Michelle Thomson: A Response

I was quoted in a recent article in the Sunday Post (as was my business partner Jim,  the CEO of Endura).  You can read the full article here > Uncertainty Principle - Convincing Captains of Industry is Vital.

As is the way with these things the journalist seeks a counter view.  There aren't many who could reasonably disagree with our position so the usual suspect emerges to offer a 'balancing' view.  Those who follow the debate will know what's coming; yes it's our old friends Business for Scotland.

This is the "balancing view" response that was offered

• But Michelle Thomson, Managing Director of Yes group Business for Scotland, pointed to a survey by accountancy firm KPMG which showed four-fifths of Scottish businesses had no plans to consider whether they should move or not if there is a Yes vote.  She added: “It’s not sensible for businesses to try to scare their staff to get them to vote one way or another; after independence when the scare stories are shown to be just scare stories the bond of trust between employer and staff members will have to be rebuilt.”

[counts to ten] ... OK, let's take this step by step

Michelle Thomson, Managing Director of Yes group Business for Scotland

If you've missed it (how could you have?) I have looked closely at this group and they appear to be an SNP construct (founding director is an ex-SNP Minister for Enterprise, economics "expert" is a failed SNP councillor candidate) and they do not have any "members" who employ significant numbers involved in material trade with rUK (see Who are Business for Scotland).  As for Michelle herself: aside from Business for Scotland Ltd, Michelle has one active directorship: Your Property Shop Ltd (SC451292) - founded 05/13 and yet to file any accounts. She is also a Director of Edinburgh Global Property Investments ltd (SC342421) which ceased trading in 2011 and was dissolved in 2013; the balance sheet suggests this business never traded materially. She is also a Director of Michelle R Thomson Consulting ltd (SC377063) which is non-trading. By way of contrast: the companies that Jim and I have built from scratch are succesfull medium sized enterprises employing about 300 people in West Lothian alone.

pointed to a survey by accountancy firm KPMG which showed four-fifths of Scottish businesses had no plans to consider whether they should move or not if there is a Yes vote

I'm guessing she is taking this from a Scotsman article (as KPMG have not yet released their 2014 survey and the 2013 one does not mention that statistic : Scotland Business Instinct Survey).  The specific quote she is relying on appears to be: "Almost 84 per cent of Scottish firms that were questioned in the latest KPMG Business Instincts Survey said they had not yet considered a continuity plan for how to deal with changes if there is a Yes vote on September 18."  Let's have a wee think about this shall we?  This is not saying those businesses are saying they won't be negatively affected, simply that they have "not yet considered a continuity plan". This may be because they are a business focused only on the Scottish market (like the vast majority of Michelle's members), because they don't believe a Yes vote will happen or because they simply didn't feel there was enough information available at that point (presumably May given the press release was June). Even if we assume that the statement can be taken at face value:  20% of businesses feeling they have to make contingency plans is a very significant issue and (I would argue) likely to be weighted towards the larger employers.  A quick glance at the testimonials collated by Working for Scotland illustrates this point - there are clearly 10's of thousands of jobs impacted by those statements.

"It’s not sensible for businesses to try to scare their staff to get them to vote one way or another; after independence when the scare stories are shown to be just scare stories the bond of trust between employer and staff members will have to be rebuilt.”

This statement  is quite breathtaking in both its arrogance and ignorance. We can probably agree that Michelle's CV doesn't qualify her to comment so grandly on what is "sensible" for businesses to do (to my knowledge she has no employees of her own and certainly has no experience of building a material business).  To accuse us of trying to scare our staff is deeply insulting (she uses the word "scare" twice) and implying we are breaking the "bond of trust" between us and our employees is outrageous.  She clearly has no relevant experience in this regard: if she did she might understand that in fact that "bond of trust" is what we are reinforcing by sharing our plans with our employees (despite the fact that we know we become exposed to the sort of ill-informed comments that she indulges in).


I recognise this has not been my most finely crafted blog post but I'm angry: forgive me.