Black holes and white lies

Another day, another "black hole" (though I see the online version is a lot more restrained). Surely the No side will have to start upping their game on the astro-physical-metaphor front. Plans for defence found full of anti-matter particles, or not to contain any Higgs bosons, maybe.

Anyway, here's what ICAS actually said.

And here's their (pretty bemused sounding) executive director, David Wood, on Good Morning Scotland (links last a week, I think) (2.09.00 onwards) . He said the biggest problem would be if no-one thought about pensions, at all, before the referendum. Forgot about them altogether. I'm sure that would be a problem but I don't think it's one he suggested was likely. The other problem (and the one about which the Scotsman was dissembling) was that, on independence, "pan-UK" pension schemes would become cross-border schemes and subject to the EU cross border rules. No, me neither but he was asked whether there were not lots of existing cross border schemes. Turns out that, yes, of course, there are. Then, this exchange:

"Q: But wouldn't it be as simple as splitting the pension fund into two bits, one for Scotland and one for the rest of the UK, and just carrying on as before....?

A: Yup. That is...that is exactly right."

He then said that there should be some planning for that, by companies, in advance, before September next year and ICAS were just trying to highlight that so companies weren't taken by surprise.

So, an important administrative task but one of the most puzzled sounding interviewees I've ever heard. And "black hole" is just, simply...inaccurate.