No Contingency Plan For a "Yes" Vote.

We heard it again last week, it’s been voiced before by MPs, top civil servants and several Lords a Leaping. Interestingly it would seem that only those with a vested interest in the British State appear to care about this. Joe and Jemima public haven’t really had it at the forefront of their concerns, at least in so far as media reports have indicated.

Well, we’re coming down to the wire, only eighteen days to go until the vote, soon it’ll be less than ten, and I’m betting we won’t hear more, much more anyway, about the lack of contingency in case of a yes vote.

You see, it’s a fairly safe bet that Westminster does have a contingency plan; only, they can’t afford for anyone to know about it. The reason that they do not have a contingency plan for such a momentous event, as they’ve acknowledged this referendum as being, can only fall into one of three categories.

Firstly, everyone in London Town is an ostrich, every last one who counts as a professed ‘leader of the British Isles’ is a certifiable idiot with their head stuck firmly in the few remaining sandy bits of the Thames embankments. While it would be comforting in a way to go with this scenario, which gets its credence due to the distinct ignorance and highly dubious decision making that’s come from that region in times past, it’s not really the most probable of options, now is it?

Secondly, it could simply be that we’ve been getting lied to. That the ‘difficulty’ experienced by both sides in disentangling the Union will actually cause minimal upheaval in everyone’s lives, with the possible exclusion of perhaps a few civil servants. Based upon the garbage and lies fed to all and sundry during this debate, by the representatives of the ‘mother of parliaments’, this scenario seems much more likely. It’s sad, but should be considered to be streets ahead of option 1 in the probability stakes. It’s sad because it says we elected a bunch of liars, but they were the best of the group offered to us. Now we’re being asked to perpetuate their employment.

The third option is perhaps the most troublesome. You see, option three means never needing a contingency plan, simply because you know it’ll be pointless, simply wasted energy to divert resources to something which you’re certain you can prevent from happening. I’d give it a weight approaching that of, or perhaps even surpassing, option two.

Option three involves many things. However, many things are what Westminster has shown itself capable of. It used the security branches in 1979 to work against Scotland’s interests, as well as that belated 40% rule and counting the dead. There’ve been other incidents too, like the lawyer Willie McRae, who allegedly committed suicide by shooting himself in the head (twice) then throwing the gun away, this after allegedly uncovering something akin to the McCrone report. There’s the last referendum where we voted for a parliament with tax raising powers only to have those powers so diluted by Westminster as to be effectively useless. Even the latest tranche, scheduled for next year can’t be used without hurting ourselves.

Another aspect that just doesn’t ‘ring’ is the disparity in polling data. That alone should have London in a lather, yet while the ‘unofficial polls’ with often massive sample sizes are consistently showing a landslide for ‘Yes’, the ‘official’ polls continue with ‘No’ by a nose.

Ultimately, if we treat option one with the derision deserved, it is certain that there actually is at least one contingency plan out there; one which will allow for London’s elite to remain in control of Scotland or to cut us loose with absolutely minimal impact. It’s an ‘either/or’, I personally can’t see the possibility for any middle ground here.

Up until recently I’d simply thought that with our separate NHS, legal system, educational system etc that we were just being lied to - again. Perhaps an uncomplicated "Velvet Divorce" is to much to hope for.

Now however I have a very real concern. One that has been generated by recent media releases and events, from Jim Murphy’s ‘egging’ (and let’s face it, the only difference this time is that it wasn’t self applied, although we’ve still to uncover just who directed the egg in his direction. What we do know however is it seems to be primarily the nationalist community with an interest in uncovering the perpetrator). Now, add that to recent inflammatory articles appearing in the media indicating "polling carnage" on the 18th, articles which even went so far as to prompt a response from the Police Scotland on September 1st, and we've got a quickly building scenario.

In its best case, a few ‘nutters’ heckling at a handful of polling stations would be unfortunate but ultimately laughable. On the other hand, in a systemic worst-case scenario anything is possible - from missing ballot boxes to calling the fairness of the vote itself into question. Yes, it’d need to be coordinated on a relatively massive scale, but when you largely ‘own’ the output of the media in such circumstances, can anything really be discounted?

Personally, I hope a lot of things can and will be discounted, although I suspect we’ll be approaching October before they can safely be binned.

There’s only one thing that’s certain, London has used every resource and contingency we know of to ensure a ‘No’. On the other hand, if it’s a ‘Yes’ as those on the ground have solid reason to believe, one can only ask what the contingencies are – and why don’t we know about them?

When there is a ‘Yes’ we can be certain those plans will be dusted off; when there is a ‘Yes’ we can only hope that good sense and democracy prevail.

Pulling The Wool - No Credit For Tweed.

Westminster and the Institute for Financial Studies (IFS) say there is, and will continue to be, a financial black hole in Scotland’s budget. They persist in telling us we are Too Poor, our economy is a basket case, and following independence we’d be poorer than a Developing Nation on its uppers, with a financial deficit in the billions. However, the IFS has apparently taken their data from those figures which are available from Westminster; figures that are created under the auspices of London’s government and London’s rules, as such they do not always, nor indeed by all appearances ever reflect the reality of Scotland’s financial standing because of certain “quirks” on how exports etc are recorded. Some of these issues I dealt with here Hidden Wealth.

Essentially, exports are credited to the UK nation that controls the port of departure. That’s right, it’s not about where they’re made, it is from where they are shipped.

The information in the above blog resulted in me being asked on Facebook what this meant for the iconic Harris Tweed Industry. It seemed appropriate to dig a bit.

My first stop was UK Registry of Companies to discover where much of the Harris Tweed industry was registered. This would tell us whether their profits and taxes could be attributed to Scottish income. The results were interesting and varied. Many of the smaller companies associated with the Harris Tweed Industry are indeed registered in Lewis, but the main mills where by far the majority of the textiles are produced brought a mixed bag of results.

I really enjoyed this trip into an iconic Scottish industry, and I learned much, such as the Harris Tweed Authority (HTA) was set up by Act of Parliament in 1993 to help protect and promote the industry, while maintaining standards within it. I was quite surprised to discover there are only three main mills within the industry, all based in the Outer Hebrides.

Shawbost is the largest mill and main producer of tweed. It is owned by Harris Tweed Hebrides Ltd and is registered in the Isle of Lewis. Interestingly, members of their board include one Ian Roper Taylor, of Vitol fame and a certain Brian Wilson, former UK Labour politician. Harris Tweed Hebrides board of directors.

The next and oldest operating mill (since 1909) belongs to the intriguingly named Harris Tweed Scotland Ltd. I say intriguingly from the viewpoint that it is actually registered as a company at Haincliffe Road, Ingrow, Keighly, West Yorkshire, BD21 5BU; Harris Tweed Scotland LTD. The company is owned by Mr Brian Haggas following a buy-out in 2006. It primarily produces tweed to be made into jackets, presumably in garment factories in the North East of England. These are then exported all over the world including sending an apparently small proportion of its finished garments back to the Islands to be sold there.

The third and smallest mill in Lewis involved in tweed production is the Carloway Mill. It’s an independent mill; however, I was unable to find any trace of registration on either of the Companies House or Company Check websites. Perhaps someone can enlighten me as to why this is so. In March of this year, they entered a joint venture with the large Chinese textile company Shandong Ruyi Technological Group Ltd. Companies not registered under their own names are often held by overseas investors through shell corporations. I’m not alleging this is the case here, but would welcome information to the contrary.

There is also a network of independent weavers within the industry who can work as contractors for any of the mills or sell their cloth freelance.

While the HTA would like you to think that the Hebrides are the centre of the exporting world for tweeds, as you will be misled by this HTA World Presence web-page, this is not strictly accurate. Indeed, all the fabric is created, dyed and woven there, but the vast majority of the product, and research indicates a substantial percentage of it, leaves the Islands by road haulage by Woody's Express Parcels and ferry for a depot in Inverness.

From Inverness I am reliably informed other haulage companies, namely DHL, UPS and FED EX take the fabric on the next step of the journey, to destinations such as East Midlands Airport (DHL, UPS), Newcastle Airport (FED EX) and all ports south. Very little of this Scottish iconic fabric actually leaves via a Scottish airport or dock. From this, I can only conclude that it doesn’t count in favour of Scottish exports and adds tonnage and financial gain to English exports, as bales of Harris Tweed exit via English ports.

What we have here is an iconic Scot’s product which has the appearance of being virtually deleted from the Scottish balance of payments ledger, while simultaneously accruing to England’s. To reiterate, as per UK export law, it is the port of exit that counts when it comes to registering overseas shipping, not the country of manufacture.

Under the weirdest of all situations one could actually have the finished garments, marked ‘Harris Tweed’ counted as a Scottish import, and worsening our balance of payments. This is because almost no ‘Harris Tweed’ garments are now manufactured in Scotland, so any sold here effectively have to be re-imported from the country of manufacture.

That you can play with the base fundamentals of an economy in such a fashion is very simple indeed. Especially when almost everyone relies upon the official figures from Westminster to obtain a consensus of agreement that Scotland might just be an economic basket case with a horrible balance of payments deficit, when the reverse may well indeed prove to be a much more accurate statement. The only real way to prove Scotland’s net worth would be to do as the USA apparently does with its states, and count the country of origin or state of origin of goods, but that might not be in vested interests with a referendum in the offing.

This is obviously something that happens with startling consistency where Scotland’s exports are concerned. It is agreed by those who have actually researched the figures that Scotland is nominally responsible for somewhere around 9% of UK GDP, this does not include oil which is treated separately, yet based upon air freight, with a similar number being expected across the board, Scotland is credited only for about 2% of UK export, by weight. Air Freight tonnage. The fact that the system is set up in such a way that practically all of Scotland’s manufacturing ends up exiting the British Isles not via a local airport or freight terminal, but one which, in Stornoway’s case, may be almost 700 miles away (Stornoway-London) is both detrimental to our economy and destructive to our environment. It is also a bit of an eye-opener when you discover Kent International Airport (where?) moved more tonnage in air freight (12,744 tonnes) than Edinburgh (8,933 tonnes) in the first half of 2013. In fact Manchester Airport shifted over twice (45,831) the cargo that the whole of Scotland moved (22,731).

The reality of this situation is that if Scotland produced exports of 9 billion pounds per year, then she would be being credited for 2 billion pounds per year, while the other 7 billion pounds per year will accrue to Westminster’s ledger, and no, they’re not hard numbers, they’re example figures.

This is a dreadful under-use of Scotland’s facilities and resources from all sorts of angles, including Green Issues, but that’s another blog for another time. Far more could and should be moved through these airports from an economical point of view. Local economies and employment would benefit enormously from this.

The important aspect I got from all of this is from London’s perspective, when you spread this “port of exit” requirement across all of Scotland’s exporting industries, whether it’s tweed, electronics or shortbread, they have created a wonderful statistical tool that ‘anyone’ can use to perpetuate the ‘too poor” case for the Scots’ economy and produce ‘believable’ statistical data that might encourage a ‘NO’ vote when perpetuated by the MSM in Scotland without proper back up research.

Hidden Wealth.

It gets you that way. You find yourself in a long Facebook natter and suddenly you realise there is a fact which doesn't often get highlighted in this “debate” about Scotland’s constitutional future. Oh yes, the Unionists aren't slow to drag the “oil is volatile and will cause you no end of confusion” card, and sadly many, many people pick this one up and run with it. It defines and confines the financial deliberation within heavily bordered limits. And this is precisely where Westminster wants this discussion to be kept.

Yet, there is not so much an elephant in the room but a small herd of elephants in the room. These are all of the companies currently manufacturing and exporting from Scotland and/or selling goods to the people in Scotland, but are head-quartered in England.

Currently, the majority of goods manufactured, grown, distilled or created in Scotland are exported via ports and airports in England. All taxation receipts from the following items such as airport fees, freight charges, fuel sales, VAT, applicable export levies and associated profits from these goods are then allocated as English income at the Treasury. The exact figures are hard to break down as they appear to be intentionally difficult to search or find in any of the Westminster governmental sites. For an example of a typically Scottish product regularly exported, in 2012 Whisky exports topped £4 billion. Approximately seventy-five percent of this is exported via English ports and allocated to the Treasury as English exports and income. This is also true of beef and other farm produce grown in Scotland, yet exported via ports down south. This can only be viewed as profits and tax receipts which should be credited to Scotland lost in a system set up to confuse and obfuscate.

Then we have the interesting situation of companies that sell goods and services in Scotland, but are head-quartered south of the border. With very few exceptions, it is only chains and stores with head offices in Scotland that record profits and VAT as being income from Scotland. The majority of companies which operate central offices in England pay their taxes and are shown as making profit in England – despite it being hard earned wages which gave them those profits and VAT receipts at tills in Aberdeen or Kilbirnie or Haddington.

We all need to eat, furnish our homes and wear clothes (well most folks do!). And many of us enjoy our electronic goods or buy home improvement items – you get the picture. We go to our local supermarket, DIY store, favourite clothes shops or electrical store and pay for all those things that make our lives viable and comfortable. Except, very few of these stores have a head office in Scotland.

As a way of explanation, allow me use one chain to give a small example.

Sainsbury: They have 1,016 stores throughout mainland UK, 60 of those are in Scotland – according to 2012 figures. This is roughly 6%. Until March of this year they took £2,329 Million in VAT. Roughly 6% of that or £140 Million was taken in Scottish stores. Under the current arrangement, ALL of that money is allocated as English income to reflect where Sainsbury have their HQ.

Now, imagine in an independent Scotland, that portion of VAT generated by us busily getting on with our daily lives, equipping our bellies, families and homes, going directly to Holyrood to be spent as needed on those things that we have deemed as important to us and our society – whether it’s infrastructure or social care. Sounds great doesn't it, but it’s “only” £140 Million, I hear someone mumble. However, you need to extrapolate this small amount over every company presently operating in Scotland under the current set-up.

What we have is a pile of money heading to Westminster and not really finding its way back to help those who spent it in the first place. Not only that, because it isn’t shown as being generated within Scotland, it helps to reinforce the “Too Poor” aspect of the Unionists argument. They can throw the volatility of North Sea Oil in our faces every other day, but they deliberately miss the point of other important, yet hidden aspects of the Scottish economy (e.g. £500 million in road taxes with associated fuel duties) which isn’t being allowed to show up for us in the “Books”.

How easily they can transform Scotland’s vibrant economy, created and supported by her hard working population, from energetic to appear poor and perhaps slightly quaint and backward.

A single question, but we still get three choices.

I have spent a month back in the company of my fellow Scots, and a wonderful month it was, sadly like everything else in life it is over, for now. 

During the visit I witnessed Alex Salmond sign the accord with David Cameron, an accord which on the surface betrayed democracy in Scotland. The Holyrood Consultation results haven’t even been announced, and those who might have expressed a desire for a third question were being discarded.

The key is on the surface.

Scots will still have a multi option referendum, it’s simply that none in the UK Westminster centric “national” media care to investigate, or highlight it.

As Scots go to the polls in 2014’s referendum there is every possibility that they will do so not simply to decide upon Union or not, but which Union. Westminster is hoping the additional air of uncertainty surrounding what will then be our times coupled with the disgusting celebrations earmarked to herald the start of a war will scare the nation into keeping the existing “pocket money” set up.

What’s not trumpeted is that so far, referencing OMB (Office of Management and Budget) and media reports, over 80% of the cuts that are required by Cameron’s “austerity” have still to be enacted. They’ll bite between now and 2016. Westminster is holding off and praying for a miracle. Someone should tell Mr. Cameron, Scotland is a long way from 34th street.

What else isn't trumpeted is the Euro-sceptic Tory mindset. In recent days we’ve seen several major cabinet players come forward with such positions. It appears most of the Tory front bench are lining up behind Teresa May; a person quietly tipped as possibly the next Tory leader.

Where this leads us, and not just on the Tory benches, is to a probable referendum on EU membership, a referendum where once again Scots stand to have their wishes subordinated to that of England in our “democratic” system. Bet on it. We will either stand united with England’s electorate, or be trampled divided. Our voice will count for little other than a distant barely audible OK, or simply be drowned.

It will happen, believe it.

It will happen because the EU Euro nations are being forced into tighter unity. Merkel and the Bundestag want a federal Europe, a United States of the Euro.

Note the difference, there will be a two tier EU, and it will come about inside the next five years. Already there is talk of what amounts to full fiscal Euro zone integration coming on line in January, that’s this January, with the ECB bond buying and backstopping shoogly economies.

When the Euro zone begins direct intervention there will be a de-facto United Sates of the Eurozone, leaving nine nations, including the United Kingdom simply peering in from the outside. We will have no say.

This is because the vaunted veto isn't really worth diddly, as we've seen. David Cameron played the trump card and achieved a small delay, substantial ridicule, was shunned in Europe and received accolades from his back benchers, but not a lot else. The rest of Europe basically set up in another room and did their deeds anyway.

Laughing stock doesn't even begin to describe what took place following that action.

The markets are pressing for Eurozone integration, the member nations are largely pressing for Eurozone integration, even David Cameron is pressing for Eurozone integration. Everyone appears to acknowledge it’s about the only way the Eurozone can sort itself out. Integration.

There are calls for a unified foreign policy, police and armed services, each made up from constituents of the Eurozone countries in the first instance no doubt. Ms. May is already calling for “repatriation” of laws and another look at the EU arrest warrants. The blackout blinds are being pulled down in London.

Where this leads us to is the fact that the already largely worthless but much vaunted veto will become effectively redundant. Since the Lisbon treaty much, most, of EU voting is done by QMV, Qualified Majority Voting. This means alliances come and go, the sands shift, and on most days every constituent nation is happy enough with what it gets.

The issue with a formal Eurozone bloc is that it will hold a perpetual majority in QMV. There will be no further need of alliances, the sands will be scorched until they become a solid immovable block of glass, and that glass will bear the word ‘Eurozone”.

Within five years, the Eurozone will either fracture and disintegrate or rule the EU. With Germany, France and Holland backing the Eurozone, Westminster can already see the sands solidifying; the groundwork is being prepared to take the UK out of the EU to protect the City of London.

No one has yet hazarded a guess as to what the few states like the UK that are not presently in the Eurozone will do when the bloc solidifies its voting structure, but one can expect most to simply join the bloc. Those that don’t can either leave or live with the multitude of diktats that emanate from Brussels while having no true say in their formation.

This is something akin to Scotland in our current Union. Westminster appears to find that option unpalatable in Europe, yet believes Scots should be browbeaten into acceptance of such a situation.

Scots will therefore have a choice in 2014, not about Union or not, but about which Union.

A “No” vote gives them what they've had these last three centuries, a short spoon and a distant seat at Westminster’s table.

A “Yes” vote gives them the opportunity to see for themselves where they would rather be, they can enter into a more loose form of Union with England should they desire, a form outwith the EU.

They could opt to remain within the EU but tied to Sterling, effectively replicate the current situation but within a bigger, safer more cosmopolitan union than Westminster could ever provide.

They could opt to join the Eurozone, because with fiscal integration the Euro will be here to stay, and backstopped by Germany, France, Holland to which would be added Scotland’s resources it will become the currency of choice.

Or our fellow countrymen and women can opt for an independent Scotland, standing aloof but ready to assist.

Four choices, two boxes, one referendum.

Only one box opens up all the choices to every Scot.