The West of Shetland oilfields currently supply about 15% of the UK's oil production IIRC, with very real prospects for further discoveries. But they are technically challenging and require massive investment.
Ticks three boxes for the Yes campaign; nuclear subs, Scotland's oil and those pesky politicians in Westminster. Kerching.
If Salmond had any sense, and I've seen no evidence of it, he'd keep the submarine bases (and the jobs) but rent them back to the UK. Just like Ukraine did with the Russian naval bases in Crimea. Oh, Hang on....
dude that makes a lot of sense actually cant see Britain imposing it self on other states. oh hang on.
If this whole business had been conducted constructively rather than in a spirit of juvenile antagonism this is one of the first issues that could have been resolved well in advance of the referendum. Handled correctly both Scotland and the UK stand to gain. The UK would retain its nuclear deterrent. Scotland would receive useful revenue from the lease and retain most of the employment the bases bring. The UK would be paying rent but it would save a fortune in relocation costs and it would be freed from the £10 billion a year Barnett Formula payment. Leased bases would represent a net saving to the UK with no loss of defence capability, and a net income gain to Scotland (assuming the country can cure itself of the state-dependency which Barnett has brought about) with no loss of employment or security. And it would set a precedent for further military co-operation between the two countries. This is the kind of mature political bargaining that could have been applied to a whole host of other issues which would have produced far more harmonious relations between the UK and an independent Scotland than exist at the moment with little material change noticeable on the ground. Shame its isn't going to happen. All the Westminster politicians are so desperate to avoid presiding over what they melodramatically imagine would amount to the break up of the Union that they are running around wringing their hands like panicking children and Salmond and his inner politburo are so blinded by anti-English resentment that they can't see the wood for the trees. Pretty dismal failure of leadership all round I'd say.
I agree with you Gimlet, and that is probably what will happen in the unlikely event of a Yes vote, but you are confusing practical issues with politics, if you don't mind me saying so. The political capital to be made north of the border by playing the "remove the obscenity of nuclear weapons from Scottish soil" card is priceless. It ranks up there with saving the NHS and employing more nurses, teachers and firemen. Who needs a private sector when we can throw the limitless resources of North Sea Oil and the savings of doing away with Trident into the public sector.
gimlet, at last a sensible response on here since the in/out debate started. couple of points i disagree with. state dependency, i will assume you mean from Westminster seeing as you mentioned barnet. i will let others quibble over the figures but i am quietly confident Scotland contributes as much as it takes. anti English? really, don't beleave the hype. do a search on here and see where most of the "banter" comes from. how can the Scottish parliament negotiate with a parliament that doesn't want to play it's cards till after the referendum.
This whole debate from day 1 from all sides of the political spectrum has been to divide opinion, its really quite simple,does Scotland want to break away from the UK ?.If it does,then so be it but the ramifications are so far beyond just oil,defence and where the government is based and has turned into a lowest common denominated free for all.Financial greed has popped its head and shouldn't.. As I said,its a simple question really.Don't make a decision until you have to and if you do,look at the possible repercussions.
Scotland's state-dependency is not measured by its contribution per capita to UK tax revenue but by the proportion of its economic activity that is derived from government spending. My understanding is that Scotland is running at over 50%. Parts of England and most of Wales and Northern Ireland aren't much better. The state takes no goods or services to market. Its net economic output is precisely nil. It is a net consumer of income not a net generator. Any economist worth his salt will tell you that allowing public spending to exceed 25% of overall economic activity is the road to certain bankruptcy. The theory has been tested to destruction the world over and the result is always the same. Scotland like the rest of the UK has an addiction to high tax, high spend old-world socialist state intervention, and it is ruinous. Salmond claims falsely that Scotland contributes more than it receives on the presumption that north sea oil is Scottish. It isn't. It is, for now at least, UK oil. Scotland is not voting on independence because it is independent already. It is voting on secession. Scotland is an equal partner in a political union which it entered voluntarily 250 years before north sea oil was discovered. It did not bring oil with it. Any more than the oil in Dorset, which has the largest on-shore oil fields in Europe, is Dorset oil. Its UK oil. To claim otherwise is creative accounting at its crudest. Of course, the greater part of the UK's north sea oil and gas fields will fall into Scottish territorial waters if Scotland secedes. But if Salmond thinks he can use that revenue to underwrite an economy fatally unbalanced by excessive state spending, he will be squandering Scotland's new-found wealth as surely as every government in Westminster has squandered it before him. Only this time, there will be no-one else to blame.
Vote independent Dorset..............works for me,no forces near Weymouth,no tanks near Lulworth,an independent nuclear county dont take our oil or fosills and we can because I say so oh yes.
cant argue with your version of the figures of the past but there is one or two on here that are more clued up on that. what i can highlight is you haven't understood why i am pro independence, you suggest we are here by the grace of Westminster due to level of subsidy handed to edinbro, what a hellish state of affairs that is, i can only assume the high subsidy is due to dependency, i ask my self why are we so dependent is it unemployment? health? what? as it stands we get a proportion of money back to budget for certain services, (a budget that has yet to see another 60% cut is that correct?) on health education police. there is still so much we don't have full control over and the people that do i distrust with a passion B.T.W i haven't always felt that way, i is a liberal at hart. as for the oil in dorset, there is as much a chance of that getting pumped as there is the for Westminster to base there nukes in the center of london. not until it has to and i wonder where there support will come from then. i have try'd hard to leave oil out of my arguments for independence as there is so much Scotland has that can make it an economic success.
I understand totally why you're pro-independence. For the record I am strongly in favour as well. And not to get rid of Scotland but because I believe the UK is grossly over centralised and the further political power is devolved away from an all-powerful central bureaucracy the better. The more Westminster squirms the better I like it. A lightly regulated, free-market, low tax, small state sovereign Scotland outside the EU with its own currency and an economy based on entrepreneurialism would set a fantastic example to the rest of the UK and to a deluded Europe. If I thought that was what was on offer I'd have moved to Scotland long since and used my vote to help push it along. But that isn't what's on offer. That's the point. My argument is that what Salmond is offering, though he tries to disguise it with rhetoric, is the exact opposite. Scotland is not a vassal that survives only on Westminster patronage, nor is it held back by England; but it is held back by a bloody-minded antagonism to the economics of prosperity. Scotland is not naturally leftist but because free market enterprise politics are seen as too English and too Tory, and specifically, too Thatcher it persists in cutting its nose to spite its face. It won't get over that while it remains in the UK. Mr Salmond wants to leave the UK but keep all the unproductive politics of grievance in place. Independence would be a great thing all round; Mr Salmond's muddled, half-arsed version would not. I feel sorry for patriotic Scots who are also free-market conservatives. They must be very frustrated. Edit: Dorset started pumping oil 50 years ago and its largest plant at Wytch Farm has been going for 30. And its fracked. No Earthquakes, no explosions, no pollution, no problem. And no wind turbines.
on some points i stand corrected, in fact i feel i bit tingly :smile: i think that was the second post maybe third post that has been something more than bugger off then, is it possible that you have fallen for no campaign's tactic that a vote for independence is a vote for salmond? the snp have managed to secure a referendum, magic, will i vote for snp come a general election in scotland who Knows? certainly being a small business owner there polices have have helped me.being a rural community the amount of people i know as a percentage that have started there own business would shock you possible because of the help given. there education polices (v.good) dam near caused a riot on another thread. so there you go a vote for snp at the moment is the only way of securing independence, it's quite possible he will be dumped come the revolution .
Wow some great reasoning there guys, really impressed and opened my eyes to aspects I'd not considered Fin I hear you on SNP are just a party, but see my post at the bottom of the previous page. Scotland's version of the labour party appears (to me anyway) more "old" labour with even more emphasis on state dependence and it scares me. For the forseeable future SNP and Labour are the choices. We have more Pandas than Conservative MPs. This is part of my reason for being a Noer (Tee Hee new catch phrase for the Better Together be in (k)NOw.........perhaps not) Realistically its goanna be SNP to vote for at election time in an independent Scotland for me if it happened, sure Salmond is well aware of this too. Our great Labour council in Glasgow were (up to few years back & maybe still do) address each other as comrade............dunno about you but that scares the Bejaysus out of me
if the don't have to fight the scurge of the tory vote they will bend in the right direction. sure of it.
