The world's most-read Scottish politics website

Wings Over Scotland


The curse of volatility

Posted on July 31, 2013 by

volatoil

(Link.)

32 to “The curse of volatility”

  1. Doug Daniel says:

    Ad it’s still less than the collective bonuses being paid out to a handful of bankers in London.
     
    Well, probably.

    Reply
  2. alexicon says:

    I’m very sceptical of the unionists’ when they only mention “oil revenues” in any calculations coming from our section of the North Sea .
    Are they deliberately leaving out Scotland’s gas revenues when calculating Scotland’s North sea revenues that make up 60% of the UK total gas production.
    Don’t fall into their trap folks.

    Reply
  3. Murray McCallum says:

    Didn’t Gordon Brown sell 60% of the UK’s gold reserves to reduce risk and because it earned no return?  Well we missed out on a possible +560% return and lost £9 billion.
     
    Is this what is meant by reducing risk – giving away your assets?

    Reply
  4. CameronB says:

    Why would anyone listen to anything the Westminster parties have to say about oil, after they all colluded to suppress the McCrone Report.
     
    Do the unionists have such a low opinion of the Scots or is it they that are stupid?

    You get to decide in 2014.

    This was the link I meant to post .

    Reply
  5. CameronB says:

    This was the link I meant to post, but apparently you can’t post links when editing.
    link to en.wikipedia.org

    Reply
  6. tartanfever says:

    Murray – yep, he did sell the gold. I remember seeing the advert on e-bay one evening as i was perusing for a new lawnmower spark plug. 
    I think in the end the winning bid was about £10.45, but the postage costs were around £50,000. 
    Broon’s e-bay moniker is ‘radioactivefifeno1’

    Reply
  7. Luigi says:

    Do the unionists have such a low opinion of the Scots or is it they that are stupid?
     
    Both

    Reply
  8. Murray McCallum says:

    In the last 6+ years the highs and lows of the tax take on UK petrol sales alone is £6 billion (*1).  That’s almost the same as the cost of the Iraq war.
     
    Petrol is a bonus to the UK economy and its also a necessity.  It’s just that its bonus is big enough to fund illegal wars.
     
    *1: 20 billion litres petrol sold; 89p to 139p price range; 60% duty and VAT take.

    Reply
  9. CameronB says:

    @ Luigi
    To be fair, it was kind of a loaded question. Correct answer though. 😉

    Reply
  10. Andy-B says:

    It must be such a burden for Scotland still to have over a Trillion quids worth of oil in the North Sea, if only we didnt have it independence would be so much easier.
     
    North Sea oil for the UK..a brilliant asset, North Sea oil for Scotland..a terrible hindrance.
    Who in their right mind would believe this preposterous equation, if only Einstein were alive today, he’d have the answer.

    Reply
  11. westie7 says:

    This and all the other LIES now circulating my area, Aberdeenshire, in a BT leaflet delivered with the junk mail by the Postie. Obviously BT cant muster anybody to do door drops

    Reply
  12. HandandShrimp says:

    Ah Better Together, where to disagree is to become the disappeared. They lie and they cannot stand the disinfectant of sunlight.

    Reply
  13. alexicon says:

    Murray McCallum says:
    31 July, 2013 at 8:49 pm

    In the last 6+ years the highs and lows of the tax take on UK petrol sales alone is £6 billion (*1).  That’s almost the same as the cost of the Iraq war.
     
    I read somewhere that the tax take on petrol for 1 year’s sales in the UK is £35 bln.
    To put it into prospective, the UK exchequer takes around £10 bln per annum in tax on tobacco sales.

    Reply
  14. Tom Hogg says:

    Trend analysis. Compare Oil and the FTSE which isn’t a commodity. That is all.

    Reply
  15. Maybe I’m over-simplifying things, but don’t all tax-takes vary from year to year?

    Reply
  16. Yet we are the envy of the middle East: 

    link to newsnetscotland.com

    Reply
  17. rabb says:

    Nice graphic from Project Fear.

    NHS Scotland has a healthy trace on show.

    Unlike the flatlining UK economy under Osbourne’s tenure.

    Reply
  18. Murray McCallum says:

    alexicon
    Yes indeed the £35 billion sounds like fuel (petrol, diesel, ..) duty & VAT on all fuels.  I just looked at the price variation in petrol.  It is obviously a valuable resource for the UK economy.
    The thing is the BT stuff is all bollocks.  The price of things go up and down (and therefore the tax).  It’s what you look to spend the money on that counts.  You would hope the voters actually get economic plans they voted for.  These voting norms do not currently apply in Scotland.

    Reply
  19. reginald says:

    Murray McCallum I watched the Keizer Report last night. Keizer and his guest said that Gordon Brown sold the gold to save a named giant American bank that had got in to deep trouble trading gold in the London markets.No idea as to the validity of their opinion.

    Reply
  20. Murray McCallum says:

    reginald
    I watched that too.  I am a big fan of Max and Stacey.  This angle on the UK gold reserves sale by Gordon Brown is mentioned in an old article in the Telegraph
    link to blogs.telegraph.co.uk
    I used the “official” explanation for the sale.  Either way it was one hell of an expensive mistake!  Puts the alleged UK savings from the Bedroom Tax in perspective.

    Reply
  21. Craig says:

    @HoracesaysYes.

    If you look at UK tax returns just in the years since devolution they vary between £336bn in 1999-2000 and £522bn in 2010-11 [Source: GERS].

    This is a difference of £186bn which is greater than the entire UK NHS budget 2011-12 (£117bn) *and* the entire budget for Scotland! (£64.5bn).

    Yes…I know that these figures don’t take into account of inflation or growth in the economy…but then…neither do the figures in that poster.
     
     

    Reply
  22. Nick Halloway says:

    Looking at what is supposed to be an ECG rhythm I would be very worried about the patient. Hopefully it represents the life of this union and it is on its death bed to be finally put out of its misery next year. 

    Reply
  23. Chic McGregor says:

    The net food and drink (groceries if you like) bill for England is many times the oil revenue in size.  A bill that has to be paid before money is spent on anything else.
     
    Scotland, however, is a net food and drink exporter.
     
    Yet somehow, that fact receives very little airing.

    Reply
  24. john king says:

    Does anyone think that the apparatchiks who collate this pish for project fear will start to  see through the tissue of lies and themselves start to drift away from such a negative destructive and self defeating campaign?
    maybe we can turn some of them and use them as moles 
    bags me that little shite with the rosy cheeks who phones people for a “wee blether together” 🙂

    Reply
  25. Lianachan says:

    Surely everybody must realise that oil prices would be just as volatile after a No vote.  The difference is that instead of handing all of that variable revenue south and getting a portion of it back, a Yes vote would see all of it going to us. 

    Reply
  26. The Unionists argue that oil makes up too big a percentage of our GDP.
    Following this logic that would mean if we had twice as much oil, it would make up twice as much of our GDP and be twice as big a problem.
    If we had half as much oil it would only be half the problem.
    So what they are arguing is that we have too much oil and the more oil we have, the worse it is for us.
    The solution apparently is to share out all the money between everyone in the UK so that we only get 10% of it and effectively give 90% of the money away. That supposedly ‘protects’ us from fluctuations in the price of oil.
    How do they even come up with this nonsense?

    Reply
  27. Doug Daniel says:

    Manny – well, they’ve got a point I suppose. If I give all my money away so that I’m completely penniless, fluctuations in the price of food, fuel and so on don’t affect me. After all, when was the last time you heard a beggar on the street complaining about energy prices?
     
    I suspect when Labour say we benefit from the union, they’re referring to the increase in people who are too poor to be taxed, and thus don’t have to worry themselves about fluctuations in tax rates. Aye, that must be it.

    Reply
  28. callum says:

    Whilst it’s a lot of fun to debunk the Project Fear/Better Together numbers in order to help the referendum victory – please remember that in the event of a YES vote, I’d quite like to replay the Better Together numbers back to the rUK when we are doing the negotiations on when parting the assets/liabilities.
    think about it.  “But you said there was only £2bn tax revenue left in the north sea – so that’s what we’ll draw up the terms of the independence agreement on”
    Scotland would save £ Billions.

    Reply
  29. Barontorc says:

    @sideshowmanny
     
    Yep, the fact is we wee folk really can’t handle biggish numbers and should really spread the risk of oil ‘ups and doons’. It makes sense to some kinda looney I suppose!

    Reply
  30. john king says:

    callum says:
    liking your thinking callum! 
    like the film the Money Pit where the guy selling the house says, “taking the staircase with me, oh taking the kitchen with me, and taking the windows with me” and laughs each time but when the new owner Richard Prior takes over the house the staircase kitchen and windows are gone,
    leave them with the mouse droppings in the drawers 🙂
    let em go frack emselves!

    Reply
  31. john king says:

    And we’ll have that 6000 miles of sea back thanks, 
    meanwhile
    close the gas plant in immingham and start bringing the gas ashore at peterhead

    Reply
  32. Cath says:

    “in the event of a YES vote, I’d quite like to replay the Better Together numbers back to the rUK when we are doing the negotiations on when parting the assets/liabilities.”
     
    Good plan!

    Reply


Comment - please read this page for comment rules. HTML tags like <i> and <b> are permitted. Use paragraph breaks in long comments. DO NOT SIGN YOUR COMMENTS, either with a name or a slogan. If your comment does not appear immediately, DO NOT REPOST IT. Ignore these rules and I WILL KILL YOU WITH HAMMERS.


  • About

    Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.

    Stats: 6,989 Posts, 1,252,661 Comments

  • Recent Posts

  • Archives

  • Categories

  • Tags

  • Recent Comments

    • Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on The fight about to come: “« The Nazis were only too anxious to secure the lustre of Thomas Mann’s presence and the prestige that mere…” Oct 16, 21:00
    • sam on The fight about to come: “I should have added that GERS is produced independently of Scottish ministers.” Oct 16, 19:37
    • sam on The fight about to come: “Who knows Mr Swinney’s feelings? Margaret Cuthbert was on the panel responding to that Committee inquiry into GERS. Here is…” Oct 16, 19:33
    • TURABDIN on The fight about to come: “What glass house pray am i supposed to inhabit? A purely rhetorical matter forsooth. & All depends on the provenance…” Oct 16, 19:00
    • TURABDIN on The fight about to come: “Indeed you are quite confused, confused. Jesus was a Jew, orthodox by today’s standards. Perhaps you are a Marcionist and…” Oct 16, 18:49
    • Captain Caveman on The fight about to come: “Wasn’t he that bloke who was considerably to the left of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell?” Oct 16, 18:38
    • factchecker on The fight about to come: “A good question, Sarah. Possibly one factor is because John Swinney remembers this Holyrood committee meeting where he was sitting…” Oct 16, 18:06
    • Captain Caveman on The fight about to come: “Ah! But of course, wilfully blind, crass hypocrisy comes as standard with these permanently affronted “types”. Expecting moral consistency is…” Oct 16, 17:56
    • Hatey McHateface on The fight about to come: “I bet you’ve suspected for years that yer Dad’s nae yer real Dad. False flags, eh?” Oct 16, 17:44
    • Hatey McHateface on The fight about to come: ““you do seem a cohort of embittered personages eyes reddened by a surfeit of prejudice” Seriously? Yet you have nothing…” Oct 16, 17:41
    • Lorncal on The fight about to come: “Indeed, Northcode, I agree with you on your use of anomaly as it applied to Mr Salmond, the person, not…” Oct 16, 17:22
    • sarah on The fight about to come: “Happily the SSRG Conference is on youtube so we can listen to some very sensible, intelligent, informed people speaking. The…” Oct 16, 17:18
    • J Robertson on The fight about to come: “Really ? what could possibly go wrong ?” Oct 16, 16:48
    • Captain Caveman on The fight about to come: “Meh. Well, your garden’s looking a tad shite from where I’m standing TURABDIN. Glass houses and all that. 😀” Oct 16, 16:25
    • TURABDIN on The fight about to come: “@Capt Caveman, Hatey, Northcode, On the basis of observation you do seem a cohort of embittered personages eyes reddened by…” Oct 16, 14:43
    • Confused on The fight about to come: “describing zionism as “racism” is pretty mild – I mean if you “really want to go there” tribalists, being tribal,…” Oct 16, 13:14
    • Hatey McHateface on The fight about to come: “An interesting article about the crisis tearing the English Greens apart: https://unherd.com/newsroom/greens-zionism-row-could-tear-the-party-in-two/ The author essentially claims that it’s the Corbynist…” Oct 16, 12:44
    • Hatey McHateface on Still Time To Save Her: “Easy for you to say, SBS, but then you’re forgetting just how much grift and lucre there is to be…” Oct 16, 12:24
    • Hatey McHateface on The fight about to come: ““I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the map of this island looks rather different come 2100” There’s defo gonna…” Oct 16, 12:10
    • Minceheid on The fight about to come: “Hatey McHateface says: 15 October, 2026 at 6:47 pm Dinna fash, MH, I’m in no position to draw my lines…” Oct 16, 11:42
    • Dick Wall on The fight about to come: “A stopped clock is right twice a day. The continued shambles that is the UK today could build support for…” Oct 16, 11:32
    • Southernbystander on Still Time To Save Her: “Everything from the past effects the present but people pick and choose what matters. How many on here would agree…” Oct 16, 11:22
    • Hatey McHateface on The fight about to come: “Aww, “Hatey’s Middle East friends”. I wonder who they might be. Surely not the people who have done more for…” Oct 16, 08:27
    • Hatey McHateface on The fight about to come: ““protofascist” I believe that to be a new word on Wings BTL. I’m certain it’s just another of those words…” Oct 16, 08:11
    • Luigi on The fight about to come: “Sigh. Do these so-called independence “leaders” not realise that their promises, their BS, their lack of action, lack of ambition,…” Oct 16, 08:03
    • Hatey McHateface on The fight about to come: ““Allowing rUK a reasonable time to relocate them might bring some rent to offset debt” Of course it will, sam.…” Oct 16, 08:00
    • Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on The fight about to come: “SALVO digital newsletter: ‘Territorial Alienation’ https://indd.adobe.com/view/713e7419-f745-461a-b79e-a061397e7638” Oct 15, 23:31
    • Northcode on The fight about to come: “I’m with the Captain on this one – Turabdin’s (I don’t do all-caps words or names unless I’m shouting at…” Oct 15, 23:07
    • Northcode on The fight about to come: “anomaly (noun) something that deviates from what is standard, normal, or expected. I’d say the intelligent, well-read, erudite, honest and…” Oct 15, 22:50
    • Northcode on The fight about to come: ““…surely you’d agree the Scots electorate cannot simply throw its collective hands up in the air and take no responsibility…”…” Oct 15, 22:31
  • A tall tale



↑ Top