Ad Lib Posted March 22, 2014 Share Posted March 22, 2014 Just hundreds of millions? How much oil money has been taken out of the ground then in billions? Hundreds of millions seems a negligibly small benefit TBH. I was giving one example. It goes far beyond what I've described. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamaldo Posted March 22, 2014 Share Posted March 22, 2014 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-26689016 Dennis Canavan is the Chair of Yes Scotland; which I didn't realise before. He spoke quite well; keen to emphasise that Yes Scotland is not party political etc. He was till not that clear on currency etc lots of 'Scottish people will decide' and 'various options' stuff but for me this just highlights that the referendum really does not provide anyone with any kind of mandate to negotiate independence if the vote was for Yes. Think that sums up your knowledge of the debate quite well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vikingTON Posted March 22, 2014 Share Posted March 22, 2014 I was giving one example. It goes far beyond what I've described. Such as? Which other areas of Scotland have enjoyed the effect of tens of billions of valuable resources being sucked out of the ground? Please be very concise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tubbs Posted March 22, 2014 Share Posted March 22, 2014 Think that sums up your knowledge of the debate quite well. And your response sums it up the debate even more accurately. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
~~~ Posted March 22, 2014 Share Posted March 22, 2014 Looks like tomorrow isn't a good day for the unionists “@newsundayherald: Our splash tomorrow: 'Misleading, lurid, conjecture and fantasy' - International economist savages Osborne's case against currency union” Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Bairn Posted March 22, 2014 Share Posted March 22, 2014 Looks like the No campaign is a lost cause. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ad Lib Posted March 22, 2014 Share Posted March 22, 2014 Such as? Which other areas of Scotland have enjoyed the effect of tens of billions of valuable resources being sucked out of the ground? Please be very concise. Highlands and Islands benefitting from renewables investment and expertise brought about by the oil and gas industry in partnership with government. Hydro and wind are significant beneficiaries. There has also, for all people are reluctant to admit it, been considerable redevelopment in Scotland in the last 40 years or so, often government assisted, made possible in no small part by higher revenues resulting from oil. We've seen Glasgow's transport network transformed in that time (including rail, subway and road network), complete redevelopment of areas like Finnieston (including among other things the building of things like the SECC). We've had the Millennium Link project, producing among other things the Falkirk Wheel, for good or ill the Edinburgh trams project, Edinburgh Park, redevelopment of Edinburgh airport, extension of the terminal at Glasgow airport. Places like Glenrothes thrived in the late 80s and early 90s off the back of inward manufacturing investment as part of government assisted redevelopment. Okay, so we don't have 100 story skyscrapers or a spectacular looking transport network, but this is as much down to the kind of infrastructure we already have as it is a question of resources. A country that has hundreds of square miles of desert on which to build is obviously going to have greater freedom to plan and to innovate and to be spectacular and modern when it goes about developing in the future. Dubai doesn't have glamorous infrastructure simply because of oil; it has it because of a vast inflow of foreign capital in a short space of time from a point where it was not already developed. The reality, though, is that the oil and gas industry in Scotland, both directly and in the revenues it has given our state, has significantly assisted important and significant redevelopment, created jobs in derivative industries (including especially new forms of manufacturing in technological sectors in Fife and Tayside) and financed the gradual construction and modernisation of the ageing infrastructure we had before. And when we did do infrastructure, we didn't do it off the back of, effectively, the slave labour of an underclass, as the UAE have done. When we redeveloped, we did so while also sustaining a welfare state, which the poor of the UAE would cut your hand off for. It is unquestionably the case that successive governments have not made the most of the oil found in the waters off the East coast of Scotland. But to suggest that it was somehow not transformative for Scotland, in terms of jobs and infrastructure, or that all that wealth was squandered on government projects and policies of zero utility significantly distorts the truth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
~~~ Posted March 22, 2014 Share Posted March 22, 2014 “@newsundayherald: Our #indyref special story eight - it's no joke when you can't find a comedian to back the union” “@newsundayherald: Our #indyref special - story six: Pro-union campaign 'destroying equal UK'” “@newsundayherald: Our #indyref special - story five: is this a stitch-up? Union backs No vote after hearing just one side of the debate” “@newsundayherald: Our #indyref special - story four: SNP slams Foreign Office for silence over UK-Spain talks” “@newsundayherald: Our #indyref special - story two: top Euro official says Scotland will add clout to the EU when it is allowed entry” Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tubbs Posted March 22, 2014 Share Posted March 22, 2014 "@newssundayherald: Our #indyref special - story ten: Salmond outlines currency plans B to F" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YOGI IS GOD Posted March 23, 2014 Share Posted March 23, 2014 ICM poll in Scot on Sun tomorrow puts Yes at 45%. http://mohkohn.wordpress.com/2014/03/22/sensational-new-icm-poll-shows-indyref-is-too-close-to-call/ Squeeky bum time at Better Together HQ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
~~~ Posted March 23, 2014 Share Posted March 23, 2014 ICM poll in Scot on Sun tomorrow puts Yes at 45%. http://mohkohn.wordpress.com/2014/03/22/sensational-new-icm-poll-shows-indyref-is-too-close-to-call/ Squeeky bum time at Better Together HQ Time for plan B More fear and negativity Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ad Lib Posted March 23, 2014 Share Posted March 23, 2014 ICM poll in Scot on Sun tomorrow puts Yes at 45%. http://mohkohn.wordpress.com/2014/03/22/sensational-new-icm-poll-shows-indyref-is-too-close-to-call/ Squeeky bum time at Better Together HQ ICM put Yes on 45.67% in January too... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Bairn Posted March 23, 2014 Share Posted March 23, 2014 Aye Scotland manipulating poll figures again. horrific new trend of just pretending the DKs don't exist Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YOGI IS GOD Posted March 23, 2014 Share Posted March 23, 2014 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vikingTON Posted March 23, 2014 Share Posted March 23, 2014 Highlands and Islands benefitting from renewables investment and expertise brought about by the oil and gas industry in partnership with government. Hydro and wind are significant beneficiaries. Erm no, not to the extent of the tens of billions of pounds directly taxed by oil revenue from the North Sea since the 1970s, nor did taxation directly determine the perfectly obvious fields of development in hydro, wind, and above all, tidal energy in Scottish waters or highlands. Regardless of who controlled the oil resource, island Scotland would still be in a box position for industry partnership. You have rather bizarrely conflated *any* investment with *all* investment, That leaves us with the rest of your straw man argument - Scotland's urban core has indeed been redeveloped; having been utterly demolished alongside the traumatic, utter destruction of its outer towns and suburbs, with the connivance of a London-centric government since 1983-1990. Glasgow as well as Manchester have since become gentrified with token Commonwealth Games events, Edinburgh, major transport investment has been upheld to the same extent as south of the border. Yet funnily enough utter dross like the Falkirk Wheel is not enough to justify continued London governance over fundamentally Scottish resources. We're not fucking stupid, despite your laughable federalist posturings in that direction. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baxter Parp Posted March 23, 2014 Share Posted March 23, 2014 He can emphasise all he wants that Yes Scotland is not a political party, but it is, whether he likes it or not Er...no it's not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ayrmad Posted March 23, 2014 Share Posted March 23, 2014 Britain is in a state of self denial, sitting at the bottom of European league tables, but convinced it still rules the waves. The aspirations of the SNP may seem ambitious, but all they are really proposing is to be a normal European country. There is a trope I hear a lot at the moment: “Scotland is different”. Left to lie, on its own, with no explanation, it's a sort of petty nationalism. The idea that any one group of people is intrinsically unlike any other strikes me as a perverse way to understand humanity. The context, usually, is political. Scotland has free education “because it's different”. Scotland hasn't privatised its NHS, “because it's different”. It's utter bunkum. The truth is that Scotland is, basically, a very normal Northern European country. Across Northern Europe, university education is either free (in Germany and the Nordic countries) or costs only a few hundred Euros (in the Netherlands and France, for example). Most of Europe has much lower levels of income inequality than the UK. Apart from the Benelux countries and Cyprus, all of Europe's countries use more renewable energy than the UK, despite Britain having more potential than almost any of them. In most of Europe, in fact, in most of the world, the idea that significant portions of your economy would be publicly owned is quite standard. In Northern Europe, it's not abnormal to have decent childcare provision, to work a sensible number of hours a day, and to be more productive in total as a result. No, when people say that Scotland is different, that the social democratic aspirations of Scots are an anomaly, they are missing the point entirely. The social attitudes of Scots, and the policies of the Scottish Parliament, are pretty much standard for a European country. Scotland isn't the exception, it's the rule. The thing that's weird isn't even England. Most English people are against privatisation, and though there is a small difference in attitudes towards social security, it's nothing that won't change over the years. No, the thing that's an outlier is Britain. As the Radical Independence Campaign has pointed out, it's Britain that is the fourth most unequal developed country on earth, in which pay has in recent years fallen faster than in all but three EU countries, in which people work the third longest hours in Europe for the second lowest wages in the OECD despite having Europe's third highest housing costs, highest train fares and the second worst levels of fuel poverty. It's Britain which has the least happy children in the developed world, the highest infant mortality rate in Western Europe and some of the worst child poverty in the industrialised world. It's British elderly people who are the fourth poorest pensioners in the EU. It's Britain which has the eighth biggest gender pay gap in Europe and child care costs much higher than most European countries. It's Britain which has a wealth gap twice as wide as any other EU country, Europe's greatest regional inequality, productivity 16% behind the average for advanced economies and the worst record on industrial production of the rich world. It's Britain whose elite has a radical ideology: 40% of the total value of all privatisations in the Western world between 1980 and 1996 happened in the UK; and it's Britain's parliament which is uniquely undemocratic, with its noxious combination of first past the post and an unelected second chamber, yet holds more centralised power than almost any other legislature in the developed world. With all that, it should be no surprise that Britain has the lowest level of trust in our politicians. Most people in the South East of England never seem to understand this. Blinded by the headlights and headlines of post imperial UK nationalism, the idea that “Britain is Great” pervades. We (I live in the South East at the moment) cling with white fisted knuckles to the notion that Britannia rules, unwilling to let go of our imperial past for fear that we might find we are just another European country. It's a myth which works much more in England, and which helps explain differences in the tendancy to believe immigrant scapegoating North and South of the border "if Britain is uniquely great" people infer "it can't be the system that's to blame, it must be outsiders". But the truth is that this is a very sick country indeed. We are investing a net figure of nothing in our future economy, and instead just about keep our head above water by flogging off our assets at a rate which would astonish almost any other country and re-inflating speculative bubbles which suck any wealth we do create into an unproductive black hole London housing market which eats wealth out of the rest of the country, hoovering any investment away from anything productive and then complaining when it's asked to redistribute crumbs from its table. A metropolis once at the centre of the biggest empire in human history and now at the centre of a global revolution of money-men over making things, of the wealthy over the rest is disguised by a blanket of post-imperial false confidence. Post-imperial Britain is a very strange, very damaged place. And before the people of these islands, the English in particular, can move on, and find a new place in the world, they need someone to finally point out that not only is this former emperor naked, not only does he no longer rule the waves, but his failure to grapple sensibly with either these facts has led to some pretty unhealthy habits. Telling a difficult truth is what friends are for. In part, that's what Scotland's referendum will be about. But for most Scots, it'll be about their families and their communities. And so for them, it's important to understand this: when people say that Scotland could do better, this isn't about some nationalist belief that the talents or the solidaristic instincts of the Scots are unique. In order to be a significantly nicer place to live, all that Scotland needs is to be normal. Compared to being in broken Britain, living in a bog-standard average Western country may seem like an impossible, utopian fairy-land, to which only naïve children conned by lying politicians would aspire. But for most of the Western world, the sort of Scotland that the SNP talk about, that most yes campaigners say we can expect, isn't exceptional, it's not even better than average. I am a radical. I hope we can achieve much more. But the “cloud cuckoo land” aspiration of the Scottish Government is to be an average, run of the mill, bog-standard European country. Compared to where we are now, that would be a great start. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doulikefish Posted March 24, 2014 Share Posted March 24, 2014 2 years today Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ayrmad Posted March 24, 2014 Share Posted March 24, 2014 Hopefully we celebrate the 24th March and 18th September, we could have 2 days off where we actually do party. Cheltenham and St Paddys one week and Independence day the next week. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baxter Parp Posted March 24, 2014 Share Posted March 24, 2014 The BBCs "amazing litany" of bias. http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2014/759-scotlandshire-bbc-scotland-coverage-of-the-independence-referendum.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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