ON your story about a new oil discovery, it is high time the people of Scotland were told exactly what all those predictions really mean, rather than figures that mean nothing (New oil find could be worth up to £5bn, The National, October 10). Let’s be clear – for as long as Scotland remains in this Union, Scotland is not going to get £5bn out of this nice oil find.
Westminster is going to pocket most of it, if not the lot, claiming perhaps that the oil was extracted from some “unknown region” or another.
On a good day, if Westminster feels generous and if the population of Scotland does not continue to decrease compared with that of England, we may get a 8.2 per cent of that figure (Population percentages taken from Statistical bulletin: “Population Estimates for UK, England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland: mid-2016”, Office for National Statistics, June 22, 2017) So it will no longer be £5bn but £410 million. Now, although £410m is nothing to turn our nose at, it is certainly not £5bn.
England however, without lifting a finger and without being blessed with the asset, will pocket a whopping £4.21bn simply because it happens to have a share of an 84.2 per cent of the total population of the UK.
So it is not really being blessed with natural resources that pays off in this union, but having a large population.
Only if Scotland becomes independent can we truly say that oil finds discovered in Scottish waters are going to benefit Scotland.
Because by the look of it, with the current arrangement, for every penny that Scotland gets of its own natural assets, England gets 10 so really, oil discovered in Scotland’s waters benefits England far more than Scotland.
I hope somebody agrees with me that it is high time England was encouraged to find its own oil deposits within its own waters
(I, of course, do not include our 6000 sq miles on this) so Scotland can get the full benefit from its own rather than just a few crumbs.
Maria Carnero, Via thenational.scot
THE Whitehouse Windbag is at it again. Donald Trump has moved to repeal Obama’s Clean Power Plan, again indicating that he is trying to accomplish two things.
One is to eradicate Barack Obama’s legacy and some really progressive ideas out of some kind of deep-seated hatred for the man. A man, may I stress, who he will never in a million years be able to emulate.
The second issue is that Trump is a closet climate change denier and he is intent on using that as an excuse for his downright stupid and very short-sighted policies.
I give him the benefit of the doubt there, it’s more likely a tweet whim to return the US to the time when coal was king.
He set his stall out during the election campaign when he posed among hard-working miners, looking like an idiot, and stated he would unleash a new coal-centred policy for power in the US.
It’s a policy that runs at odds with almost all of the sane world where we realise that using fossil fuels in such a fashion will mean that he will never hope to attain any meaningful contribution towards climate change.
Trump is hard wired to react only to the making of a dollar, and no amount of evidence will alter his myopic view on the subject.
It must be really difficult to argue that the use of fossil fuels has no effect on climate when this season has seen an inordinate rise of hurricanes, the current fires raging through the California area due to weather variants, and I am astounded that Mr and Mrs America are unable to accept these facts and resist this lunatic’s obsessions.
Will there be a tipping point in the US when they finally are forced to accept that their voracious use of oil and coal will have to be curtailed or will that moment come way too late for them and the rest of the world?
Contrast this with the progressive and genuine drive by the Scottish Government to replace fossil fuels wherever possible with the adventurous proposals for electric cars and renewable energy systems.
Talk about chalk and cheese. I know which government I like to be looked after by!
Ade Hegney, Helensburgh
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