EU referendum...THE RESULT...and aftermath...

What the Limp Dems and Greens think about anything is completely irrelevant they have as much chance of being in power as I have.

zyph wrote:

VillageGreen wrote:

SNP promise to put in a law to protect the NHS from privatisation at its launch of its election campaign.

If they leave the UK they can set their own NHS up without the help of Westminster money.

Zyph, you do realise that 96% of the UK's oil and gas fields belong to Scotland don't you? So I'd be more concerned how an independent England would cope without these revenues.

Bob and the leavers may not want to read this fairly balanced article as it seems to lack the normal massive FB led bias toward their argument but I found it quite interesting. The main Tommy Robinson in the woodpile is that the UK (presently comprising of both Scotland and England) have sold lots of the production to foreign firms so we don't really actually own a lot of it.
From the Sunday Post this week,

"It’s the billion barrel question proving a divisive issue but key to both camps in the indy debate.

The referendum so far has been dominated by opposing views of nearly everything that will happen in the event of a Yes vote, no more so than when it comes to oil and gas.

It has been a mainstay of the Scottish economy for decades but its value to the country’s future prosperity has now come sharply into focus. The extremities of the Yes and No camps’ forecasts are stark.

The independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), set up by the UK Government, has said for 2016/17 Scotland’s tax take from oil and gas revenues will be £2.9bn.

By contrast, the Scottish Government, using industry figures on how much of the resources they think is left, predicts it will be £6.9bn. To put that £4bn difference into context, Scotland currently spends £3bn a year on education.

But such is the joy of predicting the future as every clairvoyant and economist knows you can’t be wrong about something that has not happened yet, but who is more credible in this high-stakes game?

Well, the SNP administration’s case was not helped earlier this month when one of its own advisers, Professor Andrew Hughes Hallett, a key member of Alex Salmond’s Council of Economic Advisers, said it would be reasonable to expect North Sea oil revenues to rise to £4.5 to £5bn a year from 2016 well short of what the Scottish Government claims.

In addition a string of experts have lined up to say the Yes camp are over-egging their forecasts, or as academics from Glasgow University’s Centre for Public Policy for Regions put it the figures are being “skewed in an optimistic manner”.

The renowned Institute of Fiscal Studies has also warned that predictions by Alex Salmond’s Government over North Sea earnings are “too optimistic”. But both of these organisations are working from the OBR figures so it is perhaps no surprise they reached the same conclusion.

SNP ministers also point to the OBR’s own track record as being more than shaky, with the body predicting economic growth six times stronger between 2010 and 2012 than subsequent official figures suggest was the case.

Neutrals trying to decipher this complex issue also need to know that it is, of course, in the interest of the Scottish Government to talk up oil reserves, and advantageous to Westminster to talk down the value of oil to an independent Scotland.

So if we take the predictions with a pinch of salt and ignore all of the Yes and No brickbats flying around, what is actually happening in the oil and gas fields?

Well quite a lot actually.

On Thursday a leading oil and gas exploration firm announced plans to spend more than £1bn developing a major North Sea field. Minister of State for Energy Michael Fallon said the investment by Premier Oil showed “there continues to be an extraordinary level of interest in North Sea oil and gas”. In addition, there is a further £100bn investment already on the books of the big operators.

So hardly the picture of an industry in crisis. That there is a lot of oil left is not in doubt. Assuming a geographic share, Scotland has by far the biggest oil reserves in the EU. Estimates on how much oil and gas is left in all of the UK’s waters vary between 12 and 24 billion barrels.

Indeed, taking the 24 billion then multiplying it by a price of $100 per barrel has allowed the SNP to talk about £1.5 trillion worth of the stuff left, though they usually omit the point that this is UK-wide not just Scotland.

Either way, it shows the lucrative spoils that could still be out there for a cash-strapped Government of any persuasion, but it doesn’t tell the full picture.

First, not all of the money to be made from Scotland’s great natural resource will stay in the country, even with a Yes vote.

A recent study showed that nearly all Scotland’s North Sea oil and gas production is licensed to foreign firms. There is only one privately-owned Scottish firm and it produces just 6,000 of the total one million barrels of crude produced every day.

The SNP make great play of what our friends across the North Sea in Norway have done with their oil wealth, sagely putting money aside and investing it instead of propping up their economy from year to year (or electoral cycle to electoral cycle to be more accurate for the UK). But the crucial difference is the Norwegian government owns a majority stake in the firm exploiting its oil resources.

With most of North Sea profits flowing out of the country, the main route for the state whether it be a separate Scotland or the UK is the taxes levied on oil and gas fields. Norway puts some of this cash into an oil fund but in the UK it is all spent on Government activity from building roads to propping up the banks.

Many pro-Union politicians will admit, privately of course, that not setting up an oil fund at the time of the first North Sea discoveries was a mistake. The Yes camp believe it is not too late to rectify this but their own figures show that, initially at least, the cash for such a fund would have to borrowed.

But back to the tens of billions of pounds of investment planned. This is undoubtedly great news for such a vital industry but doesn’t tell the full story. The Scottish Government’s latest oil and gas forecast does.

It says: “Operating costs are now projected to be higher in future years than was [first] assumed, reducing the profitability per barrel produced.”

The Treasury is more specific, claiming the cost of extracting the remaining oil and gas resources “will be in the region of £1 trillion”. Put short, it is getting more expensive to get the stuff out and will continue to do so.

Efficiency has been falling since the reserves in the North Sea peaked more than a decade ago and research by Enders Analysis shows it is now 425% more expensive to extract one barrel of oil equivalent than it was in 2002.

Despite more than £14bn of investment by the industry last year, analysts claim output will not recover strongly because of the growth in small fields to replace the bigger ones reaching the end of their natural lives.

On top of that and this partly explains a drop in revenues over the last year the ageing North Sea infrastructure is frequently shut down for maintenance.

It is important to point out the oil and gas debate largely ignores the prospect of further, currently unknown discoveries.

The Sunday Post has previously highlighted potential fields on the Firth of Clyde, left alone due to the neighbouring Faslane nuclear base, and there is more than 30 years’ life in gas fields to the west of Shetland.

Onshore shale gas exploration could also bring a huge economic boom for Scotland, as could the little-discussed onshore oil and gas reserves.

In addition, it is hoped a new regulator and closer co-operation between companies will boost oil and gas production by up to four billion barrels. But this good news comes against a backdrop of soaring production costs which show no sign of abating regardless of who wins September’s referendum.

There are billions of barrels of oil and huge reserves of gas left in the North Sea and it will be these production costs and oil prices rather than political revenue forecasts that will determine how much gets taken out in the coming decades."

A bit more meat on the bones,

"The GERS estimate for Scotland’s implicit budget deficit in 2017–18 was 7.9% of GDP. This compares to 1.9% for the UK as a whole: a ‘fiscal gap’ of 6.0% GDP or around £10.3 billion. That means extra borrowing of £1,885 per person in Scotland, on top of the £600 being borrowed by the government for every person in the UK.

Under current fiscal arrangements, it is the UK government and UK taxpayers that have responsibility for dealing with the vast majority of these higher borrowing levels. However, the Scottish Government can borrow a relatively small amount to invest or smooth its revenues and spending. The £450 million the Scottish government borrowed to invest in 2017-18 explains around 4.5% of the ‘fiscal gap’ of £10.3 billion."

Fascinating subject this and to me shows where we have gone wrong since Maggie and every other government since have sold off all our assets to make friends and relatives wealthy at the expense of the country,

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund was established in 1990 to invest the oil surplus in order to counter fluctuation in the price of oil. Its value reached $1.1 trillion in 2017 and is the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund.

Former First Minister Alex Salmond has argued that an independent Scotland should set-up a similar fund.

A 2018 report from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) think-tank estimated that had Westminster created a similar fund from the North Sea oil revenues in the 1980s, it would be worth over £500bn today.

Bob and the leavers Iggy? I'm a leaver am I?

Bob Crow wrote:

Bob and the leavers Iggy? I'm a leaver am I?

Obviously not, a quite MP or PM like gaffe on my part, how will my reputation ever recover from it? Anyway the jibe was aimed as much at remainers as leavers who believe anything posted on their closed group Facebook pages.

Germany has narrowly avoided a recession, according to new official data.
The country's economy grew by 0.1% in the third quarter of the year after contracting in the previous three months.
A recession is often defined as two consecutive quarters of declining economic activity.
Germany's strength as an exporter of manufactured goods has left it exposed to recent conflict in global trade.
The growth figure was the right side of zero but it is still very weak. Putting together the new figures and the previous quarter's performance, the economy did shrink slightly over the six month period.

The above from the BEEB. It seems that even our glorious leaders are having hard times trying to poison the planet with their global trade aspirations. Obviously my fault lol.

Earwegoagain wrote:

Bob Crow wrote:

Bob and the leavers Iggy? I'm a leaver am I?

Obviously not, a quite MP or PM like gaffe on my part, how will my reputation ever recover from it? Anyway the jibe was aimed as much at remainers as leavers who believe anything posted on their closed group Facebook pages.

Yes I voted remain, but at the end of the day I respect the result of it, so quite rightly leaving is the only correct thing to do.

It is certainly silly season with all these party pledges that are being made, especially from Labour. The Tories and Lib Dems are in a tree war.

I loved the reaction of BT though when Corby said he'd nationalise them! Talk about spitting feathers, they threatened to withdraw the paltry amount they are investing in London to speed up their piss poor broadband. The feckers should be properly taken to account. It's a shame Bojo isn't as tough a negotiator with all the corrupt businesses that are raping us for profits whilst point blank refusing to provide a service for millions of people.

Everything from Phones/broadband, buses, trains, trams, water, gas, electricity, milk, coal and everything should be state owned. Claw the lot back without compensation off the bloodsuckers who stole it in the first place.
A counties resources should be the sovereign right of it's people and not for foreign governments and corporations to extract profit from. You must live in a pretty fecked up world when the profits from the majority of bus and train tickets sold here go into the upkeep, maintenance and fare subsidy of the national bus and rail operations in Italy, Germany and Holland.

Boris V Jezza tonight, should be an entertaining encounter, just like it is in the house for PMQs.

Jezza will storm it he's just hired Prince Andrew as his press officer.

both full of more shit than a christmas turkey... thats my summing up to that "debate"

Once again, Nicola Sturgeon, has insisted Jezza will have to back an indyref2 if he wants to lead the country as PM. She goes on to say that Jezza will not turn his back on a deal with the SNP if that is needed.

Both Labour and the SNP have rejected claims by Boris that the two already have a deal in place to hand Jezza the keys to number 10.

And she has faced much fury after a campaign speech in Dundee East.

As for the interview last night, Sturgeon got a grilling

We simply must drive this evil filth from office. Watching Sky earlier its beyond belief but then you remember the lying Bozo that is running the show....

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harvetheslayer wrote:

We simply must drive this evil filth from office. Watching Sky earlier its beyond belief but then you remember the lying Bozo that is running the show....

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

And who is our lily white saviour waiting in the wings to save us from the evil tyrant Harve? Incase you haven't noticed it Bojo is a continuation of a kind of theme here, Blair, liar, Cameron Liar, May Liar.........

Labour have released their radical manifesto which is drawing gasps from many, with questions like "is it credible and affordable".

Tory manifesto due out soon.

Limp Dems again state they will legalise cannabis in their 2019 manifesto.

Earwegoagain wrote:

harvetheslayer wrote:

We simply must drive this evil filth from office. Watching Sky earlier its beyond belief but then you remember the lying Bozo that is running the show....

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

And who is our lily white saviour waiting in the wings to save us from the evil tyrant Harve? Incase you haven't noticed it Bojo is a continuation of a kind of theme here, Blair, liar, Cameron Liar, May Liar.........

……..Corbyn racist/ anti British, pro ira, pro arab terrorists, pro anything that goes against Britain and its people, anti business, anti home owners, anti wealth for anyone.

mouldyoldgoat wrote:

Earwegoagain wrote:

harvetheslayer wrote:

We simply must drive this evil filth from office. Watching Sky earlier its beyond belief but then you remember the lying Bozo that is running the show....

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

And who is our lily white saviour waiting in the wings to save us from the evil tyrant Harve? Incase you haven't noticed it Bojo is a continuation of a kind of theme here, Blair, liar, Cameron Liar, May Liar.........

……..Corbyn racist/ anti British, pro ira, pro arab terrorists, pro anything that goes against Britain and its people, anti business, anti home owners, anti wealth for anyone.

The trouble is that it's never been needed more than now to shove the political pointer to the left a bit, well quite a lot but tue scale and timescale of Corbys manifesto seems extreme even to an extremist like me.
I would however take issue with his label of pro terrorist, I would much rather Trump and abojo sat down and talked to settle disputes rather than sending in the double tap drones. The only decent thing the coont Blair did was sit down with the IRA and sort out a ceasefire. Sadly he only did it to free up troops to fight his illegal war in Iraq.

I say pro terrorist because of his support for the IRA and Hezbola. He has also voted against every piece of anti terrorist legislation brought before the house of commons since he became an MP.

mouldyoldgoat wrote:

I say pro terrorist because of his support for the IRA and Hezbola. He has also voted against every piece of anti terrorist legislation brought before the house of commons since he became an MP.

I don't ever remember reading anything that Corbyn has said that sympathises with terrorists or outwardly supporting them or violence although there has been plenty of innuendo amply funded by big businesses through right wing telly and papers. What he has done is empathise with the plight of many people who have had the shite bombed out of them and their nearest and dearest, starved and been made homeless by the war on freedom or whatever this holy crusade is called. He then suggests that maybe it might be worth reaching out to these people finding out what their grievieances are and then having a nice chat and sorting hings out without killing loads and loads of men, women and children. Lest we forget ffffs.

Anyone watch the debate on BBC1 last night, four leaders with half an each.

Same old, same old.

Earwegoagain wrote:

mouldyoldgoat wrote:

I say pro terrorist because of his support for the IRA and Hezbola. He has also voted against every piece of anti terrorist legislation brought before the house of commons since he became an MP.

I don't ever remember reading anything that Corbyn has said that sympathises with terrorists or outwardly supporting them or violence although there has been plenty of innuendo amply funded by big businesses through right wing telly and papers. What he has done is empathise with the plight of many people who have had the shite bombed out of them and their nearest and dearest, starved and been made homeless by the war on freedom or whatever this holy crusade is called. He then suggests that maybe it might be worth reaching out to these people finding out what their grievieances are and then having a nice chat and sorting hings out without killing loads and loads of men, women and children. Lest we forget ffffs.

May I suggest this from 2017.

And also this from 2018.

And a debunk (bit of a long read) from 2016

The links between Corbyn and whoever will not go away anytime soon, they are cemented into the minds of a very sizeable number of the British population.