Scottish Referendum debate - watch with Mumsnet

[KatieMumsnet]

So tonight sees the first TV debate of the Scottish Referendum with First Minister and key advocate of the pro- yes campaign, Alex Salmond and Alistair Darling, leader of the pro-UK Better Together campaign coming together for a head to head debate for the first time.

You can watch live from 8pm on STV and if you're south of the border can tune in via the STV player.

Fancy watching along with us? What are you hoping to see from tonight's debate? What are your thoughts on the campaigns so far?

If you've decided which way to vote, why? And if not, what will help you decide?

Do feel free to share these, and any more thoughts you have

For those saying the public sector jobs would be replaced -do you believe that Scotland would needed a bigger public sector, proportionally, than the UK as a whole does at present. If not, then we would have job losses as I mentioned above as we currently have 21% of the population employed in public sector compared to 18% overall for the UK, a difference representing 78000 jobs iirc.

If we would need a bigger public sector than the UK, how would we finance that?

Personally, I believe Scotland could do with a larger public sector as I believe generally things are better off in public rather than private ownership. There is already far less privatisation of schools/NHS in Scotland and I would hope that an iScotland could for example have far more state nurseries/childcare.

If we had full control of things once things had settled down there are loads of places savings could be made without necessarily cutting. Far lower expense on defence (Inc Trident), not paying for big London centric projects like HS2 or Olympics. Welfare and taxation far easier to administer for 6 million rather than 60 million so savings there.

Things like a more robust welfare state could lead to overall savings as well.

Large swathes of the public sector in Scotland is already independent of the rest of the uk so those jobs will stay in Scotland anyway. Police, courts, health, education, justice, prison service. Dh is a civil servant, his job as secure after a yes vote than it currently is. And let's face it with the further cuts the Tories are proposing who knows what's coming for the public sector.

I work for a FTSE100 company who have been in Scotland for 25 years and have recently reported they have no plans to change that regardless of the result I. September. They are actually moving jobs here from London as we speak. Personally for every doom and gloom report suggesting jobs will head south, there are companies saying they are staying. But it's very easy to be swayed by the threat to jobs.

I do know people who work in the finance sector who have been told their jobs are at risk, who are still voting yes, because they believe that is best for Scotland.

Ah, I see we're back to the Yes voters being wonderful selfless people line again.

Yes, large swathes of the public sector is separate, but we already have a bigger public sector than the UK as a whole. I really don't see how we can afford to have more than the roughly 1:4 ratio of public:private sector employees we have already. We're already overweight in public sector employees.

More state nurseries wouldn't really create jobs, it would just move them. And I'm pretty sure Swinney has said that money saved from Trident would be spent on the armed forces.

?

"When comparing the level of aggregate public spending across countries or over time, the standard approach is to compare the ratio of public spending to GDP. This allows the size of the public sector to be compared whilst controlling for the size of the economy.

In 2011/12, estimated public spending was equivalent to 42.7 per cent of GDP in Scotland. This is estimated to be lower than in both the UK as a whole (45.5 per cent), and the majority of EU-15 countries.

Over the period 2007/08 to 2011/12 as a whole, the ratio of public spending to GDP was estimated to be 43.0 per cent in Scotland, compared to 45.0 per cent in the UK."

From GERS
www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2013/11/9348/18

I was comparing job statistics - I will link them if I can find them again. I wasn't talking about all public spending.

18% scot vs 18.8% UK? Seems pretty similar?

"The devolved public sector is an important source of employment in Scotland.1 In March 2013, councils, the NHS and central government, including the Scottish Government, employed 443,900 full and part-time staff (headcount), representing 18 per cent of the total workforce in Scotland."

<a class="break-all" href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=bx7pU4yYNoaI7AaL34HwDQ&url=www.audit-scotland.gov.uk/docs/central/2013/nr_131128_public_sector_workforce.pdf&cd=9&ved=0CDgQFjAI&usg=AFQjCNFPdg-1NAuIHPoWIS7OtHgh32zYYA&sig2=USl_MYU_uRiQegijdLAt_Q" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=bx7pU4yYNoaI7AaL34HwDQ&url=www.audit-scotland.gov.uk/docs/central/2013/nr_131128_public_sector_workforce.pdf&cd=9&ved=0CDgQFjAI&usg=AFQjCNFPdg-1NAuIHPoWIS7OtHgh32zYYA&sig2=USl_MYU_uRiQegijdLAt_Q triggers download

"For September 2013 there were 5.7 million people working in the public sector across the UK accounting for 18.8% of people in employment."
www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/december-2013/sty-public-sector-employment.html

Total stats I have are here: page 4 data table

21% scotland vs 18% UK. If Scotland was in line with UK that would be -78000 jobs.

this says 21%, the lowest for years

this says twice as many work for UK gov rather than Scotland

I stand corrected :)

However, if 31,000 of those are UK gov jobs presumably that sort of shrinks the %age. Of course some of the UKgov jobs could be lost.

I still think its much of a muchness. I'm sure there will be job losses and companies relocating. However I'm also sure there will be jobs created and new companies locating here.

I stand corrected :)

However, if 31,000 of those are UK gov jobs presumably that sort of shrinks the %age. Of course some of the UKgov jobs could be lost.

I still think its much of a muchness. I'm sure there will be job losses and companies relocating. However I'm also sure there will be jobs created and new companies locating here.

Personally, I believe Scotland could do with a larger public sector as I believe generally things are better off in public rather than private ownership. There is already far less privatisation of schools/NHS in Scotland and I would hope that an iScotland could for example have far more state nurseries/childcare.

I may have a slightly skewed view of education as I live in Edinburgh where a significant proportion opt for private school, and I'm also aware of quite a few recent NHS contracts going to the private sector - but do you really believe public sector is intrinsically better? The council here have a record of shocking mid-management.

Aside from child care (which would have to be much more flexible than current state nursery) do you see any other sectors included in the expansion of the public sector? It strikes me as leading to a very unbalanced economy.

Just because Edinburgh city council is useless on so many fronts trams doesn't mean it is typical of the Scottish public sector.

Fwiw Edinburgh has lots of private school pupils because of the number of English syllabus boarding schools which have a high proportion of non Scots attending skewing the numbers eg fettes, merchiston.

I was actually just going to ask what other functions it was envisaged going into the public sector, but as councils had cropped up on the other thread that was top of my mind. Edinburgh council is however a wonderful example of public sector not necessarily being the best option.

I know quite a lot of people in Edinburgh who opt for private education as a family tradition, and others who do it because the hours and wrap-around care suit them (these are people at a higher level than I am job-wise, and generally two parents with 'high flyer' jobs). Fetters etc probably skew the figures a bit, but there are a lot of non boarders in Watsons, Heriots, Mary Erskine etc (gives up before listing them all). Our children don't go private, so I'm not sure on the split but I would have expected day pupils to outnumber boarders.

Across Scotland only 4% of pupils are educated privately. Our system works much better than the chaos in the mixed English system.

The public sector is run much more like the private sector nowadays. It is a lot more efficient than it used to be. Private does not equal better.

Nor does public. I've read public sector business cases that would never have got past the ideas stage where I work. I'm not saying private is intrinsically better either - there are some businesses I am amazed carry on functioning.

I just don't agree with the point made that the public sector should expand. I do agree that Edinburgh has a much higher percentage of private education than the rest of the country. Presumably those who choose it, wherever they are, have good reasons.

And re education - having looked at the way the new exams are being introduced (or in many areas not being introduced) and the syllabus (the impact of WW1 on crofting? compulsory Scottish texts?) I'm not impressed.

Northern Ireland has the highest proportion of workers employed in the Public Sector in the UK, followed by Wales. I'm not sure why you'd aim for this situation to be honest- all it does is make the workforce dependent on government funding rather than attracting private industry.

As of Q1 2014, there were 545,200 people employed in the public sector in Scotland - 21% of the workforce. A proportion of these jobs will be lost and will not come back, because a Scotland will not need as big an infrastructure to deal with a population of 5.3million (8.2% of UK total), as opposed to delivering a fraction of services to a population of 64.1million.

Aye craic -UK is 18% so if we even just dropped to be proportionally the same that would be 78000 jobs lost roughly.

Alan Bissett's response to the latest Better Together guff that's circulating:

"According to the Better Together campaign, food banks are a GOOD THING in society that mean Scotland is becoming 'normal'. Vote Yes and bin this mentality."

Shame on you Better Together.

It is one Better Together site that I've seen it on, and I agree it is badly written. It is however indisputable that there are foodbanks throughout Europe. Including the well-known struggling economy Germany.

Why not shame on the Scottish Government? How much have they contributed to foodbanks and how much have they spent on Gaelic? How much did they spend trying to cover up lies about legal advice? How much do the poor benefit from the council tax freeze and free prescriptions, and how much do the middle class and rich benefit?

There shouldn't even be food banks, rather than seeing it as something that we should get used to we need to correct the reasons why people are resorting to them. Yes, Scottish Government should be helping address this issue, I agree with you OOAOML.

I've been in my local food bank to see how it all operates, and it's working families that are actually needing to use it. In this day and age...

I agree, it's a stupidly worded comment. As far I can tell written by a random history teacher. There's been plenty of shit from yes campaign affiliates too. Personally I'm not going to make a decision based on random comments from numpties on either side. I'll stick to proper information!

As they say, opinions are like Arseholes... Including this guy's!

Speaking of Alan Bissett, I thought his tweet the other day was a bit silly 'Finding these days that I feel more in common with English people voting Yes than with Scottish people voting No.'

Like it's such an unusual thing for a Scottish person to have much in common with an English person! I'm neither Scottish nor English and can clearly see the Scots and English have far more things in common than they do differences.

The problem with foodbanks though is how to get rid of the need for them? I actually think there will always be a need for some form of 'practical assistance' but considering now widespread they are and the diverse range of countries that have them - how do you address the problem? As with many things, I'm not convinced an independent Scotland would do any better than any other country at this.

Completely agree Squoosh, what an ignorant thing to say.