How much will becoming independent cost in total?
If you make sensible estimates of all the costs involved of becoming independent the total comes to about £25 billion pounds.
Isn't that a lot of money?
Well about £15 billion of that will be inherited from the UK in Scotland's share of UK assets so the real additional cost is in the order of £10 billion and obviously that is a one-off cost. It really isn't that much money when it comes to the budget of a nation state – for example, it is less than a fifth of what would have been Scotland's share of the 2008 bank bailout which was spent in one year.
How do we pay for it?
When the National Commission is set up it should be given the power to issue bonds to international investors with the guarantee that the value of these bonds will be transferred to and therefore assured by the government of Scotland once it is independent. This can then be used to pay for the costs of the tasks needed and simply added to Scotland's national debt at the end of the process.
What do we get for the money?
Well, apart from a properly-established country we get a foreign currency reserve of £25 billion pounds which can be invested and used in an emergency. And we would also get spending of at least a third of the money in the Scottish economy – that's a £3 billion boost to the Scottish economy in the early days of independence.