"[Scotland] would tend to be in chronic surplus to a quite embarrassing degree and its currency would become the hardest in Europe, with the exception perhaps of the Norwegian kroner."
Read the 1975 McCrone Report in full. Then reflect on why it was buried by successive UK governments for three decades and is still taboo at Westminster.
"The McCrone Report coverage has no paywall. We believe it is vitally important that everybody can access it."
"With a surge of support for the SNP now reaching 30% in the General Election of October 1974, the UK [Labour] Government was horrified at the thought of the Scottish people becoming alerted to their nation’s mineral wealth. It decided that McCrone’s work was to be buried in the deepest recesses of its archives, never to see the light of day again."
"The UK and Norway both discovered oil in the early 1970s, and have extracted roughly the same total amount of oil and gas. Norway has a sovereign wealth fund amounting to $1.4 trillion. The UK, and consequently Scotland, has none. Where's it all gone?"
@MadeyeTheCarnaptious@daisydaisy@Indyposterboy that’s the crux of it. Energy and water in abundance and the Scotch Whisky industry (as of Jan’24) now contributes £7bn to the U.K. economy. 30% of total UK food and drink exports come from Scotland. That is not insignificant
90% of the UK's fresh surface water.
Wind power capable of powering the whole country's domestic electricity requirements with a surplus.
Tidal power world leader.
Residual oil and gas....
@MadeyeTheCarnaptious@Indyposterboy Simple. In the UK it went via dividends and share selling into the pockets of the wealthy. In Norway the oil and gas extracting company Statoil is owned by the state and the revenues moves into the pension funds for Norwegian retirees.
@MadeyeTheCarnaptious@Indyposterboy let me guess, the difference between finding a national resource and leaving it a national resource (Norway) and finding a National resource and selling it cheap to capitalists for kick backs and promises of jobs (UK).
If you were in the US you would also have to add the 1960+70s policy of invading or destabilizing countries that tried to keep their national resources nationalized under the banner of "all socialism is communism, all communism is bad".
@Urban_Hermit
We (Norway) had the good fortune to have a system in place for retaining waterfall rights on public hands since early 1900s, with a few 100-year leases to big industries. The idea was well loved across the political spectrum. Keeping the oil on public hands came naturally. @MadeyeTheCarnaptious@Indyposterboy
And the UK has an entirely different tradition ...equally beloved by the political class - appropriating and extracting assets to further enrich the wealty
The exploitation of India was a initially a private venture (east india company)
In the Netherlands we wasted our natural gas windfall on stuff that won't last and doesn't benefit the country as a whole.
So much overspending that it overvalued our currency ('dutch disease's). But never a thought for the future.
And now the gas is almost gone and we struggle to even make whole the people living above the gasfield (whose houses were damaged)
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