scotland yet
Scotland Yet: a film about independence
(full documentary)
[remembering dod.. no longer available..]
we’re creating our own debate
all over the country – every night of the week
there’s an awakening – people who normally aren’t involved in politics at all – are meeting/talking
transformation – when people have access to life all the time instead of fighting for it – (nordic)
everybody are bringing their entire selves to this.. and that is so rare
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adding more randoms on scotland here:
edbrenegar (@edbrenegar)
9/13/14 6:32 AM
Read this.
This is one why this election is a game changer.
Wow O Wow! fb.me/6PMDcy7f7
RBS and a whole slew of massive banks are leaving Scotland, legally, in the event of independence. This is real. They’re going to do it, and they’re going to do it because they have to do it, because there’s a power in this world much, much greater than that of the people. It’s that of the markets.
Now, look – some of the banking sector (and it’s crazy to remember this, but it is true) is actually good. For real. It’s a business that works to create and sustain other businesses. That’s what banking is. All this other betting stuff, what it has become, is lunacy. But it’s a great industry, and an amazingly useful one if done with even a modicum of sanity and competence.
On top of that, there’s a lot of jobs here. A lot. A huge number of Scottish people are employed in the financial sector.
But that’s the thing. They don’t care about moving the jobs – nobody needs to physically be anywhere else, it’s a bank. So they relocate head office to London.
No jobs will be lost.
That is the leak. Look this in the eye. And think of this – good GOD. An independent Scotland would be a Scotland retaining it’s massive job-base in financial services, but freed of the danger of the toxic madness of modern banking in one day.
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Why Is Scotland’s Referendum Already A Black Swan? Cataclysmic Uncertainty
1. The pound sterling is falling. It has already fallen by 6% over the past two months. Sterling may yet fall further next week in the absence of official intervention. Investors pulled out around GBP 17 billion from the British economy last month as fears that Scotland could go independent began to hit the prospects of the whole United Kingdom. More money flowed out of British assets in August than at any time since the height of the financial crisis during the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. Over the course of this year, more than GBP 120 billion has been pulled out of British financial assets, compared to a net gain of around GBP 40 billion in 2013.
2. Deutsche Bank — Germany’s largest bank — chief economist David Folkerts-Landau states: “Everyone has the right to self-determination and to exercise his or her democratic rights. But there are times when fundamental political decisions have negative consequences far beyond what voters and politicians could have imagined. We feel that we are on the threshold of one such moment. A “Yes” vote for Scottish independence on Thursday would go down in history as a political and economic mistake as large as Winston Churchill’s decision in 1925 to return the pound to the Gold Standard or the failure of the Federal Reserve to provide sufficient liquidity to the US banking system, which we now know brought on the Great Depression in the US. These decisions — well-intentioned as they were — contributed to years of depression and suffering and could have been avoided had alternative decisions been taken.” Mr Folkerts-Landau compared an independent Scotland to struggling eurozone countries such as Ireland, Spain and Portugal, claiming that investors would stay away due to the uncertainty caused by a break-up of the Union. He also predicted that Scotland would have to undergo a period of severe austerity in order to establish itself as a credit-worthy economy.
3. Nomura — one of Japan’s oldest, biggest bank and broker-dealer — has been advising its clients to withdraw funds from the UK until after the poll in case the pound suffers extreme downturns in value. Nomura described such an outcome as a ‘cataclysmic shock’.
4. Société Générale — France’s third largest bank — figures show an apparent flight of capital from the UK. Investors have been pulling funds out of the UK for weeks and months, according to data on UK stock market funds cited by Société Générale, which show a worsening exodus of global money from shares in British companies.
5. A large number of businesses and entrepreneurs, including John Lewis, BP and Sir Richard Branson, have previously come out against independence and urged the people of Scotland to vote “No” next week.
6. The City of London is one of the most important financial centres on the planet where more than a trillion dollars are exchanged every day. If and when anybody rattles that kind of platform, other forces come into play. It is no longer about politics, it is about money.
7. There is no doubt within the minds of many ATCA 5000 distinguished members that a “Yes” vote next week would constitute a “Black Swan” or “Low Probability High Impact” event for the UK financial markets and possibly beyond. A “Yes” vote would materially raise the level of uncertainty associated with all UK financial assets.
8. However, the risk today of a Scottish “Yes” vote may be enough to move markets in advance of the referendum. Rational investors need to think now about positioning their portfolio for a possible “Yes” vote later this coming week.
9. Such anticipatory market activity could have a self-fulfilling impact. For example, if investors worry that a run on Scotland could result in a deposit moratorium, a run could occur before 18th September. Further, a run on Scotland could prompt a run on UK financial assets.
10. There is an enormous supra-national interest that resides in the UK financial world which is in a semi-panic mode about how much money can be lost not just because of a UK break-up, but because of the uncertainty surrounding that potential break-up.
11. The entire financial world, of which the City is a large part, has been caught on the wrong foot as much as the UK government.
12. The City of London will now do even more not to lose a substantial part of their wealth. And this time around, many distinguished members of ATCA 5000, don’t think they properly hedged their bets: the surge of the “Yes” side is as close to a black swan as we, and the City of London, have seen since September 2008.
13. Neither the Yes side nor the No side have gone into this thing terribly prepared; there are hundreds of questions surrounding the independence issue that won’t be solved before the vote takes place: passports, currencies, central banks, monetary unions, there’s too much to contemplate.
14. The reasons ATCA 5000 distinguished members think it may get out of hand regardless is that there is not one side that was ever prepared for the situation in which they find themselves today. Further, Scotland may not be financially viable and could go bankrupt. The former British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has said Scotland spends GBP 40 billion a year on health, education, pensions and benefits – but would make just GBP 2.9 billion from oil in year one.
15. With four more days to go until the vote that could end the 307-year-old union, major question marks hang about the stability of currency of an independent Scotland, what form it will take, or how much national debt it would take on. This is already a black swan given the high probability of a “Yes” outcome and the uncertainty that it is already creating on an enormous scale across the interconnected global financial markets.
[ENDS]
What are your thoughts, observations and views? We are keen to listen and to learn.
Best wishes
DK Matai
Chairman and Founder
Quantum Innovation Labs
mi2g, ATCA 5000, The Philanthropia
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Quinn‘s series:
Over the next week I’ll be bringing you the scene from Scotland, the political and cultural factors, as well as how they translate the events beyond this small island of 60 million people.
1 – https://medium.com/message/scottish-ripples-a6c4ea2f5755
The fact is, however the vote goes in this remote bit of the world, with its own easy oil money and calm society, life won’t change that much in any reasonable time scale in Scotland. But the issues of democracy, autonomy, terrorism vs war, and the advantages of big vs small nations are likely to be some of the forces that change the world around this little island in the 21st century. The issues that set off this referendum are of a kind to issues making impressions on every corner of the world.
The Great Powers broke up four empires at the end of World War One, partitioned them around, punished the losers, and within 20 years were into World War Two, the most devastating conflict in all human history. An unimaginable 66 million people lost their lives to the project of creating great nations and their great armies.
2 – https://medium.com/message/scotlands-divide-383aeb113ea4
Here is where MacLeod and Bailes agree. “The whole way England has conducted this campaign suggests to me that the leaders are out of touch with the people.
This vote is so even it’s practically a coin toss, which is not a strong base to forge ahead as a new nation.
MacLoad doesn’t see Scotland as politically strong enough to get the right deal out of the UK, the EU, or even internally. “What worries me is that there is nothing, even emergent, that that is resilient enough to cope with the repercussions (of independence) because the actual organizations and the (Scottish) working class are so weak that it’s scary.” He fears a Yes means trading one corporatist ruling class for another, and burning what political energy Scotland has to do it. “The policy and programs are very undeveloped.”
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https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/09/bring-on-scottish-independence/
“In Scotland, university education is free, as are health prescriptions. Scottish pensioners get a better deal than their British counterparts. The SNP opposed the Iraq war (but not the one in Afghanistan), and in August this year backed the Palestinians as the Cameron government stood by Israel in its assault on Gaza.”
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It’s not just that 45% of our fellow citizens in Scotland decided they wanted to live in a foreign country. It’s that those who chose to stay voted mostly due to fear of what would follow, not because they dismissed the idea of separation itself. It’s that the young and the poor did vote for independence, with the old and the wealthy overruling them.
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But Artur Mas, the head of Catalonia’s regional government, drew a different interpretation, saying that Scotland had provided “a great lesson in democracy” and urging Mr. Rajoy to follow Mr. Cameron’s example and permit a similar referendum there.
“To think you can shut up a Catalan society that wants to vote isn’t going to work in a democracy of the 21st century,” Mr. Mas said in Barcelona.
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“Scotland plans radical land reforms” http://t.co/DzOXKaK4jJ
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/edgeryders/status/563755855796260864
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The Independent (@Independent) tweeted at 2:48 AM – 24 Nov 2016 :
Scotland could trial giving each citizen a universal basic income https://t.co/exRjN2mzfj (http://twitter.com/Independent/status/801724157897637889?s=17)
nice… but not enough.. go deeper..
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World Economic Forum (@wef) tweeted at 6:40 AM – 13 Jan 2018 :
Scotland is trialing universal basic income https://t.co/NqBC79MA2Z #finance https://t.co/Ud6aA4ziUN (http://twitter.com/wef/status/952173410523713538?s=17)
But while Y Combinator is supported by wealthy investors, governments are under greater scrutiny when it comes to spending taxpayer money. Finland’s experiment, which was rolled out this year, earned praise around the world but also has its fair share of critics. The scheme was described as “little more than a publicity stunt” and its design was labeled as “just a form of unconditional unemployment benefits.”
As the world of work evolves, both private giants and governments are reflecting on the future of public welfare, and universal income is an appealing idea. But the questions remain whether money spent this way will actually benefit the poor, and how to make the idea work in practice. Amidst the controversy, Scotland will be a place to watch in 2018, as the government’s grant winners will set out to find answers.
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via michel fb share:
this is an absolutely amazing video with a commons-oriented and regenative vision for Scotland, but which could be applied anywhere,
a real gem and a must-see and must-think-about:
5 min video
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Michel Bauwens (@mbauwens) tweeted at 7:14 AM – 18 Feb 2019 :
A Common Right: Scotland https://t.co/nWfT5QAg6V https://t.co/Cto62Wkco1 (http://twitter.com/mbauwens/status/1097499499285671938?s=17)
7 min video
if you separate people from the land you suffer disadvantage generation after generation.. but if you can keep people connected to the land..or reconnect them to what once was the land.. you offer them an advantage
farm ing et al
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Henry Stewart (@happyhenry) tweeted at 5:38 AM – 3 Jan 2020 :
Iceland is creating – with New Zealand, Scotland – a new economic model, centred on well-being rather than consumption.
“developing wellbeing indicators has the potential to transform fiscal policies,
putting people and the planet first.” Iceland PM
https://t.co/CoOmtuULfahttps://t.co/GL11pZR4eM (http://twitter.com/happyhenry/status/1213077057464414208?s=17)
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virus ness and scotland
Nika Dubrovsky (@nikadubrovsky) tweeted at 2:26 PM on Wed, Mar 25, 2020:
Scotland is considering giving each citizen a universal basic income https://t.co/tT2DvMOZfz
(https://twitter.com/nikadubrovsky/status/1242910705944276993?s=03)
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be you. 