WHAT HAS BEEN THE UNION DIVIDEND?

AN EXCELLENT GUEST ARTICLE FROM MIA, MY REGULAR COLUMNIST, NEWLY APPOINTED IN THE LAST WEEK.

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THE UNION DIVIDEND, DEPOPULATION.

The most important resource a country has is its people.  The Scottish people is what makes Scotland what it is. Without them, their history, heritage, traditions and languages there would never be a Scotland.  What we call Scotland would be just another section in the world map where the indigenous population has been displaced and swapped by something else.

The first record of Scotland’s population was Webster’s in 1755, which claimed Scotland had 1,265,380 people. Some disputed estimations of the population of Scotland around the year 1700 put it between 1 and 1.5 million people.

Webster’s “census” was done 50 years after the treaty of union, after some clearances had already started, after lots of people migrated away from Scotland to America and after “the rebels” were dispatched in ships to the colonies, so it would not be a surprise if Scotland’s population had already decreased significantly from 1700 to 1755.

At the time of the Treaty of Union, it was estimated that the population of England was around 5,200,000, that is, England entered the union with 3.5 to 5 times more population than Scotland.  By 1900 England had already around 6.7 times more population than Scotland.  By 2000 this figure became 9 and by 2011 England had around 10 times more population than Scotland.  Goodness knows what scary ratio will the 2021 (now 2022) census hides.

A way of measuring the success of a political union is by watching how the population and the wealth of the component countries increase in the same measure, suggesting that the union is balanced and fair.

Clearly a balanced benefit among the component parts of the UK union is not what we see.  The statistical figures speak for themselves: toxic policies have been draining Scotland of its people for 300 years and, by the look of it, this continues to this day.

A faster increase in population in England compared with Scotland works against Scotland in several ways.  For example, because “the UK” resources’ revenues are divided on the basis of population, the less population Scotland has and the more England accumulates, the larger the share of Scotland’s revenues England will get and the smaller the share of England’s revenues that Scotland will receive in return, exacerbating the problem inequality as the time progresses.

But it is not only on material resources that Scotland is losing out.  Scotland is also being drained of its voice.  We are losing representation in the England as “the UK” parliament. We are about to lose two MPs shortly because of the difference in population growth between England and Scotland.  This is just another example of the “union dividend” – England’s ruling class causes the problem and walks away leaving us to deal with it. Then it comes back later on to penalise us for the problem they caused.

Scotland’s demographic situation has been crying for 5 years for a political class in Scotland with a backbone to end this toxic union and give Scotland the much needed chance to recover its population, while finally start benefitting from its many natural resources.  However, due to misplaced and unjustified complacency and very poor time management from our representatives, Scotland is losing bit by bit its most precious resource and with it, its identity as a nation.

A couple of days ago I came across an old article from the main England government propaganda outlet, otherwise known as the BBC.  The article’s title was “UK deaths outnumber births for the first time in 40 years”.  It was published already in June 2021, but I only came across it a couple of days ago because I rarely pay attention now to anything he BBC says.

This article caught my attention though. It claimed: “Last year more deaths than births were registered in the UK for first time since 1976.  In total, just over 683,000 births were registered compared with nearly 690,000 deaths”.

In other words, there were in 2020 1% of more deaths than births in “the UK”.  Considering COVID and the number of deaths it caused in all 4 countries of the UK, 1% difference between deaths and births did not seem like an awful lot.

Since 2014, the pre-dissection of what the BBC says, in order to find out what hides behind the propaganda, has become second nature. So when one reads “the UK” with regards to population instead of referring to Scotland, Wales, NI or England, knowing how different the four populations are, you know immediately they are trying to lock back inside their “one-nation” Pandora box some nasty “union dividend”.

If you look at the time series for deaths and births available to download from the National Records of Scotland, you realise that this problem of deaths being higher than births, presented by the BBC back in June as a “once in 40 years” event and caused by COVID, is in fact a huge problem that has nothing to do with COVID and that has been affecting Scotland for at least half a decade (figure 1).  COVID has only made that problem impossible for the England government and its main propaganda outlet to hide it any longer.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they are already preparing us for a shocking census in 2022.  For instance, the 1% excess of deaths compared with births in “the UK” mentioned by the BBC is insignificant compared with the 37% excess of deaths compared to births in Scotland for 2020.  Yes, you read it correctly. According to the National Records of Scotland, under the “leadership” of this FM, Scotland saw during 2020 37% more deaths (64,093) than births (46,809).  If only she had walked into a charity shop and found a second hand backbone to wear in order to close the borders and stop some of those nasty virus variants getting in, maybe that scary percentage may have been less frightening.

When you look a little bit further back in time in those time series of births and deaths you realise that this process of natural contraction of population in Scotland with more deaths than births started to happen already at least in 1998.

Figure 1: Births and deaths in Scotland per year – graph plotted with data taken from the National Records of Scotland

The decrease in births may be a consequence of the change in women’s roles in society over time, but it is also caused by continuous migration out of our young.

According to the information available through the Office for National Statistics, Wales has also been experiencing for the last 5 years less births than deaths.  England and Northern Ireland however didn’t.  Considering the astronomical levels of death due to COVID in England, the fact that it continues to have more births than deaths suggests that England’s population is very healthy and sustainable, whereas Scotland’s and Wales’ are not.

It is seems obvious that the England government propaganda outlet was trying to brush another “union dividend” for Scotland and Wales under the “one nation” carpet.  The healthy excess of births in England and Northern Ireland compared to deaths have been able to mask the problem that Scotland and Wales’ populations have been experiencing since 2015.  If it was not because of COVID, this problem in Scotland and Wales would continue to be masked under the “one nation” mantra and ignored for years.

It is not surprising that England’s government has been hiding this.  What is surprising is that this has not been shouted from the rooftops by our alleged nationalist representatives in Scotland and Westminster.

Why is the census being delayed?  Well, this is just my own guess, but 5 years of more deaths than births in Scotland, a 37% more deaths than births in 2020 and the number of EU citizens and others leaving Scotland because of Brexit is going to make rather difficult to present Scotland’s population as a “growing” one.  The only way they are going to be able to do that is if there is a huge increase in the net migration from the England, Wales and NI into Scotland to compensate for the loss of EU citizens.

Let’s not forget that the census is done at a point in time.  We could have 200,000 people from the rest of the UK entering Scotland today and leaving after a week.  Scotland would be seen in that census with 200,000 people more than it really has, but the net migration figures for the year would remain low.  Smoke and mirrors then – but hasn’t that always been the way the UK has been run?

The situation of Wales and Scotland may well have been the result of decades of migration of the young from those countries in search for better opportunities because this toxic union has strangled their countries’ growth to avoid them becoming England’s competitors.

Whatever the reason, huge damage has now been permanently done to Scotland over decades if not centuries of neglect, and the result is that the dynamics of Scotland’s population has now irreversibly changed compared with that of England.

The populations of Scotland and England grow at very different rates, therefore to remain sustainable and healthy they need different policies.  Somebody who still thinks the toxic UK policies that have been draining Scotland of its population for 300 years are going to suddenly start working for us now cannot be taken seriously anymore.  What can be worse than policies that are contracting the population of a country?.

The disparity in population growth between Scotland and England is a clear symptom of the enormous damage that remaining in this union is inflicting on Scotland. The 5 extra years that Sturgeon’s obstinacy forced Scotland to remain in the union have not done Scotland any favours to its demographics.

It is my personal opinion that Scotland and Wales’ populations are being artificially maintained at just about “surviving levels” by frequent but controlled influxes of migration from England and elsewhere to hide the damage the union is doing to Scotland and Wales demographics.  I say controlled influxes because I think that the last thing England’s ruling class want is to give Scotland or Wales any excuse to demand a bigger share of their own resources or, heaven forbid, an increase in their representation in England’s parliament and a bigger say in how to run this union of non-equals.

For obvious reasons, a population where the number of deaths per year surpasses the number of births, will tend to contract naturally in the long term.  From the figure 1, it is clear that we have been having this problem already since at least 1998.  So how does Scotland population continue to grow?

The answer is positive net migration into Scotland.  Figure 2 shows how from at least 2002-03 onwards, more people migrated in to Scotland than out.

Figure 2: people migrating to and out of Scotland – graph plotted with data obtained from the National Records of Scotland

Seen together, figure 1 and 2 suggest that Scotland’s increase in population has been artificially maintained with positive net migration.  I say artificially maintained because most of the migrants that come in to Scotland do so transiently.  At some point they will return to their countries or move somewhere else.  Only a few set roots and remain permanently in Scotland to set their families here.

To prove this point, I have plotted the number of births per year from 2004 until 2020 against the cumulative value of net migration to Scotland since 2004.

Figure 3: Impact of migration on births per year – Data for births and migration was obtained from the National Records of Scotland.

As it can be seen in Figure 3, the accumulated levels of migration Scotland has had for the last 16 years have not helped to stabilise birth rate.  Scotland may have had record number of migrants among its population but the number of births per year continues to decrease and it has been doing so since at least 2008.  In other words, migration may have increased the population slightly but it is not helping in the long term to stop the ageing of the population nor to stop the natural tendency of Scotland’s demographics to contract.

There was a census completed in 2001 and 2011.  The population given by the census in 2001 was 5,062,011 and in 2011 5,295,403.  This means an increase in population between 2001 and 2011 of over 230,000 people.  How much of that was thanks to migration in to Scotland and how much due to natural growth of the original population?

Well, the real figure is difficult to calculate because migrants come and go and with them some of the Scottish people.  But with the aim to illustrate how the apparent increase in population may be just a temporary bubble caused by transient migration, I have plotted in the figure below the actual increase in population from 2001 to 2011 as shown in the census (labelled in the figure as “2011-2001”), versus the one we would have in an imaginary scenario where there would be no net migration in (labelled in the figure as “Adjusted-2001”).  The aim is to see if the Scottish population still has a natural tendency to grow on its own.  To calculate this latter figure, I simply considered the original population value given by the 2001 census (5,062,011) and added to it all the births from 2002 to 2011 and discounted the deaths.  This value makes the assumption that the number of births and deaths would remain similar between the population that migrates in and the one that migrates out of Scotland. This may not be necessarily the case, but the aim of the graph is simply to illustrate with an extreme example (net migration of zero) how an ageing population, as Scotland’s, may give the false impression of continuous growth due to transient migration.

Figure 4: impact on migration on population change

Migration to Scotland is positive because we need migrants to avoid Scotland’s population contracting.  But what we have to be careful about is not to reach a point where the excuse of needing migration is misused as a way to swap huge chunks of Scotland’s original population by population from elsewhere that comes only transiently to Scotland and then leaves without developing any form of allegiance to Scotland or interest for its heritage and culture.  It stands to the obvious that a progressive substitution of sectors of the original population of Scotland by another will lead to a loss of sense of nationhood.

To avoid Scotland’s population contracting, we cannot simply rely on admitting more and more people in. Admitting people in is good, but it is even better to reduce the numbers of the Scottish people who feel the need to migrate elsewhere because they do not have in Scotland the opportunities available to them they find in England or elsewhere.

The UK is supposed to be a union of equals.  If it was a true union instead of a toxic arrangement, our young should be able to find the same opportunities here than they may find in England.  The fact that they cannot shows inequality between countries when we are made pay the same rate for being in this union, is another reason to terminate it: paying the same for lesser service it is not value for money, so we are better on our own.  If the same opportunities that England offers were found in Scotland, and less Scots felt compelled to migrate in search of those opportunities, maybe Scotland would not have to rely so much on the people from elsewhere to keep the illusion that our population is still growing and we would not see such an alarming progressive decrease in the number of births.

Admitting lots of migrants when they are needed is fine, but giving them as soon as they arrive the right to vote and the power to balancing out the right of the people of Scotland to run their own country in their own way, does not seem right.  No other country does this. England for instance, with the excuse that it does not have its own parliament and uses its own MPs as its de-facto devolved government does not allow migrants other than those of the commonwealth to participate in the vote.

Migrants bring their voting patterns from their origin country and in great numbers will effectively silence the original people of Scotland.  This could be interpreted as a modern version of colonialism and should be avoided.  You want to give the migrants the vote? By all means, do so, but only after they have stayed in Scotland for long enough to see it as their home and their country, and after they have embraced Scotland’s culture and gained citizenship by swearing allegiance to Scotland.

The FM of Scotland tells us that “Time is on her side”.  It may well be on “her” side but 5 years of higher deaths than births is telling us that most certainly time is not on Scotland’s side.  From the figures above, it is evident that Scotland run out of time long ago and maintaining a pretence of modest population growth by lots of people transiently migrating into Scotland and allowing them to dilute the vote of the original Scottish population does not solve the underlying cause of the problem.  It causes another one.

MY COMMENTS

Once again Mia demonstrates the urgency of securing Independence. What world does the FM live in if she thinks time is on her side ? All around her the sands are shifting, none of them in Scotland’s favour. Yet she insists that Independence must not be mentioned during Cop26 where her voice, as it stands is silenced. What the World needs to hear is that Scotland cannot do anything until we have secured our freedom. We have a FM unwilling to voice that message but still assumes the leadership of the YES movement. She needs replaced urgently, even so a once in a lifetime opportunity to spread our Independence message across the World will have been spurned by a weak, insipid, Leader.

I am, as always

Yours for Scotland.

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