RayC

If you are going to fundamentally change the nature of the statement to fit your narrative, then I don't know what to say (an unusual occurrence). The original PROPOSITION does NOT read: "England WAS (my caps) being financed by Scotland" but " ... IS (again my caps).." Obviously two completely different statements. At least you now - finally - concede that the article does not support the proposition although you stop short of stating that as a piece of statistical analysis, it is flawed. At the same time, you are quick to infer that any comment of mine should be treat

You may be correct that if extra-regio figures are allocated, then Scotland's per capita GDP exceeds all other UK regions with the exception of London and the South East. However, even if this is true, it does not alter the fact that the per capita GDP for England as a whole is greater than that of Scotland (https://fraserofallander.org/scottish-gdp-guide/#uk-comparison; chart 8: Unfortunately, this chart does not show England separately but, given that the figures for Wales and NI drag down the figures for the UK as a whole you will, no doubt, agree that this is intuitively obvious). I would

Couple of articles. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_of_the_United_Kingdom_by_GVA_per_capita https://fullfact.org/economy/comparing-scottish-uk-growth-rates/ The statement in the Fullfact article is particularly relevant: "She may have been referring to something like GDP per head. It’s lower in Scotland than in the UK as a whole, but only by 2-3%" I'm probably hoping against hope that there is no tangential discussion about the merits of GVA as an economic measure, or a questioning of how 'Fullfacts' arrived at their conclusion.

Which rather begs the question, why did you endorse the post containing the statement 'England is being financed by Scotland', if you were unsure of its' correctness or its' supporting source's validity?

So your answer to each of the questions I posed is 'Not proven'?

That's a bit embarrassing! My bad. For clarity's sake, are you saying that (1) the original statement - 'England is being financed by Scotland' - is correct and/or (2) England's GDP per capita is not greater than Scotland's and/or (3) You consider the conclusions reached by the original source to be valid?

Presumably because the EU deem it in their interests to do so. That is your opinion. Another way of looking at it is to say that it is a pragmatic business decision. As a business associate once said to me: "Anything for a friend ... for a fee".

There's a lot of 'in between' between 82 and 122,000 deaths. Truth is, up until the vaccination programme, the Thai government has made a pretty good job of managing this pandemic. Unfortunately, the exact opposite is true of the UK government.

Surely you have answered your own questions? The EU's raison d'etre is to protect its' members' interests, therefore it is protectionist by definition. The UK is no longer a member and therefore is not entitled to this protection. It is now, in this instance, a competitor. The EU sees an opportunity to grab business for its' members' and is pursuing this objective. Why should this be a surprise? The EU would be failing in its' duty to its' members' if it did otherwise.

Unfortunately, relying on statistical unsound, biased sources (almost) inevitably results in incorrect conclusions. England's GDP per head is greater than Scotland's. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Scotland https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_England I'd imagine that there are numerous other inaccuracies in your source's data.

And if Thailand had done the same number of tests, and used the same registration criteria as the UK, the figures would show 122k deaths from Covid in Thailand? I doubt it. The vaccination programme is going well in the UK. Let's hope that it continues, and that Thailand can get things sorted out.