Why Derek Mackay is better than Labour

There was some eejit on twitter asked me why I hadn't criticised Derek Mackay's most excellent budget since it has tax rises and I'd criticised Labour plan to raise taxes on the lowest-paid workers.

So...

Calum Cashley‏ @CalumCashley

Replying to @RWBBlog

Well, you see, I haven’t actually been writing many blogs this year (only 5, in fact) so it’s not at all unexpected that I left it up to the Great Deek of Mackay to explain things himself. Since you’re interested, however, I think it’s flaming marvellous that the financial

4:17 PM - 20 Dec 2017

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   Calum Cashley‏ @CalumCashley 6h6 hours ago
   
   Replying to @CalumCashley @RWBBlog
   maestro has pulled off a stunningly good budget and he is much to be congratulated. Changing the taxation system in Scotland so that the lowest paid pay less tax than they have been doing while the highest paid chip in a bit more is fabulous and a very good start. I also like
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   Calum Cashley‏ @CalumCashley 6h6 hours ago
   
   the fact that he’s increasing cash for the NHS at more than twice the rate of inflation. I like the fact that the frontline polis budget is protected and that the VAT reclaim that the SNP ground out of the Tory UK Government is going straight to the polis and the firies.
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   Calum Cashley‏ @CalumCashley 6h6 hours ago
   
   I like that there’s nearly a quarter of a billion quid going into early years provision, that the public sector pay cap is lifted and that the people in the public sector getting paid the least will get the biggest increases. I’m delighted that there’s cash to help small
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   Calum Cashley‏ @CalumCashley 6h6 hours ago
   
   businesses get rates relief and they get a chance to survive so they can later thrive and provide more jobs. I’m delighted with £600 million to roll out broadband across the country and there’s £4 billion (every billion’s a thousand million) for infrastructure – that should
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   Calum Cashley‏ @CalumCashley 6h6 hours ago
   
   provide jobs as well as improving lives. The National Investment Bank, the Building Scotland fund, Frank’s law, increase in Carer’s Allowance, free access to sanitary products in schools, baby boxes – these things are wonderful things. 50,000 new affordable homes in this
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   Calum Cashley‏ @CalumCashley 6h6 hours ago
   
   Parliament, the End Homelessness Together fund, the Child Poverty Fund and £100 million a year to mitigate the UK cuts to welfare – these are crackingly good things. Tax? Yeah, Mackay got it right. I’d like to see him go further – reduce the threshold for the higher rate to
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   Calum Cashley‏ @CalumCashley 6h6 hours ago
   
   £40k and maybe go lower but he’ll have to consider what other impacts that might have on families and individuals. I think it will be doable. Derek Mackay’s sensible and well-thought-through budget stands in stark contrast to the barking, unthinking and unanalysed guff that
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   Calum Cashley‏ @CalumCashley 6h6 hours ago
   
   we’ve come to expect from the Labour party – including the daft idea to up basic rate tax for the lowest paid. Barkington maddington! I look at the Labour party and ask where the competence of Jack McConnell has gone, where the thorough analysis of Susan Deacon has gone,
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   Calum Cashley‏ @CalumCashley 6h6 hours ago
   
   the ‘feck-it-let’s-get-it-done’ of Mo Mowlam, the intellectual rigour of Robin Cook – where has it gone? More to the point, the awful crud that has replaced them; James Kelly on finance (may the wee man help us if he ever gets close to the working side of a budget); a Scottish
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   Calum Cashley‏ @CalumCashley 6h6 hours ago
   
   Labour leader who dances about like a wee boy needin a pee when he gets excited, a UK leader with all the penetration of a marshmallow at low speed reading out invented correspondence at PMQs, a party devoid of imagination, principle or ability wherein hope has died to be
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   Calum Cashley‏ @CalumCashley 6h6 hours ago
   
   replaced by a bitterness too awful to swallow. I like Kezia, I liked her when she worked at NUS Scotland and gave the SNP a hard time but did it with good humour and with intelligence. I think she was thrust into a leadership role before she was ready but she stepped up to the
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   Calum Cashley‏ @CalumCashley 6h6 hours ago
   
   plate and she gave it a go and Labour in Scotland stood back and waited for her to fall. What an appalling shadow of a once great party. A party that, when in power in Glasgow Council, spent millions trying to avoid giving female workers compensation for decades of underpaying
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   Calum Cashley‏ @CalumCashley 6h6 hours ago
   
   them. They spent millions on legal fees while Glasgow’s schools were screaming out for more teachers. A Labour party which is so blinded to what is right it would rather lash out at the SNP Scottish Government than fight the Tory UK Government that is visiting so much pain upon
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   Calum Cashley‏ @CalumCashley 6h6 hours ago
   
   so many Scots. A Labour party where one of its leadership contenders actually said that the SNP was the enemy rather than the Tories. A Labour party that has been beaten into third place in both of the latest Parliamentary elections in Scotland – losing to Ruth Davidson’s
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   Calum Cashley‏ @CalumCashley 6h6 hours ago
   
   policy-free publicity stunts in 2016 and again in 2017. It’s come to something when the party that was dominant in Scotland for more than half a century, arguably right up until six years ago, is now in the wilderness and howling at the moon instead of trying to work out why.
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   Calum Cashley‏ @CalumCashley 6h6 hours ago
   
   I had hopes that Kezia would do what John Swinney did for the SNP and build the policy platform on an absolutely certain and proven foundation. I thought she was starting to get there, starting to sound like she had ideas for the future, but the Labour party had no discipline
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   Calum Cashley‏ @CalumCashley 6h6 hours ago
   
   and no patience; that’s why the daft tax notion was rushed out and splatted straight onto the cold, hard ground. Instead of supporting her and developing the party the eejits with ambition unfettered by talent undermined her. Staggering and towering stupidity; self-immolation
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   Calum Cashley‏ @CalumCashley 6h6 hours ago
   
   and communal harm for the sake of shouting “I’ve got a better ra-ra skirt than you”. Labour is now led by a band of wandering minstrels strumming away at the court of Theresa May, desperately trying to be relevant while avoiding taking a stance on anything important like Brexit
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   Calum Cashley‏ @CalumCashley 6h6 hours ago
   
   with a branch office in Scotland inhabited, it seems, by brutish collection of knuckle-dragging wanna-be student radicals. Gone are the talents of the Scottish Labour Action squad for whose efforts Scotland has reason to be grateful. Gone, even, are the meagre talents of Wendy
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   Calum Cashley‏ @CalumCashley 6h6 hours ago
   
   Alexander, Sarah Boyack and Margaret Curran. Labour’s left with the people who missed the talent show audition because they couldn’t work out how to open the door. So no article on Mackay’s excellent budget but he’s a mile ahead of anyone in the opposition. #superdooperSNP