On 11th May the Herald publish another article on the McCrone reports, and there were a number. [read the article]
These reports keep cropping up like a bad penny but for a very good reason. The ‘bad penny’ hasn’t dropped yet. There are still people in Scotland, who call themselves Scots but they seem to lack the Scottish ‘gift’ of cannaeness {if that is even a word}. They are more prepared to believe the media hype, the spin, the lies and the deception. I am calling these people the Gullibles.
Some people actually believe the Government when they say the oil is running out. I suppose if I was £1.5+Trillion in debt and the area I was running had more than £1.5 Trillion in liquid assets I would feel ‘inclined’ to lie about their assets – wouldn’t you. THEY ARE!
Let’s take a simple example of this deception. The Government has cited the last revenue figures at just over £4Bn to make the point that oil is running out. This is for the Gullibles and is a pack of lies. Westminster fails to explain that in that same year over £18Bn was invested in the West Hebrides deep sea field. This represented the biggest development investment in North Sea history and attracted massive financial relief on tax from Westminster.
My take on the lies and deception goes like this. Let’s call it Westminster’s 7 deadly oil sins, or McCrone versus McCrony:
Sin 1: When oil was discovered, under PM Harold Wilson with James ‘banana skin’ Callaghan as Chancellor these were dire times for the UK. When the first oil came ashore in 1975 Wilson was months away from resigning. Callaghan replaced him as Labour leader and thus PM in 1976. Callaghan was on a slippy slope losing his political advantage on the first day in office and found himself doing deals with the Liberals and SNP to hang on to power. This was the MP who as Chancellor presided over the devaluation of the pound, as PM gave us the winter of discontent and the Scottish ‘won but lost’ referendum before he lsot a ‘no confidence’ motion. As Labour PM Jim Callaghan should have paused for thought and taken a decision regarding North Sea oil on behalf of the people, especially the people of Scotland who technically own the oil in their international water. He didn’t. He offered the lot to ultra rich US oil magnates. They must have been beside themselves. Callaghan and the Labour party were in such a financial shambles with the UK economy they licensed the US oil companies to pay for the development and pay the Labour Government a few pennies a barrel. Breathtaking short term stupidity on a massive scale. Where the Tories are money grabbing crony loving scoundrels, the Labour party are inveterately stupid and naive. Despite advice to the contrary there was no fund set up for the Scots, nothing put aside and the whole amount was blown, leaving nothing.
Sin 2: From the outset the Government took a ‘grab it while you can’ attitude to North Sea oil. They left the investment to the oil companies who had a feeding frenzy and made vast profits, beyond comprehension. All the Government wanted was receipts giving them quick, easy money to spend on what all UK Governments have always spent on; failed social policies and buttering up to their electoral base. Fancy words for the South East of England. How many times have we read of a ‘pools’ winner or a lottery winner blowing the lot in a few years and being left poor, sick and destitute. In this case, this was and is Westminster. What do we have to show for £1.5 Trillion revenue? What does Scotland have to show for £1.5 Trillion revenue? some of the best stocked food banks in the west – I don’t think so! With the current Westminster debt well in excess of £1.5 Trillion, over the years they have created a £3+ Trillion black hole. As if this wasn’t enough, the Gullibles seem to think this is OK and we should trust the Government to sort it out?
Sin 3: When Callaghan was eventually kicked out in1979 following the 1978 ‘Winter of Discontent’ and the disaster of Scotland’s referendum in which Scotland voted YES. I say disaster because a certain Labour MP from England brought in an amendment to the Scotland Act ahead of the referendum to negate the result if the electoral turnout was less than 40%. Despite polling almost 52% the electoral turnout was just over 32%. Many districts in England have police commissioners with an electoral turnout in single figures. So, yes a disaster, but for not Callaghan, for Scotland.
In 1979 Margaret Thatcher came to power. The ‘Iron Lady’ was on the move. And what do you need when iron is on the move? Yes, oil, and plenty of it. The main reason Thatcher was able to stay in power for so long was she could do so much, fund so much, because she was spending Scotland’s inheritance. Of course, Thatcher was an astute business woman; daughter of a grocer, always good with the purse strings, always careful to put a bit aside for a rainy day – that’s a NO, not in Scotland’s case – she blew the lot. She had it spent the minute it came in and she even spent on oil futures. So if we ask the obvious question, ‘did she set up an oil fund?’ how could she? with what? she spent it all making sure she enjoyed the longest term in office.
Sin 4: I watched an excellent clip on U tube by John Jappy [watch it yourself]. John was a civil servant in the Treasury and was there at the time. He was not directly involved but had a very clear recollection of the ‘buzz’ when North Sea oil revenue came on stream. It quickly became an imperative to ‘shield’ Scotland from the true wealth in the North Sea. Given that the Westminster were in dire financial straights, given that Scotland was denied their referendum victory on a ‘technicality’ the last thing Westminster needed was to have Scotland realise they were now rich beyond their wildest dreams.
We know now that Scottish history was not introduced into Scotland’s schools until 2011, yes, 2011 is it any wonder that most of us are unaware that oil was first extracted commercially from the North Sea about 163 years or 1851, long before the latest find.
How about oil on the west coast? there’s a tale and a half. How could there possibly be oil on the west coast? Geologically Scotland, Britain sits on the continental shelf. The geology is much the same. There is every reason to suspect their might be especially if it’s in the North Sea and off the north coast of Scotland. You wouldn’t really know unless there was an exploration license and sonar and seismic tests were carried out. What, they were? Don’t tell me … nothing? You are kidding? There is? So why didn’t one of the oil companies apply for a license to extract the oil? What? They did? What some little rogue oil company looking for a bit of pay? Ok, so it was BP.
So why don’t we look out of our windows in Helensburgh and Greenock and see the BP platforms? Oh, they got the license, but they were not allowed to deploy rigs because the Trident subs used the area for their trials. Makes sense! BUT NOT TO ME.
Let’s ask BP, the Department of Energy and the Government to confirm or deny this. Right. They all deny it but they have all lost the paperwork. Shit, what rotten luck!
The lies and deception just keep on coming.
Sin 5: When a country discovers oil, basically they are rich. When the US found oil that did not make Canada rich. When Norway found oil that did not make Sweden rich. When Nigeria found oil that did not make Ghana rich and when the Middle East countries found oil that did not make Israel rich. When Scotland found oil, England got rich(potentially) – but here’s the thing, SCOTLAND GOT POORER. you couldn’t make it up.
So what did we get from the oil? Blackpool doesn’t have oil, but they do have a motorway, the M55. Aberdeen is the UK oil centre. Driving up there you do the last 100 miles on the A9 – they don’t even have a motorway? Perhaps Aberdeen should have swapped their rigs for a tower, with lots of flashing lights, seaside bars and ‘kiss me quick’ hats and applied for a motorway!
Well, at least we could cross subsidise our struggling shipbuilding industry on the Clyde, our massive coalfields at Lanark, our steel production at Ravenscraig, our locomotive works at Springburn and our heavy engineering, well everywhere.
WE COULD HAVE, WE SHOULD HAVE ….. BUT WE DIDN’T. It all went very south and very south east and we didn’t get as much as an oily rag.
Sin 6: Westminster has licensed the oil fields. You could almost forgive Callaghan for taking a quick buck through licensing if the Government did not even have the money to own and develop it. OK, we should NOT forgive him for crass stupidity. If you found gold in your yard but didn’t have the price of a shovel you would soon find the price of a shovel. You wouldn’t let someone come in with their shovel, dig up your gold and leave you with the old porcelain jug they found and the hole in the ground. You wouldn’t, BUT CALLAGHAN DID.
That was bad enough in the beginning, but once the money came flooding in, as it did, even at pennies a barrel, the Government still didn’t have the wit to change the operating model and take control of this asset. No, they kept on going. Let’s face it, this was the operating model that had served the British Empire so well for decades. Asset strip a country, give a few dignitaries a worthless title and dump them when it’s all gone. Unfortunately for the Scotland, this was the same tried and tested colonial operating model. And what do we imagine was the fate if one of our ‘colonies’ objected to the asset strip? The Empire also did a nice line in blood letting. We’re not at 18 September yet – what about the country when it becomes clear there will be a YES vote – will it get even nastier, will it get ugly?
Sin 7: Lie and cheat about the history. Like a chapter from Orwell, the Government have blatantly distorted the history, distorted the current figures and presented a dismal future for the oil industry that says ‘now that the oil is about to run out we will find it in our hearts to look after you. Now that the £1.5 Trillion revenues we’ve had are gone and you have nothing to show for it we will fund your economy even though we’ve more than £1.5 Trillion debt. We care about you so much that now you are a spent force we will stand by you.’ Or perhaps that should be –
WE WANT TO HOLD ON TO YOU FOR A WHILE LONGER BECAUSE WE HAVE NOT FINISHED PLUNDERING YOUR ASSETS. WHEN IT REALLY IS GONE THEN YOU CAN HAVE YOUR REFERENDUM AND THEN YOU CAN F*CK OFF.
And this is the message to the Gullibles. Don’t you get it, can’t you see that? Are you really that gullible?
SADLY, SOME PROBABLY ARE
The readers of my blog and the comments I get suggest that many,many Scots are switched on, they get it in spades. The dilemma is how do we get this message out to the Gullibles.
I do not believe for a minute that Scotland will NO. If they did then Scotland would be dictated by a collection of all the gullible people of the land. That will be very interesting, that will be tragic. That will be very, very worrying. There is only one thing worse than a gullible indian, … a gullible chief!