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Dear Scottish Fetchies

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IanS Feb 2014 11:25am, 22 Feb 2014 1,610 posts	0 IanS This is touching on one of the biggest areas of uncertainty to me - what will actually happen to businesses based in Scotland (like my own, for example) If the companies are big enough, they can negotiate with the government and/or council to get grants, better conditions, etc. They can also afford to pay big accountancy firms to minimise their tax by manipulating their revenue so that profits are accrued in the country with the lowest corporate taxation, just like Google, Starbucks, Amazon etc. etc. You may get the jobs in your country but unless you have the lowest taxation you're not going to get the big bucks in tax, and that is just a fact of life with international businesses. The government can try and attract inward investment (or even make sure they retain the current investment) by increasing grant funding, lowering corporation tax, and so on, but IMHO that is a shaky basis for long term stability - just take a look across the Irish Sea at Eire and the so-called "Celtic Tiger", there's an example of a small country trying to attract foreign businesses and it really hasn't ended well at all The other question is what sort of businesses would want to come to an independent Scotland - possibly banking/finance but I don't know anything about that sector so I don't feel qualified to comment. Construction maybe? Again, take a look at Eire - that has been an utter disaster as soon as the investment dried up. High-tech? Okay, I feel a bit more qualified to comment here, and while there are many high tech companies in Scotland, very few of them are making any real money, and those that are are typically multi-national and could (and would) move elsewhere if they felt they were getting a better deal. So we're left with the old favourites like whisky (almost entirely owned now by foreign companies like Diagio and Seagrams) and tourism, which needs a serious kick up the @rse but could and should be sustainable. However, you're left asking who will actually run the country if/when we become independent. A lot of the day-to-day stuff will be exactly the same - for example business rates are already set locally and are a major expense for many SMEs. In fact Scottish business rates are currently higher than English, and I could save thousands of pounds a year just by moving to say Newcastle. I've also had the somewhat dubious pleasure of meeting a number of Scottish MSPs in person and I have to say that I wouldn't trust most of them to run a bath, never mind a country. Ironically (because I'm no friend of the Nats) the only one who impressed me was actually John Swinney but one MSP doesn't make a parliament. It's possible some of the serious politos who are currently MPs might move back and help steer the ship, but I'm not holding my breath on that one... Just my 2p...
Bazoaxe Feb 2014 11:33am, 22 Feb 2014 6,377 posts	0 Bazoaxe If we had this vote when thatcher was in the top job it would have been different though.
jono Feb 2014 11:46am, 22 Feb 2014 14,844 posts	0 jono finished my toast its hard to negogiate with a nationilst party whose sole aim is the break up of the UK, who have employed UKiP tatics and Hamas style government incentives. Right time to get J Jnr ready for the pictures
Jambomo Feb 2014 11:56am, 22 Feb 2014 4,204 posts	0 Jambomo Indeed and let's face it what's to stop another Maggie coming along. There was a paper (and I'll try find it again and post a link) that stated when looking a ship closures, Thatcher closed Rosyth and sent the work down South (Plymouth I think?) when it would have been economically better to have kept Rosyth open and close the other one. Now I don't want to get into the historical she did that arguments but it reminded me of the recent debate over closing the Clyde shipyards. TV interviews with workers at Portsmouth were full of 'why not them?' As though they should have been protected and Scotland should automatically be the ones to suffer. Why? If the Clyde is better then why not keep that one open? What I hope is that independence will at least give citizens the power to change things. Nobody ever likes the politicians running the country or thinks they do the right thing all the time but right now, even when most of our nation votes for the same party, it's not enough to get us the government we vote for which leaves us powerless to effect any change. At least with a Scottish government if we don't like something we will have some power to make them listen.
Duchess Feb 2014 12:06pm, 22 Feb 2014 4,362 posts	0 Duchess By that argument, most English urban areas should secede from Westminster.
IanS Feb 2014 12:56pm, 22 Feb 2014 1,611 posts	0 IanS Sorry Jambomo, but I just don't buy that argument about us having the power to change things (not significantly anyway) Most of the politicians as far as I can see (and this is across the parties) don't have majorly differing views and the benefit/downside (delete as applicable) of PR in the Scottish parliament is that you usually end up needing a broad consensus across all the parties to get anything done, and so you end up failing to change the status quo by much at all (just look at the original budget proposals each year versus what actually gets through parliament) They've also proved at both a national and local level that they don't need Westminster to help them fcuk up - just take a look at the parliament building itself or the Edinburgh trams, both prime examples of amateurs being royally stitched by multinationals who do that sort of a thing for a living. Or take a look at the NHS - as daviec rightly pointed out we've not had the disasters of some of the trusts down south, but maybe that is because they've made it so difficult to get anything done (and the profit margins aren't there). If you've ever tried tendering for an NHS project you rapidly lose the will to live because you get so bogged down in paperwork and red tape. Of course this is maybe because they have been bitten so badly by the PFI/PPP projects which they were so keen to jump into but will be a huge burden on the hospital finances (and the country generally) for decades to come (just look at the ERI for example). Even when they can change things, they may choose not to because of their own political agenda. The Nats could have by-passed the bedroom tax but chose not to because it suited their independence argument to implement an unpopular policy which appeared to come from Westminster. So they would happily let people suffer just so they could get a bit more support for a yes vote.
Jambomo Feb 2014 4:54pm, 22 Feb 2014 4,205 posts	0 Jambomo Aye, it's just what I'd hope might happen but I do tend to be a bit idealistic at times! One thing on the bedroom tax though - the Scottsih government were trying to fund it so that effectively the bedroom tax did not affect people in Scotland: m.scotsman.com I think this might have been blocked by Westminster though.
IanS Feb 2014 5:08pm, 22 Feb 2014 1,612 posts	0 IanS Agreed, but that was only after Labour pushed through the proposal - the Nats were quite happy to let it lie as a policy they could then overturn and present as a benefit of independence post I-Day. I think the only reason that Westminster could block this is because Sturgeon insisted it had to be done by DHP when there were other perfectly workable ways of implementing it (but would have meant agreeing that Labour were right on something else) It's things like that which make me distrust the whole lot of them!
surreystrider™ Feb 2014 8:23pm, 22 Feb 2014 7,878 posts	0 surreystrider™ Possibly already covered but has the referendum question been set yet? If so, what is it?
daviec Feb 2014 8:51pm, 22 Feb 2014 3,780 posts	0 daviec "Should Scotland be an independent country?" Yes/No