Financial feathers are badly ruffled

Sir, By jove, I seem to have ruf- fled Mr Crossan’s feathers somewhat (Letters, April 7), but at no point did I accuse him of lying.

I said two things: that he had made a basic but honest mistake of getting his currencies mixed up, and that he was distorting facts to suit his own argument. And, what do you know, he is at it again. He quotes Professor Brian Ashcroft as calculating that Scotland is: ‘Not in deficit, but in surplus to the tune of £68.5 billion.’

What Mr Crossan omits to tell you is that Professor Ashcroft was talking about a cumulative total taken over the 10-year period from 1980 to 1990.

Scotland did produce a surplus in each of these intervening years, but that has zero relevance to right here, right now, no matter how much Mr Crossan would like to try to make you believe otherwise.

The sad fact, however, and one that Mr Crossan will not reveal, is that Scotland has produced a fiscal surplus in only three years of the 17 since then, and that Professor Ashcroft has also said: ‘Scotland has already spent its oil fund.’

He also goes on to quote well known Government and Expenditure Revenue Scotland (GERS) basher Professor Richard Murphy.

Last week I asked Professor Murphy that if, in his opinion the GERS figures were unreliable, did it automatically mean that Scotland’s deficit was therefore by definition overstated?

His reply: ‘I never said that.’

So the deficit could actually be in excess of £15 billion, according to one of Mr Crossan’s sources.

I write this the day after it has been revealed that Scotland’s economy is now in negative growth, and we are one bad fiscal quarter away from going into an official recession.

I think I will leave the silly acronyms to Mr Crossan.

Mike McGeachy, Campbeltown.