It’s not illegal to declare independence. That doesn’t imply that anyone has to pay attention, just that there’s no international law preventing them from saying they’re independent. There’s also no law that says anyone has to listen to what they’re saying.
There’s also no law preventing me declaring myself emperor of the world, and it’s equally reasonable to expect people to pay attention to that.
Your attitude seems to be that Scotland should act like a spoiled child, stamping its feet and demanding to get everything at once. Mine is that spoiled brats should shut up and let the adults decide what happens in important matters, such as where nuclear weapons are kept.
If by just about manage you means that Alabama has too few people to be a successfully country, consider Luxembourg. Alabama has almost nine times the population of Alabama. And Luxembourg has, by some measures, the world’s highest per capita income.
I don’t know that Luxembourg is the optimum size for a country. In 1921 Luxembourg went into a currency union with Belgium, something that suggests some smart people in Luxembourg believed they were below the optimum population for a country.
There certainly is an argument to be made that the United States is, as a pure matter of economic efficiency, too large a country:
As for the Eurozone, the great majority of economists outside Europe seem to think it’s too big.
I hope No wins for other reasons, but Scotland is a perfectly fine size for a country. The biggest threat to their prosperity might be hooking up their currency with another state or states, thus becoming too big.
P.S. This post is overly simplistic, since too-big isn’t as important as how-governed. But I’ll let it stay.
The very little nations, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Andorra, various Caribbean Islands etc. etc. have their own advantages. One of those being acting as financial powerhouses, being tax-havens, keeping to strict monarchy in the case of Liechtenstein — which after the present Stuart King in Bavaria contains his succession — and general adorability.
They are useful mini-buffers for the great power and are not attached to a larger nation as dependencies: the nature of geography rules otherwise for Scotland, for which a better analogy would be Albania ( Alba to Alba ), proudly fully independent but poor, or eventually, Montenegro.
Scotland has some of the finest countryside in the world ( if an even worse built-up environment aesthetically than the rest of Britain ) but in the long term as few natural resources as 500 years ago.
As for oil, I am always haunted by a catchphrase from some old radio comedy forgotten by everybody: "Bagels Don’t Last Forever."
Natural resources really aren’t that great a foundation for economic growth. Economists sometimes refer to a “Resource curse”, suffered by societies with such a natural resource windfall that they don’t focus on sustainable growth. (There’s also a problem with a potentially overvalued currency.)
Scotland isn’t an especially poor part of England. Yorkshire and the Midlands have lower per-person income. Scotland’s income per person is about 98% of the UK as a whole. By comparison Alabama is 76% as rich as the US as a whole.
Lemme see. Maybe Louisiana might be a better comparison. Pop: 4.6 million to Scotland’s 5.3. Dependent upon offshore oil. Distinctive culture, some non-English language. Roughly as rich as the rest of the country. The big difference is that Louisiana suffers from terrible local governance, while the Scottish are pretty happy with their young Parliament.
Better to have unused natural resources than not have them. What exact ‘sustainable growth’ will Scotland have ? They’re betting the farm on those fabulous untold billions of barrels of oil, enough for every Scot to bathe in every night.
Also renewable energies. Which are a very good thing; but may be no better planned or managed than by the British government. There is no reason to think any part of a country contains rulers more competent than any other, and Scottish schemes have often gone awry.
Scotland has better income because of the Barnett transfer. This will end with Independence.
The Scottish national character is far nearer to the good Alabamians than to the Louisianan. The generous motto ‘Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler’ was never part of Jean Calvin’s creed.
I dunno, enough billions of barrels of oil, the profits from which invested properly in a Scottish Sovereign Wealth Fund, could set the place up pretty nicely to cruise comfortably into the future.
Thing is, when does any government have the moral rectitude for such a move? Seems like only Norway, and maybe Saudi Arabia, have been able to pull it off. Most other places you get a few fat billionaires and a large, wretched lower-middle class.
Just a note. I could see how this could be interpreted as mocking Pjen there. This is a touchy subject, heaven knows, so let’s try to avoid posts that could be interpreted that way.
This oil money cannot be properly invested in a Scottish Sovereign Wealth Fund without effecting current Scottish Government spending. To save money for the future some sort of current spending has to be cut, or taxes have to rise. The SNP has promised not to cut public services; Labour in Scotland would be unwilling to makes cuts either. Where is this money on public services to come from if not from oil?
Firstly estimates of the oil left vary… And however much is there, it is getting more and more expensive to extract. Year by Year.
Mr. Sillars has indeed — with incredible timing — threatened BP:
*“This referendum is about power, and when we get a Yes majority, we will use that power for a day of reckoning with BP and the banks.
“The heads of these companies are rich men, in cahoots with a rich English Tory Prime Minister, to keep Scotland’s poor poorer.
“The power they have to subvert our democracy will come to an end with a Yes.”
He added: “BP, in an independent Scotland, will need to learn the meaning of nationalisation, in part or in whole.
We will be the masters of the oil fields, not BP or any other of the majors.”* Scottish Express
I have nothing against that, but as with Mr. Cameron’s cackhanded style, the timing is off: when planning to stab someone, a cardinal rule, perhaps the most important cardinal rule, is to refrain from telling them in advance of one’s intentions.
Mr. Salmond has the, near singular, view there are 24 billion barrels waiting.
*Alex Salmond, a former oil economist and now first minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish Nationalist party, has argued that a newly independent country could exploit the £54bn in tax taken from the North Sea in the six years up to 2016-17.
And he believes that there are 24bn barrels of oil equivalents (boe) of reserves – which includes gas – still lying under the seabed and waiting to be exploited.*
*Such figures have proved a major bone of contention. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has predicted recoverable reserves of 10bn boe and North Sea tax revenues of £61.6bn between now and 2040.
The Office for National Statistics put the worth of untapped reserves to the UK Treasury at closer to £120bn while Sir Ian Wood, a leading offshore oil industrialist in Aberdeen, put the figure at 15bn-16.5bn barrels.*
continued Guardian
Yet oil prices ( and thus fuel costs ) may increase, or decrease. It’s a slippery thing to make your stand on.
The three biggest industries in Scotland are oil, financial services and whiskey. The first is in decline. The second two are sustainable, but much of banking will flee south and the whiskey industry is nervous because of the risks of losing their trade benefits while they negotiate with the EU et al.
