Save Scotland
Reports that RBS has confirmed that it plans to move its headquarters out of Edinburgh to London if Scotland becomes independent are a stark reminder of the fragility of the Scottish economy, with the overhanging cloud of uncertainty caused by an impending Indyref2.
The constant “will they won’t they?” narrative is causing anxiety and fear among Scottish businesses, with many already planning their exit strategy to survive if Scotland gains independence. This fragile marketplace doesn’t just affect the financial services sector. There isn’t one sector across Scotland which will not be adversely affected.
Not only will our trading relationships suffer, so too will our economic viability and position as a stable market with which to trade in future.
This is no longer a patriotic desire for Scotland’s heritage, it’s a calculated desire for the future of our businesses, our economies and the people of Scotland to get the best opportunity to thrive and grow as part of the United Kingdom. STRUAN STEVENSON
Chief Executive, Scottish Business UK, Station Road, Musselburgh
To Alan Thomson (Letters, 7 August), quoting figures taken from the 2011 census saying that only 29 per cent of respondents in England
had any sense of Britishness is “an unrelenting campaign to discredit Britain and everything British”.
Worse, he says the figures I quoted are “questionable”, and that’s an unfortunate implication. Well, I didn’t tick these boxes on the census forms. Clearly Mr Thomson doesn’t like it when people present him with inconvenient truths and he has attempted to disprove them. He failed because facts are chiels that winna ding, and the figures come from a professionally enumerated set of collated data coming from the returns of more than 53 million people.
To counter these statistics, Mr Thomson quotes a study undertaken by the BBC involving a few thousand selfresponding individuals. Not really comparable then? Mr Thomson completes his letter the day after a poll carried out by the Conservative Lord Ashcroft, showing that 52 per cent of the electorate of Scotland want independence, by assuring us with great certainty that “the majority of people who live in Scotland, as well as those who live in England, still identify as British”.
He provides no empirical data to substantiate this claim and we’re left to imagine that he carried out a straw poll in Strontian.
GILL TURNER Derby Street, Edinburgh
Exam pass rates down yet again. Sick Kids’ fiasco. Economy still outperformed by RUK. The disappearing Named Person scheme. U-turn on British Transport Police and ‘Poileas Alba’ merger. Roads a disgrace. £500 annual workplace parking fees. Record levels of drug and alcohol-related deaths. But it doesn’t matter; the radicalised, saltire-waving faithful will still be voting SNP.
MARTIN O’GORMAN Littlejohn Road, Edinburgh
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