MARTIN FLANAGAN: It's a difficult balancing act sitting on the fence A PATTERN is emerging. More and more Scottish business people at senior levels are indicating publicly that the vote on independence is one for the people, not for them to dictate. But at the same time they would like clarity and certainty sooner rather than later on what the implications of a split would be for businesses to allow for their forward planning. The big questions that hang portentously in the air are obviously taxation and regulation in any fully independent, as opposed to devolved, Scottish economy. The latest to indicate their carefully calibrated concern yesterday was David Nish, chief executive of one of Edinburgh's corporate totems, Standard Life. Nish, in moderate but unmistakeable language, joined the gathering business momentum on the issue, saying more daylight on the business operating environment post- independence would be welcome and that his overriding concern would always be the competitiveness of Standard Life. Competitiveness? Domicile? Not exactly a surreal juxtaposition, is it? Other business doyens and doyennes to raise their concerns recently include Sir Ian Wood, head of the eponymous oil and gas services company, Keith Cochrane at engineering group Weir, utility giant Scottish & Southern Energy, Keith Miller at Miller Group, and Lesley Knox, outgoing chairman at investment house Alliance Trust. One can see the difficult fence the Scottish business community has to sit on. Any heavyhanded "blackmail" to the rightful democratic process could see it lose hordes of customers on its home turf (although many big Scottish companies, like Standard, make no secret that they have more customers south of the Border than north). However, corporate bosses would not be doing their fiduciary duty if they did not flag up concerns about the nuts and bolts of the business operating climate post any vote for independence. It is a tightrope, but an unavoidable one, and I think the companies mentioned above will be far from the last to call for the new Holy Grail regarding the issue: clarity. The question is how much clarity and certainty First Minister Alex Salmond is prepared to give them on the issue. Politicians, generally speaking, do not like to tie themselves down with firm commitments when they do not know the tax-raising needs and regulatory structure they may find necessary farther down the line (in this case two years or more). That is bound to lead to certain tensions between Holyrood and businesses trying to put in place medium-term strategies, and as time gets shorter to the vote, and if there is insufficient certainty on the prospective Scottish business environment, we may well see carefully‑coded corporate "concerns" perhaps mutate into unambiguous warnings. But having said that, no major Scottish business, publicly quoted or otherwise, is likely to welcome being the first to stick their head above the parapet and risk a populist backlash alleging business blackmail of the democratic process. Pioneers can often be the ones ending up with arrows in their back. Therefore we are likely to be in this twilight zone at the independence/business interface, with grey only gradually assuming clearer colours, for some time yet. Muddy waters hard even for experts to penetrate I HAD lunch with a senior City economist yesterday, and reassuringly it seems even City experts are perplexed about where things go from here. We have had good retail, manufacturing and services data suggesting the UK will avoid recession this year. But then there was the shocking fall in industrial output in January. Italy has gone into recession, and trade with the UK's biggest exports market, the eurozone, is understandably shaky. America is recovering strongly compared with Europe, with more than 200,000 jobs a month being created, but not compared with previous US recoveries from recession where by this stage one would be hoping for a figure of 400,000 jobs or so being added each month. UK inflation is falling, but the stand-off with Iran, and possible military action, remains the wildest of cards. Muddy waters.