ASH Scotland And How Crippling Taxes Are Somehow Good For The Economy

Via the ever-vigilant Belinda, you've just got to sit back and admire the world class chutzpah of ASH Scotland's Sheila "that kettle is black" Duffy in describing the Scottish Retail Consortium.

Your story (“Scottish retailers claim ‘health levy’ will cost jobs”, The Herald, October 6) highlights the expected lobbying over this issue from a retail sector keen to protect its members’ interests.

Only to then follow that with brazenly transparent self-interest of her own.

ASH Scotland’s response to last year’s Finance Committee inquiry into preventative spending concluded that prevention is better than cure and that tobacco control is a cost-effective public health measure.

Because, like other Bauld-faced arroganzas we could name, Sheila - although just a common or garden fake charity PR exec - is the font of all things economic. Obviously.

See, Sheila has said that it is cost-effective, and therefore it must be, mustn't it?

The SRC's submission is entirely different. It may have seemed incontrovertible ...

Ian Shearer, of the Scottish Retail Consortium (SRC), told a key Holyrood committee the sector was “in shock” at hearing of the new tax, which had “caused profound anger among the companies affected and wider unease among others”.

The SRC described the levy as a threat to job creation, not just in retailing but in the construction and manufacturing sectors.

Mr Shearer told the Enterprise, Energy and Tourism Committee: “The retail supplement is presented as a public health levy. No objective evidence has yet been given to support this description.

“It appears more to be a tax raid targeted specifically at a handful of companies that the Scottish Government believes can afford to pay it.

“There is no precedent for introducing such an element into the system of business rates which are by definition allocated to general funding of local authorities.”

Mr Shearer said of the impact of the levy, which is aimed at raising £30 million next year and £40m in subsequent years: “The UK supermarket sector is one of the most competitive in the world and operates on low margins of around 3% to 5%.

“Assuming the mid-point of 4%, funding a levy of £40 million in its second and third years would be the equivalent of the affected stores needing to do another £1bn of business annually to cover the cost, disregarding VAT.”

... but that's just an illusion.

Why, the main drivers of economic prosperity in Scotland are those who take taxes from profitable businesses - like Sheila, for example - to spend on, well, other people like Sheila, of course. How can anyone possibly think anything different?

There is a silver lining, though, in the form of the proposed minimum alcohol pricing that the Jock assembly will soon be battling the EU about, as succinctly described by commenter, John Anderson.

Would the potential minimum price on alcohol not put money back in the retailers pocket? Therefore this would just be taking it straight back out

Hmm, that would definitely be one way of calming the controversy over alcohol retailers being a beneficiary of minimum pricing.

And, the government would enrich themselves again on the back of legislation they designed themselves, while businesses who have built themselves up on their own effort - and who truly create jobs organically from public demand - have the fruit of their endeavours stolen from them by way of thuggery, extortion, and theft. Again.

Meanwhile, we all get punished as the state continues to enjoy massive revenues from products they accuse others of profiting from.

Not. About. Health.