Smile and be a Villain
This claim turned up in comments on The National yesterday, from John Stuart Wilson. Since it's based on data, it needs to be taken seriously: Our largest on-shore private sector employer is the finance industry. It accounts for, directly and indirectly, 1 in 12 jobs. It doesn't want to be located in a foreign country from 90% of its customers. (Ask yourself: how many local authorities and SMEs currently send their monthly pension scheme payments to Belgium to have them managed there?) And it will not accept the loss of a LOLR [lender of last resort] backstop. So independence will cause major job losses in Scotland, as these firms relocate to the rUK. However, there are a few points in the above claim which are not clear: - the Scottish finance industry employs 160,000 people, out of a labour force of 2.6m. This is 1 in 16. Where does the writer get his figure of 1 in 12 from? - the UK-wide finance industry employs about 2m people, out of a labour force of 32m. So the Scottish...