Also a lot of northerners saying 'hope they vote no, but if they don't, then I'm emigrating".
To an Indy Scotland you mean?
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
White Paper (THE #indyref thread)
(2915 posts)- Started 11 years ago by Morningsider
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Posted 10 years ago #
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Also a lot of northerners saying 'hope they vote no, but if they don't, then I'm emigrating".
Could I clarify their implication. Are they saying they would emigrate from the rUK to somewhere else in the world, or from Scotland to rUK in event of a Yes vote?
Posted 10 years ago # -
Following up onmy original grumble, the BBC has moderated its line to;
RBS confirms Yes vote London move
RBS confirms it will relocate its registered headquarters to London if Scotland votes for independence next week, but said it had no intention to move jobs or operations.Overall a better reflection of reality. Perhaps they read CCE?
Posted 10 years ago # -
Yes, at the moment these are just legal moves of registered offices but there are massive unanswered questions about the future of the finance sector and how things will develop in the event of a Yes vote.
For example (and there are lots I could choose from) what happens with regulation? The White Paper makes some statements about setting up a new Scottish regulator but how will this work in practice? And what are the implications and costs for taxpayers, customers, businesses? On a purely practical level, where are these new regulators going to come from? At the moment the PRA is struggling to recruit appropriately qualified staff, and that’s from the wider potential workforce in London.
While in theory there is an aim of single EU-wide regulation of finance, the interpretation of these regulations varies across the EU states (and despite claims to the contrary, the UK insurance companies have historically been more tightly regulated than those on the continent; I can’t comment on banks). What happens if the iScotland and rUK regulators take different views on the EU regs? Will the iScotland regulator have any real opportunity to take a different view from rUK? If not, then why would it exist at all?
If Standard Life has 90% of its business from rUK customers then which regulator takes precendence? Are they expected to run two separate businesses? Again, at what cost? How long would they continue with this?
These are questions that can’t just be fobbed off with a “it’ll all be worked out as part of the negotiations” or dismissed as scaremongering. Like it or not, the finance sector is a huge part of the Scottish economy. Without satisfactory plans on how any transition would be dealt with then the rational response is to ask for answers and more detail.
At best I’m sceptical that the Yes side have any robust or thought-through plans. And if I have this view about areas I have some knowledge about, then why should I trust them in areas where I don’t have this knowledge – health, education, defence……?
Posted 10 years ago # -
@stickman
All good questions of course, but they are questions to which the answers are already largely available.
Standard Life for instance sell a bond from their Irish legal entity to English customers, regulated by the FSA and taxed under Scots law. They operate in another ten or so legal jurisdictions in addition to those two. One more is frankly nothing to them.
There's no reason to suppose that at the outset of iScotland we won't just adopt our current regulatory framework wholesale.
Frankly, I hope that Scots (myself included) can find better things to do than punt easy credit and tax dodges to each other.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Yes, but with respect, I don't think that the Irish bonds are a fair comparison. At the moment they may be manufactured abroad but they are sold to UK customers. They are also a relatively small part of their overall balance sheet and business model. If it was the case that they were 90%+ of the whole business then the situation would be very different, and I suspect both the regulators and tax authorities would look at them in a different light.
... And pedant's corner - FSA doesn't exist any more. There were no mourners at the funeral. ;-)
Posted 10 years ago # -
@stickman
Arrrgh! I said FSA. I should and do know better.
What will happen, I guess, is that banks will move their prime legal entity to England, in order to put their hands in the pockets of English taxpayers when they next collapse. We are well shot of them. They currently pay very little tax as they make no money. They have no motive to move the workers that I can see.
Asset managers like Standard Life will move English customers to an English legal entity, brass-plated in London. They have no ability to put their hands in tax payers pockets, so I'd guess will stay put and argue for lower corporation tax, an argument that we should resist.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Could the FCA and PRA have what amounts to a branch office in a very-slightly-foreign territory, if the regulations adopted by iScotland are close enough to the rUK's to allow it without having to specially re-train staff before sending them up on exchange visits?
Financial Services companies seem quite happy to set up branch offices in foreign countries willy-nilly when setting up exciting new ventures. Presumably they're happy paying their offices' power bills and rent and so on to the foreign countries' utility providers using the local currency?
Posted 10 years ago # -
I won't pretend to understand the technicalities of it all, it's not my area of expertise. What I do understand is that in practice these things do work.
I'm sure there are many other examples, but the one I am most familiar with is Ulster Bank. Ulster Bank Limited is headquartered in Belfast, regulated by the UK (PRA / FCA) and running £s accounts for Northern Ireland. Ulster Bank Ireland Limited is headquartered in Dublin, regulated by the Bank of Ireland and running €s accounts for the Republic of Ireland. It has substantial headquarters buildings in both and the latter is the bigger part of the operation, even though the former is its spiritual home. It has operations centres on both sides of the border but each of these support parts of the operation on both sides of the border. Various other support and operations functions are carried out from the UK Mainland, Poland and India. Both legal entities are subsidiaries of RBS Group Plc, registered and headquartered (for now) from Edinburgh although to all intents and purposes run from London.
This arrangement has always been the case. Banks/ F.I.s have long been happy to work across borders and deal with the regulators wherever it is they want to do business. I'm not sure this makes them any more inefficient than a bank which deals only in one market with one regulator? HSBC, Standard Chartered and Barclays are "big" banks that dodged most of the crash fallout and yet have themselves spread widely across the globe with infinitely clever webs of subsidiaries and dealing with each local regulator on its own terms. They do that because they wish to do business in this countries.
And if I have this view about areas I have some knowledge about, then why should I trust them in areas where I don’t have this knowledge – health, education, defence……?
Well the first 2 are already being run from Holyrood and have always been separate from the rest-of-the-UK systems. The fact there are hospitals, schools, dentists and universities running in the country and running pretty well should allow you to put trust in that.
When it comes to defence matters, well frankly I don't think many military experts put a huge amount of faith in the Ministry of Defence to run the armed forces particularly well. Their procurement record is appalling and they arrived in Iraq and Afghanistan basically with the "wrong" army, having to replace a huge amount of unsuitable kit in a hurry because they were still trying to run an army for a Cold War standoff rather than modern asymmetric counter-insurgency warfare.
Ruth Davidson implied that Putin might threaten (invade) Scotland if it were independent without Trident. Others may correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the military presence currently in Scotland is not designed or intended to garrison and/or defend the country. There's no permanent major surface warship presence, there's absolutely limited offshore patrol capability (1 or perhaps 2 visiting vessels) - the Holyrood run Scottish Fishery Protection Agency and the Northern Lighthouse Board have more vessels based here - there's no oceanic patrol capability since the upgraded Nimrod was scrapped (again SFPA have some small aircraft for inshore patrol) and there is now only 1 operational military airbase (Lossiemouth). Between 2000 and 2010, military personnel stationed in Scotland have been cut by 28%. There are now (2014) only 3,690 army personnel in Scotland. The intention of the White Paper was to more or less double the numbers of military personnel in Scotland.
At the end of the day I guess it comes down to whether you think Independence is the right thing or not with respect to changing the country and bringing it closer to the kind of country you'd like to live in, and if negotiation and changes to regulatory environments are a price worth paying.
Posted 10 years ago # -
"
EDINBURGH’S financial services sector will flourish in an independent Scotland, Alex Salmond has claimed.
The First Minister dismissed renewed warnings from top companies that they were preparing to transfer parts of their business to England if there is a Yes vote.
And in an exclusive interview with the Evening News, he insisted the skills and talents of those employed in the sector would help bring prosperity to Scotland after independence.
"
http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/scottish-independence-edinburgh-would-flourish-1-3538274
Posted 10 years ago # -
@kaputnik
Thanks, that's the kind of response that isn't often put across elsewhere and I appreciate you going to the effort.
I'm not able to express my views as eloquently/succinctly as I'm primarily a numbers geek and writing isn't my strong point. Being a numbers geek means that that is what I'm primarily focussed on, and for me the case just hasn't been made. It's not just about regulation, which I agree could be resolved. I just chose that as an example of the issues.
For me there is just too much of the "it'll all be sorted and life will be flowers and rainbows" for me. We're being sold what comes across to me as a student union vision of the future. To quote Sara Palin (possibly a first for CCE?) "How's that hopey, changey thing working out for ya?"
Posted 10 years ago # -
We are well shot of them. They currently pay very little tax as they make no money
At the risk of sounding snarky, can we apply this to any loss making industry? So no more wailing about the closure of shipyards, steelworks, coal mines.......?
Posted 10 years ago # -
So no more wailing about the closure of shipyards, steelworks, coal mines.......?
It's not so much the loss of the industries its what you do with the newly unemployed. The closure of pits was arguably necessary but simply abandoning these people to a life on benefits has caused an awful lot of the problems we see in small ex-mining communities.
Posted 10 years ago # -
@stickman
'Financial services' are a special part of the economy in my view, banks in particular. The question is, to me, one of social utility. We would be well shot of any organisation that doesn't make our lives better.
Banks, insurers and asset managers should, I think;
1) Provide a mechanism of exchange
2) Allocate capital wisely
3) Act as a store of value
4) Pool and reduce riskMany of their activities are now, in as far as can be comprehended, well outside this remit. I'm thinking of high frequency trading, mis-selling and financial instruments too complex to be understood before they mature.
The NHS does not make a profit but we should keep it. Ditto some form of civil defence force. We need banks to facilitate our purchases and store the value of work done. We should keep that. The trading desks, shadow banking system and tax evasion apparatus? I say let them go elsewhere.
Scots need, amongst other things;
1) Food
2) Shelter
3) Clothing
4) Drinking water
5) Fulfilling work
6) Medical care
7) Communities to live in
8) Access to culture
9) Access to leisureIdeally I'd like to see how each part of our society helps to provide these things or gets in the way of them. That's a fairly radical idea these days, I know.
Posted 10 years ago # -
]It's not so much the loss of the industries its what you do with the newly unemployed. The closure of pits was arguably necessary but simply abandoning these people to a life on benefits has caused an awful lot of the problems we see in small ex-mining communities.
Agreed.
Part of the problem that has to be tackled (and I don't know how) is to acknowledge that some of these ex-mining towns are never going to recover and so how to encourage people I move on. For example, I remember visiting a village in South Wales (can't remember the name, even if I could then I couldn't spell it!).
It developed solely round the mine. A settlement would never have developed there apart from the mine and with that gone then there was no prospect of any industries choosing to locate there unless heavily bribed by government. The difficult question to address is whether it is the right use of scarce resources to try to prop up a dying village? Or just give the residents the funds to relocate to where they are more likely to find work?
I don't know the answer, but I think the question should at least be acknowledged.
Posted 10 years ago # -
The question is, to me, one of social utility. We would be well shot of any organisation that doesn't make our lives better.
And who decides what constitutes "social utility"? You? Me? A panel of "experts"? I suspect we'd all have different ideas about this. And then what happens when you fall under the spotlight and have to justify your own "social utility"? It may be fine when it's your definition that is the current one but what happens if the government changes and you aren't part of the favoured group?
Like me, you work in the finance industry. You know as we as I do that there are a multitude of uses of financial products and it easy to say "they have no utility" if you look at them from one perspective, but have valid uses when viewed from another angle.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Historically, many settlements were founded because there existed confluences of paths/roads/waterways whose users might be persuaded to stop for rest/nourishment/horse-shoeing. Now that people can travel further/faster/longer/more safely (at least in the sense of being less frequently waylaid by highwaypeople), it's only the proximity to those same travel channels which permits people to remain there and perform other work somewhere else, unless the settlement has acquired other industries or is large enough to support the economic activities based around lots of people living there and needing food/clothes/utilities/fripperies.
A way around the people-who-need-work-stuck-somewhere-where-there-is-none-any-more is some sort of combined employment/housing/relocation administration, which could move people who need work into somewhere they could find some and then perhaps request people looking to retire somewhere quiet and out-of-the-way to consider former mining villages, where there are now some conveniently freshly-vacated houses.
Posted 10 years ago # -
I think we need to accept that people have lived in places that now hold little attraction and vice versa. Think of Roxburgh, erstwhile capital of Scotland and now abandoned. The summit of Salisbury Crags was a good place to live in the Bronze Age climatic optimum, but no longer.
Posted 10 years ago # -
@stickman
I think those decisions should be made democratically. (And fully accept that I am condensing/glossing/simplifying a hugely complex issue.)
Posted 10 years ago # -
"some sort of combined employment/housing/relocation administration, which could move people who need work into somewhere"
"I think we need to accept that people have lived in places that now hold little attraction and vice versa."
I think most efforts to date, have largely been based on the idea that (most/many) people want to stay where they are and have family/roots.
With hindsight this might not have been the optimum option (either for the individuals or 'society').
But the opportunities for mass emigration are more limited than they once were...
Even significant movement within Scotland or the UK is hard - Corby no more.
http://www.coalfieldcommunities.org/about-us.php
http://www.thecourier.co.uk/news/local/fife/stark-report-into-fife-deprivation-1.86662
Posted 10 years ago # -
@chdot:
There don't appear to be such limits on economic migration within the US: there is a willingness to pack everything in a van and drive to the opposite coast for work. Being glib, a hangover from the Pioneer roots of the modern US?
Posted 10 years ago # -
"there is a willingness to pack everything in a van and drive to the opposite coast for work.
I'm sure you're right, but the US has plenty of places that have been 'left behind' and live in poverty - some are/were large cities.
Here plenty of people 'pack up and go to find a life/fortune' - not least to London! No idea if the proportion of the 'mobile' is much greater in the US.
"Being glib, a hangover from the Pioneer roots of the modern US?"
Perhaps, though I suspect 'the land of opportunity' and 'the American Dream' aren't what they once(?) were.
I'm sure differences in welfare systems is a factor - for good and bad.
Things could be different,
perhaps
maybe
"
Then there’s dreams. In a small room off Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, the campaign group Common Weal, whose activists have become quietly central to the non-nationalist part of the yes campaign, were presenting its proposals for “21 new industries for Scotland”.
The radical wing of the yes campaign is not obsessed with exploiting oil revenues. They are keen instead on what economists call the “entrepreneurial state”: a state investment bank, the creation of “national mutual” companies etc. Of the new industries proposed some were mundane – for example hydrogen powered engines and micro-engineering which already have a skills base in the country, or the diversification of Clyde shipbuilding outside of the military market.
"
http://blogs.channel4.com/paul-mason-blog/grassroots-groups-leading-indyref-debate/2263
Posted 10 years ago # -
A state investment bank is a bad idea. The risk/reward incentives are completely misaligned for any kind of successful investment if backed by state funds. Also they are exposed to corruption far more than any private venture. Read the stories about the collapse of the German Landesbanken for examples.
Posted 10 years ago # -
"
City gamblers have overwhelmingly backed a ’Yes’ vote, with bookmaker William Hill saying 80% of bets had backed independence.
The company, Scotland’s biggest bookmaker, revealed that the Capital was still the most cautious, with over 90% of referendum bets in Aberdeen, Dundee, Glasgow, Kilmarnock, Motherwell and Perth put down for yes. And in Inverness, 87% of bets backed a ‘yes’ vote.
"
http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/capital-gambles-on-a-yes-as-bookmakers-take-2m-1-3538782
Meaningless of course.
http://sports.williamhill.com/bet/en-gb/betting/g/1479658/Scottish-Independence-Markets.html
Posted 10 years ago # -
The bookies are never wrong.....
Posted 10 years ago # -
@laidback
@kaputnikWaaay up at the top of the page I meant northern englanders saying they intended to migrate to indyscotland.
Posted 10 years ago # -
@stickman
The landesbanken are widely regarded, along with the different attitude to share ownership and a culture of education and hard work, as being largely responsible for the prosperity of Germany. I don't know if this idea is correct or not, but Germany does something right.
And we have learned to our cost that all UK banks are state backed, though informally through free (the banking levy notwithstanding) implicit guarantees. They made, make and will continue to make awful decisions until we fully seperate retail and investment activities and charge the full price for any state guarantee to the retail banks. (Oddly, both the French National Front and Occupy Wall Street are also in favour of this seperation.) I suspect our economy is much weaker than it should be as a result of banking activity that ignores social utility.
I'm certainly not taking instructions on how to vote from any of our financial institutions.
Posted 10 years ago # -
until we fully seperate retail and investment activitiesIs that to protect the retail side from the actions of the investment divisions or vice versa?
I'm certainly not taking instructions on how to vote from any of our financial institutions.
You and me both!
I know I'm possibly coming across as a bit contrarian and argumentative here. It's not my usual position - I may be getting fired up after seeing the PM in front of all the cameras yesterday, but there's a debate going and I like to have my views challenged.
Posted 10 years ago # -
"
@Peston: I have learned that PM met supermarket bosses at No.10 this afternoon & urged them to go public on how prices would rise in indie Scotland
"
Posted 10 years ago # -
"
@Peston: Would the anglicisation of banks and fund managers actually matter? http://t.co/MuTTwjvMI2
"
"
@Peston: & why five banks disclosed plans to move to England if Scots vote for independence http://t.co/MuTTwjvMI2
"
Posted 10 years ago #
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