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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"...
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
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.
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.