Only London, the South and East of England had higher gross disposable incomes per head than Scotland in 2015. This is testimony to the robustness of the wider Scottish economy and the Scottish government’s progressive policies. The recent data revealing that the Scottish economy is growing at 4 times the rate of the UK as-a-whole and the numerous good news reports in my blog over the past months suggest that the 2016 and 2017 figures will be similar if not better.
Table 2: NUTS1 gross disposable household income (GDHI)1, UK, 20152
| NUTS1 Regions | GDHI per head (£) | GDHI per head growth on 2014 (percentage) | GDHI per head index (UK=100) | Total GDHI (£ million) | Total GDHI growth on 2014 (percentage) | Share of UK total GDHI (percentage) | |||
| United Kingdom | 19,106 | 2.9 | 100.0 | 1,243,970 | 3.7 | 100.0 | |||
| North East | 16,197 | 3.9 | 84.8 | 42,512 | 4.2 | 3.4 | |||
| North West | 16,915 | 2.9 | 88.5 | 121,344 | 3.5 | 9.8 | |||
| Yorkshire and The Humber | 16,267 | 2.9 | 85.1 | 87,691 | 3.5 | 7.0 | |||
| East Midlands | 16,935 | 2.5 | 88.6 | 79,206 | 3.3 | 6.4 | |||
| West Midlands | 16,559 | 2.0 | 86.7 | 95,234 | 2.7 | 7.7 | |||
| East of England | 19,796 | 3.0 | 103.6 | 120,292 | 4.0 | 9.7 | |||
| London | 25,293 | 2.7 | 132.4 | 219,386 | 4.3 | 17.6 | |||
| South East | 21,808 | 2.8 | 114.1 | 195,138 | 3.7 | 15.7 | |||
| South West | 19,128 | 3.5 | 100.1 | 104,651 | 4.4 | 8.4 | |||
| Wales | 16,341 | 3.3 | 85.5 | 50,642 | 3.6 | 4.1 | |||
| Scotland | 18,315 | 2.7 | 95.9 | 98,408 | 3.2 | 7.9 | |||
| Northern Ireland | 15,913 | 3.0 | 83.3 | 29,466 | 3.6 | 2.4 | |||
| Source: Office for National Statistics | |||||||||
| Notes: | |||||||||
| 1. Figures may not sum to totals as a result of rounding. | |||||||||
| 2. 2015 estimates are provisional. | |||||||||
Talking-up Scotland 
Ah, what a relief to find some easy-to-understand numbers – I was trying (and failing) to make sense of graphs and stuff over on thecommongreen.scot blog, to do with GDP, of course. Stark reminder here just how disproportionate the London and south east England shares are – bankers, markets etc. Dr Craig did post this interesting TED talk on an alternative to GDP that I rather liked the idea of:
Just makes me wish Scotland was independent now, though, and maybe we would have got a mention in the ‘translating economic growth into wellbeing’ category. Then it makes me sad that we are still attached to the vindictive shambles that is the uk. But, even though the Scottish government is shackled, I wonder how the policies they have, and want to have, adopted would translate into sustainable economic growth in a real country? Indicators are good for those countries that declare that is their intention & enact policies to bring it about, and environment is a part of it, so we have a huge amount of renewables and a government (well, the Scottish SNP one, obviously – the Westminster one wants us poor and stupid) that wants to tackle poverty, inequality, bigotry, etc etc – I think we’d be high on the SEDA scale.
It has made me think, most of the media in the uk, extremists that they are, focus on the numbers and percentages – good ol’ Thatcherite ideals of only money gives you status – so in their searches to do down Scotland and scream ‘bad’ numbers at Scotland, they pay no attention to any wellbeing factor. Usually the numbers are taken well out of context anyway, or blatantly wrong.
There has been a graph going about showing Scotland’s most deprived youths are not going to university at the same rate as in the rest of the U.K., so (apparently) students not having to pay fees is a terrible policy & does not help deprived background students – now, obviously, that is utter tosh. There can be many reasons for the lower numbers, but I very much doubt any one of those reasons is not having to pay fees, it is a laughable conclusion. Perhaps the biggest reason is that the Scottish SNP government has an integrated education policy, and you can go to college for two years and are more likely to get a job out of it – quicker and cheaper – or if you fancy, you go on to only another 2 years of university. If they didn’t have grants back in my day, that’s what I’d have done, I certainly wouldn’t be paying university fees. ,,, So, back to my point, what if we take those ‘lower numbers for Scotland’ and take the view that MORE people from deprived backgrounds are, in fact, benefitting in some other way, that is, they are not getting into debt but still they are being educated (in a more practical manner) and their wellbeing has improved, and that of society.
I should try and find a link to that graph, can’t remember where I saw it.
So, instead of trying to refute the extremist media version of the world, which, unfortunately can sometimes be just downright lies, we always add the wellbeing context. (Yes, yes, I know you are already doing this John!) e.g. The endless, tedious, rhetoric of Scotland being the highest taxed part of the uk- we are NOT – we have to remind ourselves: free prescriptions (that actually SAVE the NHS money because the admin costs are gone), lower council tax (and more services for your money? no water meters for sure), no tolls on roads, ,,, I can’t remember the rest, but you get the drift, our wellbeing is improved by the Scottish government policies. I think these things need to be repeated endlessly. Independence for Scotland ‘could be bad for the economy’ (that really is a laughable one, what with Brexit and everything, at the moment) – no it isn’t because the economy is an instrument to be used for our wellbeing, and only one government can deliver it, a Scottish one that is autonomous & fiscally independent. Independence would be the best thing for our wellbeing.
Wonder what the wellbeing factor is of the U.K. Government policies?
Let’s see,,, they have stopped subsidies to get windfarms built in Scotland (which are good wellbeing items), but are spending our taxes to build an expensive nuclear power station (bad wellbeing factor) in a different country, that will cost everyone more to buy electricity (very bad wellbeing factor), with most of the profits going abroad (extremist-version of bad wellbeing factor). Nope, can’t think of any good policies that would contribute to wellbeing.
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Oh aye, that graph was from Jamie Ross at buzzfeed, he wrote an article on Scottish university education – free tuition fees don’t make for equality he says. I got bored half way through reading it though – because it doesn’t look at the whole picture, a bit too puffy for my tastes.
I wrote to my MSP re college education while the uproar about equal conditions was going on (the pay deal was already done, they were still fighting for equal conditions a year after it had been agreed) and got a fairly comprehensive review of how the SNP college eduction integrates with university education policies. Also kept me updated on negotiations of staff conditions, including one fairly outrageous letter from a college head (basically saying they could sing for it, but in politick-speak). (That was just before the scotgov had to step in and sort it).
Every time I hear someone in business talking about how they introduced the real living wage, or improved conditions in some way (flexible working etc), they always say their business is running better, more efficiently, higher profits – why anyone would want to short-change their staff is beyond me.
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Thanks Contrary. These are great. Set up your own blog? You’ve got the stuff
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You are far too kind! Got to be realistic though, I would never get round to it 🙂 ,,, but you never know,,,
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