How Scotland’s Economic Deficit Is Manufactured By Westminster.
Westminster claims annually that Scotland is subsidised by England.
This makes Scotland the only substantial oil
producing nation in history which operates at a loss.
How can this possibly be?
On the same amount of oil reserves and population Norway has become the richest country in the world per capita.
Is Scotland somehow selling its oil and gas at a loss?
Not even a single third world country has ever managed to do this.
Will this continue even after Scotland is independent and owns all its own energy reserves and stops giving them away to England?
Westminster keep the actual revenue figures extremely
secret to avoid public scrutiny of the accounting. And
especially public scrutiny in Scotland.
(See The McCrone Report of 1976 below for the deceitful reasons for this longstanding policy.)
This Scottish budget deficit is mysterious until it is
understood that it is greatly in Westminster’s interests that it exists.
It makes Scotland magically appear to be unable to afford to govern itself, despite the economic experts of the OECD stating Scotland is one of the richest countries in Europe. Richer per person than the UK.
England wants to claim it is subsidising a Scotland which cannot afford to be independent.
In reality Scotland is drowning in oil, gas, wind energy, marine resources and tourism and whisky industries.
And so Westminster has to resort to manipulating the accounts in order to make Scotland appear to be economically weak and in need of a rescuing English subsidy.
Here is how the trick is done:
Scotland owns 8.4% of everything in the UK. This is the
relative proportional population of Scotland and is used in the Barnett Formula.
England practises false and misleading accounting
by saying that ALL of this North Sea Oil and Gas is UK production and not Scottish production.
For deficit calculations, Scotland produces NO oil and gas income. The UK claims it produces 100% of North Sea Oil revenues. Then it gives Scotland a percentage of it back as a ‘subsidy’.
Westminster can now both claim 100% of the economic
gain from North Sea Oil and Gas, while simultaneously excluding a recently estimated £9 billion a year from the credit side of Scottish fiscal balances.
This is Scotland’s imaginary budget deficit.
Westminster goes to extremely great pains to conceal the
true income received from North Sea Oil. It managed to
keep The 1974 McCrone Report completely secret for 30 years. The best estimate of total oil revenue is $500 billion profit over this period. This is what Norway has earned and invested into $1.6 trillion.
Clearly an independent Scotland would not be giving its oil revenues to another country. This gigantic amount
of revenue would therefore remain in Scotland – amounting to a massive annual financial surplus.
This huge surplus is enough to rebuild the NHS and the
housing and social systems and infrastructure of a new
independent country. A new and wealthy Scotland.
It is also enough to begin a Sovereign Wealth Fund like Norway’s to generate stable future revenue and influence.
If you are in any doubt about the reality of this secretive
and deceitful Westminster accounting practice simply ask yourself:
If Scotland needs such annual subsidies then why is England holding on to it so very tightly?
England has never been a generous coloniser. The British
Empire was always run for profiteering.
