It's difficult at times to work out what is hype and what is fact. The problem I believe is that if the politicians had reacted initially to Mr Salmon, this fact would have been used by the No campaign to give ligitamacy to their claim. I.e the cry would be that Westminster is panicking because we are going to win, by not reacting the Yes campaign has also gained ground by the No campaign not putting forward the debate sufficiently. It's a tricky stage to play for the Wstminster team and only hindsight will determine if they got it right. At the moment they appear to have reacted too slowly.
The other problem I believe is that if that the No campaign had, or indeed does really highlight the plight that both countries may face if the Yes campaign were to succeed, they are likely to switch off the Scottish populous and be branded as reterics under the 'doomed' banner. It would be very easy for Mr Salmon to rebuff as he is at the moment doing any concerns that are raised. Any issues highlight about the aftermath for the rest of the UK would only endear Mr Salmon to his followers. The very poor analogy would be do you tell someone all of the details about both the perceived up side and definite down side of drugs, or do you just highlight that it's a taboo that should not be tried? The fear of most parents is that by giving too much detail only the perceived upside is remember and the downside either not heard of ignored. The basic human instinct is to switch off when hearing about the bad side of anything. So, how much do you tel them?
The plight of the bankers is a good political football that everyone seems to like to kick about. The truth appears to be that our US of A cousins actually created a package of debt that was bought and sold that in reality in simple terms was fraudulent. As clever as we all hope we are, anyone of us can fall foul of what would have been in the UK illegal dealing if we had packaged it up. The UK banks along with the rest of the world banks were drawn into the deals driven by everyone's desire to see profit. Let's not forget that the deals that we now like to 'kick' were the bed rock of most of our private pension funds. The profits were making our retirements look rather rosey. So, the bankers were duped, let them Rot is the cry that is still heard. What would have been the consequences if that had been allowed to happen, well in short anyone who had a debt with a bank that failed would have seen the debt called in. Anyone with savings or a current account would have seen it vanish. The effect of this would have been a complete melt down in property prices, wide scale evictions, and most of us having lost everything we ever worked for. In short Armagedon. This is something we should be very grateful to Mr Brown for stopping and finding a resolution for.
What about bankers bonuses. Well. Let's again look at some facts that get forgotten. The rotten debt caused massive losses, these needed to be rectified by large profits. Simple maths, billions lost = billions needed to plug the hole. Looking at it from a personal level, if we each created a lot of wealth for our employer, would we expect to be rewarded by some form of bonus or extra salary? Hopefully everyone would agree that this is a reasonable expectation, certainly the unions do that I deal with. However, the problem comes with people's expectations. It's very difficult for someone on the average salary which is I believe somewhere near £25K / year to feel that a bonus of £1 million or more is acceptable. Putting it slightly differently, if you were to say to the person in the street, that they have helped their company increase profits for the year by 100%, would they expect a share? And what level of share would they expect? Would 0.1% be acceptable? On average the percentage handed out in to bankers in bonuses is tiny compared to the profits generated - which go to paying off the debts. Seen as a percentage the bonuses would be to anyone laughable, and the unions would be up in arms that the employers were exploring the workforce. Same bonus, different perspective.
So, I would like to suggest that the banks, stock brokers and bankers bonuses are not the evil they are portraid to be, rather they are actually responsible for the largest proportion of the UK's GDP, far larger than the North Sea to put it into perspective.
The very thing that Mr Salmon is arguing against has been a major contributor to the fund that the Scotish parliament is given to support the NHS and other services it controls.
