Scottish independence

Love it deserving. If you have ever been by ship down the North Sea you see how many oil platforms are way south of the border with Scotland. Just because it's easier to pump uphill(!!) to Scotland now does not mean it won't be just as easy to stop that flow and pump it through new pipe lines to a refinery further south. It will all be down to economy and political pressure.

I have always believed its not wise to put all your oil eggs in one basket

Brenda I have posted a map on the Pictures thread which shows clearly that the platforms you saw off the coast of England are in fact harvesting GAS. I repeat that 95% of the OIL wells are in Scottish waters. HTH

Where is the boundary drawn between Scottish and Scandinavian rigs? Halfway between nearest respective dry lands? The ones nearer Norway seemto have Norwegian names.

granny23 I have learned more from you on the whole question of independence than all the political speechifying. I may even come off the fence. The two main areas of concern to me are the NHS and Trident. Independence would avoid us going down the route of England's privatisation of the NHS and would hopefully allow us to get rid of Trident. All this talk of "Billy no mates" is just muddying the waters. It is nothing to do with disliking the English (or the Scots) but about what kind of society we want our grandchildren to grow up in. I don't want them to grow with this "skivers/scroungers" versus "hard working families" kind of society the conservatives seem to be pushing us into.

Now POGS you raise and interesting point between Britain and the United Kingdom. I'm pretty hopeless at Geography so happy to be enlightened, but isn't the British Isles a geographical designation and the United Kingdom a political one? So Scotland would still be part of the British Isles?

That's more or less it Elegran. There was a big, argumentative, international commission when oil/gas was first discovered, which eventually agreed the sea boundaries for the North Sea. Map to show these is on Wikipedia but I could not manage to copy it.

Yes, the Norwegian ones have Norwegian names and most of the 'Scottish' ones have Scottish names. Funny that.

Granny23 a very informative and interesting set of posts. Thank you.

Granny23 I look forward to hearing your "few words" on the subject of Independence on Sunday. Something tells me we will all be far more clued up on it after that.

(Still space for more if anyone else wants to come, btw, but not a lot of time to get your name down)

A lot of us in England aren't too keen on the privatisation of the NHS either and would love to get rid of Trident too.
Much of England outside London commuting distance feels isolated too and that London is another country which has no idea what life is like for the rest of us.
The Scots may well be better off going it alone but I for one will be very sorry if it happens and am saddened that they they feel the need to go.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/mar/17/scottish-independence-islands-home-rule This adds even more complications to Independence for Scotland

What kind of hospital can the islands muster between them I wonder?

There is a small hospital in Benbecula, where at the present time, if the problems are to big for the staff to deal with, a heliciopter flies the patients to either Stornoway, Glasgow or Inverness

Personally speaking, I hope that Scotland doesn't become independent, though I can understand why they'd want to.

NFK I have often thought that if the City of London were to declare itself a city state, like Singapore or Monaco, then the rest of the UK would find it easy to make common ground and balance out inequalities. When I think of the money that was diverted by the Lottery from Good Causes and the vast sums handed over from all UK taxpayers to help fund the 'London' Olympics' my blood still boils.* If the Olympics had been held somewhere more central, then perhaps more of us would have been able to afford to go. Two current threads highlight the bias in favour of London - High speed rail link from Birmingham to, of course, London, funded by ALL of us whether we will ever have occasion to use it or not and to the detriment of much need local services, and the Bob Crow story - Why, in today's world of texts and e.mails is it sensible to site a Union's Headquarters in the middle of London with all the inflated costs of living and working there? Any sensible person would consider it a good idea to locate the HQ elsewhere, perhaps in an area of high unemployment. The same argument applies to many other Government Departments, Charity HQs, Governing Bodies, etc. etc. Perhaps some of the big state occasions could be held elsewhere so that people in other parts of the country could feel involved.

* [Please note that next year's Commonwealth Games in Glasgow is receiving no hand outs at all from Central Government nor the Lottery]

Interesting newist so an independent "islands" would have to pay the Scottish health service for all the really expensive stuff like cancer treatment and heart surgery. And pay a private hire rate for the helicopter.
OK Granny23 here's a question - what happens to Scotland when the oil and gas reserves run out because they argument that "we'd be better off" seems to rely heavily on those revenues?

I don't want Scotland to break away from the UK but I think it's certainly do-able, with or without oil and gas reserves.

The three Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, combined population about six million) successfully broke away from the old Soviet Union. All three are in the EU and seem to be doing OK.

They must have somehow dealt with the problems of border control, splitting assets, currency, security, etc.

What would happen if the Isle of Wight were independent? Would they have to pay the UK for expensive health treatments?

What is the likelihood of the Islands wanting to be independent? Or the Isle of Wight?

[Resident population of IofW 2011 - 145,000 (was 64,690 in 1801)
Resident poulation of Hebrides 2011 - 46,632
Resident population of Orkney 2011 - 21,349
Resident population of Shetland - 23,167]

The Isle of Man has reciprocal arrangements with the UK NHS for healthcare if residents of either place become ill when visting, but the IoM pays for its patients when they are sent to Liverpool, Manchester, etc for specialist treatment.

Everything is do-able but at a certain cost and a certain risk. The costs of dividing up the machinery of government will put HS2 in the shade surely and cost us all a lot of money?
I generally disapprove of all this nationalistic emotion. A little bit of it adds to the fun of some sporting events but apart from that what good does it do in the world actually?
In the Basque region it led to the failure to commission a very expensively built nuclear power station (attacks on the site), terrorist campaign with loss of many lives, hundreds of political prisoners spread across Spain. And (if i read the runes correctly) a vast amount spent building an OTT road system, rapidly followed by an OTT rail system. (Imagine if the Welsh had a big north-south motorway and high speed rail linking Merthyr, Swansea and Cardiff - and then throw in some seriously high mountains with dozens of tunnels and a lot more distance) We have subsidised all this via the EU folks. Oh and the Basques are still feeling sorry for themselves despite having the best economy in Spain.
Also tends to encourage war IMO.
The author Sansom has written a good essay on nationalism at the back of his excellent novel Dominion.
www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/scots-author-condemns-dangerous-snp-in-book.19134105

Jess Current production of oil is 6 x Scotland's needs and it is estimated that there is more oil still under the sea than has already been extracted. At current production rates the oil is predicted to last for another 40 years [or 240 years if only used within Scotland!] Granted that some of it will be more expensive to extract but the same is true across all the OPEC countries and so the market price of oil will continue to rise making investment in hard to reach oil fields financially worthwhile. The plan is to slow production rates to conserve stocks and thereby spin out the oil for a longer period. Once Scotland's share of the National Debt has been cleared there would be scope to save money annually into an OIL Fund like Norway's.

Fortunately, for Scotland there is another bonanza round the corner in the form of wind and wave power. Developments are mainly still at the experimental stage but the expertise in working offshore, plus an extensive coastline and plenty wind mean that Scotland is set to become a world leader in green energy.

Also still lots of coal underground, (vast new opencast mine given planning permission at Penicuik this month), which with carbon capture technology could be used safely to fuel power stations if necessary and potential for fracking, shale oil, etc. if the SG decides to allow it. Of course, the Scottish Economy is not entirely dependent on oil/gas revenues, also having profitable Food and Drink, farming, fishing, Media production, and Tourism sectors contributing to the GDP.

NB: As things stand ATM, crediting Scotland with a 9.6% share of oil revenue, the Scottish economy runs a 1-2% deficit on GDP compared with 3-4% deficit for the whole UK.

Unless we're an undiscovered tribe living deep in the Amazon Rain Forests we're all a hodge podge of different 'nationalities' anyway; our 'nationality' just being the place we happen to be born fuelled with any indoctrination that happens while we're there.

Why keep the pound Sterling?

There is a long and honourable history of "The Pound Scots" (worth rather less than the English £ - like the Euro!) and of course there were groats and bawbees.
I find the whole concept and prospect so totally complex and unmanageable I wonder if Alex Salmond really wants it and could cope with the ramifications. It is easy to say "We want....." and offer the moon - a different thing to deliver. Oh of course we have seen that at successive elections for Westminster anyway.

Both Akex Salmond and John Swinney were experienced and successful economists before entering politics, a point made earlier by Granny23 but apparently forgotten by Alistair Darling in his rambling and incoherent interview on TV the other night.

One thing's for sure an independent Scotland would not have to worry about rising fuel bills. In addition to oil and proposals for wind and wave, they already have a hydroelectric capacity.