To think wealthy people will leave Scotland?

[Juniperberries25]

..if the YES side win a referendum? Surely a lot of successful businesses and people who are wealthy/ comfortable/ have paid into a pension will not want to risk all their assets becoming worthless? Or am I missing something? Higher taxes, unknown currency, economic uncertainty, hard border, national security concerns etc

It would cost BILLIONS to set up new Government bodies (eg DVLA, Passport office, MI5, MI6, Amy Navy, RAF to name a few) so surely taxes will be much, much higher than rest of the UK?

Just to clarify I am NOT a fan of Boris but surely he will be long gone by the time Scotland actually became independent after YES vote (probably at least 10 years, just look at the BREXIT timeline).

Please don't flame me, I am just wondering what people think as I genuinely don't get how the benefits outweigh the risks.

Well the city of London profits do fund the Barnet formula which gives every man woman and child in Scotland 2k more than raised in taxes.

Ireland is a big international finance hub for one reason only - its 12.5% corp tax rate.

I worked in Edinburgh in fund admin at the time of the last referendum. We bought out a fund admin company in England 8 weeks beforehand when things were looking dicey. Our clients would not have stayed with us is we were no longer regulated by the FCA. That’s just how things are. It’s business.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/millions-emergency-covid-funding-left-27240229

News report here over the millions of covid funding which never got distributed by SG

These things are obviously not decided yet as it hasn’t happened yet. No one can explain the future to you. Not for any country.

Jeez.

the ferries. Who cares about people on the islands

gupta steel - it’s only millions

rangers false crimes - it’s only millions

bifab - it’s only millions

4 years waiting list for a hip operation. 7 years for a shoulder

moray maternity services. - who cares women can travel for 90 minutes in labour

education attainment gap - well despite we said we would close that we have given up

delays on the new childrens hospital in Edinburgh. Who cares

our universities need foreign students to bring in money. Our own kids. Well who cares. College funding. Slashed.

edinburgh. Ramshackle. Given over to air B and B. Entire tenements deserted in the centre of town. Festivals given over to foreign invest. Princes street garden ruined every year. Roads potholed back to cobbles

women and girls. Naw no care of safeguarding for them. Any man can say he is a women. We women have no say.
hate crime - well men in drag have more protections than women and girls

and the stress of another divisive referendum.

ta sturgeon. Thanks

Link here
link fail. This is it

Well said 🙌

@littlbrowndog couldn't have put it better.

So much BS. Rangers false crimes ..quite a stretch of the inagination there!!

Moray maternity - travelling 90 minutes? How'd you work that out?

If you look at how other smaller countries have sustained their economies you get some idea of what Scotland would have to do.

Norway is wealthy because of oil found 50 years ago. Most of their wealth now is from decades of polluting oil exploration and won't continue indefinitely. The North Sea has maybe another 30 years of reserves and then we need to rely on renewable energy. The cost of decommissioning spent oil platforms on the UK continental shelf will be billions.

The recent Irish economic success story was from offering low tax rates to the likes of Apple and Google. They got in big trouble with the European Commission and got taken to court for it. Scotland couldn't compete with Ireland on the "English speaking low tax status" in future as global minimum tax rates are coming in 2023 which will stop this race to the bottom.

Without oil or a knowledge economy Scotland is going to find it very hard to keep a skilled workforce in the future. Yes there is wind power offshore but there's no storage capacity in Scotland, it all goes into a UK wide system at the moment.

The % of people in Scotland currently earning at or below UK average salary is significant which is why Scottish income tax rates are already higher than rUK and will only go up. VAT will go up, land related taxes will go up, NI will go up. Food will cost more to import. It'll be like Brexit but undoing hundreds of years instead of just 40 odd years of shared legal systems and infrastructure. The population will be in for a shock if Scotland does vote for independence.

Have you not read about the crisis in Moray maternity services?

Thanks @littlbrowndog
I'm in SW Scotland and it feels like a third world country.... potholes, litter, no GPs, looooong wait for any NHS treatment, schools not good then I read posts about how well we are doing and start to wonder if I'm getting it wrong - but no I agree with you it's shit.

Dr Gray’s hospital- @Teach12

And of all that list you’ve ignored the rest…

90 minutes? To the nearest maternity hospital?

👏👏👏

It was 24 million and still counting

www.insider.co.uk/news/former-rangers-administrators-24-million-23466740

ive worked with many financial services companies globally. Business doesn’t like change but gets used to it. There is not any issue with Irish regulation or law nor their reputation internationally. Nor is the FCA considered to be some sort of global superstar. Many countries have robust legal and regulatory systems. The FCA is not any better than most developed countries regulators.

If you claim business will leave Scotland because it’s no longer regulated by the FCA, why do people do business quite happily in other jurisdictions? Surely by your logic everyone would just base themselves in London. But that’s not what happens.

Actually a big draw now for Ireland is that it’s a well regulated fs system in the EU. That could be a free Scotland too.

Gupta

www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/scottish-government-metal-firm-bankruptcy-26967710

50 jobs 🤷‍♀️

There are so, so many factors that mean Indy would be economically devastating:

Separating yourself off from the place where you export 60% of supplies to.
Having to start up endless civil service functions.
High paid jobs / taxpayers moving south.
Loss of Barnett formula (worth £12-£15bn a year).
Not having your lending backed by the Bank of England, an institution hundreds of years old and had never defaulted, hence can borrow at very low rates. Indy Scotland would not be able to access such low rates of borrowing.
If you start a new currency it will devalue rapidly. If you live in Scotland being paid wages in a rapidly devaluing currency yet have to repay a mortgage in GBP you are in a dire situation.

These are just the issues off the top of my head. I’m sorry if it seems patronising to point these things out to those who believe it’s all going to be a bed of roses, but that’s just facts.

Why do you think Scotland would be a “banana republic” or that the SNP would perpetually be in charge? Do you believe that there will be no democracy? Or that Scottish people are too stupid to know what’s good for them?

Sounds a bit like racism to me.

It’s not that the FCA is great - I’m certainly not saying that - it’s just that there is no equivalent in Scotland that has any form of international
standing. The jobs have to move in the short term until the Scottish equivalent does have an equivalent. And why would the jobs move back?

So a major company/ manufacturer which runs a UK-wide business will stay in Scotland if there's a new currency with a different exchange rate and currency fluctuations, a border to negotiate when exporting to England and Wales, higher taxes in Scotland (like other small countries such as Denmark, Finland and Norway)... I could go on. In the meantime I imagine anyone planning to invest in manufacturing in Scotland and realising that this independence issue is likely to run on indefinitely will look elsewhere. Business doesn't like unknowns.

I'll be interested to see how the Scots will cope with two new currencies in succession: first the new Scottish pound or whatever it's going to be called, and then the euro. And the whammy of two changes in legislation (first, independence, then joining the EU), passports, negotiating trade treaties, border policing, a whole expensive new tranche of government etc.

Once the effect of Brexit and Covid is over (give it another 10 years or so) England and Wales with a population of 60 million will limp on — disabled by Brexit, perhaps, but still ambulant. I imagine Scotland will still be paying off the administrative costs of independence and joining the EU. It will cost billions.

@Villagewaspbyke they didn’t say perpetually in charge, they said in charge.
There is not enough transparency in the SNP. Why won’t they release their accounts??

Well for some women it’s a 65 mile trip to Aberdeen

www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/snp-news-moray-maternity-chaos-26597288

@Fairisleflora Not sure why as a financial expert you are not aware that the questions of whether Scotland subsidised England, England subsidised Scotland, or there is no subsidisy, can not be answered with the available public figures.
People manipulate the figures to support their argument. The truth is no one outside of the government knows.

www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-has-scotland-subsidised-the-rest-of-the-uk

@Teach12 It’s about 65 miles from Elgin to the maternity unit in Aberdeen… takes about 90 minutes due to the roads. Dr Gray’s hospital in Elgin was downgraded in 2018 and most babies were being delivered in Aberdeen …there was a campaign to change this … Google it and you can read about all the problems.