Plugsy
New Member
- Joined
- Sep 18, 2013
- Messages
- 6,584
The oil revenues are obviously declining though and if some big financial services employers leave, like some have threatened, that will hurt. Much has already been said about Scotland's potential higher borrowing costs too.
I'm just intrigued about will happen. I don't want Scotland to go to shit- I have a lot of friends from there and have been there loads of times- it is a beautiful country.
I just think Salmond underestimated just how expensive and complicated the whole process will be.
In terms of expense I'd look at the cost of setting up government/civil service departments to run things like taxation. At the moment the white paper says they intend to share resources with HMRC but once again, no agreement exists for them to do so. It's another example of Salmond thinking that stating a preference means automatic acceptance, as if to form a union or bond with any country all you need to do is insist you want it.
The cost of setting up things like a border controls, an immigration service, a customs and excise/tax collecting agency, a financial services regulator and all the literally dozens and dozens of other agencies/bodies will be astronomical. We see how much a mere name rebranding of various departments runs into millions of pounds, let alone when they need to get their computer system updated, then it's often hundreds of millions. Just imagine the cost of setting up everything from scratch.