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No Voters - what say you?


jamamafegan

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Just now, Fide said:

Harrumph, so much for civil discourse.

Ref! The bad man called me thick!

Read the OP again.

There'll be another umpteen threads and opportunities over the next 18 -24 months to utilise all the message board "phrases" of disdain etc.

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5 minutes ago, git-intae-thum said:

The too wee, too poor argument.

You are of course referring the deficit of Scotland in union, not an iScotlands

Its a deficit that funnily enough has only really risen in the last couple of years and is in part due to taking a share of the UK govts catastrophic public debt.

That is a debt that iScotland may well not have piled up should we have been independent and legally will have no obligation to take on when we become independent.

Up until the last couple of years and for nearly all of the previous 40 years (probably the last 100 years) Scotland has paid in substantially more than we have taken out.

This is a wealthy country. It is tragic how many folk have been/ continue to be.....duped.

Public spending is a good bit above the UK average here. That's hardly the hallmark of wealthy.

So Scotland just washes its hands of everything bad (deficit) and still gets everything good (the pound, the open border, quick access to europe, nato etc)? Stone me if that happens.

Also what baring does the past have now? Am I supposed to vote yes because Scotland didn't get full hands on the oil in the 70s? 

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4 minutes ago, Snakebite said:

Public spending is a good bit above the UK average here. That's hardly the hallmark of wealthy.

So Scotland just washes its hands of everything bad (deficit) and still gets everything good (the pound, the open border, quick access to europe, nato etc)? Stone me if that happens.

Also what baring does the past have now? Am I supposed to vote yes because Scotland didn't get full hands on the oil in the 70s? 

The past is of relevance because it shows the long term trends of Scotland in union. We have been shafted and will continue to be so. If we stay put, it will be slow economic death.

Scottish public spending is dictated by the block grant which is calculated through the Barnett formula as a direct correlation of rUK public spending.

Yes we receive more per head of population, but until the last couple of years contributed significantly more per head of population than what we received.

This again will likely be the case when the oil price rises and production ups.

However that is not the whole story. If Holyrood had full fiscal power, public spend could be targeted.  Money could be stopped for nonsense we do not use or need and instead thrown at industries likely to provide real growth in Scotland.

People using the too wee too poor argument are like the doley sitting content at getting his fortnightly giro.

They then scoff at the guy who gets off his arse and shows a bit of true grit and enterprise.

As a nation do we want to be the doley or entrepreneur.

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31 minutes ago, Snakebite said:

Public spending is a good bit above the UK average here. That's hardly the hallmark of wealthy.

tbf snakebite, I don't think it's one way or the other. I think Norway and Denmark have substantially higher public spending per head than the UK. I don't think anyone would suggest those countries are poor. Not now.

There is the wider argument that I think you can consider. I can see why some might take the view that Scotland is (relatively) poor right now. But to me, that should be seen as a slight on the union, not a justification for its continuance.

I look around at countries, similar in size to us – many of which lack our resources – and think: is there something wrong with us as a people that we can't match those countries? Are we dim-witted, uninventive, lazy? History doesn't tell us so. I think the answer is simpler: there is something wrong with the way we have been governed, and we can do better.

Edited by Mr Heliums
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Since it is the unionist politicians and press making the claim that the rUK makes up the vast majority of Scottish exports, I am gonna throw this right back at ye[emoji4]
A container of whisky distilled in Scotland, bottled in Fife, driven south and sat for a month in a warehouse, put on a ship at Tilbury for shipment to Hamburg.
Can we conclusively prove that container is always recorded as a Scottish export to the EU?


Yes it would be. The data collection method specifies that exports are recorded via customer location not the destination of transport or port. The publication says:

IMG_1489528669.471730.jpg

Also, as you are making the assertion that the export statistics are wrong, you should really be providing the evidence of this.












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Norway have three times the revenue from hydrocarbons that we do (thats a UK comparison though, so may be even higher), and it is an industry, particularly in the north sea which is declining, people earn more there, their GDP is higher, socially are we similar at all? More people here are obese, we have higher rates of obesity and cancer. We have more alcohol related deaths, we use more drugs. Theres a higher percentage of people out of work in Scotland. We are a lot different to them.

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2 minutes ago, Snakebite said:

Norway have three times the revenue from hydrocarbons that we do (thats a UK comparison though, so may be even higher), and it is an industry, particularly in the north sea which is declining, people earn more there, their GDP is higher, socially are we similar at all? More people here are obese, we have higher rates of obesity and cancer. We have more alcohol related deaths, we use more drugs. Theres a higher percentage of people out of work in Scotland. We are a lot different to them.

You are no really making a great case for Scotland continuing in union here.

Edited by git-intae-thum
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6 hours ago, Skyline Drifter said:

I think we'll lose a lot of financial sector jobs and it will create labour market problems both with rUk and with Europe, though the latter is probably going to happen anyway post Brexit (which I was also against).

Finance is cutting jobs right left and centre. No-one will argue that. But I can't see it escalating. I've seen a lot of finance job losses in Edinburgh over the past couple of years. A v quick Google search confirmed this sentiment.

27 February 2015 Job cuts on horizon as RBS reports £3.5bn loss (‘An RBS spokesman declined to rule out redundancies in [Edinburgh]’)

13 March 2016 Rise of the robots means job losses at Royal Bank of Scotland
31 May 2016 Standard Life announces it will be cutting 70 IT jobs in Edinburgh
21 June 2016 Royal Bank of Scotland plans further 900 job cuts in UK
4 October 2016 HSBC is closing its call centre in Edinburgh where it employs 186 staff
18 January 2017 Forty Clydesdale branches to close with loss of 200 jobs
7 March 2017 Executives urged to reveal how many jobs will be lost as Standard Life and Aberdeen Asset Management agree terms

Imagine for a moment that we'd got independence in 2014. How many of those headlines do you think would have blamed independence? How many would you have blamed on independence?

But I think that independence may be the thing that rescues finance jobs. Rather than companies thinking of heading south – as they clearly were last time – surely more, post-Brexit, will base themselves here, with an educated, skilful workforce on tap and a chance of access to Europe. And a newly independent country is bound to draw at least some (I won't speculate how many) jobs, just in order to have a base here.

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9 minutes ago, Snakebite said:

Norway have three times the revenue from hydrocarbons that we do (thats a UK comparison though, so may be even higher), and it is an industry, particularly in the north sea which is declining, people earn more there, their GDP is higher, socially are we similar at all? More people here are obese, we have higher rates of obesity and cancer. We have more alcohol related deaths, we use more drugs. Theres a higher percentage of people out of work in Scotland. We are a lot different to them.

If that's the case, who do you blame for our historically high rates of obesity and cancer? Who is at fault for our long-term lack of investment in renewables? Is there some intrinsic fault with the Scottish race? Or could it not be that we are not fulfilling our potential?

A lot of questions I know, but I'm genuinely interested in your answers.

Edited by Mr Heliums
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8 minutes ago, Mr Heliums said:

But I think that independence may be the thing that rescues finance jobs. Rather than companies thinking of heading south – as they clearly were last time – surely more, post-Brexit, will base themselves here, with an educated, skilful workforce on tap and a chance of access to Europe.

I dont follow this argument at all. If you accept finance jobs would "clearly" have moved South before why wouldnt they now? If European access puts them off London it would be just as easy to go to Dublin and still work in English. Dublin has absolute access to Europe not a vague hope for it which nobody can seriously expect to click in 10 seconds after rUK leaves surely? Even if the SNP can somehow deliver EU membership there will surely be a period out of it.

Edited to add - Thats a genuine question. I'm interested.

Edited by Skyline Drifter
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Just now, Skyline Drifter said:

I dont follow this argument at all. If you accept finance jobs would "clearly" have moved South before why wouldnt they now? If European access puts them off London it would be just as easy to go to Dublin and still work in English. Dubl8n has absolute access to Europe not a vague hope for it which nobidy can seriously expect to click in 10 seconds after rUK leaves surely? Even if the SNP can somehow deliver EU membership there will surely be a period out of it.

I didn't say they would clearly have moved south in 2014. I said it was clear companies were thinking of it. Neither am I claiming that there wouldn't be other options. All I'm saying is that Edinburgh – given its financial expertise and history dwarfs Dublin's – would look more attractive post independence, with the prospect or reality of EU access, than it has for the last two years.

At any rate, I certainly don't see independence as a trigger for financial job losses.

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Regarding Standard Life, I worked for them up until 2013 and I was at an event that year where there was a Q&A with the then Cheri Executive David Nish. He was asked what the attitude of Standard Life would be to Scotland becoming independent and he said that at that point he didn't know the details. He said that from the companies perspective there are technical details about insurance and regulatory regimes covering the company and its customers that he needed to know before taking a position.

I don't think that it can be said with much certainty what way SL would go in the event of Scottish independence. The vast majority of SLs business would be in the rUK, I think only Germany is a significant market for them in the EU. Of course, an independent Scotland might end up being an attractive place for a multinational company, I think that's something the SNO and Yes campaign would be keen to publicise.

I doubt they'd take a specific line but I also think that a company like Standard Life isn't going to be in favour of radical constitutional change. Insurance companies aren't exactly famed for their radicalism.

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2 minutes ago, git-intae-thum said:

You are no really making a great case for Scotland continuing in union here.

We drink more than the Welsh and the Northern Irish (a lot),we are fatter than them, we are generally more likely to die from cancer. Glasgow has a much higher excess mortality rate than cities in the north like Manchester and Liverpool which both have similar levels of deprivation.The point is, even in comparison to these areas that aren't also particularly wealthy compared to the South, we have greater social issues, we just don't have a lot of our shit in order. 

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