Funding capital expenditure
The new Forth bridge will not be paid for with a cash advance from the UK treasury.Sorry, let me get this right: the (Scottish) Government wanted to fund the bridge with a loan from the (UK) Government.
The chancellor's department has rejected a request from the Scottish Government to spread the cost of the £2bn bridge over 20 years.
Wasn't the Scottish Futures Trust supposed to do this sort of thing, before the Government realised that it wasn't worth the paper it was written on and kicked it into the long grass?
Mr Darling explained the reasoning for the refusal to BBC Radio Scotland's The Business programme.
[...]
"If you are contemplating large projects like this you do need to make choices. The Scottish government's no different from any other large organisations."
The Chancellor is absolutely correct, which is why the both Governments encourage Councils to use 'Prudential Borrowing' to fund capital projects, by substituting revenue expenditure for capital repayments. Warning, trying to understand Prudential Borrowing will make your head hurt, but in essence it is cutting revenue budgets to pay for the HP on a new asset.
Politics is all about choices, but the SNP made too many uncosted promises before they were elected, probably in the expectation of not actually having to implement them, and now are hoisted by their own petard.
As I have said before, the SNP would have been better to just - marginally - lost the last election, and spent the entire time in opposition sniping at Labour, before walking straight into majority control in 2011. Now the problems of success will come back to haunt them, as Labour learn how to act as an opposition.
But the last words belong to Alex Salmond, who...
You better realise that they are out to stuff you, and unless you can find a way to deliver, then Labour are going to be on you like a pack of jackals. And they control the money.... told BBC Radio Scotland: "What we are proposing is thoroughly sensible and thoroughly credible. I'm not taking no for an answer."
5 comments:
hmm what a funny little entry....
You actually think 4 extra long years of new labour domination of Scotland would be a good thing?
Ha - Ha - Ha
The SNP (AKA AS)have made a right pigs ear of this. Where are they going to get the money from if the real government won't give it to them?
It must have been so humiliating for them to have to go to the real government to ask for money. I'm not surprised that they were told no. I bet the mandarins in the ttreasury wet their pants laughing. {:-)
11:50 - would you prefer four extra long years of Labour (which would have just about passed by now)or 8-20 more years - possibly stretching out in front of you!?
What would you expect from that shower of lying bastards called Labour and/or Conservative. Anyone else seen the devious methods of both London parties used to counter the SNP truths re the Scottish economic situation in the 70s. No doubt the same was true in the 80s, the 90s and the present decade. London rule can never be trusted and only a complete idiot could not / cannot see this
3.05
Maybes only a neurotic paranoid would see it! {:-)
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