David Cameron is peddling bullshit of the premium Aberdeen Angus kind today. At today’s oil prices, recoverable North Sea oil is worth a minimum of 1.2 trillion and a maximum of 2.4 trillion dollars. Cameron is claiming that potential will not be released without government subsidy of 24 billion dollars, and that only the UK government’s “broad shoulders” can raise this.
It is nauseous to dive into such bulllshit to analyse it. To knock a few noughts off, Cameron is saying that it is impossible to raise £10 investment if you have a guaranteed return of £5,000 and possibly £10,000. Salmond’s counter that Norway manages these things is perfectly valid.
Am I the only one who wonders why the taxpayer, under Cameron’s plan, the taxpayer – ie you and me – should fund $20 billion to decommission oil platforms when the oil companies made, at today’s values, over $400 billion in straight profit from those platforms? That payment to the oil companies constitutes 83% of the money from the UK which Cameron claims an independent Scotland would miss out on. The money would not actually go to Scotland at all – it would go to British Gas, BP, Shell, Exxon and other such needy people, to compensate them for polluting us (sic!).
Finally, the taxation revenue to Scotland from the oil and gas after independence will be a minimum of $240 billion and a maximum of $500 billion more to the Scottish taxpayer if Scotland were independent, than the share Scotland will get within the UK. Purely in terms of government revenue, Scotland will still be at least US 216 billion better off in taxes even if it pays the precious 24 billion Cameron is harping on about today.
Finally, the Cabinet is in Aberdeen and discussing vital revenue and investment questions, but where are they hiding George Osborne? Have they hidden him behind a curtain with a bucket on his head? Come on, we want George! Bring out your Family Trust Fund Public Schoolboys!!
@fred
Note the second last paragraph that Airdrieonian links to:
“A minority Labour administration currently runs the council.”
@mary
“Is there some orchestration at work?”
Yes of course, let’s not be naive. There will be a steady planned release of similar announcements, increasing in intensity as we near the referendum date.
Vronsky. Yes my question was ironic, or at least meant to be.
“A minority Labour administration currently runs the council.”
Yes but how would that affect the legality or the morality of the issue?
‘Personally I’m not much interested in your opinion knowing that will just argue your party line.’
I KNOW, Fred. It’s completely obvious because you never actually read what I say. You want me to be an evil Nazi Nationalist, so you can just assume that’s where I’m coming from, and pump out the stuff you’d hear in a Rangers pub if you ever, ever went for a drink and relaxed.
What party line? I haven’t been a member of any party for around -bloody hell, twenty years. My last vote was for the Greens…but better assume I’m a claymore-swinging stalwart of Siol nan Gaedhael, intent on looting and pillaging the crofts of honest English settlers, eh?
Why did you go to Scotland, Fred? You seem to resent its being Scottish – just asking.
Oh, and what underhand tactics? Still waiting. Can’t be attacking GG’s integrity*…you started attacking mine long before that, so that’s got to be permissible, no?
*Have trouble seeing it, to be honest.
Fred
27 Feb, 2014 – 9:00 am
“Standard Life could quit Scotland
“I read the article and the reasons Standard Life gave make sound economic sense. It would be extremely difficult and risky for them to be in a different country with a different currency than the majority of their customers.”
I have read the article too Fred and it is pure bullshit. This is political blackmail as with other interventions from BP and Jose Barroso of the EU Commission.
[Standard Life’s] Gerry Grimstone, says Scotland has been a great base for the company but that, “if anything were to threaten this, we will take whatever action we consider necessary – including transferring parts of our operations from Scotland.
Who is the democratically elected government of Scotland Fred the SNP or Mr Grimstone?
What this man is saying is “you do what we want or we leave”; a bit like the anti-democratic City financiers say to Westminster.
Standard Life’s chief executive, David Nish, insisted Standard Life has “a long-standing policy of strict political neutrality and at no time will we advise people on how they should vote.”
But they just have.
Abdalla Salem el-Badri said Scotland would be best off remaining in the United Kingdom.
[because] most of its North Sea oil reserves are “depleted.”
What does he mean by depleted? The way the word is used gives the impression he means nearly empty; which of course would be a lie.
Any finite resource like oil becomes “depleted” (ie reduced) as soon as you start exploiting it.
“Badri admitted that the Scottish referendum had “nothing to do with OPEC”
So why is he interfering Fred?
“BP’s chief executive Bob Dudley has warned that major companies may divest billions in future investment away from Scotland because of the uncertainties the country’s independence would mean for business.”
“That’s not a company view, that’s from me”
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/scottish-independence-bp-boss-bob-dudley-warns-industry-costs-investment-withdrawal-1435153
“European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has said it would be “extremely difficult, if not impossible” for an independent Scotland to join the European Union.”
“Mr Barroso made clear that it was up to the people of Scotland to decide their future, and he said he did not want to interfere in that process.” But he just did.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-26215963
Can’t you see a pattern Fred?
“Can’t you see a pattern Fred?”
Yes I see the pattern, anyone who tells it how it is about independence must be biassed, bullying, interfering. Salmond can lie through his teeth all day long yet the sun shines out of his arsehole.
That’s the pattern I’m seeing.
More BS from our resident govewrnm,ent of mastiffs. here we have the son of New Labour’s Blackburn emperor J.Straw making his point about Europe.
Off course most of it is written by his dad one presume’s, who is preparing his son to take over from him in the Blackburn manipulation stakes.
This to start it is a quote from W. Churchill 1946 on the dangers of a future Germany
“He formulated his conclusions drawn from the lessons of history in his famous
‘Speech to the academic youth’ held at the University of Zurich in 1946: “There is
a remedy which … would in a few years make all Europe … free and … happy.
It is to re-create the European family, or as much of it as we can, and to provide it
with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, in safety and in freedom.
We must build a kind of United States of Europe.”
and here is Will’s Friend of Europe article for der Spiegel.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/will-straw-essay-on-the-role-of-britain-in-the-european-union-a-956230.html
Nothing new about corporate welfare. The biggest get bailed out while the little guys get hung out to dry.