to believe the remaining UK should not make special exceptions for Scottish economic refugees?

[longfingernails]

In the event of Scottish independence, the Scottish economy will be in the toilet. In this event, Britain should not be allowed to become a magnet for Scottish economic migrants.

I wouldn't blame Cameron if the Scots choose independence; the Tory party don't exactly have a strong foothold in those parts. However, I will certainly excoriate him if he gives an inch in any negotiations in the event of independence - especially if he allows large scale unskilled immigration from Scotland into Britain.

An independent Scotland would have almost zero negotiating power and Britain should exploit that to maximise our own advantage.

I just don't believe those figures on welfare spending (or the UK unemployment figures either, with the millions on disability and invalidity benefits not included).

There must be a difference in what is counted as welfare. In much of Northern Europe, the ethos seems to be to benefit a larger swathe of the population, rather than providing a lifestyle for a benefits class. There is a real stigma on the long term jobless, and the thinking seems to be that they are mainly druggies and disaffected immigrants. OTOH there's clearly far more money spent on things which benefit the population as a whole - excellent roads, public transport, etc..

I know in the Netherlands until very recently, those with mortgages received a tax credit, and this might be included in those figures. Also its long been the case that people living in social housing with too much space for their needs are made to move elsewhere - again, its meant to benefit society as a whole, not create a benefits class.

Scotland barely even has any motorways linking its cities - how can it possibly be a successful seperate country, moving people, goods and services around, or fund the improvements needed to bring it up to European standards?

And the abusive comments that you get on the streets, the drunk culture, is exactly what you get in England but not the rest of northern Europe.

Scotland to me seems such a similar country to England and the people as far removed from the rest of n Europe or even Norway as the uk as a whole. The left wing welfare heavy policies proposed are much the same in practice too, as well as the lieing, the covering up of the truth, and the giving people a rotten deal, especially if theyre middle class.

Heaven forbid we do anything to upset the middle classes!

Gosh some of this thread is horrible.

I was born a British citizen and am also an EU citizen. I pay more tax into the UK economy per annum than many people earn and we have been net contributors for year. I support the no campaign (although I think they're making a fucking hash of things as is goes).

So now, if the rest of the UK and the shite no-campaign don't convince the Scottish electorate (including 16 yr olds ) and my job moves south I'm a fucking 'Scottish refugee'? Thanks for that. Should I follow my English DP back south, or would he be an English refugee what with the 'Scottish welfare state' (which incidentally I agree is unsustainable). Maybe I should take my experience and my qualification and fuck off abroad...

To be honest I think the problem is that the UK as a whole needs to become less London centric. Yes, I get it, 10% of people live there (I've worked there often enough, I know the place reasonably well), but guess what that means - 90% of people don't. Sort that out and I think the UK could be a much more cohesive place. People don't think they're being listened too and represented and that needs to be addressed at both a local and national level.

ItsAllGoingToBeFine can you tell me which section of the OECD report you're linking to? I haven't got time to read it all just now but I'd be interested to see the data.

Warning: links trigger downloads
DX.doi.org/10.1787/888932907224
DX.doi.org/10.1787/888932907243

Thanks, yes those are interesting tables. But not necessarily that instructive. The Netherlands, for example, who appear to have very good pension rates, also have a very well-developed three-tier pension system consisting of state pension which pays a limited proportion of retirement income, and over 90% of employees are in an occupational pension scheme, plus there is an option of a private pension scheme as well.

And of course they have their own financial regulator and lender of last resort - that's not what the White Paper is proposing. The UK is starting to make progress towards getting more people into occupational pension schemes but it is slow work and there is a lot of resistance. So a new relatively small country starting out without their own financial regulator and their own pension legislation is really not going to quickly move towards generous pensions.

www.pensioenfederatie.nl/Document/Publicaties/English%20publications/Nederlandse_pensioensysteem_Engelstalige_versie.pdf

I see a few posts about Norway, better standards of living, income etc - has nobody mentioned that the tax rates are higher?

without reading the whole thread as its sooo long, a few Qs

how would Scotland afford to be in the EU-don't we pay billions a year just to be members?!

also

wont the british flag then have to be changed?

I just don't believe those figures on welfare spending

Figures from OECD. Feel free to independently check and report back.
www.oecd.org/dataoecd/56/37/31613113.xls (download)

There must be a difference in what is counted as welfare

The main social policy areas are as follows: Old age, Survivors, Incapacity-related benefits, Health, Family, Active labour market programmes, Unemployment, Housing, and Other social policy areas.
www.oecd.org/social/expenditure.htm

In much of Northern Europe, the ethos seems to be to benefit a larger swathe of the population, rather than providing a lifestyle for a benefits class.

Welfare spending UK:
Pensions 144bn
Healthcare 128bn
Education 89bn
Other welfare 113bn
Unemployment 6bn
www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/year_spending_2014UKbn_13bc1i_40#ukgs302

There is a real stigma on the long term jobless, and the thinking seems to be that they are mainly druggies and disaffected immigrants

Charming. FYI in 2013 2.52 million UK unemployed, 503,000 advertised jobs. You do the maths.

Scotland barely even has any motorways linking its cities - how can it possibly be a successful seperate country, moving people, goods and services around,

Are you serious? . Of course when we leave our mud huts we don't venture beyond the wooden palisades of our villages, and we survive on food parcels helicoptered in from rUK.

And the abusive comments that you get on the streets, the drunk culture, is exactly what you get in England but not the rest of northern Europe.

I agree with this statement. I find it odd that you think this is a reason to remain in UK so that Scotland and England can be drunk and abusive together, rather than seek independence to build a new society with more positive values.

I see a few posts about Norway, better standards of living, income etc - has nobody mentioned that the tax rates are higher?

Sorry, this is from Wings

"Worker with average national purchasing power

UK: £23,000 minus tax/NI of £4935 = £18,065 disposable income

Norway: £41,000 minus tax/NI of £11,070 = £29,930 disposable income"

wingsoverscotland.com/deal-or-no-deal/

Feel free to double check the maths

Geez, drunk culture?

Biggest work drinking culture I've ever experienced is London by a mile. The only places I've felt unsafe alone after a night out (outside of London) are in England too and not ones you might expect - Nottingham & Birmingham.

BTW I've lived in Edinburgh for 15 years...

how would Scotland afford to be in the EU-don't we pay billions a year just to be members?!

The UK pays the EU. Scotland pays the UK. On independence Scotland would pay the EU. This is a gross oversimplification, but its not England pays for everything at the moment, Scotland puts its share into the pot too.

wont the british flag then have to be changed?
m.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25205017

Itsallgoingtobefine I am not trying to.promote either side. I am undecided how to vote actually. But my life us all about attention to detail, spotting lies and mistakes. And so much of what the Yes campaign is presenting massaged facts and figures, trying to quell reasonable criticism with wide claims of cowardice or treating very educated people as stupid.

To me, the independence campaigners will say just about anything to "win" an argument. That is something entirely different from seeking to.improve the fortunes of a country as a whole. Scotland seems to have far too.many of these semi educated, pseudo authoritative political types with a chip on their shoulder who try to tell people what to do.

Of course, if Scotland was going to miraculously turn into a country with as high a standard of living as NL or Belgium, then it would be great. I think its far more likely to turn into as much of an Eastern European type state as you can get in northern Europe. And why would a lot of people stay to find out, when they have the option of leaving? And standards here in so many things just seem to be so incompetent and aimed at the lowest common denominator already.

I really resent the economic and job uncertainty that's being caused by the referendum. I get the impression that many independence campaigners don't work in the true private sector, outwith the heavily male dominated oil industry.

What will happen once an independent Scotland has driven away all the people with the intelligence to ask questions, who aren't taken in by all this crap?

Sorry, this is from Wings - yeah, I'm not giving that biased website more traffic just now.

Norwegian VAT standard rate 25%. Of course they're not actually members of the EU, so maybe not such an ideal comparison. www.skatteetaten.no/en/International-pages/Felles-innhold-benyttes-i-flere-malgrupper/Brochure/Guide-to-value-added-tax-in-Norway/?chapter=7157#kapitteltekst

I also had a quick look for cost of living comparison, this site appears to be a database with user-contributed data- so self-selecting rather than official but still interesting.

Consumer Prices in United Kingdom are 31.74% lower than in Norway
Consumer Prices Including Rent in United Kingdom are 30.89% lower than in Norway
Rent Prices in United Kingdom are 28.71% lower than in Norway
Restaurant Prices in United Kingdom are 40.24% lower than in Norway
Groceries Prices in United Kingdom are 32.31% lower than in Norway
Local Purchasing Power in United Kingdom is 1.10% higher than in Norway

www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=Norway&country2=United+Kingdom

Norway is no comparison. It has more oil than an independent Scotland would ever have had.

People should stop moaning about London too. There are 650 seats in the Commons. Less than 100 are in London. If you think your elected representatives are not serving their local areas, elect others or stand for election yourself.

Under the FPTP system, this is comparatively easy. However only some Scots, some Welsh, and the good folk of Kidderminster have taken advantage of this.

The Nats' anti-London rhetoric is just old-fashioned anti-Englishness in drag. They do not want to be portrayed as racist, and so employ an easy scapegoat which has the convenient side-effect of discussing the opposition. The true reason for the wealth of London and the SE is that a very high proportion of the UK's most successful enterprises are located there. London itself has far, far more going on than high finance and Whitehall.

OP, you sound like an idiot, a cunty idiot.

Gosh I do hope that isn't considered a personal attack.

Damn my phone. For "discussing" read "dividing".

Itsallgoingtobefine I am not trying to.promote either side. I am undecided how to vote actually.

Which is why you said you would leave if scotland were independent.

DH works in electronics and I work in a field I could do in Europe. DH has a few colleagues working in Holland, and when we've been on holiday there, I find parts of it away from the main cities surprisingly quiet and rural. The public transport is also far better. That would probably be our first choice on independence, as I really don't fancy paying higher taxes and living in what is obviously (according to some) an unusually impoverished country for Northern European standards. Or England - I really like country walks in calm, lowland scenery.

I also had a quick look for cost of living comparison

You might want to look at the Wings link. They are using data from the World Bank as opposed to some random used generated site. Just because its a yes site, doesn't mean it is wrong or inaccurate.

I don't want to live in Norway either! Ive been there, its got nice scenery but that's about it.

Unless you are actually Norwegian or work.in the oil industry, why would anyone want to.live in Norway? Or a country like Norway, but mi us the polite, reserved people?

I thought Wings was just one person, though they like to present themself as much bigger than that?

Some of the pro independence stuff is such awful drivel, you could play a recording of it as an instrument of torture!

I don't want to live in Norway either! Ive been there, its got nice scenery but that's about it.

I was not discussing your home country of choice. I was pointing out that your claim of being neutral was not true.

I thought Wings was just one person, though they like to present themself as much bigger than that?

You are one person. Does that mean I should automatically assume everything you say is without any merit.

I'm prepared to accept the disposable income argument (does it mention the balance between private and public sector employment?) but disposable income is only meaningful in what you can get for it - they have higher VAT and they appear to have higher costs of living. Possibly they have a higher standard of living, but as others have pointed out they have managed their resources and investment in a completely different way to the UK over decades. We will not be in remotely the same position.

I've been put off Wings by the people I know who endlessly spam Facebook with it and claim it as a neutral source of data, and I've no wish to feed into any 'look how many hits we get' statistics.

but disposable income is only meaningful in what you can get for it - they have higher VAT and they appear to have higher costs of living

That was taken into account. (C And Pd so you don't soil your browsing history)

didn’t just pluck those numbers out of the air. They’re the World Bank’s current calculations of international GDP per capita for the UK and Norway respectively, adjusted for what’s called “Purchasing Power Parity”, or PPP. (We’ve also converted them from dollars to Sterling.)

What PPP means is that the figures already take account of the cost of living, so they’re genuinely comparable – it doesn’t matter that beer costs £10 a pint in Norway or whatever, because that’s been factored into the figures, which means you know you can still afford to buy 1.78 pints (41 divided by 23) in Oslo for every one pint you can get in Auchtermuchty before your wages run out.

I've no wish to feed into any 'look how many hits we get' statistics.

Your hits would be insignificant. 290,546 page views yesterday...

So, wait a minute. I was born in England and raised in Wales, but I've been living in Scotland for the last several years now and also had my dd (6) here. I am strongly against Scottish Independence and will absolutely be voting no. I work bloody hard and I pay my own way in life. My family is evenly split between both England and Scotland as my father is English and my mother Scottish. I consider myself to be (proudly) British. However, if independence is actually gained come referendum time, my daughter and I are supposed to become goddamn Scottish refugee's in your eyes OP?

I just... I can't even.

"I believe that the governments of nations have a primary duty of care towards their own citizens before foreigners..."

I am not a foreigner! The United Kingdom has and always will be my home. I don't even tend to differentiate between England, Wales and Scotland (I'm leaving NI out solely because I haven't personally lived there, though it would absolutely be included if I had) - to me, they're all one place, one land. They are all home. I am not Scottish, English or Welsh. I'm British and that distinction means a lot to me. I'm fudging Switzerland when it comes to the rugby!

I think Scots should certainly be allowed to work in Britain in the event of independence, but only if they are highly skilled migrants.

You should consult Nigel Farage regarding this matter, OP. Between the pair of you, you could really bring the world to heel and have a gay old time of it being ignorant, tantrum-throwing, intolerant toddlers.

Jesus.