Yes was badly led

 I don’t like reading the almost abusive letters regarding people’s like or dislike of the result. We have had the vote and the democratic path has been laid out.

This is my take of the result as the owner of a small business. It magnifies the scale to larger businesses, and you will realise why the banks were ready to move their main offices out of Scotland.

Our business is mainly centred on building workboats for the salmon and other industries. It normally takes us around two years from initial contact with a customer to delivery of their boat, but it can take longer; generally the bigger the company the longer the lead-time.

So, say a reasonably large company came to us now and asked for a quote to supply a boat in June or July 2016.

If it had been a Yes vote the following questions would have to be answered:

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• What currency would we quote them in?
• What sort of exchange rate would we have to apply?
• Could we still be able to purchase materials directly from Holland, Austria, Italy and England as we do currently?
• Would we still be in the EU for instance? Again exchange rates come into it.

Alex could only say “we can use the pound” but in reality could we? Could we stay in the EU? Spain said they would veto it as they have problems with devolution too.

The simple fact is we would go out of business before all these issues could be sorted.

The bottom line is the Yes campaign was very badly led. They had no answers to these fundamental questions, and without these answers the people of Shetland simply couldn’t go with a Yes vote.

It is not something to get all hot under the collar about; it just wasn’t possible with the information provided.

Jack Barclay
Unst