Tracks of my tiers

[tinseltitsbumfannythelot]

New thread!

Morning all.

We absolutely need some stability and recovery time before considering any more large scale political/economic/constitutional change. As a country we have had a hell of a year. And we have no idea how the world is going to reshape after this. Will we see more long term homeworking and reduced business travel for example, and what consequence does that have for our economy? More homeworking might reduce potential job losses from financial companies moving their head office in the event of independence as they'll keep more staff on, whereas the reduced travel might hurt oil badly. We don't know enough to actually say whether indy would be better or worse post covid, unless based on ideology

@WouldBeGood

I just wish they’d stop banging on about another referendum now. This is a terrible time and people need some peace to settle after it. In my view

I agree. She’s just came up on my FB feed saying, now we must get our independence due to this terrible deal. Got sent this gif. -:)

The issue with financial services is really the regulation. At the moment they are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority which covers the whole UK. I think that the last white paper suggested we'd need our own regulator so even if they mirrored the existing rules, it would need money to run which the financial services pay into. I think there is no appetitive to pay twice in order to operate in both parts of the current UK and also have another layer of regulation. And if of course, the rules were not the same then you have conflicts to deal with. It's not really worth a chew when they can simply move sticks and either ignore the scottish market or have smaller off-shoots specifically to deal with it and the bulk of profit and taxes etc are paid into rUK.

That's right - we need to see what happens with these huge shocks - brexit and covid related changes before we'd be in a position to say what a good decision or a good plan would be.

It's by no means clear that Scotland would want to rejoin the EU for monetary or fiscal reasons in 5 years - much as sentiment wise we feel that way now.

The snp like to say 'we wouldn't choose to start from here' but we reaaaally don't want to start from this absolute low point.

I still can't see it being in the FS Indy's interest to leave the uk either wax, would the snp argument be that they could have an FS Indy more geared to competing in the EU? But wouldn't anyway we then be attempting to build something that already exists in Frankfurt?

As London fs competes all over the world anyway I can't see a case for it, so we're just hoping not to damage one of our core strengths too much?

Wouldbegood so if not a lockdown now, what instead? Yes lockdown is just kicking the can down the road, but right now, I don't see any other option, seeing as we've another 2 months of winter and only at the start of the vaccine roll out.

You realise its not just no deal or a hard Brexit that were the two options?

Well, in the case of what the current vote will be on, those are the two options.

They are not voting on what type of brexit, or none, would be best for the economy (the HoC had that debate last year and couldn't reach a decision...). They are voting on whether this deal or no deal would be least worst. Not a nice choice when you believe that any brexit at all will be a disaster, granted. If they vote against the deal, though, they are saying no deal would be preferable. No one (well, OK, maybe some...) would criticise them for making their point that Scottish interests haven't been addressed well, the majority of Scottish people didn't want brexit at the time, and the figures suggest that this deal will make Scotland worse off than under EU membership - but overall the Scottish economy would be even worse with no deal so the deal is the smaller turd of the two before them and they will therefore support it.

The DUP may be voting for no deal too. But this is Scotsnet and we don't have any DUP MPs in Scotland. I think the same point stands though.

It is rhetoric, I agree.

TBH anon, if folks are working at home then it wouldn't really matter where the head office is based. However, it will make a difference in terms of regulation and taxation so I think most will jump to being fully based in rUK. A lot of UK companies do have EU off-shoots but these have to abide by local regulation. That's not to say they couldn't do the same if there was an independent Scotland, but the market would have to be big enough. I would think that would only apply to new business so any existing interests would just be run from rUK. I have a nephew who works in the European arm of a US FS company and they were moved out of London after the brexit vote so he's now working in a European city, the working from home revolution may mean he can come home? I've not looked too far into it since the No vote as i'm hoping to be retired and therefore not having to deal with it from a work pov.

Agree Anon and Wax. Dublin already acts as the EU arm of the City of London. I don't see an opening for Edinburgh. I do however see a massive threat of a shift in back office operations from Glasgow to Manchester and specialist investment services similarly from Edinburgh and Aberdeen. The minute Scotland left the UK the Scottish FS sector would lose its edge as the boutique arm of London.

Perihelion yet to see any evidence that lockdown measures are having any appreciable impact. Therefore bemused why anyone at this stage thinks more is better. Cases in Glasgow have risen and fallen independently of all the various iterations and tweaks.

Agreed I don't think there's much of a gap for Edinburgh as an English speaking EU financial alternative to London. Dublin has got that nailed.

Re my FS comment all I meant was that home working may mean fewer job losses in that sector than was feared pre indyref, as it would be easier to keep existing staff but move the head office, and I think companies will be more open to this sort of thing in the future than historically. I still think we'll lose the head offices and the tax revenues

I just don't see why a UK HQ operation would choose staff based in Scotland post Indy. Lots of people in various lower cost regions of England with similar FS skill sets.

I agree @StatisticallyChallenged but it will depend what type of jobs. At the moment if there is an individual equipment fail/technical issue then companies are just sucking it up, covid aside, even if they allow home working, if there is an issue, they'd generally expect the person to make their way to the local office. If there is no local office then they are still having to suck that up. I'd expect a gradual/not so gradual movement either to areas where they have available offices, or, if they are sucking it up, a move to areas of the world with cheaper staff/even more to outsource companies.

Reading this which is pretty terrifying. Hopefully we can avoid it
London Hospital declares Major Incident. www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/4118472-London-Hospital-declares-Major-Incident

Do you work in compliance wax?

I haven't really wrapped my head around all the potential implications on independence. But the more I think about it, the more it feels that now isn't the time.

It'd be better for our economy, jobs and wages if the question of independence was put to bed for 5 years with a promise to revisit when the economic fallout post covid and brexit was better understood.

Ah delusional dreams of a competent government actually in Scotland's best interests! Instead of peddling the nonsense that Scotland can choose to avoid brexit consequences.

@Perihelion

Wouldbegood so if not a lockdown now, what instead? Yes lockdown is just kicking the can down the road, but right now, I don't see any other option, seeing as we've another 2 months of winter and only at the start of the vaccine roll out.

I agree with scottishskifun and bear that a lockdown should really only be used in extremis , to control numbers (and therefore hospitalizations) while other measures are put in place. Be that expanding NHS provision, improving contact tracing or whatever. But that was squandered over the summer, and in Scotland at least we are now stuck in a loop of restrictions, that are occasionally relaxed until they have to be tightened again, or just move straight to further tightening! Lockdown (and its nasty little relatives tiers 1-4) work because they physically stop people from coming into contact with others. But that shouldn't be a long-term strategy, or the first thought whenever testing shows that positive tests are increasing.

I can't understand why much more effort isn't put into contact tracing (and monitoring/ testing of the contacts, forward and backward). There just seems to be an assumption that it hasn't worked, or there are too many cases in the community, but it just seems to have been chronically underfunded with nowhere near the number of staff needed to contact and assist everyone. And the odd well publicised cock-up that doesn't instil confidence in the system. Some more thought should be put into helping people who really can't self isolate too (financial, job security, needing to access food or carers etc). Surely that would be cheaper economically, as well as better for the social and mental health of the population?

Maybe we just have to suck up further lockdown and lite-lockdown until the vaccination programme is further along, now, given we have limited time to do anything else in terms of improving other systems. But we just can't have this method of cycling restrictions being rolled out again whenever we have a bad flu year in the future, because it's been proven to bring down case numbers temporarily until the weather gets better. Nononononono.

Sort of @tinseltitsbumfannythelot. I don't analyse new regs or give advice on it though I would have learn any new system at least to the point where I knew where to find stuff/know who to ask for specifics and know the most common/important parts.

[quote ikswobel]Reading this which is pretty terrifying. Hopefully we can avoid it
London Hospital declares Major Incident. www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/4118472-London-Hospital-declares-Major-Incident[/quote]
Really important to keep these stories in context. The Daily Fail has also been alarmist to attract and boost their comments, it’s how their ad funding works.
If you’ve ever lived in London, you’ll know that the hospitals run to capacity/bursting at the seams over every winter. Likewise, the maternity units close to new admissions, yes women in labour, at peak birth points too- August being one of them- you are bumped on to another unit that can manage to admit you.
Likewise, you ideally don’t want the service of an ambulance in central London on a Friday night in the usual Christmas party period, or not be surprised if you’re turned away from A&E at peak points across the year.
I’m not saying this story is untrue, but it sells newspapers and therefore ads online to be alarmist at the moment. Try not to be terrified, the reality is far removed from the way it’s presented, especially if you live in less densely populated areas. Our resilience is being tested enough without irresponsible headlines from the media.

[quote ikswobel]Reading this which is pretty terrifying. Hopefully we can avoid it
London Hospital declares Major Incident. www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/4118472-London-Hospital-declares-Major-Incident[/quote]
Admittedly I don't tend to look at the hospitalisations for Glasgow etc, but I don't imagine we're anywhere close to that surely? Hence the preventative lockdown.

Major incidents in hospitals happen all the time. As far as Scotland is concerned I don't think we are anywhere near this. DH gets asked to prepare for OT every winter normally and hasn't been asked this year, he's been in empty wards, even places such as acute admissions have beds available, no-one in beds in hallways or queuing ambulances etc.

It's very worrying. If you read it it's not just about the usual pressure but about issues with oxygen supply.
I don't think we are in this situation in Scotland - to start with we have a higher proportion of beds per head of population. But for people who are unhappy about our level 4 I think this gives a bit of context.

Last figures available suggested that there was about 56 in ICU in lockdown 1 we were told there was about 225 (250) ICU beds reserved for covid patients. FVR had 3 wards available but these were never full at the peak.

I think we got up to about 200ish in ICU in lock down 1 but i think this time the most we've had is around 100 but it's been around 60ish for around a month.

But we shouldn't let facts get in the way of selling the fear.

@WaxOnFeckOff major incidents don't happen that often in Scotland

@ikswobel No they don't but the article was talking about down south?