NI needs to take reins from London
I ENJOYED Alex Kane’s musing on the possibilities of a Northern Ireland ‘Arab spring’.
If it occurs then I suspect that the driving motivation will be economic, since I favour Bill Clinton’s axiom: ‘It’s the economy, stupid!’
In a previous letter (News Letter, 29/12/2011) I observed that the £12.8 billion aggregate income for Northern Ireland stated in a briefing paper (‘Funding the United Kingdom’s devolved administrations’ 28/10/2011) failed to include £11 billion in VAT that a chancellor of the NI Exchequer could expect to receive (‘Northern Ireland annual business inquiry (experimental)’, published by Department of Finance & Personnel 20/4/2011).
The combined £24 billion total income would exceed the £21.7 billion expenditure cited, and other income streams such as corporation tax and business rates would push the surplus higher still. Also, Basil McCrea has since stated that NI expenditure will drop to £18.8 billion this year (News Letter, 30/1/2012).
For example, another £1 billion would come from fuel duty. The NIA Research and Library service briefing note ‘Major fuel supplies in NI’ (6/5/2010) states that unleaded petrol cost £1.16 in February that year. This amount included £0.63 (54%) fuel duty and £0.17 (15%) of VAT. There were 479,926 tonnes of diesel and 315,773 tonnes of petrol consumed in NI during 2010-2011. Fuel duty and VAT on this amount of fuel would produce an income stream of about £1 billion for a chancellor of the NI Exchequer, and these fuel figures are considerably down on previous years, and both the price of fuel and VAT have increased considerably since then. It is likely that duty on cigarettes and alcohol would produce another £1 billion each, and I would guestimate that a chancellor of the NI Exchequer might receive between £28-35 billion in annual revenues were there an independent Northern Ireland (INI).
If I could use common parlance here, these statistics would suggest to me that the cream is being skimmed off the milk before we receive it – we’re being short-changed.
This would explain why Zimbabwe’s second city of Bulawayo has more skyscrapers than Belfast, the lack of a motorway linking our two main cities of Derry and Belfast, and the continued absence of even a visitor centre at the Giant’s Causeway, i.e. we have a Third World economy because we’re being short-changed.
Unlike Irish republicans, I see no benefit to be derived by the people of Northern Ireland from simply switching one set of political masters at Westminster with another set in Dublin who will also skim the cream off the milk before we receive it.
Where I differ from the Scots is that I think we should first seek maximum devolution for Stormont to take over political and economic reins from Westminster, and then once this has been successful we could move to independence within the EU.
Furthermore, I do suspect that there is room for a political party here in NI to emulate the SNP.
Bernard J Mulholland
Belfast
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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Comments
There are 3 comments to this article
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s magowan
Friday, February 3, 2012 at 04:41 PMI would prefer Independence outside of the EU and of course the ROI.
leaningona
Friday, February 3, 2012 at 09:47 AMI enjoyed the article. Independence outside the EU is doable too, as Norway and Switzerland have proven.
DM
Friday, February 3, 2012 at 09:15 AMGreat article. Quite refreshing to hear some bold thinking about NI's future, rather than the same old, same old, sectarian bile that is thrown around.
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