What is the SNP?

[John Little]

Well fine. No use of oil. No use of coal. Increasingly globalised markets. Best of British luck. You're going to need it.

[squidge]

Well fine???????

Thats the response I get from my 17 year old when I dont say the things HE wants. You know what - I have better things to do than entertain grown up teenagers - you 'll be saying yeah yeah yeah whatever next.

Off to do something worthwhile.......

[John Little]

Well fine??????? Thats the response I get from my 17 year old when I dont say the things HE wants. You know what - I have better things to do than entertain grown up teenagers - you 'll be saying yeah yeah yeah whatever next. Off to do something worthwhile.......

There is little else to be said.

There's none so blind as them that don't want to see.

You won't see.

What else is there to say?


Btw - what was that you said about calling people names?

[Corrie 3]

Well fine. No use of oil. No use of coal. Increasingly globalised markets. Best of British luck. You're going to need it.

Tut tut John..........When the oil runs out it will run out for the UK, coal is all but finished in the UK now thanks to Maggie, the Unions,the Greens and the high price of having to import it. And dont forget, gas will be running out for the Uk before very long so it's not only Scotland that needs your best of British luck is it?

C3.

[John Little]

Did I say it was?

[John Little]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...er-stations-uk

http://www.ukcoal.com/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18611647

None of those allowed in SNP Scotland...

No nuclear either.


Going to build a new industrial base on wind and wave?

[weezer 316]

Tut tut John..........When the oil runs out it will run out for the UK, coal is all but finished in the UK now thanks to Maggie, the Unions,the Greens and the high price of having to import it. And dont forget, gas will be running out for the Uk before very long so it's not only Scotland that needs your best of British luck is it?

C3.

Maggie and the unions...........working together where they!!

It just couldnt be that we couldnt subsidies loss maknig pits any more could it? it couldnt be that could it? She did it for the crack clearly.....

Mindnumbing.....

Forget about Thatcher. Her name doenst resonate with people our age as looking back it pretty clear something drastic needed done or Britain was finished. I would put your energies into trying to convince they tin hat mob the tories have taken their benefits and now they are after their thoughts....and fat eck can save you by building wind farms to interfere with the signal.

[ducati]

The main change in industrial Scotland over the last 30 years is all the industry has been bought and sold to foreign interests.

Anyone notice that when a professor of this or that is trotted out to try to explain the latest innovation being worked on at this or that University in Scotland, they are always Dutch, Norwegien, Italian, Spanish, Canadian.............

Just an observation, I don't know what it means.

[secrets in symmetry]

@ Squidge

"pro independence supporters are stupid, thick or intellectually challenged
pro independence supporters are sheep following their leader with no idea of the issues ( simply a variation of the above).

I might not have put it quite so bluntly as she did, but the evidence from their posts on this forum would certainly support those claims - especially since these were evidently their own words lol.

[John Little]

Before this little discussion shambles off into the hell of sullen silence I am going to take the liberty of elaborating some of what Weezer has already pointed out.

The government bases its shifts in policy on advice it gets from various sources. These sources come in a number of forms – Royal Commissions, Parliamentary Commissions and Civil Service Commissions are the main ones. If a minister wishes to make a decision then he/she needs state of the art information and instructs a civil servant to prepare a briefing document after consultation with appropriate experts and authorities.

Weezer has provided a link to such a document.

Sometimes they are wrong – as in the information given to the Transport Minister over rail franchising- but that mistake was over forecasting. Weezer’s link is not about forecasting but about what has happened already.

Such mistakes are as rare as hen’s teeth in practice because the civil servant who makes them suddenly finds that their career is finished.

Which means that the overwhelming probability is that the information in Weezer’s link is accurate.

I take the liberty of reproducing the last part of it here;


“Oil fund
An oil fund works on the basis that all oil revenues are paid into the fund and only interest gained is taken out. If this same approach to an oil fund had been in place in Scotland since North Sea oil was discovered then there would have been a fiscal deficit every year – totalling almost £150bn over the last 27 years. If instead oil revenue was paid into an oil fund only once the budget was balanced then there would only have been nine years when any money would have been paid into a fund, and since 1989-90 there would have been 18 years when even with oil revenues being used to support Scotland’s public finances there would still have been a fiscal deficit.
Oil revenues can be used only once, you can’t spend them to offset an expenditure black hole and invest them in an oil fund at the same time.

Conclusion
− North Sea oil revenues are volatile and difficult to forecast because of movements in the price of oil, production levels and costs as shown in the data presented and the evidence from the Commission on Scottish Devolution report.
− Oil production from the North Sea is declining − Scottish fiscal balance has never been in surplus without oil revenues, and
has been in surplus for only 9 years even when all oil revenues are allocated to Scotland
Scotland has seen a public sector deficit in every year since 1980-81 when no direct share of oil revenues is allocated.
Even with all oil revenues allocated to Scotland there would have been only nine years out of twenty-seven where there would have been a surplus, none of them since 1988-89.
With all oil revenues accruing to Scotland there would still have been a cumulative net deficit of around £20bn over twenty-seven years.
Oil is a diminishing resource. Production has fallen year on year since 1999 (bar 2007, when the large Buzzard Field started production), and is currently declining at around five per cent per annum.
The price of oil is exceptionally volatile. It has fallen to a value today of less than half of what it was a year ago.
Since 2002-03 total Exchequer revenues from taxes on profits from oil and gas production have year on year fallen by 16%, increased by 21%, increased by 82%, fallen by 3%, fallen by 14%, and increased by 66% - and have over this time variously made up around a sixth to a third of the total Scottish budget. This would make forward budgeting extremely difficult for an independent Scotland.”

http://www.scotlandoffice.gov.uk/sco...nd%20paper.pdf

All of which exposes the SNPs position as rather airy posturing. Something to be glazed over because it is inconvenient.

There is an ice-berg ahead and the Captain has just ordered full steam ahead.

In reality Weezer has shot their fantasy straight through the head – stone dead.



But will they notice?

[pmcd]

But John - surely you know that the SNP response to these figures will be "Figures as published by the same UK government which wishes to keep the UK together. Are these figures to be trusted? Figures which were created by the same people who totally messed up the banks, the economy, the railway franchises, etc." Then followed by the usual emotive statements featuring they great "they" - Maggie Thatcher, The Tories", bloated plutocrats, bread snatchers, etc. Face it John, the Secessionists don't do facts - at least, no facts which don't suit.

[John Little]

True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air
And more inconstant than the wind, who woos
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,
Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.

[pmcd]

The problem with telling decent people that they are victims, and are oppressed, is that gradually they come to believe it, and then become it.

[John Little]

The problem with telling decent people that they are victims, and are oppressed, is that gradually they come to believe it, and then become it.

I believe that you are correct. I really do.

Mind you, Johan Lamont suddenly looks rather sensible in the light of that document. Things have to be paid for do they not?

The contribution of Scots to the general UK economy is enormous - three quarters of a million working in England alone, and heaven knows how many in Wales and Northern Ireland. We all generate revenue that goes into a common pot.

If we have a common pot then it matters not a whit where the revenue originates. It ain't Scottish or English etc - it's British.

But split up the UK so they have to rely on revenue generated in one particular area and I fear that within a very short time the greatest export in that area will be its people.

[John Little]

But John - surely you know that the SNP response to these figures will be "Figures as published by the same UK government which wishes to keep the UK together. Are these figures to be trusted? Figures which were created by the same people who totally messed up the banks, the economy, the railway franchises, etc." Then followed by the usual emotive statements featuring they great "they" - Maggie Thatcher, The Tories", bloated plutocrats, bread snatchers, etc. Face it John, the Secessionists don't do facts - at least, no facts which don't suit.

SNP conference 2020?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ599TQUiug

[Corrie 3]

I fear that within a very short time the greatest export in that area will be its people.

It is now John and has been for years, 90% of our young have to leave the Highlands and Islands to get something like a decent job. It's no wonder people are voting for change, the 3 main parties have let us down for decades, no wonder our islands are empty of teenagers and young adults, where else can they go but down south to get decent employment? And they are being replaced by aging incomers who are a drain on our NHS funds and contribute very little to the local economy. You have an alternative with voting for UKIP, we have an alternative with voting for the SNP. Or we can carry on voting for the 3 main party Muppets who keep letting us all down time after time. Who will you be voting for next at the elections John, I would love to know!!!

C3.

[John Little]

C3 - I have you in my head as an honest man. Facing the figures that Weezer brought up, surely you can see that any promise to make a better Scotland based on a. The available cash and b, the ideology that refuses to use resources that the rest of the world persists in using is a hollow souffle - full of hot air?

Weezer has convinced me that the SNP are charlatans. They promise mountains but I think they will be hard pushed to deliver molehills.

As to population- Scotland's population is going up. Lots and lots of people are coming in - can't be so short of jobs as you think;
http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/files...8/j1119801.htm

Even New Scots have to have employment- no?

Ukip? There's another bunch of chancers - no thanks.

I shall vote Labour - as I have said before. I have never voted Labour in my life but better that than this bunch of idiots we have now. At least Miliband is making an effort and he may shape up. I hope so.

It ain't much but I'm willing to give it a try.

If you wonder why the gas power stations and the nuclear new builds and the coal mines are not in Scotland then ask the SNP. Their green ideology makes them move the hem of their garment away from such things.

Pity that China and Brazil and India do not have the same scruples.

Those figures tell a tale C3. You're too wise a man to be taken in by pink fluffy dreams.

Lamont is being realistic - things have to be paid for. You know that.

Look at that document - look at the graphs.


The fact is that we are interdependent. We need each other to prosper.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interdependence


Split us and we all lose.

[weezer 316]

It is now John and has been for years, 90% of our young have to leave the Highlands and Islands to get something like a decent job. It's no wonder people are voting for change, the 3 main parties have let us down for decades, no wonder our islands are empty of teenagers and young adults, where else can they go but down south to get decent employment? And they are being replaced by aging incomers who are a drain on our NHS funds and contribute very little to the local economy. You have an alternative with voting for UKIP, we have an alternative with voting for the SNP. Or we can carry on voting for the 3 main party Muppets who keep letting us all down time after time. Who will you be voting for next at the elections John, I would love to know!!!

C3.

Oh corrie corrie corrie......

You have made a link between the SNP and retention of people my age in the highlands...

Dounreay employs a fair chunk of my mates + 2000 others......

Most of the rest work in places dependent on dounreay to varying degrees (contruction firms, JGC, retail etc).......

Most of that will be gone in 10-15 years time. I might be in my 40s.....


What exactly, or even vaguely, is the SNP doing that will keep more people and therefore more young people in this area in anything even like the numbers dounreay does?

And before you answer, if you do, I should want you I have looked.....

[golach]

Not a lot has changed up in the Highlands, in 1946 my Father and two other familys of Ploughmen became economic migrants and had to leave Caithness to take up employment in the richer south sic Perthshire, for the next 10 years my father and my family were in 3 separate farms, I was in 4 different schools, accommodation varied a lot in one farm cottage we had no electricity, no water in the house, and no flushable toilet facilities. while 100 yards up the road was a German POW camp with all mod cons, of course the cottage was rent free, and my fathers wages were £7.00 a quarter, with free milk and a half hundredweight of oatmeal per month. And I never knew we were poor.
So there are no jobs up there now, nothings changed much in 66 years, I left home at the age of 16 to go to the job I wanted, to be at sea. and we did not heed the nutters that were the SNP in those days either.

[John Little]

The problem with telling decent people that they are victims, and are oppressed, is that gradually they come to believe it, and then become it.

@PMCD

What you said here made me think.- a lot. There is a perception about that Scotland is a victim and oppressed and is the junior partner in a bad marriage.

It seems to me that once again it’s the SNP who have set the terms of reference here – or maybe even James 1 himself, who wanted the union of the crowns to be seen as a marriage.

It’s actually a wrong perception, because the joining of two countries is not like a marriage, and their splitting up is nothing like a divorce- I used to think it was too but have changed much over the last year.

If one insists on using such a scenario, then it’s very easy to present one partner as badly done to, especially given the difference in populations.

But it’s a totally false analogy and should be rejected, because the Union is actually a much more complicated business than a marriage between two individuals. When two countries join, then it may be likened to a marriage for a while – but the union of the crowns was 400 years ago and the actual Union 300 years ago.

The forces of Geography have taken over and the United Kingdom has become an Interdependent country – that is to say that its industry, commerce, culture and activities of all kinds have become so intermingled that in effect they form a unitary whole in many ways – but not all.

The United Kingdom is thus the ‘Child’ of the Union and rather than seeing the arrangement as a marriage it might be better to see it as a large human body- let us call it ‘The Body Politic’.


By and large the body politic is healthy- occasionally it gets ill though and at the moment it is suffering from Recession Flu. It works, makes its way in the world and the blood of its commerce supports and nourishes the cells who make it up – which is us.

The parts of the body depend on each other. The Heart cannot function without the head, nor the spleen without the liver - and so on.

If the head has a violent argument with the torso, then the resulting loss of blood, shock etc would kill the body politic. How could it do otherwise?

As to the blood – are we to argue that the marrow in a leg bone is more important because it produces more blood cells than an arm bone?

That would be absurd.

The point is that the blood is produced and it nourishes the whole.

Use this analogy, which seems more valid than marriage, and where is the sense of victimhood and oppression- or of inferiority?

Just change the narrative.

After all- however Brave the Heart, if you cut it out of the body, then it dies and the body dies too.

Who benefits from that?