Scotland has ignored oil opportunities

Your Letters (Herald) January 03 2007

In 1974 I went to the Middle East to work as a civil engineer. I had been a lecturer at Strathclyde University, and had actively supported the SNP. I authored the 1972 booklet, The Reality of Scotland's Oil, which drew attention to the potential benefits that an independent Scotland could expect from the great oil wealth discovered in the North Sea. Of course this booklet, and the SNP's own well-researched economic claims in their It's Scotland's Oil campaign, were roundly rubbished by the unionist press (including The Glasgow Herald).

We now know that even in the 1970s our unionist politicians knew the truth of the SNP's claims but were determined to hide this from voters.

In 1975, the Middle East was a fairly undeveloped area with little in the way of infrastructure and services. That is why I, and thousands of other British engineers, were going there. The region's oil wealth had risen greatly in value after the 1973 Arab/Israeli war, and this was now being invested frantically in the construction of roads, ports, water and drainage schemes, power stations, desalination plants, hospitals, schools and universities. Later, it became luxury hotels, shopping malls, apartment blocks, libraries and museums, business parks and theme parks; now even the world's tallest building. The tangible fruits of their oil wealth are there for all to see. Their worldwide investment portfolios are even more impressive. Millions of people now go to the Gulf countries on holiday and are no doubt astonished at what they find in cities such as Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Muscat, Doha and Bahrain. Not as astonished as I am, since I first saw all these places in the 1970s.

In all this, where stands Scotland, itself a major oil producer for 30 years? World oil production is around 0.6 tons/year/head of world population. The figure for the US has averaged 1.2 tons/year/head. But the vast majority of countries are at nil or less than 1.0.Over the past 10 years (and for a good number of years before that) Scotland has produced an average of around 20 tons of oil/year/head of population. For comparison, let us look at the mega-rich Arab Gulf countries. For Kuwait and the UAE, the figure is around 55; for Saudi Arabia, it is 23. The Norwegian figure is way up there with the big boys at around 30 tons/year/head, which helps explain how they have managed to build up a heritage fund in excess of £100bn for future generations, while still being now Europe's most prosperous country. So you can see that Scotland has been (in oil production terms at least) in the big league.

So where has Scotland gone wrong? Why are we the only country in the world whose population has stayed static for the past 50 years while the world's population has soared from 2.5 billion to 6 billion? Why have we had, at 1.8%, the lowest average GDP growth in western Europe over the past 30 years? Why is it that, of all the countries of western Europe, only in Scotland is male life expectancy still below 70 years? It is the same with indicators such as the percentage of people either unemployed or not in employment through incapacity, our car ownership rate and other measures of economic wellbeing.

All that oil wealth we produced, oil wealth that transformed the Gulf countries and Norway, has simply passed us by. We even suffer the annual indignity of being taunted by our unionist leaders about how much we are indebted to a subsidy from England for our very survival as one of western Europe's poorest countries. I used to think that there was something wrong with Scottish voters that so many could be so easily fooled and deceived, election after election, especially by the Labour Party. But at least they had an excuse – like those who voted for the war in Iraq. I now see that the real "dummies" in Scotland have been our own business and commercial people.

They have, for 30 years, totally failed to see the economic opportunities that would have arisen in an independent oil-rich Scotland. A trip to the Middle East would soon put them right. The economic opportunities, and the best oil-related jobs, were snapped up by London and the south-east, where control of our industry lay, and they didn't notice.

Scotland still has a lot of oil left to be produced and it has become very, very valuable. In this coming year, "energy security" will come to be recognised as an important quality for a country to have. Scotland will have that in spades. Perhaps in 2007 our business leaders, and even the voters, will finally get the message.

Nick Dekker, 1 Nairn Way, Cumbernauld.

SAME NONSENSE BY BLIAR FOR WALES

Blair: Independence is backward

INDEPENDENCE for Wales and Scotland would be an old-fashioned backward step, Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday - while claiming his own legacy was to make Britain a more modern place.

[A backward step? More like a necessary step which every former colony of the British Empire has made and none have regretted! Independence is not 'backward' for Wales or Scotland. As Jack Straw has pointed out the union is useful for England but it is not useful for Scotland or Wales, both of whom would benefit from independent representation in the EU and the UN. JOE]

Mr Blair has been under pressure on the constitutional issue after a series of polls showed growing support among the English for the break-up of the UK, and a surge in support for the SNP in Scotland.

But Mr Blair told a Westminster lunch that autonomy for the nations of the UK was "a completely regressive step, totally wrong and totally contrary to where the modern world is moving, which is countries moving together."

Using his own background to stress the "interdependence" point used repeatedly by Chancellor Gordon Brown, Mr Blair said, "My mum was Irish, my Dad was English, both lived most of their lives in Scotland. I was born in Scotland but brought up in County Durham, and I now live most of my life down in London. [Who cares? Blair's allegiance is to England, fair enough, but can he not realise that others put Scotland or Wales first?]

"It's a good newspaper story - You have an opinion poll question to people saying 'Scotland have got their own parliament, should England have its own parliament?'
"I would be kind of surprised if people didn't answer that question 'yes'.
"But to then take it a step further and say they want to bust up the United Kingdom; I don't think they want to bust-up the UK." [Pity that's exactly what the polls say Tony.]

An ICM survey for The Sunday Telegraph which suggested support for Scottish independence had reached 52% among Scots and 59% in England. And a poll in yesterday's Scotsman suggest the SNP was on course to be the largest party in the Scottish parliament after next May.

Mr Blair said he recalled similar poll results being published in the summer of 1998, which were not reflected in the results of the 1999 Welsh and Scottish elections.
"When people come to the point of do they want to bust up the UK, I don't think they want to do that," he said. "I'm not saying these aren't difficult arguments that you have to handle carefully, because you do, but I think independence would be a thoroughly old-fashioned and regressive step."

The Prime Minister has said he will step down before next September, but would not be drawn on his departure date when questioned by reporters yesterday. Asked about his biggest mistakes since entering 10 Downing Street in 1997, he hinted they might not include issues such as the Iraq war.

"If people ask me what's your biggest mistakes, I always say 'that's for me to know and you to find out'. Although they may, funnily enough not be some of the things you might think of," he said. He added, "I think the thing that has changed about the country overall is that I think the country is basically more willing to advance people on merit today, and ... I think we've become a far more modern country."

Returning to his theme of the regions [Scotland and Wales are COUNTRIES not regions], he said, it was wrong to always compare areas such as Wales or the north-east of England with London, saying there had been strong economic growth throughout the UK

"Part of the trouble with comparing region by region is, if you take London for example, you have some of the wealthiest parts of Britain and some of the poorest. It's more sensible to analyse disparities within regions rather than pitting regions against each other."

STICK TRIDENT TONY - SCOTLAND DOES NOT WANT IT

So Tony has decided, yes Britain needs it's nuclear deterrent so it can play big man on campus. His friends in the US will be very happy to receive a £20 Billion order for an unusable nuclear defence system.

Despite the fact Britain can hardly equip it's troops in the current US instigated wars, Tony thinks that a new missile system is a snip. "No madman can blow us up, if he did we'll blow him up, they'd have to be mad" he assures us, yes Trident will save us from all manner of unlikely scenarios dreamed up by Whitehall mandarins.

Well I'm sorry Tony but Scotland doesn't want or need your 20 Million quid virility symbol. We don't need to have the capacity to blow up other nations and we don't feel the requirement to pretend we're a big bully on the international stage.

Scotland is a small country, we are a rich country but we are not willing to waste our money on bombs which can't be dropped, again. There is a simple way to destroy Tony's nuclear dream where he sits in his bunker as the last man under the nuclear slag heap. That way is by voting for Scottish independence.

The radiation won't stop at the border but at least we won't waste our money on a unusable nuclear deterrent nor will we contribute towards a future nuclear conflict. Let's leave the US to play their games in NATO and if England wants to pretend they've still got imperial power they can pay for their bombs themselves.

Harry Reid joins the Convention

One of Scotland’s most eminent journalists, Harry Reid, has joined the Scottish Independence Convention, throwing his weight behind the campaign for a referendum and proclaiming his belief that the Treaty of Union is dead.

Mr Reid is a former editor of The Herald who ran the paper during its acclaimed campaign for a Yes/Yes vote in the 1997 devolution referendum. He has since written authoritative books on the Church of Scotland and the state of Scottish football. His latest book, Deadline, is a fast-selling history of the Scottish press.

He explained his decision to embrace independence: “I’ve been a ‘fellow traveller’ for a year or so now, yet somehow I’ve never quite faced up to what both my heart and my head have been telling me: that an independent Scotland could – and almost certainly would – be a better Scotland. I further believe that the Union is finished, and that England could benefit greatly from rediscovering itself by going through the potentially positive process of becoming English rather than British.

“And then my old friend and colleague Murray Ritchie bludgeoned me into writing this short piece. SO LET ME COME OUT AND SCREAM IT: I BELIEVE IN, AND NOW I EARNESTLY DESIRE, AN INDEPENDENT SCOTLAND.”

He said there were many reasons for this, some subtle, some crude, some cerebral, some emotive, some obscure, some historical.

“But the clincher for me has been the way this man Blair – surely the worst British leader in living memory – has been responsible for the worst thing I can recall the British state doing. That is, the reckless and illegal invasion of a sovereign foreign country, Iraq. I’m not sure if the invasion would have been justified had our security been genuinely at risk, but without doubt a case could have been made. Whereas the case that Blair presented was utterly false.
“And it was easy enough to invade, easy enough to topple Saddam: but how to secure the peace and how to construct a new and stable Iraq? How to persuade that country’s people – those of them who have not been slaughtered - that their life is better and the invasion has been beneficial? Not a thought seems to have been given to these crucial policy decisions. And thus, for the people of Iraq, life has slipped towards the abyss.

“The invasion of Iraq has been supremely and horrendously counter-productive. Our fine military have been shamelessly sent on a grotesque fool’s errand, a mission that was supposed to help us defeat terrorism but is instead creating and mentoring a whole new generation of terrorists.

“And what has this to do with an independent Scotland? It is quite simple. An independent Scotland would never ever misuse its power in this manner. I could never imagine, in a thousand years, an independent Scotland sending its army to invade a far-off country on such phoney pretexts.

“Iraq must dominate our current political agenda. But as I have tried to explain, Iraq is relevant to our constitutional debate.

“There are many other, far more positive, arguments for Scottish independence and I look forward to discussing these in the months ahead. The key point in the here-and-now is this: the British state – and it pains me to write this – has done something that is seriously wrong and very stupid. A Scottish state would never have behaved in this way.”

Murray Ritchie, convention convener, welcomed Mr Reid to the campaign. “Harry’s an intellectual heavyweight. He has thought through the arguments for and against independence and, like most of Scotland’s leading thinkers, reached the conclusion that the benefits will be overwhelmingly in favour. We are delighted to welcome him to the winning side.”

from Scottish Independence Convention www.scottishindependenceconvention.com

We'll keep the oil, you can have the Trident submarines

By Paul Henderson Scott, Sunday Telegraph

Last weekend in Oban, the Scottish Labour Party held a very unusual conference. A succession of ministers from the Westminster Government, beginning with Tony Blair and followed by Scottish MPs Gordon Brown, John Reid and Douglas Alexander, all indulged in hysterical speeches about what they saw as the dangers of Scottish independence. They spoke as if it would be a strange anomaly in the modern world of increasing interdependence. Have they failed to notice that in recent years all the old empires, including the British, and most of the multinational states have resolved into their component parts? It is Scotland (probably the oldest nation in Europe) that is the anomaly in failing so far to follow the modern tendency.

"We are two open countries, England and Scotland," Mr Blair said, "open to each other and open to the world." So they would remain with Scottish, or Scottish and English, independence. We should both be members states of the European Union and of the United Nations. On most issues we should agree and be able to support one another.

As separate states, we should have more influence in Europe as two voices than as one; more seats in the European Parliament and more votes in the Council of Ministers. But when our interests and views differed, Scotland would be able to state its own case. And, of course, we should still have free movement of people and goods, not only between us but over the whole of the European Union. Scottish independence would remove grievances between England and Scotland, not increase them.

advertisementWe have a parallel close to home. Ireland, as part of the UK, was impoverished and resentful. As an independent country it is contented and prosperous. The small independent nations of Europe, such as Ireland, Norway, Iceland and Finland, are among the most prosperous. Small countries are closer and more responsive to the needs of their citizens and more flexible in responding to changing circumstances in the global economy.

An independent Scotland would, of course, have to stand on its own feet financially. There would be no suspicion, as there is at present in England, that it is being subsidised from south of the border. In fact, the financial flow is in the opposite direction because of the proceeds of the oil in Scottish waters, which, at the current oil price, is worth about £10 billion a year. The oil revenues have been seized by Westminster, although under international law they are a Scottish asset. That is presumably one reason why the present British Government would like to hold on to Scotland. This may be a contentious issue but, after all, oil is a diminishing asset, Westminster has enjoyed it for 30-odd years, and that is probably at least half of the total.

With independence, Scotland would assume responsibility for its own defence, with such international agreements as it might wish to make. This is one of the issues where majority opinion in Scotland and England diverge. Most people in England still seem to hold on to the idea of Britain (or England) as a world power. From this follows a desire to renew the so-called nuclear deterrent.

We in Scotland see no advantage in trying to act as a major power, especially if in practice it means hanging on to the coat-tails of the United States. This is the attitude that leads to such disasters as the Iraq war and the consequent provocation of terrorism.

This, of course, brings us to the awkward matter of the nuclear submarines on the Clyde. In the opinion of most people in Scotland, they are immoral, useless, hideously expensive (an independent Scotland would be more than happy to have to contribute towards them no longer) and always liable to an explosion, either accidentally or as a consequence of a terrorist attack. They are close to our major centre of population. How can Britain express indignation about other countries seeking to obtain nuclear weapons when it proposes, contrary to its treaty obligations, to renew its own? British nuclear weapons should be abolished, which might be an encouragement to other countries to do the same.

If England takes a different view from an independent Scotland, what happens? An elaborate and expensive base has been built for the submarines at Faslane. It would take time to build a new base in England and one can imagine the outcry from people living close to it. If that consideration helps to influence a decision against renewal, so much the better. If not, perhaps an English government could persuade the United States to allow them to share one of their bases. They use the same technology, after all, and it is highly improbable that an English government would ever want to start a nuclear war on its own.

• Paul Henderson Scott is a former diplomat. He has written many books on Scottish history, politics and culture. The most recent is The Union of 1707: Why and How (Saltire Society)

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/03/nuk103.xml