Indyref8

[grovel]

ItsAllGoingToBeFine, but who will be Prime Minister? Pretty unsatisfactory changing halfway through. My suggestion was that maybe Cameron, Clegg, Miliband et al agree on a team and step back themselves. It would make the end result a joint enterprise and could prevent years of feuding in rUK.

It was very telling whom Cameron chose to address today.

Does anyone else think Westminster will somehow fix the vote? I don't think the Establishment will allow this to happen. Does anyone know who will be observing the referendum and ensuring everything is above-board?

Plastic this was another good one

But I would be interested to know whether there are any examples of countries have gone from having a decent level of benefits and comprehensive services to austerity and then when the financial outlook has improved, have gone back to even better levels of benefits and services?

Or is it more common that expectations of what the state should provide are reset and lowered during the austerity area?

Does anyone else think Westminster will somehow fix the vote?

Well, why not? After all they get blamed for everyting else ...

Cameron couldn't win; had he gone to the schemes he'd have been called a rich out of touch bastard etc.

I read on Twitter that France & Germany have exempted their key public services (including Health) from TTIP, yet Westminster has not. Why not?

Scotland's devolved NHS is not safe if we vote No.

Those talking about austerity from WM - do you have figures for exactly how much has been cut over the last few years?

net capital investment has been cut consistently since the general election in 2010. Today’s figures show that it was cut in 2012/13 by a further 23.1 per cent. It has now fallen from £38 billion in 2010/11 to £23 billion last year.

Overall, public sector employment fell by 293,000 or 4.9 per cent (excluding FE college staff, who were reclassified to the private sector) between December 2010 and December 2012. This is a clear indication that expenditure has been cut.

Fiscal consolidation in the early part of this parliament also came from tax rises, such as the increase in VAT. In 2011/12, the ratio between tax rises and spending cuts in the cumulative consolidation was 44:56; last year it was 38:72, and by 2015/16 it will be 20:80. In the next parliament, spending cuts will take almost all the burden.
www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/nick-pearce/is-there-any-austerity-in-uk (sorry, best I could quickly find)

[Osborne said]"We've got to make more cuts – £17bn this coming year, £20bn next year, and over £25bn further across the two years after. That's more than £60bn in total."
www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jan/06/george-osborne-britain-cuts-austerity

I wonder if the poll that showed the 'Yes' campaign ahead will be its undoing? It's given the bankers a chance to mount a final scare campaign and blackmail the population into voting 'No'.

Thanks Itsall. They aren't quite telling the whole picture though.

For ease and consistency I'll stick with the GERS figures. You can work out total UK govt expenditure from them.

Figures in billion
2008/09 - 632
2009/10 - 675 107% of prev years
2010/11- 697 103% of previous years
2011/12- 697 100% prev years
2012/13- 701 101% prev years

for the sake of my own sanity, I've lifted the 13/14 and 14/15 budget from the guardian rather than going digging any more

2013 - 720bn
2014 - 732bn

There may be a bit of discrepancy due to source change but the scale looks about right

Now obviously these figures are nominal but - the total spending hasn't actually reduced. All this austerity is what has happened to basically stand still. Of course it's a cut in real terms. And I'm not defending the individual policy decisions.

But look at what the Credit Suisse report is saying. What these numbers suggest is that the austerity we're experiencing as part of the UK doesn't even touch the sides of what we'd potentially be landed with in iScotland.

Cameron couldn't win; had he gone to the schemes he'd have been called a rich out of touch bastard etc.

You forgot patronising. He's have got a hard time wherever he went.

[Osborne said]"We've got to make more cuts – £17bn this coming year, £20bn next year, and over £25bn further across the two years after. That's more than £60bn in total."

That is across Britain though- not solely Scotland. Taking Scotland's share to be a little under 10%, that's about six billion over the four years. Whereas the Credit Suisse report suggests that Scotland might have to run a primary budget surplus.

Whereas last year, as Stats points out, we were minus 8.6 billion.

I take some hope from the latest poll that in spite of Westminster's incompetent handling of the referendum, ordinary decent Scottish people are beginning to understand that Salmond is offering an impossible dream based on lies and diversions.

Whatwould

I didn't expect that, it took me a sec. Brilliant

Stat
Bless. The poor dear!

I am ordinary decent folk and I don't.

Just making the legitimate point that wherever he went, people would have criticised. If he'd stayed in London, he didn't care. If he went to a council estate he'd be out of touch, patronising the poor...he went to a financial district full of scared people, he's only interested in bankers (even though most are not bankers)

I don't think there is a single scenario where he could have done anything and it would have been classed as the right thing to do by Yes voters.

What do you think of the Credit Suisse report then starwars?

Stat

I wasn't disagreeing with your point at all.
Far from it. I just don't have any sy/empathy for truth of it,

As I said, the establishment forces are now out. Do you think we would be allowed to just leave?

There will be many more of this type in the next days and we will be said to be doomed, because no country ever became independent without begging to go back and no small rich country like us could ever survive on our own. Oh shucks, what was I thinking?

Credit suisse have actually released a lot of the backing info before - they've tightened it up in to a shorter note which I would expect, and they've had to make adjustments to reflect the political position re currency. But they've been highlighting issues for a while.

*Cameron couldn't win; had he gone to the schemes he'd have been called a rich out of touch bastard etc.

You forgot patronising. He's have got a hard time wherever he went*
Correct, don't forget "Tory toff, Eton posh boy" etc etc

However I liked his speech today, although I'm already a No, doesn't make any difference to me.

I do agree that the No campaign is late to the party, should have started engagement sooner. But they are here now and ramping it up so it's apparently time to sneer at them for that too. Cannae win either way.

Sir Ian Wood weighed in again today, reiterating his figures and saying that oil cannot be relied on for the medium to long term. BP added their voice that in their opinion business is best served from the UK. RBS and Lloyds also saying they have contingency plans to move, added to the previously reported Standard Life. All adds up to very grim reading for an independent Scotland IMO.

starwarslegoboy, that's interesting to me. Which small countries should I research?

Did Norway or Ireland or Australia or New Zealand or Malta or India have all the i's dotted and t's crossed before they voted (or agreed) to independence?

Or is the angst currently being experienced a function of living in the surplus of Information Age and we've lost the ability to make a leap of faith and/or vote for what we believe in just because we think it is the right thing to do? ]

I have a friend who is very, very pro yes, works for Standard life and doesn't seem phased at the prospect of his job going out the window.

I am also sick and tired of morons on facebook claiming they can't wait till the 19th till the yes vote goes through. Another is planning a massive party with yes voters only as apparently the whole city will be "buzzing"

They all became independent in a very different time, where global markets didn't have the impact they used to, financial regulation wasn't the way it is now, companies couldn't move around and up sticks, hop over the border and not have to start again. Global trade wasn't as dominant. And no, we weren't in the information age we are in now

It's a totally different world.

But look at that Credit Suisse report. High unemployment, huge cuts to budgets- that's going to hit the poorest. Is choosing this option really the right thing to do?

Scotland is in a totally unique position. You can't compare if to the countries you mentioned (although I think Stats mentioned that Norway had a period of recession for 3 years after it voted for independence).

We can't predict the future but we have a duty to try and work out what it would resemble. The economic signs are not good for an independent Scotland.