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.

Of course, there will be individuals with anti-English feelings. But I think it is far more often a class thing. If you are clearly middle class with a posh English accent, there are places where you may have comments directed at you.
There is a lot of ill-feeling in some communities about well-off English people buying second homes and holiday homes in Scotland and pushing residents out.
You find the same in parts of Cornwall, Northumberland, Wales, Devon and Cornwall.

CalMacs problems pre-date devolution, but there's no political mileage in fixing them and there are too many powerful interests that prefer things to stay as they are, so it will be an eternal criticism of whoever is in power.

It’s odd that there’s so much talk about anti-English racism but not anti-Irish racism in Scotland on this thread. I haven’t seen that much of either in Scotland tbh but the grand displays that make the news have certainly been more anti-Irish/anti-catholic of Irish decent over the passed few years- is that just BBC bias?
I’m thinking here or scenes from after Rangers football matches and Orange marches through Edinburgh. The Orange order is explicitly anti-catholic (no catholic members allowed, no members married to catholics allowed etc.) . There was some story about the OO singing about a catholic woman who was murdered a few years ago. With rangers there are some old links to fascism, surely if the anti-English racism is a concern then this has to be too?
So it’s horrible that any of it exists, but I’m not sure why the English should get precedence in terms of concerns over sectarianism/racism, they’ve not typically been in a power minority in Scotland from what I can tell, it seems like if anything if they are disliked because they are perceived as having too much power/ownership in Scotland, not because Scottish people look down on them as being inferior.
Also are the SNP really a big bunch of bigots? They seem to be much better than the current Tory gov of not being publicly racist (I mean it wouldn’t be hard!) but maybe there are lots of stories like this I’ve missed?

@Ofcourseandyouknowit The SNP are not a bunch of bigots and have done a good job of creating a sense of Scottishness that is not just white, unlike England where Englishness is white.

Yes, I am aware that technically nothing is free but in Scotland you pay your tax and when you go to collect a prescription you pay nothing. In England you pay your tax and when you go to collect your prescription you pay for it then and there from your already taxed cash. This difference because the Scottish Government have chosen to use some of their budget to cover the prescription charge.

Scotland get £X from the treasury just like the DoT or BEIS and that's it (as the Scottish Government is classed as a department of the UK government). We then have to decided how to allocate that money and since we don't have access to all the economics levers a government usually has we have very limited scope to increase spending as it all just comes from one pot. We are also by law not allowed to exceed our annual government department budget so we can't run a deficit. England, on the other hand use the UK governments full fiscal powers for their own benefit and could have all the same benefits as in Scotland has if they wanted it.

In fact it would be even easier for them because the tories could quite literally cover the cost by printing money, borrowing more, or raising taxes. And here's the real kicker, if they did that every single person from all four home nations would then have to cover the cost for something that only benefits England.

The system we have now is that all 4 home nations pull their revenue together. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are then given a share back to spend and England keeps the rest. If Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland want to increase their spending on education, health, infrastructure, etc the only option for them is to redistribute the share they were given. If England want to increase their spending they can do that to or they can use the UK government powers to create more revenue and the other home nations get to chip in to cover the cost. No wonder the English don't want to lose the union.

Think you’re conflating two quite separately rooted issues there. I wouldn’t have thought there would be much crossover between the SNP and the Orange Order.

Peatland restoration is to help with carbon sequestration as it is an excellent natural carbon sink. They’re not restoring it to harvest for burning....🙈

No one should be burning peat.

I am still wading through all of this but a few points to make.

Re the border and what happens, we don’t know what will come eventually but NS has already said that it will initially be a hard border that causes a lot of problems for border communities. My DH lived in New York for a while and popping over to Canada and vice versa was not particularly easy, everyone queued irrespective of who you were/purpose for the visit.

Re no one in Scotland has benefited from “Scotland’” oil, also not true. The Zetland Act 1974 legislated for Shetland to receive money for every barrel of oil landed their which went straight into charitable trust, similar to what is in place in Norway - it was a private members bill brought to Parliament by the then Liberal MP.

Re independence, has Brecht taught us nothing at all? Brexiteers were promised the world, but as we now know, it was lies as nobody could have predicted the terms in which we would eventually leave on, it is the same here, the ruk will hold the master cards in the negotiations so they will go for a very hard deal to support their needs not ours.

The people of Scotland need to really be clear in that voting for independence is just that as we will not know the exact terms until it’s too late, just like Brexit.

Nobody is promising riches for Scotland if they vote yes.
We know if they vote no they will be part of the UK's deep recession. A no vote is not a vore for the status quo, things are going to get much worse in the UK because of Brexit, And the UK government's "solution" is to break international law.
All that will happen to Scotland is the Scots will get poorer and poorer while more well-off English people will buy holiday homes in the scenic parts.

Hard to know

They may have the global impact and still have recession but with this on top making it harder

Maybe, I’m not an expert! Is there really a lot of cross over between SNP and the orange order?! I would have thought they would be massively against each other, Orange Order are unionists generally, or is it different in Scotland?

@MarshaBradyo They can implement policies to mitigate it. The UK government is doing nothing to mitigate it. Their only concern is keeping property prices high. Policies and money has been spent on that. LOcal businesses - fuck em.

The Orange Order and football teams are about religious conflicts exported by Irish migrants when they came to Scotland.
It is not to do with the SNP.

@Formerpupil sorry! Missread your comment, no I wouldn’t have thought there would be much crossover either! A few people on this thread have described the SNP as bigots (presumably against English people?or maybe unionists?) and I was just saying that the big public displays of sectarianism/racism that gets covered in the news seem to be more anti-Irish/anti-catholic in nature from what I’ve seen. Which led me to wonder why so much concern about the anti-English racism but not anti-Irish/anti-catholic racism.

No that’s what I mean. I’m not a member of either but they don’t seem to have much in common! I don’t think it’s odd that the anti-English thing has been focused on here as that is what some people tend to associate with the SNP.

@Ofcourseandyouknowit Because they want to attack the SNP and know little about Scotland beyond google?

@Ofcourseandyouknowit crossed posts sorry, yes I think the comments about SNP bigotry on here mean against the English

yeah I see what you mean, maybe it’s an incorrect comparison. It’s just that when SNP are being called bigots - I’ve just not seen much evidence of it, covered in the news that is, like an SNP candidate going on a massive anti-English tirade or using anti-English slurs. It’s sort of implied that SNP are more bigoted than the other Scottish parties, who I am suggesting probably have some their own bigotry issues given some of the crowd they run with (some not all, obviously). So it’s just surprising the concern is about anti-Englishness, I haven’t seen evidence that it’s the biggest issue or that bigotry is especially or uniquely an SNP issue.

So it's not about Boris Johnson, then? It's about Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, John Major? Any leader from Westminster?
If Scotland votes for national parties like Labour or Conservative, they'll have influence in the Union. If they vote for a party that doesn't field candidates outside Scotland, then obviously they'll not be able to outvote the main parties. 🙄 I mean that's just common sense and basic maths.

To be clear, I really haven’t found Scotland, Scottish politics or Scottish people abroad to be particularly bigoted at all! But I accept that some people clearly have a different experience, I’m just surprised there isn’t more coverage if people find it so prevalent

You don't think that telling the women of Scotland that sex is immaterial and that any man can be a woman if he says so indicates a certain lack of intellectual rigour and a less than healthy attitude to women's rights?

@Ofcourseandyouknowit
I don't think you are comparing liek with like. Listing the errors eg ferries, made by Scot Gov and comparing with a country 14 times the population - obviously the larger the country the more chance of bad (and good) things happening.
Where I am the roads are shambolic, there are few road sweepers, no parking attendants, no repairs, missing consultants at the hospital, usual long waiting lists, no nhs dentists, buses few and far between, missing train services - worst I can remember.

We've seen this type of thinking before. A lot of Brexit supporters thought that very little would change between the UK and the EU after Brexit as it wouldn't be in the EUs interest. But the EU decided differently and the UK is now paying the price. It seems that people are making the same mistake of thinking that independence wouldn't change anything between Scotland and the UK, without taking into consideration that the uk might decide if they're going to spend billions each year, why not spend it within the union and benefit uk locals.

Both wealthy people and companies.