These are my reasons for voting NO on September 18th 2014. First of all a little about me, I am a husband and a father of two. I work in the construction industry and have done since I left school. My role is clerical but primarily financial although I did work on site and still visit sites regularly. If I had to bracket myself I would consider myself to be working/middle class and am a traditional centre left voter. I do not, however, blindly follow the party line if there is something that I do not believe in or disagree with. I am also very sceptical of politicians of ALL parties, European, Westminster or Holyrood. I am fiercely patriotic and love to watch Scotland compete in the Six Nations and international Football competitions. I am not, however, nationalistic, as I am equally happy to watch and cheer on Team GB perform at various sports, even Europe at golf, but I get a special feeling when I see a Scot excelling at any level, whether it’s under the Saltire, Union flag or European Flag.
As anyone that has a mortgage, a family or runs a household will tell you, times have been and still are tough since the global downturn started in 2008 and like everyone else we have had to tighten our belts over the last few years, pay off debt and generally knuckle down to make ends meet. My wife and I have been fortunate enough to remain employed through the recession despite her working for a major financial company that required financial bolstering by the UK government.
The thing that concerns me the most as a voter is the economy and my family’s personal finances, the economy is the key to ALL our prosperity, not just my family’s, but everyone in Scotland’s and the whole of the UK’s. As I work with figures and consider myself to be a bit of a numbers geek, I decided to look at the economic case for an independent Scotland. I looked at the arguments from both the yes and no campaigns but luckily the easiest factual neutral thing to find is the previous years’ (2012/13) financial figures published by the SG (Scottish Government), the GERS* or Government Expenditure and Revenue Spending report. It’s a bit of a technical document so it took a bit of reading to get my head round the jargon but the summary of the report confirmed what I thought all along, that if Scotland were to vote to leave the United Kingdom, that we are more than capable of doing so but there would be a price to pay. I don’t purport to know what that price of independence would be but I am certain of this, either our income tax, national health insurance and VAT would be have to rise dramatically (or a combination of the three) throw in cost of living increases and this will leave us all with less disposable income, including the poorest in society.
Firstly the independence proposal (white paper) that the SG are asking us to vote on do not propose any tax increases, only a 3% tax cut for corporations, which means they think we can increase public spending but they fail to explain how they will fund this, call me a cynic but it strongly looks like the list of policies and pledges that have been made appear to be an attempt to convince every demographic of our society that there will be something in it for them. Unfortunately there doesn’t appear to be any cost modelling done on any of these proposals to scrutinise. The counter argument is that these are ideological policies that could be implemented; I would say that I’m not prepared to gamble my future and my children’s future on “ideals”. We would all love to live in an “ideal“ world where there was no war, poverty or famine but I have to be a realist and be given facts, figures and detailed proposals before I can make a judgement on whether I feel these ideals are realistic and better for me and my family. A strapline such us “Vote Yes for more free Childcare worth £5,500” means nothing when you find out that no cost modelling has been done, they claim that this policy will pay for itself as mothers will work more hours and pay tax to fund the policy. In reality the fact is there aren’t even enough mothers in the country for this to be achieved.
Our economy has just come through the worst financial crisis in history, it may not feel like it but we (the UK) are recovering better than most economies that were badly affected such as Ireland, Spain, Greece and many Eurozone countries. Growth is on the up and more importantly employment is on the up, when employment starts to rise, wage rise demands grow, we are getting to the point now where that wage growth will start to increase at a higher rate than inflation, hence starting to give us more disposable income. To break the country up at this point will create economic turmoil at a time where we should be flourishing again. The economic fallout will last years, most likely between 5-10 years, and I for one, do not want to face the uncertainty that we have just came through. To quote a blog article I read recently, we are a recovering patient, you don’t amputate a limb when a patient is on the mend.
What I don’t understand is you wouldn’t just go out and buy a house, new car or get a massive bank loan if you didn’t know at least some of the basic facts surrounding this, such as monthly repayments, interest rates, loan term or even what currency you will be paying it up in. I’m a canny person as most Scots are, and know a bad deal when I’m offered one, that’s why I have looked into this decision with as much detail as I could. It’s one of the most important decisions in my lifetime and I’m not going to jump in with two feet just because I don’t like the current government in power in Edinburgh or London. Governments and political parties rise and fall, this decision will be final, once made, this can’t be reversed in 4 or 5 years, there will be no turning back if it all goes horribly wrong for my family and the people of Scotland. What can happen though is we can vote again at some point in the future, it is not, a one-time opportunity, if the will of the Scottish people dictates another referendum, it will happen.
So far, these are the policies and pledges we have been promised (and/or continued)
Free further education
Free prescriptions
Free bus travel for over 60s
Council Tax Freeze
No cuts in services
Increase in minimum wage
Additional free childcare
3% Corporation tax cut
No Income tax rises
No NHI rises
No austerity
No deficit in public spending
Retire Earlier
Higher pensions
Reduced working week
More employment
A job for life in the Scottish Armed Forces
A revolution in social policy
Elimination of poverty
Reduction of gap between rich & poor
Reduced Utility bills
Reduced grocery bills
An oil fund
A Greener planet
Quite a list in anyone’s book, I’m a believer in the saying “if it’s too good to be true”
So here last year’s official budget statement from the current SNP Scottish government administration
Summary of 2012/13 GERS published by the Scottish Government:
Income
Income tax: £10.9 billion
Corporation tax: £2.9 billion
National insurance: £8.5 billion
VAT: £9.3 billion
Council tax: £2.0 billion
Fuel duties: £2.3 billion
Tobacco and alcohol: £2.1 billion
North Sea oil (geographic): £5.6 billion
Other revenue: £9.5 billion
Total Revenue: £53.1 billion
Expenditure
Direct expenditure: £55.8 billion
Allocated expenditure
Defence: £3.0 billion
Debt interest: £4.0 billion
International services: £0.7 billion
Other: £1.7 billion
Total expenditure: £65.2 billion
Deficit (Revenue less Expenditure): £12.1 billion
So that £12bn was added on to the UK national debt, in an independent Scotland that £12bn would have to have been funded by tax increases, spending cuts or added to Scotland’s national debt which would have to be guaranteed by the Scottish taxpayer.
This all leads me to the conclusion that the Scottish Government plans to introduce their much lauded Scandinavian style tax and spend system where more money is raised through higher general taxation and VAT and spent on more social services. I’m sure that most of us in the country wouldn’t mind paying a little extra tax but we are being told in the white paper that no extra taxes will be required to pay for all these fantastic services and policies that will be introduced. No lender will support the Scottish government without approving a fiscal budget similar to which the Eurozone countries do, this will result in austerity cuts to public services deeper than that of the current Conservative UK government to reduce the £12bn deficit.
I have also heard the counter argument that wages will rise to meet these new taxes, but wages only rise if there is employment demand, even then there is no guarantee as no government can dictate to the private sector to increase wages, only employers and the jobs market can do this. Any employer (say Tesco for example) is not going to pay a worker in Dumfries more than a worker in Carlisle for doing exactly the same job unless the cost of goods covers those additional wages.
For me there are far too many unanswered questions, currency plans A and B have been widely criticised by economists, we will have no Lender of last resort or central bank, where will our national debt be held and borrowing obtained from, EU membership is widely considered to be a renegotiation from a position outside the EU which will result in us losing the favourable opt outs that we have as part of the UK and be obliged to join the euro as this is a non-negotiable condition of joining the EU.
I particularly worry about what will happen to our free further education programme that we are lucky to have under the power of devolution, under ***EU rules Scotland will not be able to discriminate against any citizen of the EU, so if we continue with free further education, we will be obliged to provide this free to anyone who applies to join our universities and colleges and hence reducing place numbers and the opportunity for home grown scots to fill these spots.
There is also a real danger of cost of living increases such as higher interest rates, mortgage, credit card & loan rates will rise accordingly with higher interest repayments, loss of ***EU VAT rate exemption on food, children’s clothes and energy bills, energy price rises due to loss of £4bn Ruk subsidies on renewable projects and higher alcohol and cigarette prices due to government policy. It is also widely accepted that property values will drop upon a vote for independence, leaving many people in negative equity on their property, and with higher mortgage rates, we could end up paying more for a property that is worth less, another risk that I find hard to see any sense in taking.
One thing that has particularly put me off the yes campaign is the recent scare stories regarding the NHS in Scotland and the “risk of privatisation”. I find this particularly offensive as the Scottish NHS is fully devolved, the funding on the NHS has risen albeit not at the same rate as inflation but it has been ring fenced. Privatisation is used both South AND North of the border and the current Scottish government outsource operations and services to meet their operation deadlines. There is also a major construction project currently on going in Edinburgh, the Edinburgh sick kids’ hospital, which is being funded by private capital, if this is not privatisation of the Scottish NHS, what is it, scots mist? The Scottish government love to quote the public services of the Scandinavian countries and the economy of Ireland which is a similar size to Scotland’s, what they fail to alert the public to is in independent Ireland NHS GP’s fees are approximately £25 for a 10 minute appointment and a visit to A&E will set you back about £80 and much lauded Norway has similar fees for seeing your doctor.
Shared/Retained institutions such as the Welfare and Credits system, Tax departments and systems alone are estimated to be £750m, DVLA, BBC, Scottish Embassies, National Lottery etc. would need to be funded, currently we share over 180 government departments and institutions, the start-up costs of £250m that have been quoted are just wholly unrealistic, we have all seen how these capital projects and department computer systems cost spiral out of control, you only have to look at the Scottish parliament building and the Edinburgh trams project to see how these things go awry.
Summation
I just cannot see any sense in leaving a political and financial union with the 3 countries we share our borders with and do 70% of our trade with to join another union of 29 countries that we have no strong links with and in comparison do very little trade with. Our very own prosperity depends on the economy and the economies of our closest trading partners. As much as the UK currently has its various problems, it’s a risk we don’t have to and shouldn’t take at this time as we have more devolution to come in the Scotland act 2012 that has already been passed by parliaments in Holyrood and Westminster and comes into effect to the party that wins the 2016 Scottish election, there is also the further proposals that have been put forward by the current opposition parties that could result in even more devolution than we currently have. If you are undecided, I would urge you to vote No this time, let the devolution process take its course and if it does not come to fruition, there will be another Scottish election and most probably another referendum if a mutual consensus is not agreed. Currently, at this time, we don’t have the answers we need to make a truly informed decision. That is why I just can’t even consider a yes vote at this point.
Note
I am in favour of a federal UK system where we share the risks and take the opportunities that working as four nations in a union where we can buy and sell to each other freely and at no cost or borders. All tax and spending raised in each country would be controlled by each individual parliament/assembly but with retained common sharing of central bank, interest rates, defence and borrowing. I would be in favour of an English devolved parliament, the commons vote would consist of all the members of the 4 devolved governments and the “lords“ would be reduced in size and consist of elected members to provide a “double check” system of government, there to prevent any bad legislation from getting through.
Sources, Note & References
*http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Economy/GERS
**Some will argue that you can’t put a price on freedom but I live in a Scotland and United Kingdom that I am free to say and do what I like, to travel where I want, to protest against the establishment (within the boundaries of the laws) a basic human right that is denied to the real victims of tyranny. I get to vote freely for whom I want to best represent my views on the local council, what member of the Scottish Parliament I want, what Member of UK parliament I want and what party I want to represent me at European level. I do not subscribe to the emotional argument that attempts to make me feel guilty, a patriotic argument I have seen promoted as a reason to vote one way or another. I have no reason to feel guilty for voting for what I believe is best for my family’s’ immediate future. It is my vote, my personal opinion and my democratic right. I should not be subjected to abuse, ridiculed or made to feel guilty for that.
***May take 2-3years to come into effect depending on time taken to re-join EU
smiffy73 