Game theory - tee hee.

From the slightly longer print version of an article, which is actually about Grexit, in City AM:

One of the insights of game theory is that it is possible for both sides to win...*

Nicola Sturgeon and David Cameron have manoeuvred themselves into a lucrative strategy of co-operation. The game began during the election campaign. The SNP needed to destroy Labour in Scotland. They trumpeted their intention to help Ed Miliband get into Downing Street. The Conservatives seized on this and used the SNP bogeyman to frighten the voters in marginal seats in England.

The game goes on. Cameron needs to make some concessions to Sturgeon so that she can boast about them to the Scottish electorate. But the SNP also needs to maintain a set of grievances, which is the party's raison d'être. Neither side actually wants to redress them, so that both continue to gain and keep Labour out. Practical politicians are often much better game-players than so-called expert theorists.

* If they can gang together to do over a third party. If there's no third party, this is called 'compromise' or 'saving face'.

Short List

Leaders of the SNP named after a fish.

Bonus: Leaders of the SNP named after an animal.

If True....

Scotland

Hmmm. I am not all sure I fancy that. Perhaps I now know how the Scots feel?

Scots referendum, the debate moves down a level...

There was a letter in the Times yesterday suggesting that with the referendum polls so close, Scotland's 16 and 17 year olds could effectively decide her future. Now most of MW's readers probably don't befriend many young Scots SNP supporters on facebook.

But since someone on a rival Aberdeenshire cricket team added me, and fits the bill, I can use copy and paste to give you all an insight into the kind of propaganda the kids are circulating up here:

On oil:

Scotland would get about 90% of the oil revenues. Speaking of revenues; Scotland has generated more tax per person than the rest of the UK in each and every one of the last 30 years and that includes a period when the oil price was as low as $10 a barrel and revenues just a tenth of what they have been in recent years...

Norway discovered oil and gas at the same time as Scotland, and has been able to use this wealth to become one of the very wealthiest countries on earth in terms of GDP per head of population and also now sits at the very top of world wellbeing and equality league tables.

Another important comparison with Norway relates to the establishment of a “sovereign wealth fund”. Unlike the UK, since 1996 the Norwegian government has been investing proceeds from its oil revenues into an investment fund so that future generations can benefit too. That fund is now worth over £500 billion (£100,000 per person)...

Margaret Thatcher's Westminster government used the North Sea revenue to fund tax cuts for the rich. An independent Scotland could still choose to invest in a similar "rainy day fund", building a secure legacy for the future. Remember there are up 24 billion barrels of oil still to be extracted from the North Sea with a wholesale value of up to £1.5 trillion."

On tax and spend:

The Scottish economy made £120 billion last year and only received £32 billion of it to spend while the rest went AWOL...

Let's take it in a literal sense, picture you as the Scottish government and Me as Westminster.. What currently happens is effectively like you getting paid £1000, giving it to Me and only getting you £250 to spend. Then if you give me more powers (ie. If Scotland voting no) then I will only give you maybe £200 next month because there is nothing you can do about it meaning you have to sell your ipad and your phone to make money - it's not being done through choice, it just has to be done for you to get by.

Scotland is massively wealthy so why there are 100,000 kids in poverty is a joke.

"Food and drink display ban in large shops comes into force"

From the BBC:

A ban on the display of food and drink in large shops in Scotland has come into force.

Public Health Minister Michael Matheson said the move will help prevent young people from becoming obese. Under the Food and Drink Primary Medical Services (Scotland) Act 2010, the sale of snacks from vending machines is also banned.

Stores that do not comply could be convicted of a criminal offence or receive a fixed penalty fine. England, Wales and Northern Ireland plan to bring in similar bans to prevent large stores from displaying groceries and soft drinks. The Scottish government's Obesity Control Strategy also supports the introduction of standardised packaging.

Mr Matheson said: "These bans are the right step to prevent young people in Scotland from becoming obese or succumbing to a range of diet-related illnesses such as diabetes. It is well known that eating is associated with a range of illnesses from kidney failure to heart attacks and is the primary preventable cause of ill health and premature death. Each year, malnutrition and over-eating is associated with over 13,000 deaths and 56,000 hospital admissions in Scotland.

"That is why it is so important that this government works to improve health by reducing the number of people who choose to eat food or consume drinks containing potentially harmful additives such as sugar and salt. Evidence shows that young people exposed to the promotion of fast food are more likely to pop out for an artery-hardening burger and chips."

Nice little house price bubble you've got going there, shame if anything were to happen to it...

Danny Alexander came up with a splendid Home-Owner-Ist argument against Scottish independence as reported in The Daily Express:

SCOTTISH homeowners (1) could face a £1billion increase in their mortgage bills if the country becomes independent, it was claimed yesterday. Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, predicted that Scotland may not inherit the UK's coveted AAA credit rating (2), which determines the cost of borrowing on the international money markets.(3) That could force up interest rates for Scottish banks, (4) leading to bigger repayments for hundreds of thousands of mortgage-holders and small businesses.(5)

Where do you start?

1) It's not "homeowners" who'll pay more in interest, it's "mortgage borrowers".

2) Scotland might well not be rated AAA. But the UK might lose its AAA rating anyway. So that's a highly speculative claim. And it all depends on how much of the UK's national debt Scotland is prepared to take on.

3) "However, Finance Secretary John Swinney described the claims as "economic illiteracy" and said it was "deeply worrying" that a senior Coalition minister did not know the difference between the interest rates paid on government bonds and private bank lending."

That has the makings of a fair point. The credit rating of banks depends largely on the credit rating of the government which is propping them up, which is still likely to be the UK post-independence (see 4), so the government's credit rating has some influence on the interest rate which banks have to pay, but it probably has f- all influence on the interest rate which mortgage borrowers pay to the banks.

4) Which "Scottish banks"does he mean? Does he mean Lloyds-Halifax-Bank of Scotland or Royal Bank of Scotland-NatWest? Nobody has debated whether the UK government or the Scottish government will be responsible for propping them up post-independence. If the UK were to fob it off onto Scotland then all Hell would break loose, with "hard pressed hard working homeowners" (TM Gordon Brown) in England also facing higher interest charges, so that seems unlikely.

5) All this glosses over the fact that higher interest rates are bad for leveraged land price speculators but great for cash savers, and that small businesses barely borrow anything from banks in the first place.

Alex Salmond

"The irony is, Joan's right."

My kids and I thought it was quite funny, it even manages to be funny without having any swearing in it:

I suppose it's only a question of time before there's a Downfall spoof in which Tom Harris calls in his media advisors to ask them who the hell thought that doing a Downfall spoof in which Alex Salmond [etc].

George Osborne talks nonsense on financial implications of Scottish independence

There's a lot of guff talked on both sides, and as ever, it is not clear whether they really are that stupid, or whether they are playing a clever double bluff where the supposedly Unionist Tories actually want to rile the Scots into leaving and the SNP secretly know they'd never win a referendum in Scotland, and just see the whole thing as a way of screwing more subsidies out of Whitehall, who are - allegedly - keen to keep Scotland in the Union. The expression "he has a bargaining chip on his shoulder" springs to mind.

Bearing this in mind, let's see what Osborne is reported to have said. From The Independent:

George Osborne last night fired the opening shots of the campaign against Scottish independence, warning that Scotland would risk a euro-style debt crisis if it left the United Kingdom.(1) The Chancellor also claimed that Scotland standing alone would be unable to withstand a second financial shock and would deter foreign investors.(2)

He spoke out as Downing Street signalled its belief that Scotland would have to accept its share of the toxic assets of the Royal Bank of Scotland following its £46bn bailout by the UK taxpayer.(3)

The Coalition Government believes the SNP administration headed by Alex Salmond would be vulnerable to a challenge over the practicalities of how an independent Scotland would operate – a stance shared by Labour leaders. Pro-Union politicians are now preparing to focus the debate on four main questions – what currency would operate north of the border, what proportion of the UK's debts Scotland would have to assume, the future of the armed forces and whether border controls would have to be introduced.(4)

Mr Osborne raised the spectre of an independent Scotland joining the single currency when it is in deep crisis. He told ITV News: "Alex Salmond has said Scotland should join the euro... That is not the currency I'd be wanting to join at a time like this... (5) I don't think Scotland would be as prosperous as it would be as part of the UK. I think there are businesses that are nervous about investing in Scotland when they don't know about its constitutional future." (6)

Mr Osborne suggested an independent Scotland would have struggled to cope with the financial crisis of 2008. He said: "If... you ask yourself 'would Scotland alone have been able to bail out the Royal Bank of Scotland or Halifax Bank of Scotland'? (7) You ask these questions and you begin to see actually Scotland is better off in terms of jobs and prosperity being part of the UK and, by the way, the rest of the UK is better off with Scotland as well." (8)

1) Nope. That all depends on how recklessly the Scottish government spends. So it's not our problem and it's not like the UK government, also led mainly by Scots, has a good record on spending.

2) There's more to it than that, see (7) below.

3) Not just a share, all of them. I covered this yesterday evening.

4) As to currencies, see (5). Scotland's share of National Debt has been provisionally agreed at 8.4% (see post of yesterday morning). Armed forces is not an issue, it's not like we are going to invade each other, and it's up to Scotland whether they join in the UK's madcap adventures around the globe in future.

Border controls is an interesting one, what it boils down to is: if we agree to have common border controls/immigration rules for the whole of Great Britain, no controls are necessary at the English/Scottish border or on ferries between Northern Ireland/Scotland (the model followed by EU member states). Or the Scots can have their own immigration rules. If theirs are tighter than ours, then it'll be the Scots who want border controls and vice versa (compare the difference between US/Canadian border and US/Mexican border).

5) Scottish people can use any currency they want. Practicalities say they would continue to use sterling for the time being, and Salmond has said as much. Osborne can huff and puff as much as he wants, there is nothing to stop them from denominating transactions in sterling. Whether £1 backed by the Scottish central bank is worth more or less than £1 backed by the Bank of England is another question; but those businesses who trade with England can sidestep this problem by having sterling accounts with English banks for making/accepting sterling payments to/from English suppliers/customers.

6) That's his opinion and he's entitled to it. I don't see the relevance though.

7) The answer is "No, they probably wouldn't. So they would have been forced to do an Iceland, which would have been a very good thing indeed for all of us. RBS and HBOS would have sorted themselves out with debt-for-equity swaps, at zero cost to either English or Scottish taxpayers. Or possibly they would have been stupid enough to do an Ireland, which would have been a fantastic result for the English - a foreign government bails out our depositors and bondholders."

8) Wholly unsubstantiated claims. There are economies and diseconomies of scale with increasing population size, but once you get past a population of five million, they are negligible either way. There are plenty of countries with populations of five million or less, and there is nothing to suggest that they are markedly worse off for it. And whether the UK has a population of 62 million or 57 million is completely irrelevant. Finally, if it all goes wrong, we can always merge our two countries again.

From a fiscal point of view, Scottish independence would be a non-event.

This topic seems to generate a lot of passion on both sides, the Daily Mail article has so far attracted over 1,700 comments, which is unusually high even by the Mail's standards.

As to the finances, it boils down to three main items which more or less net off to nothing:

1. The Scots would draw a new boundary for the Continental shelf, basically a straight line heading due East from the English/Scottish border, see map here and collect North Sea oil revenues from their patch. According to that same link, Scotland's ninety per cent share of North Sea oil revenues would be about £10 billion a year. On the BBC yesterday, they quoted a lower figure of £6.5 billion.

2. UK government spending is skewed towards the three non-English nations and poorer areas in England. According to Wiki's write up of the Barnett Formula (as poor old Lord Joel Barnett has been saying for decades, it's not a bloody formula!), average spending per capita per year in Scotland is about £1,200 higher than the average for the rest of the UK. So the UK as a whole subsidises Scotland to the tune of £6.2 billion.

3. Alex Salmond conceded yesterday that Scotland would assume a share of existing UK government debt, proportional to population or GDP. GDP per capita is about the same so we can split it proportional to population and Scotland's share would be 5.2 million/62 million = 8.4% and if UK government debt in 2015 is £1,400 billion or thereabouts, then Scotlan's share would be £118 billion. Let's guess the average interest rate on UK government debt at 3%. As a small/new country, Scotland would end up paying a bit more than that, say 3.2% and the interest rate on the residual UK's debt would fall ever so slightly.

The net position is thus as follows:

1. Scotland gains £10 billion a year;
2. Scotland loses £6.2 billion a year;
3. Scotland loses £3.8 billion a year interest (assuming debt is rolled over in perpetuity).

Scotland's gains = rest of UK's losses and vice versa.

To my untrained eye, that looks like a nil overall position. Of course, oil revenues can go up or down quite markedly; there are different ways of calculating per-capita overspend in Scotland; and interest rates can go up or down (and we don't know what the Scottish premium would be). So each team of negotiators has to do its own forecasts and then bring them into balance by increasing or reducing Scotland's share of UK national debt accordingly. Provided that each party expects to at least break even on the final agreed deal, then the deal is worth doing, end of.

There are of course lots of other bits and pieces that have to be looked at; whether UK nuclear submarines will stay in Faslane and whether the UK Navy will still pay for ships to built in Scotland; who is responsible for paying the old age and public sector pensions for people who have worked and lived both in Scotland and elsewhere in the UK, but we can apply the same principles. It is not an intractable problem.

Alex Salmond singularly fails to draw the obvious conclusion...

From the BBC:

Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond believes Prime Minister David Cameron's decision to veto EU treaty changes could affect talks on fish quotas.

He told the BBC that Mr Cameron's "irresponsible posturing" could make it harder to stop regulation of the Scottish fishing industry. Mr Salmond has written to the prime minister asking him to explain his actions to the devolved governments...

D'oh!

Cameron went to Brussels tasked with getting a concession for his mates in banking, Merkozy refused point blank, so Cameron played the only card he had left and walked out.

I do wonder whether Salmond, who is a master negotiator, really fails to realise that we can do exactly the same thing again for our fishing industry at the next round of talks on fish quotas.

Here's a quick guide for him, just in case he's reading this:
--------------------------------
Salmond (or whoever it is): "About these quotas. We'd like to regain control of all fishing rights in our half of the North Sea."

Others round the table: "No chance. We were thinking of reducing Scotland's quota even further."

Salmond: "All right, sod the lot of you. As of next week, we are withdrawing from the Common Fisheries Policy. Anybody who wants to fish in our half of the North Sea can pay up or be blown out of the water."

Others round the table: "Er... or what?"

Salmond, packing briefcase etc: "Well it was lovely meeting you all. What time's the next Eurostar back to Blighty?"

Others round the table: "Did I hear that right..? Shit! Seriously - what's our next move? Oh, f-ing hell..."

Alex Salmond

The Dark Blue Wing Of The Home-Owner-Ist Movement

From the BBC:

The SNP has announced that it plans to extend the freeze on council tax beyond the next election. Deputy leader Nicola Sturgeon told... delegates in Perth the policy would set the SNP apart from Labour, who argue the freeze is no longer affordable...

The SNP has funded a council tax freeze each year since entering government and, in an appeal to voters on a new policy debate website, the party wants to continue discussion on the issue. The Nationalists say they will protect family budgets, while Labour would put up the tax.

Correction: the SNP has funded nothing. They have merely shuffled taxpayers' money from one pile to another.

The Scottish Government also has the power to increase or reduce basic rate income tax by three per cent. They clearly haven't reduced it, so they could equally be accused of levying income tax that is three per cent higher than necessary. Does that not hurt 'family budgets' and damage their economy at the same time?
--------------------------------------
Even more galling was this in The Daily Mail. It is a pile of self-contradictory drivel which I can't even begin to fisk, so I'll just cut and paste two of the top-rated comments:

1. "Most of us can understand good old bricks and mortar, which over the years have offered consistent capital growth."

The sheer economic illiteracy of this comment is astounding. It is not the bricks & mortar which offers capital growth, it is the underlying value of the land which increase over time due to the activities of the entire population, the gain on which is then enjoyed by a single person/family. Land speculation & "house price" bubbles are bad for the economy, whilst making a select few richer, as a nation we are made poorer as a result.

Wages need to rise faster than "property" prices (actually land values) in order to correct the damage done to the economy by successive governments made up of the very same select few who become richer at the expense of the nation. Scott Wright, Sheffield, UK.

2. "People with homes have shelter, full stop. The hysteria of the mortgage lenders and banks, led to the unsustainable ramp-up in land values & presented people with a chimera: If you pay us huge amounts of interest, we'll perhaps let you "buy" a home, which doesn't belong to you in the first place; it belongs to the banks, until that faraway day when the mortgage - a French word involving "death" is retired.

The home owner has privilege of living there by the mortgage lenders. Mr. Glover's obeisance to a 90s boom is as much illusion as the South Sea bubble.

Real wealth is NOT created by your home; never has.. Real wealth is created by slashing taxes on peoples work and returns on investment. Real wealth is created by working hard and not letting the Dukes of Westminsters of the world pocket the gains in property values created by the hard work of real people.

As wages rise, why on earth should the benefit go to banks? Let the creative economy bloom by untaxing that. Joshua Vincent, Philadelphia, PA.

NB, Scott & Joshua are moderate and enthusiatic LVT-supporters respectively, who both occasionally comment in this blog.

Y'see, that's another selling point of replacing all taxes with LVT and dishing most of it out as a Citizen's Income: there would be no need to scramble to buy a house to 'share in Britain's rising prosperity' as we would all effectively be landlords anyway (via the Citizen's Income), so we could and would devote our energies to creating more wealth and creating a bigger cake, rather than trying to grab the biggest slice of an ever smaller cake.

It's then up to each individual to decide how much LVT he wants to or can afford to pay by choosing to consume more or less land value. That is a purely personal/family decision and has nothing to do with wealth creation or indeed wealth destruction.
--------------------------------------
PS, my personal favourite bit of DoubleThink from the article is this:

Nor is it the fault of home-owners that the last Government failed to build enough new houses. Whereas in the Sixties hundreds of thousands of houses were built every year — the annual peak being some 385,000 — only 142,000 houses were built last year, the smallest number during any peacetime period since 1923.

'nuff said.

Political Party Funding Fun

In El Comm's press release of last week on donations to political parties, they mention casually that "Five parties also received a total of £2,211,200 in public funds." In case you're interested in which ones and how much, from pages 132 and 133 of this (pdf) the lucky recipients were:

Plain Cymru: £34,168.14
SNP: £53,288.77
Labour: £71,412.35
Lib Dems: £634,785.18
Conservatives: £1,417,545.93

Just sayin', is all.

SNP and Plaid Cymru miss the point

This BBC write up of the joint SNP-PC press conference (held, ironically, in London) mentions what appeared to be the main thrust of the full coverage which I saw on the BBC Parliament channel*:

Mr Wyn Jones said... "We promise a strong block of Plaid and SNP MPs to fight for fair funding for Wales and Scotland, to protect local services and the most vulnerable in society, protecting them from the cuts agenda of the three main London parties, push the green agenda and push for business growth."

He and Alex Salmond kept referring to 'the London parties' and funding from 'Westminster'. Sure, this type of pork barrel pleading is what you'd expect - they want to get as much money from 'London' as they can, and I am sure that they will, but there is an upper limit to how much they can get (and it might well be less than what they get now). They also paid lip service to the idea that they want to get the private sector in their own countries going again, fair enough.

But they ignored or overlooked a third flow of money over which they have a lot of control, namely the flows which are a result of the restrictive planning system. Home-Owner-Ism is just as rife in those countries as it is in England, which forces Welsh and Scottish people to take out much larger mortgages than they really need to, and most of the interest that they pay goes 'to London'.

If I were in charge in Wales or Scotland (but not allowed to change the tax system to more locally collected property taxes and less nationally collected income taxes**) the next best thing I could do would be to liberalise planning laws. That would make it cheaper to rent or buy business premises; and it would make it cheaper to rent or buy houses. Because people spend the bulk of their money locally, all the rent that is longer being sucked out of the productive economy, and all the interest that is not being syphoned off 'to London' would slosh round the Welsh or Scottish economies instead.

What can possibly go wrong?

* The physical contrast between Wyn Jones and Salmond is quite comical, Wyn Jones is a small, thin, pale grey man, and Salmond appears to be about two foot taller, two foot wider and slightly larger than life. This is not so obvious from the picture accompanying the article.

** Both SNP and Plaid Cymru, like the Lib Dems, have the insane idea of replacing Council Tax with Local Income Tax - brilliant politics but terrible economics.

As I have said before, the problem with Council Tax is not that it is a property tax, the problem is that it is a Poll Tax. At the very least, we could increase the number of bands. If we had from Band A all the way to Band Z with a 20% gap between each band (as at present), then Council Tax on a Band A property would be £50 or £100 a year or something and for one in Band Z it would be £5,000 or £10,000.

More Statist Waffling

Need I say that this authoritarian hag and her intrusive, state loving plan are both the brainchild of the Scottish Labour Party?

"Catherine Stihler urged a powerful European Parliament committee to impose an all-out ban on alcoholic drinks which also include caffeine. The move follows growing concern over Buckfast tonic wine. The drink is 15 per cent alcohol and contains as much caffeine as eight cans of cola in a standard bottle."

HOLY CRAP!!! CAFFEINE?!! We better do something before it's too late!

I mean it's almost as if this hag thinks that people need caffeine to get through the day...

"Caffeine addiction can lead to a whole host of medical problems, not to mention its link with crime and violence on Scottish streets."

You're taking the fucking piss, right? According to MedicineNet, 80% of the world consumes caffeiene on a daily basis. Lest we forget the victims of these scum criminals who were fuelled by their addiction of such a deadly drug - the criminals who steal, lie, sell themselves and encourage a downfall in society when they can't get their £1.79 jar of Nescafe. Grow the hell up you cow.

"The fact is many consumers are unaware of the damage they are doing to their bodies and lack the essential information to make an informed decision about what they purchase."

Ah yes, I wondered where that argument was! We need the state to tell us what is and is not safe for us, because we junkies, when we buy our jasmine tea, are unaware just how much damage we are doing to our bodies with this deadly caffeine drug.

"Her campaign has already been backed by MEPs from Sweden, where concern is growing about young people mixing high caffeine energy drinks, such as Red Bull, with alcohol."

PEOPLE DRINKING WHAT THEY WANT?! WE CANNOT TOLERATE SUCH SPIRITUALLY IMPURE ACTIONS! 



Now seriously, economically thinking, does this stupid bint realise what kind of knock on effect this will have? Scotland has neds, chavs, scum, whatever. They drink a HELL of a lot of Buckfast, the main target of this ban. Buckfast is rather highly priced in Scotland, and will be unaffected by the minimum price mandate being proposed by the Scottish Nazional Party. Considering how much of it is sold (not to mention caffeinated drinks like Red Bull that are bought just to add to alcohol) a ban will put the Buckfast producers out of business. And the neds? Well they'll just move on to something else. Then they'll ban that. Then the next thing. Then the next thing. And on, and on, and on, and on.

Catherine Stihler = stupid slag.

Scottish Tories: The value-for-money party

From Public Finance

Scottish Tories have condemned plans by the Holyrood government to end the right of all new tenants to buy their council or housing association homes. Chief whip David McLetchie described the decision, the first major change to the policy introduced by the Conservatives 25 years ago, as an 'act of naked political vandalism'.

He said: 'Nearly half a million homes have been bought thanks to a policy which has done more to make housing affordable for working people in Scotland than any other before or since (1). At the same time receipts from sales, now approaching £7bn (2), have enabled other rented homes to be modernised and new council houses to be built (3) for those who continued to rent in the past 25 years.'

1) Are houses in Scotland particularly cheap or affordable? Nope.

2) £7 billion sounds like a lot, but divide that by half a million and the average selling price was £14,000 each. If they'd retained those, they could have collected twice as much in rent in the interim and still own the housing!

NB, average net rents in social housing (after Housing & Council Tax Benefit) are about £30 a week x 52 weeks x 20 years x 500,000 homes = £16 billion, plus a tenth of those will now be let to Housing Benefit claimants, call that another £2 billion cost to the taxpayer, total cost to the taxpayer £18 billion, give or take a large margin of error.

3) How many homes can you build for £14,000? A third or a quarter of a home, maybe? If my estimate of £18 billion loss is correct, they could have afforded to build another 400,000 units of social housing in addition to the 500,000 they shouldn't have sold off in the first place.

From the point of view of the taxpayer, who committed the bigger "act of naked political vandalism"?

Epic Fail from the Fake Statistics Department.

Oo-er!

We've had our fulsome chuckle at the recent claim that "a 40p minimum unit price - coupled with a ban on promotions - would cut the number of alcohol-related deaths by about 70 in its first year", not least because there were - allegedly - only "8,724 alcohol-related deaths in 2007" in the whole of the UK anyway, so such a reduction would be within any sensible margin of measuring error.

But fair do's. Now, remember that Scotland represents less then a tenth of the population of the UK as a whole, so we'd expect the number of "alcohol-related deaths" (however defined) in Scotland to be in the order of a thousand or so and any cut to be in the order of, er, half a dozen to a dozen.

To my flabberstonishgaspment, I now read in The Torygraph, h/t Health Minister Dick, that"SNP ministers have published an academic report which indicates the measure would cut hospital admissions and deaths by 3,600 a year."

OK. When I'm in charge, I'll announce that I will ban conker fights (are they still legal?), which will "reduce the number of bruised knuckles and deaths by 3,600 a year" and I'll ban schoolboy soccer matches, which will "reduce the number of hacked shins and deaths by 36,000 a year" just to see if anybody is actually paying attention.

Hypocrite/Twat* Of The Week

The Scottish government has been doing its level best to kill off the alcohol industry for some time, so what is Alex Salmond whining about?

* Delete according to taste.

"Brown holds his breath as Scots vote in Glenrothes"

Here's hoping for death by asphyxiation!