Corporations are people too

Indeed, separate legal persons. Who pay tax and don’t have representation. So they issue press releases and employee memos. How terrible.

gordimhor – Ian Davidson is a nutter and has been since before any independence debate, but I don’t find the comment intimidating with context added. Sillars, on the other hand, is a former leader of the SNP who is describing a set of actions an SNP government might take and are so clearly stated they don’t have the get out of being a metaphorical clumsiness.
Ian Davidson MP, who is Chairman of the Scottish Affairs Select Committee, told RIA Novosti he was not advocating the literally bayonetting of pro-independence supporters following a No-vote, but added his comments were “in the context of the conflict being over and there would be the cleaning up to be done.”

we are discussing employees not shareholders* and they were doing more than inform about what it might mean.

If you go back to the old notion about no taxation without representation then given the levels of tax paid by businesses who can’t vote, there’s an engagement deficit if they are to remain silent.

Corporate Social Responsibility and increasing employee engagement has been developing for ages with the expectation that employees should be informed of major issues affecting the company for which they work.

Looking at it from those two points of view it is reasonable for a company to communicate its point of view.

There is no obligation to do this

I’m afraid there is if you’re a listed company. I can’t be bothered looking it up for you, but the obligations to consider and inform shareholders on risks to the business are quite strong.

Anyone from the Yes side care to distance themselves from Mr Sillars?

No, not intimidating in the slightest…

Probably but it is worthy of debate. I think they need to set the tone very careful or else it is just political rhetoric mixed with DOOM and an implicit or explicit threat. Fundamentally it is also none of their business how i vote so I am not fully comfortable with it.

For a public company, they are really obliged to comment on the implications for them of a decision so there should be no complaint about them doing so. For a private company, I think it is perfectly reasonable for the company to outline the implications of a decision so that employees are aware of the impact on their jobs as long as there is no threat of sanction if anyone doesn’t toe the party line.

We made no comment to staff formally and there’s been no real request to know what the company position is.

Most no voters seem to passionately dislike him [ in england anyway]

Is this the case in Scotland as well?
Amongst friends and colleagues, it is the deceit, refusal to answer credible questions, playing the man rather than ball and general holier than thou attitude. I don’t think the attitude displayed during the campaign is anything I would want representing me at either a negotiating table or on the international stage.

Galloway seems to be warning Scotland that under independence, we’ll get the government we vote for. And what’s worse, we’ll get them all the time!

The SNP got something like 45% of the vote but 53% of the seats, so you could argue that if PR did its job properly we voted for an SNP dominated coalition rather than an SNP controlled government.

Knew someone once who kept training through. Ended up fitting and hospitalised. If in doubt, rest.

This isn’t some impartial business decision, it’s as political as it gets.

I think you fail to understand the very onerous obligations on listed companies in relation to information provision. This sort of stuff has a high degree of share price sensitivity and investors know what it means. It can only be published if it genuinely is what current management will do. Unlike the politicians, directors of such companies face very serious consequences for misleading.

^ that, but before you go there work out what you want to use it for and where. That’ll make a difference to length, width, rocker etc that you’re looking for.

plan is to paddle up Loch Morar from Morar to Swordland and portage to East Loch Tarbet. Cross from Tarbet to Knoydart past the narrows at the head of Loch Nevis (don’t have the name of the upper loch to hand), but that’s large body of water and a narrow channel, and on to Inverie. Then to Mallaig next day crossing Loch Nevis again.

I’ve paddled a fair bit round there and tides aren’t particularly worrying as there’s always a shore away from the flow. Winds are a way bigger issue there and there’s no table for that.

Higher paid employees pay much more employer taxes like National Insurance as it’s uncapped, 13% on amounts over 50k (I think that’s the threshold)

Mainly 13.8% above c. £8k p.a. with no upper limit.

we keep full control of everything

I’m not sure dazh’s suggestion allowed any control. Sort of like the sovereignty debate in a nutshell. maybe.

rUK defends Scotland in the event of an agressor attacking, and Scotland pays for the protection, with some sort of ongoing contribution acting as a retainer

Great idea. Hell, we could even extend that logic to every other aspect of public service provision. Could call it a Union, or something.

Ever been in a job you haven’t like and changed just to move, even if it meant a drop in wages?

Looking a little harder to find the one with better pay and prospects always seemed a better idea.

Scottish DEFENCE force

Yup, that could only mean one thing. See Israel Defence Forces for useful naming conventions

you should probably read it tbh, because it doesn’t say that at all

You think I don’t read what I link to. Interesting. It may use the word “could” but there’s no reason to publish it unless it is to satisfy investor concerns over what it will do in the event of a Yes vote. Otherwise its previous statement on contingency planning would have been adequate.

Yes, the Standard Life story isn’t a new story, it’s an old story dragged up again because Better Together can’t give up on Project Fear.

There’s going to be a lot more of this in the next few days.
It is a new story today in the sense that the market update was issued today stating which parts of their business would relocate, not just that they’re thinking about it. i.e. it isn’t a threat – it is a statement.

Standard Life weigh in with a statement which essentially says a Yes vote means they’re going to relocate large parts of the business to England:

Std Life market update

if you were embarking on setting up a new country, would you be looking to base the economy on the financial sector?

If you’ve already got one, it would make sense to maximise the potential of it whilst encouraging the new industries you want. There doesn’t seem to be an aversion to basing much of the economics on oil, despite its limited remaining life.

Under normal circumstances it was entirely manageable with the usual levers of economic policy and governance

This may not be thread on which to argue the subject, but no, it wasn’t manageable. The deficit was created through boom years (i.e. better than “normal circumstances”)and so was unsustainable whether there was a crash or not.

That’s not revisionist. That’s a view I came to in about 2002 when I saw the inevitable going to happen. Not that I didn’t ride the wave first, but I got off it in 2007 when it was clearly about to break.

£1 trillion bailout by taxpayers after they bankrupted the country

Well, it wasn’t a trillion and they didn’t bankrupt the country. That was done by the politicians who had already spent it all before the crisis started. But you knew that anyway, right?

We were going out for a ride, she asked me to get her bike out for her and when I asked “which one” she discovered she’d forgotten she had two.

So I’m sure I can manage to forget how many I have if there’s ever an awkward moment.

The currency I work with is AUD (simply because I have a better chance of understanding the Oz economy). Check the movements. I haven’t imagined it.

Indeed. Apologies. Quite why I wrote AUD when my brain told my fingers to write NOK is a concern as I don’t touch AUD. I’d better get that sorted before I pick up the ballot paper!

The others stand.

So you are sure the CU issue has had nothing to do with the £ decline at a time when we keep getting told our economy is recovering

You sure it is declining? It has recently been strengthening against other currencies I have to deal with like CHF, CAD, AUD. But hey, that doesn’t suit your argument, so it can be ignored. On the other hand you could go and read the various market forecasts from a few months ago which are now coming through. A bit late but still happening because of the reasons predicted and with the effect predicted.

I’d be looking at what is actually happening to the pound rather than listening to spin

Only it isn’t spin. The markets have been expecting and predicting USD to strengthen vs GBP for months and in managing my employer’s FX exposure for the last several months I’ve been banking on it. The predictions have nothing to do with the referendum and everything to do with the US economy finally starting to come to life.

Farage reckons that well over 50% of Scots live on benefits

A couple of years out of date, but, for a change, he might not be talking complete nonsense.
Maybe 60%

That plus PR is a major improvement

Is it? partially, but not fully. I dislike the secondary vote element because that is picked from party lists. Anything which perpetuates the party system rather than making it about the individuals being elected I see as fundamentally flawed because they’re there on their party’s merits not their own. So where is their primary loyalty? Party or constituency?

“Yes of course Scotland can go it alone” Then saying “the number don’t match up” suggests that we can’t!

Pointing this out is apparently anti english?
Ben’s quote was clearly directed at those outside Scotland.

Whether or not we can go it alone and whether the numbers add up or not are two different issues.

The ability to go it alone does not in any way define the quality of life we’d have. Hell, even Zimbabwe can go it alone.

But the numbers adding up or not is very much about whether or not the vision presented by the Scottish Government in the white paper is deliverable. It has had so many holes shot in it since the day of publication that it clearly isn’t.

And before you say again “we’re not always destined to have the SNP in charge” that’s the manifesto of the guys doing the negotiating for the structure of independence. They will have more impact on the future of the country through that process than the generation of governments which follow.

It’s not that we can’t afford it, it’s that we’re not capable of doing it ourselves because ekkonomiks iz diffikult. Like a small child who’s rich grandparent dies, we need someone responsible to look after our wealth for us, carefully handing it back to us when we can prove we’re responsible

You can take it as an anti-Scottish viewpoint of the English if you like Ben, but there are plenty of us inside the country who don’t think the numbers and policies add up.

Of course they’re doing it because it’s becoming more difficult to extract the reserves that are left – but they think it’s worth the investment.

And they expect the tax incentives to follow which were proposed by the Oil & Gas Commission. So business takes more risk to achieve the harder to get supplies. And government collects less tax. So that’s less tax on reducing supplies. Now, how do the numbers add up again?

– If the oil is running out, why are the oil companies spending record amounts on new equipment?

Because what’s left is so hard to get they need to to be able to get it.

problem then comes that the surplus will get turned in to more tax breaks and divvied up amoung “friends”. Rather than put to good use

And you know this because?

Or perhaps they’ll use any surplus to start reducing the (probably) £1.7trillion debt we’ll have by then. It’ll only take a generation or so to sort that out.

coping is all the assurance I need

That’s you. It isn’t the rest of the country, thankfully. If you’re bamboozled by numbers, then perhaps you need to take the time to work through them. The ability to understand numbers is fairly key to the ability to cope (or not).

what, the bit that most people agree on?

Well, you presented it as a fact and it is an assumption at best.

Still, coping really doesn’t really aim too high in the aspiration stakes. Coping is what you do when trying to get to the end of the month having had to fix the car unexpectedly. It certainly isn’t how the utopian iS is portrayed by the Yes campaign.

Better than the long term exit of the UK from the EU

How better? Possible uncertainty as opposed to a yes vote being definite uncertainty? It is not better, honestly, is it.

Still can’t quite see UK exit happening. It would require a Tory majority in Westminster for a start and despite Ed Milliband’s best efforts I can’t quite see that being what runs the next Parliament.

It would be convenient to have membership of both [EU & NATO], but it’s not an essential, just an extension of the period of adjustment to being independent.

In your world. As an FD of a business which exports the majority of its output to the EU, any “adjustment” is something I can’t afford. You can talk about the long term all you want but you’ve got to get through the short term to get there and the short term is quite hard enough thanks.

a mandate to negotiate what’s best for Scotland

And, as I’ve asked before, what if the deal available isn’t any good? Will he carry on regardless?

What if:
EU says membership is contingent on an economic plan to bring Scotland in line with European economic cycles and the Euro and following that plan damages the other White Paper commitments?
NATO says that nukes have to stay here to gain membership?

The independent Fiscal Commission recommended a currency union, but also covered various other options B, C, D and E

Indeed they did Ben. But they didn’t say which was which.

AS needs to be clear which one is B. And what the implications for the country might be.

Parliament Act has been around for over a century. Limits the Lords to delaying.