Should Scotland be an independent country?

Right, but are they going to need to spend any money on anything other than debt in the interim?

And how much is going to be generated from other resources? Even if they have all the oils.

The English always love decrying how stingy the Scots are so by that logic you might find that our portion of the national debt is lower as we don't like spending as much on frivolous consumer goods in favour of hiding it in an old sock under the floor boards.

According to these figures Scotlands GDP is ~£130 billion.

If they do get independence then I think the negotiating is going to be intensely interesting.

On the one hand the UK has a few bargaining chips. However, from a PR perspective if the UK tries to play hardball they look like pricks. In fact even if they just try reasonable negotiation it can easily be spun to make them look like pricks.

Overall I have very limited confidence in any of our politicians negotiating ability, whereas from what I can see Salmond is an excellent politician.

UK debt is ~£1600 billion pounds.

UK Population is ~63 million.

Scottish Population is ~5.3 million.

My appalling maths gives us the following:

1600/63=25.4 billion of debt per million head of population.

Therefore Scotland would have a "share" of the national debt that equates to £135 billion.

Salmond reckons that if he succeeds in claiming the North Sea oil for Scotland then it'll be worth £10 billion/year, so it looks like he'd break even in 20 years ish, given year on year increases in the cost of extraction and so forth.

If I was Alex Salmond (I'm not, too slim) I'd point out that revenue from Scottish oil has been propping up the Tories' tax cutting agenda for the best part of 30 years so if they think they are going to saddle our nascent nation with debt they can go fuck themselves.

Bear in mind that the government would be wanting to get re-elected by the remains of the UK, so "playing hardball" might be more positive for them than you imagine.

i.e. fucking the Scotts could be played as a positive thing, in terms of voter perception.

According to these figures Scotlands GDP is ~£130 billion.

That's a lot of Irn Bru.

Bear in mind that the government would be wanting to get re-elected by the remains of the UK, so "playing hardball" might be more positive for them than you imagine.

i.e. fucking the Scotts could be played as a positive thing, in terms of voter perception.

Par for the course anyway. You've been fucking us for years.

Do the Shetlanders,
with their own nest egg from the Sullom Voe oil terminal,
necessarily see themselves as 'SalmondScots'?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shetland

Must be a lot more than the £9.5k per head by now.

Par for the course anyway. You've been fucking us for years.

Rank ingratitude! After all the nice Highland clearances we gave you!

^^It that actually true?

If you compared per capita public spending on Scots compared to NI or England, are Scots that hard done by?

What about investment in infrastructure? Obviously everything pails into insignificance compared with London, but what about the NE?

Par for the course anyway. You've been fucking us for years.

Looks under sofa for tin of stolen shortbread

^^It that actually true?

If you compared per capita public spending on Scots compared to NI or England, are Scots that hard done?

this is a hugely debatable subject based on whether you bother to factor in that per capita Scotland contributes more to the UK via tax etc that according to what I've read, roughly equates to an equilibrium to what we get 'given' from the UK pot.

I know you English are a charitable, generous lot but would Thatcher of all people, presided over a hugely disproportionate or overly generous subsidy of a country she viewed with huge suspicion if not total dislike?

If it meant getting the oil revenue without having to deal with rioting?

Do the Shetlanders,
with their own nest egg from the Sullom Voe oil terminal,
necessarily see themselves as 'SalmondScots'?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shetland

Must be a lot more than the £9.5k per head by now.

You'd have to ask Shetland. If I was from there I'd rather be Norwegian anyway, and they are genetically and historically closer to Scandinavia than Scotland.

If it meant getting the oil revenue without having to deal with rioting?

Thatcher wasn't scared of inciting a good riot was she?

I wasn't saying that you've been living off our backs. I'm just questioning whether you've actually been significantly disadvantaged.

i'd say successive generations of Tory governments and London-centric thinking has hugely disadvantaged Scotland and any other part of the UK not part of the 'finance capital' millionaires playground world view.

Which is part of the reason I think that independence is a good idea, I'd just caution that it's possibly not going to be as rosy as the newly minted Scots would like to think- I can't believe that the Tory government will allow Scotland to escape without at least 100 billion of debt, probably significantly more if they also allow Scotland to take the oil revenue.

If it meant getting the oil revenue without having to deal with rioting?

In the first 2 years of Thatcher's 1st term Scotland lost a 5th of it's workforce. It was the absolute chaos in Glasgow that started shocking middle England.

She really didn't give a shit.

The oil revenue thing...

I've read that it represents 45% of Scotland's current GDP.

Even if that drops of really quickly this puts them in an interesting situation regards renewable energy. Unlike England they'll have means and incentive to produce lots.

interesting read guess could say its based on dept

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darien_scheme

The oil revenue thing...

I've read that it represents 45% of Scotland's current GDP.

Even if that drops of really quickly this puts them in an interesting situation regards renewable energy. Unlike England they'll have means and incentive to produce lots.

renewables (wind farms for e.g.) cost loads to implement and maintain (ironically) and take fucking years to get anywhere near paying for the outlay

in fact wind farms are just a wind fall for the companies that install them

The oil revenue thing...

I've read that it represents 45% of Scotland's current GDP.

Even if that drops of really quickly this puts them in an interesting situation regards renewable energy. Unlike England they'll have means and incentive to produce lots.

On the oil front estimates vary widely, although in general they are with regards to the cost of extraction- that there is loads left under the North Sea isn't really questioned.

In terms of renewables, the wind farm situation is now at the point of incremental gains, according to a wind-energy analyst who I was chatting to the other day, the biggest gains will now be seen in replacing the first turbines as their service life ends rather than seeding new fields.

Salmond has talked at length about the potential of the Pentland Firth tidal bore- however he estimates its output at 20 GW, whereas actual scientists in peer reviewed studies have suggested that 1 GW would be more likely.

The remarkable thing about the tidal bore is that unlike wind and wave it's reliable- so you don't need something else (nuclear, oil, coal, biofuel, gas etc) to "fill the gaps" when the wind isn't blowing.

Question would be can Scotland be run on 1GW during lulls in the weather, or are there other projects that could help take up the slack.

Again- be interesting to see.