and Revenues Statistics showed national income from Scottish sources in 2008-9 (the latest figures available) exceeded all state spending here by £1.3bn. That is a budget surplus of  0.9% of GDP (including contributions to bailing out the banks.

In order to cover up their embarrassment, the most recent unionist tack focuses on Scotland being profligate under devolution. We are Britney Speirs or Michael Jackson, too flaky to manage our own considerable wealth.  It’s an absurd analogy designed to mask exploitation – and besides, John Swinney is no Britney Spiers.

In a Scotland with economic powers – independence or full fiscal responsibility – Swinney’s budget would look completely different. It’s an interesting exercise to imagine how a Scottish Chancellor of the Exchequer might operate in the grown up world.

My list is entirely personal, I couldn’t second guess Mr Swinney. However you have to start with those oil revenues, which give a Scottish chancellor more money to play with. They account for a fifth of all UK corporation tax - £6.4 billion in 2009 according to the industry body UK Oil and Gas. This only covers production, the supply chain is estimated to raise another £5-6 billion. 

The Scottish government’s stated intention is to build up an oil fund like that of Norway, which has reached $518 billion. But we could immediately use oil revenue to move our economy away from the distorted UK model built on City of London speculation, property and services. We must develop renewables, skilled manufacturing, engineering, life sciences and digital industries. We need to encourage entreprenuership, and create a friendly environment for the small and medium sized enterprises that account for most private sector employment.

Diverting some oil revenue towards building an infrastructure for renewables would be an important first step – no hanging around for the UK Green Investment Bank. We wouldn’t have the problem of Scotland’s share of the fossil fuel levy being chopped off our block grant.  Indeed we could design a completely different model of transferring cash from carbon fuels to green energy.

Given Scotland’s ambitious targets for renewable electricity generation, it’s not unreasonable that an Edinburgh chancellor would feel able to reduce the cost of petrol at the pump. We have some of the highest prices in the world. It affects all business, not just in rural areas. So let’s use fuel duty, vehicle excise duty and air passenger duty to address any logistical problems we face because of geography.

Specific industries could benefit from a chancellor whose first loyalty is to Scotland. Take the digital industries – everything from mobile phone apps to computer games. Digital Inspirations, a report for Scottish Enterprise 18 months ago, found the sector employed 42,000 in Scotland and generated £3.16 bill. It predicted this could double by 2012 with the right support. Scotland is strong on creativity, but weaker on building commercial value. Digital Inspirations suggested tax breaks or the creation of an industry hub in Dundee. The coalition government in Westminster refused tax breaks and announced a gamers’ hub in London. That’s the sort of thing a Scottish chancellor could fix.

Of course all industries depend on digital infrastructure. The Royal Society of Edinburgh recently pointed out that Scotland was falling behind in high speed broadband – an area that is reserved to London. Westminster shows little inclination to act, other than offering a limited pilot scheme in The Highlands.  The RSE urged the Scottish government to fill the gap but admitted the £100m cost could not be met by the block grant. A Scottish chancellor with priorities closer to home, would not struggle to find the funds to upgrade broadband. What about a text tax to pay for it?  It would please the parents of teenagers. This might sound like a flippant suggestion, and it is. But the substantive point is, that with imagination and flexibility, any government can use the tax system to transfer money to where it will bring most benefit.

A Scotland in surplus could improve all infrastructure more easily if it had access to that surplus. Full fiscal autonomy would also give us the ability to borrow to invest – but not the crazy forfeiting of our future to the banks, which was the model of the Public Finance Initiative. We might choose to emulate the Catalans, who recently issued a government bond worth 1000 euro and offering an interest rate of  4.75%. Ordinary citizens snapped up 1000 million euros worth in the first week of sale.

It’s not just other governments that a Holyrood  chancellor might look to for ideas. The Scottish Green Party turned to the land reform campaigner Andy Wightman to develop an alternative to council tax and business rates. Wightman’s proposal, the Land Value Tax, proposes an annual valuation on unimproved land so property owners would not be penalised for improving their home. The idea is to redistribute the 80-90% gains enjoyed by property speculators - and stop the kind of craziness that cause the crash. It’s untried and new, but an example of the kind of imaginative proposal we could consider. One recent report said LVT could subsidise affordable housing.

The need for minimum alcohol prices would no longer exist with a Scottish exchequer  – we could raise the price of drink through duty without waiting for the UK. We could emulate the Danish experiment in taxing junk food at higher rates, then invest the revenue in free nutritious school meals. It would save the NHS by reducing illnesses such as diabetes.

Myriad options come with full economic power. These are just a few. Others might have better ideas. The important thing is that they are tailored to Scotland’s needs. It beats squabbling over the bag of sweeties.