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Scotland's Independence Vote Could Shake Up Industry
dcblogs writes: Scotland is not a major high-tech employment center, but it has good universities and entrepreneurial energy. About 70,000 people work in tech out of a total workforce of about 2.5 million, or about 3%. By contrast, financial services accounts for about 15% of employment in Scotland. But passions are high. "Honest, I've never been so scared in my life," said Euan Mackenzie about the prospect of separating from the U.K. He runs a 16-employee start-up, 1partCarbon, in Edinburgh, a platform that builds medical systems. "For tech start-ups, funding will be tougher to find and more expensive, there will be no local banks, access to EU markets and the freedom of movement will be curtailed," said Mackenzie. "As someone who enjoys risk and new opportunities, my company will remain in Scotland and make the best of whichever side prevails on Thursday, but the effect of independence on tech start-ups and the whole Scottish economy will be cataclysmic," he said.
The UK does not have a ground based deterrent. Our nuclear deterrent consists entirely of submarine launched ICBMs with one submarine in an unknown aquatic location at all times (which could be just about anywhere where the water is deep enough to hide a submarine). In terms of what it "covers" - the range is irrelevant in the sense that we're not going to nuke ourselves or our allies - it only matters in that the missiles can reach Moscow. In terms of whether we'd use them in the rest of Europe's defence (either through NATO, altruistically or through fear for ourselves) is the question of political guesswork, bluffing, double bluffing, prisoners dilemmas and so forth that is the basis of mutually assured destruction. The short answer is: who knows, the only way to find out is by "experiment"...
A lot of people think that Scotland is walking blindly towards independence without knowing what they're doing. I'd like to remind them that Scotland has voted for independence twice before but both times it's been blocked. In 1914 Scotland voted for independence from the UK, but then the First World War started and it was conveniently dropped. In 1979 Scotland voted again for much more local power through devolution, but some dodgy rule dictated that at least 40% of the total registered electorate had to vote for devolution, and even though they got the majority winning by 51.62% Yes to 48.38% No the vote was overturned because the Yes vote comprised only 32.9% of the total possible vote. So this has been a long time coming.
Scotland lands control 1/3 the resources of the UK and has 1/13th the population, assuming a new independent Scotland would have control over those resources, a "No" vote is foolish(except to the rest of the UK)..
Scotland represents just 8.3% of the UK population.... Remember that number 8.3%..
Scotland has of the UK resources:
32% Land area
61% Sea area
90% Surface fresh water
65% North Sea natural gas production
96.5% North Sea crude oil production
47% Open cast coal production
81% Coal reserves at sites not yet in production
62% Timber production (green tonnes)
46% Total forest area (hectares)
92% Hydro electric production
40% Wind, wave, solar production
60% Fish Landings (total by Scottish vessels)
55% Fish Landings (total from Scottish waters)
30% Beef herd (breeding stock)
20% Sheep herd (breeding flock)
9% Dairy herd
10% Pig herd
15% Cereal holdings (hectares)
20% potato holdings (hectares)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom
"First of all, Scotland would be one of two EU nations to produce its own oil and gaz (the other is Norway)."
I've seen this so many times on the internet. Norway is NOT a member of the European Union.
Indeed - the U.S. Navy still has a pretty big presence in Scotland. It's how I ended up with a half brother there.
Scotland has been treated very well indeed. When it joined the Union its people were piss poor and its "government" was bankrupt. It's now a wealthy first world country, with lots of MPs in its Parliament, large amounts of money spent on its people and it's contributed multiple Prime Ministers and senior government figures.
Despite all that, a large number of Scottish people have repeatedly attempted to trash their own country and England too by blindly supporting policies that are - to put not too fine a point on it - communist. This is a part of the world where as late as 1989 an MP was trying to get elected by recalling "Red Clydeside". This is a part of the world where hatred of Thatcher is practically a national pasttime, although her crimes amounted to ending communist policies like massive state ownership of industry and trade union control. Scotland failed to adapt to deindustrialisation and failed so hard that decades after the rest of the country has moved on, lots of people there are still nursing a massive grudge.
Scotland's current state isn't because it was badly treated by England. Arguably the south of England saved Scotland in the 1980's. Leaving behind Soviet-style economic policies wasn't a choice, it was an inevitability, as the USSR would prove when it collapsed around the time Thatcher was booted out.
Now we see in the Yes campaign socialism rear its ugly head once again. The most common reason I've seen for voting for independence is that the nasty mean English vote Tory and Scots are fairer, kinder and more hard working than that. Even Salmond, the man who runs a political party that has basically mainstream economic policies, doesn't hesitate to take a giant dump on the English by implying that an independent Scotland would be a utopia of milk and honey once the hated Tories are overthrown. When asked what kind of spending cuts would happen post independence Sturgeon simply said "there wouldn't be any".
The reality is that Yes is campaigning on a framework of economic illiteracy. If they win independence, there are really only two possible outcomes - one is that the rest of Scotland manages to counterbalane the hard left somehow and Holyrood runs governments that look much like those in Westminster from an economic perspective. The other possibility is that disaster strikes and people who want to roll Scotland back to the chaos of the 1970's actually start winning elections, in which case Scotland will probably end up looking like Ireland did for much of the 20th century (dirt poor with large amounts of emigration).
Naw - there was a bill before Parliament that disappeared when war started, but no vote, unless you can provide me with evidence to the contrary
It will be useful for their grandchildren and generations to come.
Yes, because of course no bank would ever want to be in a new country with an educated workforce, low unemployment, and lots of natural resources! Small places like Luxembourg and Switzerland are absolutely barren, devoid of banks, money, or access to markets! The poor people of Liechtenstein and Monaco are starving and barely literate! Don't turn Scotland into a dump like Norway!
(That was sarcasm, for the sarcasm-impaired.)
I don't really understand the political or economic motivations of Scottish independence.
The political side would make more sense if Scotland was greatly different than UK culturally and had a significant short-term history of English subjugation. The Scots really aren't an ethnic or racial grouping, except at some micro level and don't seem to have a serious complaint regarding discrimination on language or religious grounds.
The economics make less sense -- Scotland has been economically integrated with the larger UK for a long time. Had Scotland split off in 1850, it would have been at a time when economies were smaller and much more locally self sufficient and it would have had time to develop into something that The economy seems much more regional now and it will be a hard transition to a more standalone economy.
You're mixing up currency and currency union. Salmond has been deliberately obfuscating this so the confusion is not surprising, but they are different things.
Post independence Scotland could continue to use the pieces of metal and paper we tend to think of as "the pound". It could still express prices in pounds. The UK cannot stop this nor would it care to do so, even if it could. Scotland can keep the currency.
Currency union is an entirely different matter. Currency union is about decision making and who pays for what in future should things go tits up again. This is not a physical object or landmass that can be split up. It's called a "union" because it involves people working together. This is categorically not on offer because Scotland has shown no preference for economic policies compatible with the rest of the UK, really it's shown the exact opposite. So English people working together with Scottish people to create unified economic policies on this wouldn't really be possible, the disagreements are too deep and English people outnumber Scottish quite significantly. Thus it'd only make sense if Scotland agreed to give up most of the independence it had just won. Otherwise it'd be Greece all over again. Profligate teenager wouldn't even begin to describe it.
There is one situation in which CU could actually make sense - if Scotland strongly and consistently voted for the same economic policies as the UK had, and could be trusted to do so for the forseeable future. However this isn't a Scotland that anyone has been seeing during the independence campaign, so it's hard to imagine things changing anytime soon.
With respect to the debt, I think in the event of independence all the opinion polls suggest the UK will take a firm line. No currency union and they split the debt equally too. It's not up for debate. This is actually a fair position - split the debts and financially each goes their own way - but I doubt Scotland will go for it, and the amount of pain that could result for both sides is quite astronomical. This is why such a large proportion of people don't think independence is worth it.
In Scotland it's arguably the other way around. The UK benefits from Scottish oil and renewable energy. Scotland would be better off keeping it for itself. Unfortunately a lot of the oil wealth has already been squandered.
Scotland also leans much further to the left than England, but ends up with very right wing English governments and policies. Devolution of power has helped a bit but ultimately only independence will fully protect them.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
but the downside for the UK with sterlingisation is that Scotland would not be liable for any share of the UK accumulated debt.
I'm afraid you have fallen in Salmonds trap - debt and currency are two entirely separate things, they are not linked in any manner and while Scotland can *refuse* to take its share of debt, that refusal is not automatic based on not taking the currency.
A countries debt is denominated in the currency that country uses, but its not linked to it in any other way.
If Scotland do refuse to take its share, then it will have a poorer credit rating on the international funds markets because of it.
The Treasure have already confirmed that the debt belongs to the UK and only the UK.
No, what the Treasury did was confirm that the entirety of the debt was safe, it would be serviced by the UK even in the event that Scotland refused to take its share - they did this because it eliminated pre-referendum uncertainty about the financial situation, and prevented pre-emptive financial issues surrounding borrowing rates when lenders refuse to lend to the pre-referendum UK on the basis that it may not get its money back.
Again you have fallen into Salmonds trap by accepting his statements at face value - the UK just guaranteed the entirety of the debt, but that doesn't have any standing as to exonerating Scotland from its share when it comes to post-referendum negotiations. This isn't the school yard here.
That's the view that sums up the Yes campaign, indeed. But is it realistic?
Let's start with "Thatcher destroyed manufacturing and industry". I find it to be a very misleading way to phrase things. At the time Thatcher came to power, heavily nationalised UK industry was already destroying itself. It had high costs, low productivity, large chunks of it were unprofitable and it was dominated by incredibly militant unions who didn't care about any of this at all, because their wages were being subsidised by tax and the printing of money. Being unprofitable is not some minor debating point. Enormous numbers of people in the UK were being paid to uselessly dig holes in the ground. There was no purpose to this. In the absence of subsidies, nobody would have wanted the rocks that were being dug up. Other people in other countries were doing it better.
And it wasn't just mining. At the time Thatcher came to power the British state also owned shipyards, steel works, a furniture removal company and the Gleneagles Hotel ..... just to name a few.
None of this made any sense. It had happened because the post-war governments believed full employment mattered more than inflation. The result was openly Marxist trade unions realised a weak government with an addiction to money printing could be turned into an ATM via nationally organised strikes. By the 1970's the UK was a basket case. It was suffering electricity blackouts, trash was piling up on the streets uncollected, railways didn't work, even emergency services and hospitals were striking. The country was one of the poorest in Europe and being called "ungovernable". The strikes were wildly unpopular with over 80% disapproval ratings of the strikers being common.
There was no way these industries were ever going to be world-beating titans ever again.
Thatcher was elected to fix this state of affairs, and she did, by making the painful choice to take away the subsidies and start targeting inflation instead of employment.
By the time she left the UK was a stable and prosperous first world nation once again.