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The magic money rigs

Posted on August 10, 2017 by

A reader sent us an interesting snippet of information today.

That seemed a startling fact, so we looked into it. And it’s true.

“RTS” is the UK government’s – or more precisely HMRC’s – Regional Trade Statistics accounts, which seek to disaggregate the UK economy to see how much money is generated in which areas. When independence supporters first discovered that the large bulk of North Sea oil revenues were attributed in the stats to an “unknown region” rather than to Scotland – Wings readers knew about it at least as early as July 2014 – Unionists went into overdrive to downplay and obfuscate the fact.

But as of this year, with the independence referendum safely long in the past, the UK government has very quietly altered the methodology of RTS to now accurately credit oil revenues to where they belong.

If you look at the figures published in 2016, they put Scottish production of “Mineral Fuels” at £1.76bn for 2014 and £588m for 2015.

But the latest figures backdate those numbers up to £10.6bn and £6.8bn respectively.

In just two years, then, Scotland’s economy has suddenly produced over £15bn more than the official UK government figures had previously claimed it did. It’s a bit like popping out to your garage to fetch a screwdriver and discovering a Ferrari you didn’t know you had under a dust sheet.

Now, we’re not remotely expert enough when it comes to the labyrinth of government trade stats to determine how significant that is (the £15bn, not the surprise Ferrari). But we suspect readers will agree that it seems an awfully big statistic to alter without mentioning it, or having anyone notice.

And if there was nothing shady going on before, why change the rules now?

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Bugger (the Panda)

My thoughts simply are why did they do it?

Macart

Oh, this’ll leave a mark. 🙂

Popcorn time anyone?

heedtracker

WTF! So is this how they are able to fund giant spends like HS2 and Crossrail 2 in the south east of England?

Anne Meikle

£15 Billion? That’s that big black hole of debt sorted.

Gordon Hay

So if Tony Blair had not introduced the afore-mentioned “Scottish Adjacent Waters Boundaries Order 1999” then presumably these figures would have been even higher.

David McCann

And thereby hangs a tale,
link to liveleak.com

One_Scot

There really is not any good reason why Scottish voters should ever believe the UK media or the UK Government.

Unless we learn this fast, they may well pull the wool over our eyes long enough to buy them another 50 years to repress and damage Scotland.

Harry Molloy

Who would have believed that an English Based Pro England, so called British government would tell such out and out lies to us Scots?
I guess those of us who have any sense at all know their devious figures are only to subjugate the numpties who believe in the great British empire.

Daisy Walker

Have some of the establishment elite decided to jump ship… with a view to becoming big fish in a wee pond. A very rich wee pond. Colonising 2.0.

Or do we have a secret supporter who slipped these stats through when no-one was looking.

Interesting, but not going to educate the punter in the street yet… 50 years of ‘its a diminishing resource, it such a burden, it’ll all run out a week on Tuesday’ to counter first.

Conan the Librarian

Where have I heard £15 billion mentioned before…?

gordoz

I’m sorry Rev but I think the famous burns poem regarding parcels should be permitted again over this as its clear the rouges are at it again.

Scotland has suffered quite enough slight of hand tricks from Westminster, when will we learn ??

liz

So will we be getting a new article from Fraser Nelson ‘No £15bn black-hole after all’ with subsequent apology?

Seepy

One possibility is that the UK government could use the next GERS figures to say, “Look, pooling and sharing has brought down Scotland’s deficit entirely. Why leave now?”

That might involve UK govt actually having thought things through, though.

heraldnomore

Richard Murphy will be interested in this, in his quest to have meaningful figures for Scotland.

gordoz

The coincidental matching of the figure of £15 billion to the ‘UKOK / WM machine / media’ argument is quite striking, but no doubt Kenny F Alex M and David T will be able to explain this away as quibbling.

Ian McCubbin

All the conspiracy theories of the windfall are obvious. Rather than focus on these lets celebrate what Stuart has recieved and use it widely.
I believe that in long term good will come out and corruption of UK plc is ending.
So what if a few small eleite want to jump ship to an Indy Scotland.
All the Smorgsbord countries have elites but they are not so far removed from the rest of us.
This can only be good.

Nana

Does this mean Kevin will need to crowdfund for some new crayons?

Rab Boyce

It is worth pointing out that the change in methodology only alters the allocation under RTS, which isn’t a very good way to get a grasp on Scotland’s export numbers. ESS should be used for onshore exports and the SNAP Oil & Gas statistics should be used for the offshore industry. It is the latter that is included in Scotland’s GDP when you include offshore activity. So while, it’s good that the HMRC have revised this methodology it doesn’t change the headline numbers.

This also does not change the Revenue numbers in GERS as that doesn’t include export values, and the revenue figures are allocated under the Kemp-Stephen methodology.

oh…and someone did notice, hence why we published the article. ( link to scotfact.com )

gordoz

Why aren’t the SNP all over this and if this was of importance to NO side wouldn’t it be all over the media ???

Proud Cybernat

Where’s Kevvy-boy? We need a graph.

Proud Cybernat

Are really BIG graph please, Kevvy.

arthurfaeleith

How does this affect the balance of trade between the Scotland, the UK, and Europe? All those graphs showing Scotland’s biggest trading partner to be rUK will have to be changed now, won’t they?

Capella

Prior to December 2016, Oil Exports that shipped directly from the rigs were counted towards company HQs.

So these company HQs were not in Scotland. But where? What a bizarre method of counting resources. Unless your intention is to deceive.
But why change now? What possible reason could there be for allocating Scotland’s resources accurately now?

WoS ought to be allocated 1% of that revenue for discovering it.

Susanne

This is huge Wings.

heedtracker

Nana says:
10 August, 2017 at 11:35 am
Does this mean Kevin will need to crowdfund for some new crayons?

Kevrage will be back to lay down the UKOK rules stuff but this goon also sticks out as one of the UK’s great liars.

His thing about HS2 funding for example, is that Yes, its a massive investment but No was not going to cost Scots anything.

Kleptomaniacs don’t really come close to a label for creeps like the Ligger, who’s now off to nuke war with Orange Hitler on the other side of the planet, as you toryboy do.

Andrew Neil?Verified account @afneil Aug 9

N Korea has only one shot in its locker before US destruction rained down on it. If every made enough to take that one shot, won’t be Guam.

brian watters

multiply those billions not counted over a period 40 years and it is comes to quite a tidy sum.

Betty Boop

When first they practice to deceive… Well, it comes out in the wash eventually, but, you’d never know from our what passes for MSM “journalism”.

Isn’t it a good thing that we had a ref campaign because now we have an army of folk watching them.

kedomacaroonbar

You have to ask yourselves why this off book accounting applies to oil & gas from Scotland, but not the London Financial sector.

Scotland cannot be seen to be a healthy, solvent and vibrant country – my god, we’d get above our station and start to question the status quo.

David McKeen

Jackie Bird will be chomping at the bit to tell Scotland this great news before the Daily Telegraph, Times, Daily Record, et sl, beat her to the punch.

Oh look! Rocking Horse shite.

Macart

@heraldnomore

Spookily, I was just thinking the same thing.

gus1940

O/T

I have just watched an amazing program mainly on the Scottish NHS starring Miriam Margolyes.

It compared and contrasted Health Care pre and post 1948 using her late father’s experiences as a GP.

The program was really an eye opener and was so positive about today’s Scottish NHS it puzzles me just how it slipped through the BBC’s SNPbad/Scotland is rubbish filter.

Everybody appearing in the program from medical staff to patients couldn’t be more positive.

The contrast between the program’s content and the daily tsunami of SNHS alleged disasters excreted over us by The BBC and msm was mindboggling.

If only it could be shown at peak time – some hope.

If it appears on the iPlayer watch it and then mount an attack on the media and their negative coverage of the Scottish NHS.

Marcia

This will mean a lot of negative newspaper articles would need to be pulled to reflect the true position..?

A lot of blank pages.

Ian MacDonald

Let remember that the two years in question were disastrous for the oil industry in Scotland. Just think how much of our wealth has been stolen when the oil price was higher, going right back to the 1970s.

It’s enough to make you weep.

FiferJP

“And if there was nothing shady going on before, why change the rules now?”

The powers that be must be pretty confident there wont be a second indyref.

galamcennalath

As I understand it, this is £15bn mineral oil exported from UK directly to elsewhere which is now being correctly attributed to the Scotland part of the UK.

There will be another figure hidden out there. That is the amount of mineral oil produced in Scottish waters then ‘exported internally’ to the rest of the UK itself. The sum of the two figures would of course be the potential oil export value to an iScotland.

Meg merrilees

So we’re not too poor, too wee or too stupid – just lied to from morning till night!
Well done that alert reader.

Those figures have been as high as that while the oil price has been tanking. What were they prior to 2014 when the oil price was double where it is now.
Maybe those SNP figures for a post-ref Indy Scotland don’t seem just quite so off target now.

And another thing:
So exactly how much oil has China been taking from the N Sea, attributed to company headquarters, and therefore free of UK tax and they’ve received a tax rebate from the UK gov of over £2billion recently…..

Obviously WM trying to ‘take back control’ before Brexit, after which they’ll claim total ownership of the entire N Sea and all it produces. Perhaps the ‘bonanza’ of powers refers to the oil grab as well as the power grab that they are planning and curious that it is a round £15bn figure – wonder why???

Macart

Y’know, a lot of people visit this site and read these posts and threads. A great many were probably reluctant no voters last time round, or hopeful no voters, or indeed last chance no voters.

From this week’s offerings alone, there can be little doubt of the truth of Better Togetherness, government by Westminster and information derived from mainstream media.

It’s not a great truth to have to face I’ll admit, but it IS the truth nonetheless. If its any consolation, they pulled the wool over a great many people’s eyes for a very long time.

The next bit is up to you. You can help folk change this and all you need do is put a mark on a bit of paper and maybe talk to a few friends. Let them know what you now know.

Help us put the power to change things back where it belongs. In our own hands, with a government we elect, to administer to our specific needs and aspirations. A government that reflects the wishes of its population, rather than one which manipulates the opinions of those in its care to achieve its own ends.

Pretty certain the help would be appreciated.

Bradford Millar

so what other figures are they hiding about our economy *sic* whisky Ireland has 4% of the market that makes £2.5 billion euros for the Irish economy yet Scotland has 80% of the market yet UK claims it’s worth £5 billion

Proud Cybernat

“And if there was nothing shady going on before, why change the rules now?”

Wasn’t there a recent EU regulation relating to how a country’s finances are reported that the UK now has to comply with?

Reluctant Nationalist

Stu: “…why change the rules now?”

Because they’re jolly good chaps and thought it just wasn’t cricket. Hurrah!

Mike

Stu, your analogy is flawed. It is not like finding a Ferrari in your garage that you didn’t know you had. It is like having a Ferrari and your neighbour telling you that you haven’t got one to the extent that you a provided with psychiatric treatment in a secure unit until you admit that you haven’t got a Ferrari. Then being discharged and being complimented on your Ferrari by your neighbour who has been using it to the extent that it is knackered and now you need to replace the wheels and the engine so he can have another go.

Another Union Dividend

No Yoon spokesperson has ever explained why Norway continues to earn more in tax per barrel oil.

A little reported fact is that Oil companies making more profits at $50 per barrel than they did at $100 per barrel yet the UK Government is not taxing them.

link to oilandgaspeople.com

Calum McKay

uk government lying about Scotland’s oil production – who would have thought that possible?

How could this have been hidden from us with all the freedom of information requests submitted by bcc or the blood hound dedication and integrity of our press in sniffing out the truth?

Perhaps the red and blue tory branch party leaders should be offered opportunity to to comment along with bbc in Scotland and the paper press.

When stealing natural resources and artefacts from other countries during the empire, the English elite bought off some locals to spin the news locally that the English taking resources people needed and artefacts local people treasured, was somehow good for the local people! They also gave local babbles and glass beads, this is what labour in Scotland call pooling and sharing!

What is the difference in Scotland 2017 – there is none!

How far do you imagine England would get stealing oil from Irish waters or telling the Irish that leaving the EU against their stated will would be good for them? No where, the Irish have their own TV and press, they are not swayed with propaganda, plus the placemen are long gone execept in the North! The Irish see England for what it is.

The last thing some Scots would admit to, and that’s being taken for a fool all their lives by the English elite. It is 2017 and Scotland is being looted for resources and our democracy strangled.

Time some Scots opened their eyes!

Meg merrilees

I followed the link from Rab Boyce @11.38 – thank you.
link to scotfact.com

It’s a link to the article the Rev has quoted from.
Interesting ( but you need to read it in a quiet room).

It basically says that HMRC are not really massaging the statistics, however reading the sentence quoted below it still feels as if we are being shafted somewhat!

A much better source of Scotland’s Oil and Gas exports would have been the SNAP Oil & Gas figures, which were available at the time and are, crucially, designed for this purpose. SNAP estimates that Scotland’s Oil and Gas exports outside the UK in 2015 were £6,973m. Of course, Scotland produces more Oil and Gas than this but £7,859m is ‘exported’ to the rUK.

Fireproofjim

Gus 1940
What as the NHS programme called? I would like to catch it if possible.
Thanks

Bob Mack

They will tell us it is just an accounting device to make us appear not “too poor”” ,and thus save us embarrassment. Thanks very much.

Zen Broon

Wow, don’t worry the razor-sharp intellects of the Scottish press corps will get to the bottom of this soon with their keen investigative skills and tireless diligence.

Wulls

This is why Wings is of such fundamental importance Asti. If you want to start a crowd finder to get a fuckin pedicure I’m in lol

Fireproofjim

This MUST be broadcast far and wide.
We must all write to our MP or MSP with this information. It is a vital rebuttal,of the too poor lies.

SOG

So what happened in previous years?

Camz

Any idea when this will appear in BBC Scotland news?

2035? 2045? Never?

Vote now.

Charles

Christ..that’s almost half their bloody Brexit bill right there !!!

Dave McEwan Hill

No doubt this will be on the front page of the Daily Record tomorrow.

Actually there is not one – not even one – anti SNP piece in today’s Record. Not even among the “reader’s letters”.
WTF?

Proud Cybernat

So, with the Rev’s recent ‘Too Wee’ series debunking the myth that Scotland is ‘too wee’ to be an independent country, we now have the concrete evidence that thoroughly debunks the “too poor” mantra.

Okay, who wants to have a go at the “too stupid” schtick?

(I suppose after these recent revelations, if in IndyRef2, we vote to stay witht he UK then I suppose that really will prove the “too stupid” meme).

Donald Bruce

Someone asked why publish now. I think it’s to show how Scotland can suddenly boom when they vote in 10 Tory puppets. Just picked up latest unionist ploy it’s to smudge the border between Scotland and England. Seems Now Tory MP in Borders they are to work together to make the border both sides one region

Effijy

The next time anyone from SNP who is involved in any kind of interview Must demand to discuss this matter first.

As ever we can depend on the Westminster Parties Covering up, Distorting, completely lying about Scotland’s economy!

Their manufacture £15 Billion Scottish Deficit, their contrived Black Hole, could have been paid off with 2 years worth of uncovered revenue.

Dirty, Lying, Scheming Shower of B***ards!!!!!!

gus1940

Fireproofjim

The title was ‘Matron, Medicine And Me: 70 Years Of The NHS’ and it ran on BBC1 from 1.00 to 11.45.

My program guide has it as a Repeat.

Jockanese Wind Talker

Been thinking….

Westminster is corrupt and they have been hiding the truth about Scotlands oil and gas receipts since it started being extracted.

Why believe them now?

£15 Billion is a convienient figure to just arrive at isn’t it?

Wonder if it is actually a lot more?

heedtracker

The whole UKOK toryboy show in Scotland and England seems to be built on lies.

For example,

link to businessinsider.com

Unemployment in the UK is now so low it’s in danger of exposing the lie used to create the numbers

Government statistics put unemployment in Britain at just 4.5% — a low not seen since the 1970s.
But the real rate of unemployment is four times that.

Why does Britain have no wage inflation, if the labour market is so tight?

The answer is that unemployment is not really that low. In reality, about 21.5% of British workers are either officially unemployed, inactive, or employed part time even though they really want full-time work.

Note especially that the rump of “inactive” workers — the black bars — has stayed roughly the same for two decades.

The situation is worse from the perspective of men. The percentage of inactive male workers has tripled in the past 40 years, as more and more women are drawn into the workforce to replace them:

etc.

Isabel Melville

I’m not up on international accounting, but can someone please have a look at Gibraltar’s fuel consumption? Latest figures acording to wikipaedia is 42,000 barrels per day which seems a lot. In fact, it accounts for over 50% of Gibraltar’s export figures.

Gibraltar being a tax haven, is this money missing from our coffers? Or is it taxed at source?

[…] Wings Over Scotland The magic money rigs A reader sent us an interesting snippet of information today. That seemed a startling […]

ronnie anderson

This might be a indicator as to where the Tories Dark Money comes from, the Westminster Governments (have / are ) complicit in robbing the Scottish People of they’re resources . Please Share this Link to every social media site available , not forgetting Families & Friends , print of some copies & post them through Unionist doors that you’s know of , leave copies in your workplace buses/trains ect ect .

HandandShrimp

Actually there is not one – not even one – anti SNP piece in today’s Record. Not even among the “reader’s letters”.
WTF?

Dave

They have squawked themselves to a standstill?

Robert Graham

its always been there just well hidden , it begins to question what else is being conveniently hidden for political advantage ,
Ian Lang devised the smokescreen of GERS knowing full well the intention was to muddle, and confuse, because the treasury retained the real data and continues to obstruct access to the full picture , thats why ratings agencies have openly admitted they cant give a definitive answer on scotland’s economy based on guesswork i believe 25 out of 26 figures are informed guesses, GERS has only recently started being questioned as to their accuracy and its obvious there figures cant be defended .

ronnie anderson

@ Jockanese Wind Talker.

You may be proved right in your observations in the long term .

This needs more forensic examination Rev .

Scot Finlayson

All those billions wasted by UK Gov to subsidise London/bankers,

according to Tory manifesto 2017 p21 `more than £300 billion in tax revenues were provided by the North sea for UK`

should have been used to rebuild Scotland`s infrastructure,from new roads/bridges/internet connectivity/airports/ports/social care/green energy/modern social housing throughout Scotland not just the cities and big towns but the countryside and esp the highlands and islands,

£300 billion taken and not a peep from our Scottish press/media.

Iain MacGillivray

And there’s your deficit right there, lying cheating, robbing swine…when will we wake up…??

Edward Freeman

Oh good. I have been banging on about this for quite a while, because, to put it simply, I wanted to know how it was that Norway continued to derive a healthy revenue stream from its sector of the North Sea even when the oil price had slumped to its lowest level, yet Scotland’s oil revenues appeared to have vanished almost completely.

I wonder what provoked Them to finally tell the truth? I mean, why now in particular? With that one release of actual facts, They have in effect admitted that the “too poor” leg of the “too wee, too poor, too stupid” stool was a lie. My great fear is that this may prove to be another clue as to the regime’s thinking: like Gove’s announcement to Danish fishermen, which could be at least partially true only if the Scottish Government no longer had anything to say about fishing in Scottish waters, could They be releasing this information now because they think it won’t matter because Their plan is to either abolish the Scottish Parliament completely, or turn it into a glorified COSLA?

Derek Rogers

Unbelievably massive:

Scotland’s GDP £150bn, adjustment £15bn, 10% increase in Scotland’s economic activity.

But ‘economic activity’ is not the same as ‘publc spending’:

Scotland’s public spending £70bn, Scotland’s tax take £55bn, deficit £15bn.

‘Economic activity’ is the total value of all our work and play, whereas ‘public spending’ is what the government takes out of that in taxes and spends on our behalf. So let’s not get too carried away here. The extra £15bn of oil has presumably already been taxed, and so has no effect on the public spending deficit.

Auld Rock

Gus1940 – just heard the EBC 1 o’clock News reporting the NHS England’s waiting lists and times are the worst in TEN YEARS. Will we read in tomorrows yoon press, Tory & Lib/Dem BAD – I’m not holding my breathe!!!

Auld Rock

Ian

This is good and bad. Good that someone flagged it but bad that the SNP didn’t. Don’t they have people that do this sort of analysis? Bearing in mind that it was misinformation about the economy that largely persuaded the swing voters to vote no the last time, isn’t it obvious that a much truer picture of the economy needs to be as widely available as possible to make sure that the swing voters don’t get fooled again.

We know that the msm will ignore this sort of information but I’d have thought that the best place to initially highlight information like this would be in the Scottish Parliament. Then it could be passed on using the alternative information sites like Wings. How much confidence (or fear) would it give to voters if information like this was first announced in the Parliament. It would make the Scottish government look like they were simply ready and waiting to take full control of an independent Scotland, rather than firefighting against the usual lies and deceit.

If the pools are so important in being ready to call Inyref2, what effect would a situation like this have on them. The polls need to have solid information to change them otherwise they remain stuck based largely on misinformation or a lack of important information.

I recently half listened to a discussion in a pub about Brexit, with the usual arguments for stay or leave. And as usual it went round in circles until someone asked, ‘was there enough accurate information to make a solid decision one way or another’. It was the only thing they all agreed on. No there wasn’t. Scotland needs as much accurate information about the economy as it can establish if it’s to avoid the same misinformed guessing that the Brexit referendum highlighted. It comes down to meaningless slogans vs properly determined facts. That should be a no brainer for the majority of voters.

heedtracker

Hundreds of billions of not Scots Oil and Gas revenues quietly looted and this great master of toryboy fraud gets his beeb gimp soapbox, for his climate change denying.

BBC Scotland gimps are also ferocious climate change deniers but its clearly a tory thing.

link to politicalscrapbook.net

It was a cracker from BBC r4 tory roasters right enough.

Fill their tory pockets with loot and bootie, their beeb gimps take the wtf strain for them.

How it works in teamGB.

AlexK

HandandShrimp says:
10 August, 2017 at 1:10 pm

Actually there is not one – not even one – anti SNP piece in today’s Record. Not even among the “reader’s letters”.
WTF?

They are having meetings to decide which they hate more: the Tories or the SNP? And spending all day tossing coins.

Tackety Beets

Whilst the topic is OIL.

Let us not forget Stat Oil statement whilst trying to justify their £billions of investments in Rigs on shortbread radio

Gent stated ” @ $50 / Barrel & costs of $15 / Barrel there is still room for plenty profit”

Words to the effect , I so wish I recorded it.

Marcia

Derek Rodgers

What we need now is the actual public spending attributed to Scotland (and spent here) and not estimated spending as in the GERS figures. What is actually spent in Scotland and not just charged to us without knowing how the bill is made up?

Colin MacFarlane

Rab Boyce
From your page Scotfact, are we to assume that GERS is an amalgam of ESS and SNAP? Why do you say SNAP does not have a regional distribution?
You also say “This also does not change the Revenue numbers in GERS as that doesn’t include export values, and the revenue figures are allocated under the Kemp-Stephen methodology” Ate you saying GERS revenue doesn’t include oil/gas export values, but these ar brought in through SNAP??

shug

Can anyone explain why they change the rules now to make it look good for Scotland??

Proud Cybernat

“This is good and bad. Good that someone flagged it but bad that the SNP didn’t. Don’t they have people that do this sort of analysis?”

If the SNP did the research and released it to the MSM in a Press Release you can have a fairly safe bet it would be ignored or turned into SNP Bad news. Perhaps the SNP IS doing this research but having it ‘released’ through other means that WILL find its way into the MSM without the obligatory SNP Bad distortion applied?

It’s a canny game we have to play.

Snode1965

Derek Rogers…
Scotlands public spending £70bn, Scotlands tax take £55bn…still trust those figures?

Sam

@Dave McEwan Hill. Negative SNP Bad propaganda will be less effective if it’s relentless without a break.

A non political acquaintance who has relied heavily on Scotland’s Health Service asked why are the BBC always saying there’s problems with our health service.

They’ve overdone it and taking their foot off the gas.

Proud Cybernat

The news where you’re not…

link to imgur.com

AndyH

Hahaha!

The yoons will make up any old garbage to grasp on to the ‘Black hole’

The only big hole is where their brain should be.

wull2

The yes side should make a graph that most people would understand and let the other side try to say why it is not.

jfngw

Regarding the lack of anti-SNP stories today, this would indicate that these have been put on hold until the journos are clear not to write pieces that are so easily disproved. The tsunami of pulled stories is making them look somewhat incompetent.

They have been told to stick to innuendo rather than anything that is based on factual stats which are readily available.

The above is unlikely to appear on RepScot, at least until they have worked out the negative spin it can be given. Something like Scottish GDP bigger than reported, but critics say this is an example of how Scotland has benefited inside the UK and would weaken an independent Scottish currency.

geeo

Seems i have upset the BBC and facebook.

I posted the following on BBC Scotlands facebook page and now Facebook have ‘mark it as spam’, presumable at the request of the BBC.

BBC Scotland, suppressing the truth yet again.

……

Wee question for BBC Scotland.

Will you be investigating the bombshell news included in this article from Wings over Scotland concerning the ADMISSION from HMRC that OIL REVENUES have been UNDERPLAYED and hidden by using accountancy tricks.

This was a claim made by the Yes campaign in 2014 indyref and rubbished by mainstream news organisations, including BBC Scotland.

I suggest EVERYONE read this article, even if you do not like the messenger, the MESSAGE is confirmed by HMRC.

Feel free to share this news on your BBC Scotland news platforms, although, i will not hold my breath with it being the state sponsored BBC.

link to wingsoverscotland.com
……….
“As of this year, with the independence referendum safely long in the past, the UK government has very quietly altered the methodology of RTS (Regional Trade Statistics) to now accurately credit oil revenues to where they belong.

If you look at the figures published in 2016, they put Scottish production of “Mineral Fuels” at £1.76bn for 2014 and £588m for 2015”.

“But the latest figures backdate those numbers up to £10.6bn and£6.8bn respectively”.

“In just two years, then, Scotland’s economy has suddenly produced over £15bn more than the official UK government figures had previously claimed it did, (during indyref) but we suspect readers will agree that it seems an awfully big statistic to alter without mentioning it, or having anyone notice”.

“And if there was nothing shady going on before, why change the rules now”?

….. …

With an upcoming indyref, where the uk government will surely claim Scotland is, ‘Too wee, too poor, too stupid’ to become an independent country, a false claim fully promoted by the State propoganda station (BBC), this exposing of the ACTUAL REALITY of Scottish oil wealth MUST BE REPORTED by broadcasters like the BBC if they wish to claim ‘neutrality’ in the upcoming debate.

I look forward to Jackie Bird informing Scots that we were deceived in 2014 about our oil wealth by the uk goverment and their compliant media sources (including the BBC) and watching as she (JB) explains the REAL figures of that time as laid out by the HMRC figures in the article.

Prove your neutrality, go on, i challenge you to do so.

Run this bombshell story.

Dan Huil

Great work by the Rev.

Big Phil

“2017 is gonnae be so quiet” ?? Never ate so much popcorn in ma puff.
Its kinda weird having a smile knowing that some thieving bastards have been robbing ye blind.
I wonder how they’ll cover up this beauty. MORE POPCORN ,PURLEEEESSS.

galamcennalath

If the £15b oil exports was not attributed to Scotland, then presumably the tax take on that wouldn’t have been attributed to Scotland either?

How much tax does the government take on £15b of production?

That supposed £15b deficit is known to contain debt repayments, nukes, illegal wars, expensive embassies, a percentage of infrastructure expenditure in SE England, costs of Westminster, etc.. now of these will apply to iScotland.

I’m guessing the residual deficit just got even smaller if missing tax take is added to the equation.

A2

“How much tax does the government take on £15b of production?”

bugger all.

Stoker

Jockanese Wind Talker wrote on 10 August, 2017 at 12:47 pm:
“Been thinking….Westminster is corrupt and they have been hiding the truth about Scotlands oil and gas receipts since it started being extracted.Why believe them now? £15 Billion is a convienient figure to just arrive at isn’t it? Wonder if it is actually a lot more?”

Was thinking something very similar – If that’s what they’re telling us then how long before someone discovers the truth?

heedtracker

Nothing from the fat slob that gave us Project Fear. Pity. I often wonder how an actual interview with at least this git but even more, Scotland’s greatest rogues like Crash Gordon and Lord Flipper really would go. Its clearly a kind of psychosis in yoons, lie, lie, lie, lie…

Blair McDougall?Verified account @blairmcdougall Aug 6

Mainstream SNPers who mocked us when we complained about abuse & now find themselves on receiving end of monster they created: no sympathy.

Albert Herring

“How much tax does the government take on £15b of production?”

We’re currently paying the oil companies to take it away.

Marcia

Stoker

I suspect the Westminster Government may need to have accurate accounts for the Brexit negotiations of it’s wealth and not have things hidden. It will be a first.

ScottishPsyche

Why they are doing this now raises so many questions. Any Yoon who tries to excuse or legitimise this obvious jiggery pokery deserves the contempt coming their way.

I had high hope for George Kerevan on the Treasury Select Committee to get into the books but he was one of the main Tory targets.

Media, Finance and Foreign Affairs – all SNP hard hitters who had every possible Yoon resource utilised to get rid of them, I wonder why?

heedtracker

Still funny.

Not a chance in hell of this neo fascist spin doc even mentioning colossal NOT Scots oil revenues suddenly popping up. Still can’t get over why the great and the good socialist workers of SLab, are all huddling under the wing of a neo fascist from the Daily Heil. What is going on in SLabour.

Alan Roden?Verified account @AlanRoden Aug 7
More
.@AndrewSNicoll: “That, ladies and gentlemen, is why you need reporters. We check stuff.”

Brian

What’s the opposite of a £15bn “Black hole”?

Scot Finlayson

@Derek Rogers

as you,me and anyone with more than 3 brain cells know (which eliminates Scottish press/media),

all accounting figures/statistics/measurements are intentionally labyrinthine and byzantine that they can be manipulated to show any conclusion desired,

if as you say the £15 billion has already been taxed would that not be added now to Scotland`s `tax take`.

heedtracker

Kevrage has deigned to mention this sudden appearance of the lost revenues of his scotland region. He used to comment btl here on WoS as Kevin Rippey or near that. Be great if Kev could do come on again.

Anyone taking odds of the big chicken not actually laying down the fiscal law, WoS btl, toryboy Kev style? cluck cluck Mr Rippey, cluck cluck.

Kevin Hague? @kevverage 2h

Kevin Hague Retweeted Peter
correct – but Wings has never been one to let understanding stand in the way of whipping up a grievance

heedtracker

Brian says:
10 August, 2017 at 2:46 pm
What’s the opposite of a £15bn “Black hole”?

About half of a Crossrail2.

link to crossrail2.co.uk

But as BoJO the Clown explains,

link to youtube.com

Gerry

If anyone can find me a specific figure for England’s deficit, I would be interested in seeing it.
I can’t find it anywhere, but by subtraction (UK – Sco+Wls+NI) leaves somewhere around only 43% of the UK total deficit attributed to England which is around 85% of the population.

Proud Cybernat

Will this be reported on main BBC evening news?

How the UK Government is keeping the natives of Scotland ignorant of our immense wealth and how we are being robbed blind of it by London?

There won’t be a Jackie Bird of it mentioned.

Proud Cybernat

So why now?

Well, let”s think outside the box a wee bit.

In the not so distant future, the UK will be departing the EU with its tail firmly between its hind legs. A big chunk of its financial sector will have buggered of elsewhere from London. The UK economy will tank–BIG TIME TANK.

When this happens the solution to the screaming and wailing Kippers will be to stop funding the scrounging, subsidy-junkie Scots.

Until some nice man from the UK Treasury finally admits to the kippers “Em, no. Scotland actually pays its way in the UK. Look–here’s the (partially corrected) books. We actually need Scotland to stop us going totally under. So shut your pie hole, kipper and let’s talk about Northern Ireland.”

Robert Louis

Of course Westminster lies about Scotland’s oil. They have clearly been shown to have lied about it over several decades, and have still not apologised. So, I repeat, of course Westminster lies about Scotland’s oil. They still are, and always will, until enough Scots sniff the coffee, wake up and realise what an utter bunch of lying f*****g barstewards they are in London.

link to archive.is

link to oilofscotland.org

Meanwhile in Norway (who didn’t have all their oil stolen by England..)

link to nbim.no

stewartb

Tackety Beets @1.43pm

Further to your interesting reference to Statoil:

Statoil President and CEO in the company statement (July 2017) .“… At oil prices around 50 dollars per barrel, we have generated 4 billion dollars in free cash flow, and reduced our net debt ratio by 8.1 percentage points since the start of the year.” Also, Statoil’s Chief Financial Officer states that three years ago Statoil needed oil prices at US$100 per barrel to cover investments and dividend and today “we do the same at US$50”.

Source: link to oilprice.com

And more from Statoil on future projects: “Johan Castberg is one of the largest projects in Statoil’s portfolio yet to be developed. It includes three oil structures located about 249 kilometers north of Hammerfest on the Norwegian Arctic mainland.”

“According to a new analysis commissioned by the company, an oil price of $30 per barrel will be sufficient for the field to be profitable. The project is very robust to changing oil prices, dollar exchange rates and fluctuating environmental costs, the company says. It is expected to come on stream in 2022, and have an operating lifetime of 30 years.”

“The national employment during the development phase (of the Johan Castberg project) has been estimated at almost 47,000 man-years, of which close to 1,800 will be in North Norway.”

Source: link to arcticnow.com

Also, Statoil is currently building the world’s first floating wind farm offshore Scotland and already provides electricity from offshore wind to c. 650k homes in the UK.

Source: link to statoil.com

In case anyone forgets, the Norwegian state owns 67%, of the company! Wee Norway – but not too wee, far from too poor and the polar opposite of too stupid!

Robert Louis

Or even better, here is the live link to the Norwegian sovereign oil fund (which could have been Scotland, if England had not lied and stolen our oil). Then they wonder why we want independence.

link to nbim.no

Snode1965

Gerry….I have been raising this point repeatedly whilst *debating* with Yoons online.
According to HM Treasury Scotland has a deficit of £15bn, Wales £14.7bn and NI £9.5bn. That equates to almost 60% of the total UK deficit…from around 18% of the UK population.
Either Westminster are truly generous to the devolved regions, or the Treasury are lying c*nts…

Brian

Publish sources please.

Adds more credit to the article and makes it easier to verify.

Robert Louis

And I don’t want to labour the point, but here, for everybody to see, is what it says on the first page of the website regarding the Norwegian sovereign wealth oil fund;

“The Government Pension Fund Global is saving for future generations in Norway. One day the oil will run out, but the return on the fund will continue to benefit the Norwegian population.”

Read it and weep. Then vote for a restoration of Scottish independence, free of London colonial abuse and theft.

Proud Cybernat

In case you missed it:

Gallas – The 40 Year Fleecing of Scotland’s oil wealth by Westminster

link to youtube.com

Robert Graham

A bit o/t but relevant- As ever the BBC in Scotland headlines education and its perceived failings, I have to add all these attacks on public services, one thing is missing the Unions, are they being complicit, are they acting with the Unionist parties to attack the freely elected government, I have to wonder about their motives in assisting attacks on their members on a daily basis,
This undermining appears to run very deep one way or the other the SNP must fall and be seen to fail , it doesn’t matter if they have been elected ,this state within a state operating the shadows .
It just highlights the monumental impediments the SNP face, it is a wonder that they have managed to continue to operate at all, swimming through shit doesn’t come close.

Joemcg

The question that needs to be answered is why. Why even list this one asset and commodity under an “unknown region” in the first place?

heedtracker

Kevrage and his twitter followers are quite odd to watch in action.

How do you get from,

“If you look at the figures published in 2016, they put Scottish production of “Mineral Fuels” at £1.76bn for 2014 and £588m for 2015.” with “But the latest figures backdate those numbers up to £10.6bn and £6.8bn respectively.”

To whatever it is this merry band of unionists think, because its their bloody toryboy UK gov,

Kevin Hague?
@kevverage
Follow

is Wings over Scotland (Stuart Campbell) wilfully misleading people or does he genuinely not understand national stats?

my guess: both
5:39 am – 10 Aug 2017

End of conversation
New conversation
TSE? @TSEofPB 2h
Replying to @kevverage
Well the number of people who go on about the Whisky Export Duty does make you think it is both
1 reply . 0 retweets 2 likes

Replying to @kevverage
Both. His pathology is such that even when he knows he’s wrong he will not concede error. Being uncompromising impresses acolytes
0 replies . 0 retweets 1 like
Reply Retweet Like 1
Mel Mac? @MeIodyMac 37s

Replying to @kevverage
both. And the bandwagon of willing ignorance is on overdrive.
0 replies . 0 retweets 0 likes
Reply Retweet Like
JWTheSpa? @SpaJw 10m

Replying to @kevverage
If Stu wants it to be true it is true even if it isn’t. See also Brexiteers.
0 replies . 0 retweets 0 likes
Reply Retweet Like
Pro UK Anti Theism ??? @AyrshireBog 2h

Replying to @kevverage
He twists and lies about facts to suit his political argument.

Replying to @kevverage
He’s never been one to let facts get in the way of a bad argument.

Ann Rayner

Can we create an oil fund and finance our Scottish Investment bank now, please?

Robert Peffers

Aye! Precisely. That Unknown Region is what I’ve been shouting at Wingers about for a very long time.

It is the infamous, “Extra-Regio-Territory”. That has been on the go since before oil, (and Gas), were discovered in the North Sea.

By the way it also includes other things that Westminster wants to hide among the welter of other statistics deliberately created by such actions as devolving Westminster powers to only three of the bipartite United Kingdom’s four countries in order to make Westminster the de facto parliament of the country of England and the other three countries, including the Kingdom & Country of Scotland that is legally the other partner of the two kingdoms in the union.

Then, to make it even more complex, they did not devolve the same powers to what they had made into three English dominions.

The three Scottish branch offices of the Westminster Establishment Political Parties did not just stand by and allowed them to do so – they led the charge to steal Scotland’s natural assets for, “The Crown”. a.k.a. The Westminster Establishment and then hid the McCrone report deep in the bowls of the Westminster house of shame.

Big Phil

If these troughers can hide all this from us ,what are they hiding for themselves??
And this?

Bradford Millar says:
10 August, 2017 at 12:06 pm
so what other figures are they hiding about our economy *sic* whisky Ireland has 4% of the market that makes £2.5 billion euros for the Irish economy yet Scotland has 80% of the market yet UK claims it’s worth £5 billion.

Its all coming oot in the wash eh!!

velofello

I’ve been telling of this for some time “on the doorstep”, and so often the response was – I just think we’re better to stay together.

Now next,what about generated power? Scottish generated surplus is sent to the National Grid that then charges us a premium for transmission. Meantime power generated in the Home Counties receives a subsidy.Transmission losses they claim justifies the policy. Does Scotland receive any book entry credit for power supply? And as Scotland’s renewable energy production increases so this scam will continue.I doubt that I need check whether power generation policy is reserved to Westminster.

To the SNP, it really is time you started blowing’ your trumpet, get a billboard campaign going of your successes; fully establish an investment bank; start talking about a Scottish currency.And do not budge on Brexit. We voted to stay in the EU.

Robert Peffers

@heedtracker says: 10 August, 2017 at 3:43 pm:

“Kevrage and his twitter followers are quite odd to watch in action.”

Are they not just so?

The really hilarious thing about the whole bunch of them is that the bold Kev draws up his wee meaningless graphs that would see a wee schoolgirl fail her exams and they never can quote any sources.

The Rev Stu never fails to provide corroboration.
How do you get from,
“If you look at the figures published in 2016, they put Scottish production of “Mineral Fuels” at £1.76bn for 2014 and £588m for 2015.” with “But the latest figures backdate those numbers up to £10.6bn and £6.8bn respectively.”
To whatever it is this merry band of unionists think, because its their bloody toryboy UK gov,
Kevin Hague?
@kevverage
Follow
is Wings over Scotland (Stuart Campbell) wilfully misleading people or does he genuinely not understand national stats?
my guess: both
5:39 am – 10 Aug 2017
End of conversation
New conversation
TSE? @TSEofPB 2h
Replying to @kevverage
Well the number of people who go on about the Whisky Export Duty does make you think it is both
1 reply . 0 retweets 2 likes
Replying to @kevverage
Both. His pathology is such that even when he knows he’s wrong he will not concede error. Being uncompromising impresses acolytes
0 replies . 0 retweets 1 like
Reply Retweet Like 1
Mel Mac? @MeIodyMac 37s
Replying to @kevverage
both. And the bandwagon of willing ignorance is on overdrive.
0 replies . 0 retweets 0 likes
Reply Retweet Like
JWTheSpa? @SpaJw 10m
Replying to @kevverage
If Stu wants it to be true it is true even if it isn’t. See also Brexiteers.
0 replies . 0 retweets 0 likes
Reply Retweet Like
Pro UK Anti Theism ??? @AyrshireBog 2h
Replying to @kevverage
He twists and lies about facts to suit his political argument.
Replying to @kevverage
He’s never been one to let facts get in the way of a bad argument

Proud Cybernat

“Its all coming oot in the wash eh!!”

Just as well ’cause we’ve fat chance of it coming out in the press!

heedtracker

Robert Peffers says:
10 August, 2017 at 4:08 pm
@heedtracker says: 10 August, 2017 at 3:43 pm:

Indeed Rabbi.

On the one hand we have BBC Scotland desperately running down Scotland, day in day out. On t’other, we can watch twitter tory yoons argue up is down, black is white. And if you disagree, you’re on the “bandwagon of willing ignorance, on overdrive.”

Even yoon metaphors make no sense.

Shinty

Takes me back to the figures from 1921.

Revenue contribution by Scotland £119,753,000
Expenditure on Scottish services £33,096,000
Retained in London for ‘Imperial Services’ £86,657,000

(Imperial Services = disbursed in England)

Scotland has been shafted for a very long time.

ScottieDog

So my question, does this change the final figures in GERS. I have to add that I never look at GERS simply because it represents Scotland as what IS at the moment – a glorified local authority.
The SNP however did use GERS as part of its white paper in 2014.

The key things we should focus on are
1- units of oil pumped out of the North Sea
2- how much of that was kept by companies like BP, shell etc
3- the resource capacity of England as a standalone nation
4- why the banking sector in London should not be included in GDP (it is as Adam smith wrote ‘unearned income’ used primarily for speculation)

Proud Cybernat

Guess what was found at the back of the sofa…

link to imgur.com

Michael

If this is completely the way it seems to be. The biggest failure is why is has no one in the Scottish Government picked it up? Why is it left to some random person to send it to Wings?
It seems to me Scot Govt accept such changes in the way figures are presented without much or any investigation. Or are they just too busy trying to get off the backfoot all the time.
Scot Govt always seem to want to take the moral high ground on misrepresented facts and ignore them.
Lets take Westminster and the civil servants on and challenge them when they present false figures and stats.

manandboy

In any event, Scotland’s unionists, including Kez, Ruth & Willie, want the English ruling classes to have it all. It’s no loss to them – they’re on the gravy train, getting their share, with lots more still to come.

Michael

Hey Proud Cybernat.
Is the answer to your question Westminster’s money grapping hands?

Proud Cybernat

“The biggest failure is why is has no one in the Scottish Government picked it up? Why is it left to some random person to send it to Wings?”

Think anout it. If the SNP ‘broke’ this story, just how many anti-SNP people would even have clicked on the message let alone read it? With it NOT being an SNP ‘breaking story’ we have more chance of anti-SNP people actually reading the thing.

We have to box clever.

Andy-B

WTF, is it any wonder that Westminster is desperate to keep Scotland in this dying union. I don’t know about anyone else but info makes me very angry indeed.

galamcennalath

Robert Louis says:

Meanwhile in Norway (who didn’t have all their oil stolen by England..)

link to nbim.no

That should make every Scot feel utterly sick, ashamed, and angry!

Unless of course you are a British Wannabe English born in Scotland, then it’s all UKOK.

Proud Cybernat

“I don’t know about anyone else but info makes me very angry indeed.”

Don’t get angry – get mad!

manandboy

Effectively, since oil was discovered in Scottish waters in 1970, Scotland won the Lottery every single day – and then promptly gave the winning ticket to the English Ruling Classes – every single day for 17,000 days.
To the English way of thinking, a naive, gullible, illiterate, brainwashed fool of a nation and their money are easily parted. That’s probably close to how the whole world thinks of Scotland now. Tragic.

Time for a change in Scotland. High time.

Fireproofjim

Everybody
Please send this Wings report to – info@snp.org
For their Press Office.
I have done this and also sent to my MP.
This has to get a lot of publicity. It could be a game changer.

Proud Cybernat

Just made a mess of my shirt with the coffee…

“And then the man continued, pointing to Ginger, who was at that moment lying on the floor of the hall licking his bollocks, “See that dug? When Scotland is independent that dug will be on a stamp.” And that is now my favourite personal reason for wanting Scottish independence, because after Scottish independence Ruth Davidson will have to lick my dog’s behind.” – WGD

link to weegingerdug.wordpress.com

Golfnut

The thing is that we were pretty well aware that a country can’t be swimming in oil and be poor, well not unless the government’s and corps who want it decide to steal it. And we new they were stealing, just not exactly how or indeed how much.
I know the UK gov taxes profit, Norway taxes extraction, so why is the UK extraction Levy classified information?
The UK gov allowed the oil companies to walk away with £27 billion in Corporation, so just how much profit do they make if the corporation tax comes to £27 billion, and are even the figures they have adjusted no more than a smoke screen.

stewartb

stewartb Says:

Tackety Beets @1.43pm. Further to your interesting reference to Statoil:

Statoil President and CEO in a company statement (July 2017) .“… At oil prices around 50 dollars per barrel, we have generated 4 billion dollars in free cash flow, and reduced our net debt ratio by 8.1 percentage points since the start of the year.” Also, Statoil’s Chief Financial Officer states that three years ago Statoil needed oil prices at US$100 per barrel to cover investments and dividend and today “we do the same at US$50”.

Source: link to oilprice.com

And more from Statoil on future projects: “Johan Castberg is one of the largest projects in Statoil’s portfolio yet to be developed. It includes three oil structures located about 249 kilometers north of Hammerfest on the Norwegian Arctic mainland.”

“According to a new analysis commissioned by the company, an oil price of $30 per barrel will be sufficient for the field to be profitable. The project is very robust to changing oil prices, dollar exchange rates and fluctuating environmental costs, the company says. It is expected to come on stream in 2022, and have an operating lifetime of 30 years.”

“The national employment during the development phase (of the Johan Castberg project) has been estimated at almost 47,000 man-years, of which close to 1,800 will be in North Norway.”

Source: link to arcticnow.com

Also, Statoil is currently building the world’s first floating wind farm offshore Scotland and already provides electricity from offshore wind to c. 650k homes in the UK.

Source: link to statoil.com

In case anyone forgets, the Norwegian state owns 67%, of the company! Wee Norway! – yes but not too wee, far from too poor and the polar opposite of too stupid!

Golfnut

@ manandboy

Let’s not forget, that for Westminster to succeed with the deception, they required the assistance and complicity of every unionist MP from day oil was discovered. Every single Sectretary of State, chancellors and Prime Minister from Scottish Constituencies facilitated the theft of Scotland’s resources. After the info surfaced regarding Irish whiskey, we can probably add Whisky to the bill.

Les Wilson

Methinks, this Billionaire must have known something we never have.

link to bloomberg.com

This is serious stuff, perhaps came out with something like the EU looking into the UK’s finances? and they must be bricking it.

GovanX

That’ll cover the mysterious 15billion black hole Scotland seemed to have during indyref.

Meg merrilees

Just hearing on BBC R4 that there is no room on the Isle of Skye and police are asking people not to go there unless they have a room booked.

Why is the BBC perpetrating this myth…

IZZIE

O/T sorry but just found out that Alex Salmonds show at festival has been extended

Petra

Well done Stu. What a week! And isn’t it brilliant to see that so many people are fighting back now with great sites out there that I had no idea of such as:

link to scotfact.com

…………………………..

Has anyone contacted Sarah Smith, Kezia Dugdale et al?

link to youtube.com

Seems that many people outside of the UK are well aware of Scotland’s wealth, such as Jim Rodgers.

link to youtube.com

…………………………………

@ Mike says at 12:08 pm …. ”Stu, your analogy is flawed. It is not like finding a Ferrari in your garage that you didn’t know you had. It is like having a Ferrari and your neighbour telling you that you haven’t got one to the extent that you a provided with psychiatric treatment in a secure unit until you admit that you haven’t got a Ferrari. Then being discharged and being complimented on your Ferrari by your neighbour who has been using it to the extent that it is knackered and now you need to replace the wheels and the engine so he can have another go.”

Love it Mike. It’s spot on.

…………………………………

@ geeo says at 2:18 pm …. ”Seems i have upset the BBC and facebook…………”

Well done Geeo. Let’s ALL email the BBC, STV, newspapers, political parties and so on.

Petra

O/T

For goodness sake we’re loaded folks!

‘As world’s largest tidal energy plant in Pentland Firth generates 1GWh which is enough for 700 000 homes, will Scotland become the most energy-rich country in Europe?’

link to thoughtcontrolscotland.com

…………………..

Prof Robertson’s ‘feel good site.’

link to thoughtcontrolscotland.com

……………………..

And this one should go alongside Prof Robertson’s articles. From ScottieDog (last article 9:39 am).

’10 yearsafter the Crash: looking back at BBC coverage.’

….”When considering the lessons learnt and still to be learnt ten years after the Crash, it’s worth reminding ourselves of research conducted into public broadcaster the BBC’s famed impartiality through a major content analysis study conducted by academics at the Cardiff University School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies. Dr Mike Berry wrote an article two years ago on their findings which is worth revisiting as we reflect on that catastrophic series of events……………………………………

But generally, the BBC either totally or largely excludes such voices and, in doing so, shows a systematic bias in the direction of orthodox neoliberal thinking and values.

link to taxjustice.net

Ivor H-T

Interesting that you pinched this from Scot Fact but seem to have omitted the most salient point on the page:
“The most prolific example of a wrong conclusion drawn is a meme that began circulating in 2016 that suggests the ‘Unknown’ region in RTS is used by HMRC to mask the strength of Scotland’s Oil & Gas exports, and that the majority of the ‘Unknown’ Region’s exports were, in fact, Scottish Oil and Gas.”

Petra

O/T

‘Scottish ‘history police’ launched to make sure museums get their facts right.’

‘THE tourism operator who challenged a heritage museum on the Isle of Arran over its account of the Clearances has set up a social media forum to discuss the many matters of dispute in Scottish history.

Catriona Stevenson established the “History Police” pages on the website of her company Clyde Coast Tourism, but after a series of encounters with factual inaccuracies at venues throughout Scotland, she has expanded to Twitter and Facebook.

Using #historypolice, 31-year-old Stevenson says the forum is for “discussion and inspiration”, and it is already proving popular and controversial…..

link to thenational.scot

………………………..

‘Lesley Riddoch: It’s Scotland’s fish – why we need to fight Westminster’s Brexit power grab.’

Fishing is a big part of Scotland’s national heritage. IT’S Scotland’s fish. Strangely that slogan couldn’t match “It’s Scotland’s oil” as an economic and emotional argument for independence — until now. Thanks to the cross-border row brewing over Brexit, fishing and farming are fast becoming totemic symbols for Scottish home rule, even though they represent a small part of the economy and working population – farming produced just one per cent of GDP in 2016 — and even though many fishermen voted for the Union and leaving the EU. But those loyalties could yet change thanks to Brexit and the greed of the Westminster government………

link to thenational.scot

………………………………….

‘Edinburgh University to help train ‘digital leaders’ for England’s NHS.’

‘SCOTTISH university has been selected to help train 300 “digital leaders” for the NHS in England and Wales. Edinburgh University is joining forces with Imperial College London (ICL) and Harvard Medical School in the US to launch an NHS Digital Academy.

The health service south of the Border is playing catch-up with NHS Scotland and the Scottish Government, who launched Scotland’s Digital Health and Social Care Strategy 2017-22 in November last year. Edinburgh, ICL and Harvard were selected to lead the Digital Academy development after a competitive tender process…..’

link to thenational.scot

……………………….

‘PALLIATIVE care in Scotland is amongst the best in Europe — but “we need to do more”, experts say.’

‘End of life support was compared with that offered by other European countries by academics at Glasgow University. Scotland was ranked seventh for the provision of inpatient care and hospital support teams, and came in at five for the home care available.

Until now statistics for Scotland has been included with UK data, but last year’s Scottish Atlas of Palliative Care has allowed experts to take a closer look for the first time.

Professor David Clark said ‘’ the results are encouraging. Scotland is in the top ten EU countries for all three types of service – not many countries do as consistently well across the board……’

link to thenational.scot

……………………….

‘Scots comic book writer Mark Millar’s firm bought by Netflix as big plans announced.’

‘SCOTS comic hero Mark Millar hailed the “biggest news ever” today as international entertainment company Netflix bought his firm for an undisclosed sum.

The acquisition is the first in the history of the streaming firm and will see the US streaming giant develop films, TV series and children’s content from characters created by the Glasgow-based writer.

Announcing the move yesterday, Millar said: “Warner Bros bought DC Comics in 1968. Disney bought Marvel in 2009.

Today Netflix purchased Millarworld and I’m still blinking. This is only the third time in history a comic-book company purchase on this scale has ever happened.” …….

link to thenational.scot

……………………………

And a wee snippet from Lesley Riddoch’s ‘Let’s not forget what we’re fighting for – the chance to create a better Scotland’ which I can’t get online! Taken directly from the newspaper.

….”In England this week official figures revealed a record number of prisoners were set free by mistake and violence in jails is at an all time high ….

England’s jails are in meltdown with riot squad officers sent into Hertfordshire prison for the second time in 24 hours this week …..

Figures seized by the Scottish Lib-dems last month seem to suggest the same level of prisoner assaults in Scotland as England but according to the Scottish Prison Services these statistics are not directly comparable. If three guards restrain one prisoner in Scotland that’s recorded as three separate attacks (in England it’s registered as one attack).

gordoz

Well, well there you go folks,
The voice of the people BBC & the peoples channel STV not interested in this news at al !
Surprising UK deceit of Scottish economy is not news ???

No UK state manipulation of our media ? Just laziness ?
Piss poor reporting ? What does it matter what u call it we are being Duped and they dont give a flying feck or are they scared ? Any ideas folks ?

Imagine if this was proof of some SNP govt financial deceit?
Think they’d miss that off the schedule ?

So £15 bn is no big deal after all. only when it relates to Labotory black hole pish ! Fuming ?

Petra

‘Why is Norway still getting much more tax from oil?’

‘……….. Looking at how the tax breaks apply to Shell and BP: in the 24 countries where Shell extracts oil and gas, all except the UK made Shell pay taxes. While the UK gave Shell £80m in tax rebates, Shell paid Norway £2.7bn. So, Norway generated 62 times more tax from one company than Westminster generated from the entire UK industry last year reported. Given that Shell alone cut up to 13,000 jobs and paid no corporation tax in the UK in 2015, it might surprise people that Shell paid £7.9 billion in shareholder dividends for that year, and in 2016 Shell paid out bumper £11.1 billion in dividends to its shareholders, more than any other company in the world…..’

link to businessforscotland.com

……………………………..

‘Osborne and Cameron confirm Scotland better off outside the UK.’

Two short videos. Oh and by the way they both get the population stats relating to Norway wrong …. 4 million. Data from Bibby via the MSM? Norway’s population is on a par with Scotland’s at around 5.3 million.

link to businessforscotland.com

galamcennalath

Twists of history! Just imagine if the Vikings had extended control over the whole of Scotland and hung onto it. We might all have become Scandinavians! We too might in time have become model democracies and be actually benefiting from our own natural resources. Just imagine being so lucky, eh?

TheWasp

Too many homeless, Sturgeon must act
Sailors stuck on a boat, Sturgeon must act
Sugar is bad, Sturgeon must act
Football IT hacking, Sturgeon must act
Hospital delayed, Sturgeon must act
Housing market stagnant,Sturgeon must act
Education shambolic, Sturgeon must act
QE2 hospital cladding danger, Sturgeon must act
Eilidh Doyle too slow, Sturgeon must act
Murder 50 years ago, Sturgeon must act
Rain tomorrow, Sturgeon must act

All on the oil less reporting scotland

Brian Doonthetoon

Hi gus1940 and Fireproofjim.

RE: ‘Matron, Medicine And Me: 70 Years Of The NHS’.

This was first shown around a year ago as a daytime programme. I missed it at the time. I watched it this afternoon, after hunting it down – thanks for reminding me. (Miriam Margolyes is ace!)

It was produced by BBC Northern Ireland, which maybe explains why it had no “SNP BAAD!” element. you can find it on iPlayer at:-

link to bbc.co.uk

ben madigan

@Donald Bruce who wrote “Just picked up latest unionist ploy it’s to smudge the border between Scotland and England”

Think you’re right Donald.They and the DUP are using the opposite technique in NI – Furthering divergence between NI and the Republic of Ireland in order to prevent any even gradual movement towards Irish Reunification.

link to eurofree3.wordpress.com

So Scotland has to insist on the differences between her and England and big them up

But as you mentioned it’s “the latest” ploy.
Others include the manipulation of the mass media which the Rev is doing his utmost to disclose to us.

Eyes wide open folks for more!

PS about that BBC programme on the NHS that was mentioned. A You Tube link would be great if possible for our diaspora that can’t access the iplayer.

Fireproofjim

Good to see Elisha McColgan qualifying for the final of the 5,000 metres and even better to see her saltire wristband.

ben madigan

@ Snode1965 who says:

“According to HM Treasury Scotland has a deficit of £15bn, Wales £14.7bn and NI £9.5bn”.

Can’t comment on Wales and Scotland but I do know people who have been driven round in circles trying to get the figures for NI. No confirmation from anywhere – just this statement as Snode says

Chick McGregor

So, the Expiliexregius spell has worn off then?

Gerry

@ Ben

The UUP’s 2016 manifesto states: “There was a time when we were net contributors to Her Majesty’s Treasury, now Stormont is dependent on an annual £11 billion subvention from Westminster every year.”
from link to factcheckni.org

Robert Peffers

@David McCann says: 10 August, 2017 at 11:25 am:

“And thereby hangs a tale,
link to liveleak.com

Well actually no. A tale doesn’t hang there. In the first place it really wasn’t a secret as we who were SNP and independence activists knew about it and, as was usual back then, no one believed us and the Scottish Main Stream Media were not about to inform Joe and Josephine Public of the facts.

A bit like many other such facts – like the McCrone report for example. We activists told anyone who would listen and, remember there were pro-union Westminster Unionist parties with a majority of the Scottish seats in power in Scotland at those times and it was their political colleagues and them who had voted these so called secret things through both the Commons & the Lords and Her Royal Majesty who signed them into United Kingdom law.

If no where else they were reported in Hansard. It wasn’t secret it just was not publicised by the media in Scotland.

We knew about it but no one believed us when we told them about it. Preferring instead to believe we were the lunatic fringe spouting conspiracy theories.

Just the same when we told them that as Scots they were legally sovereign and neither the Queen nor the government were. As usual they believed the BBC, SMSM, the Labour, Liberal and Tory parties. Around 50% of them still believe whatever the unionists tell them to believe.

Things are hardly any better even yet. Which is why we did not win independence on 18th September 2014.

Ghillie

Ohho! Caught !!

Can’t wait for the next whine ‘but what about Scotland’s huge £15 billion debt?’ !!

Gonna have fun with this = )

Thank you Alert Reader 🙂

And thank you Rev Stu as always 🙂

Lots of smiling 🙂

davidbsb

@ Bradford Miller 12:06

That stat is incorrect. When it surfaced on facebook a few weeks ago it was easily disproved. What might be worthy of investigation is how the generally multinational brand owners book their sales and profits, and how much tax revenues arise in which jurisdictions.

Eire has a low corporation tax regime, so it might be perfectly possible for a company to allocate its profit to Eire and pay less tax than they would in the UK. The export price of Whisky and Whiskey are approximately the same. But UK internal taxation is £7.54 a bottle plus VAT, so that brings in a lot of revenue for the UK treasury. However there is no export tax. Just taxes on profits. That is where independent Scotland has to be smart. Taxing at £7-54 a bottle would reap a few hundred millions to the Scottish treasury. rUK would still make much more than us.

The main contribution Whisky is going to give independent Scotland is in balance of trade ( as well as employment etc ). That is the big contribution the fiddled oil revenues also identifies. The UK treasury will still have extracted such taxes ( or rebated the oil companies LOL ) as were due on the revised figures. But the contributions to Scottish exports of oil and of Whisky are where those numbers matter. We already suspect/ know that Scotland runs an external trade surplus, while rUK runs the world’s second largest deficit. That in theory makes our putative currency strong.

As the economics are not straight forward, and the BBC would distort any argument – and anyway it takes more than 30 seconds to explain it – there isn’t much point looking at all the possible scenarios that independent Scotland could see. For simplicity, the Norwegians made shed loads of money extracting pretty much the same amount of oil, from pretty much the same place, at pretty much the same time. In the UK the directors and shareholders of BP, Shell and a lot of other oil Companies kleptocratically captured those revenues for themselves.

And Whisky company profits rarely stay in Scotland. Same story.

Robert J. Sutherland

Rab Boyce @ 11:38

This also does not change the Revenue numbers in GERS as that doesn’t include export values, and the revenue figures are allocated under the Kemp-Stephen methodology

I have a similar question to that of Colin MacFarlane upthread @ 13:47. Are you actually saying that GERS takes no account of export figures at all? That would seem to be a major omission. And would still be even if they were “only” ignoring export to rUK. Either way, that would be a grave distortion of the present-day situation, let alone the entirely different situation with independence.

This UK financial chicanery seems to have more layers than an onion. Rather reminiscent of a fraudulent company whose books are “cooked”.

ben madigan

@Gerry who quoted the UUP’s stats – the professionals I spoke to were unable to find out with NI paid (tax, VAT etc) compared with what it received. Their calculations worked out about a £5-6 bn difference, not £11bn, but they unable to get any factual proof of figures.Anywhere.

Rock

If this is not front page headline news in The National tomorrow, it will have been proved beyond any reasonable doubt that its support for independence is fake.

Robert J. Sutherland

davidbsb @ 20:26,

Your point about “balance of trade” is worth expanding upon. Unlike many production industries (eg. car manufacture), whisky production essentially doesn’t depend on the import of any raw materials (excepting the import of some malt from England), so its gross value and net value to the economy are essentially the same, and are entirely independent of the exchange rate. This is what makes whisky supremely attractive to the UK Treasury.

The same goes to a large extent for renewable energy production and oil production, especially if we invest in R&D and construction facilities here.

With those latter two we are in effect sitting on two goldmines, one which is finite but still with significant life, and the other which has near-infinite potential.

It is frankly impossible that we could be “too puir” if independent. For that to happen, it would need gross mismanagement at a level of incompetence that only BLiS could provide.

(Maybe that’s why they are so dead set against independence. They know they just couldn’t hack it!)

laukat

I don’t profess to know the financial ins and outs of this change but I do suspect there will be a political angle to the change of figures and given its HMRC, an arm of the UK government, it will not be pro-independence.

I suspect that we will see in the next few weeks something released that shows the value of this figure has dropped from £6.8 billion to something considerably less due to the drop in oil price. At which point the pro-union press will say Scotland’s economic output dropped by a zillion percent whilst glossing over that we are no longer comparing like for like figures.

Call me cynical but I’ve seen this play book too many times to believe that anything positive for Independence will be reported in the media.

Artyhetty

O/T, totally.

Up in Edin city today. Two things, the ‘BBC’ have taken over Heriots school grounds, took a leaflet but told lass it was out of interest otherwise no thanks, She looked a bit surprised. English, nice and all, but no idea, sorry. How much will they be paying to rent huge grounds from this (charity) private,expensive, school?

Next, barriers, yes, around the castle and the mile, it’s like a war zone. Huge barriers, like the ones you see at border control type. Necessary? Depressing, imo. First time I ever saw these barriers, like, majorly obvious.

GERS.
Scotland we know will be told, sorry, no, the rest of the UKok, and the world, will be told how s***e Scotland is.
Don’t go to Skye, everythings crap. The hoards of people, sooo many tourists, loads fun being had, it’s fab, but we are still hearing that Scotland is s***e!

What are the economic figures for rUKOK and when can we read about them. Not even sure what they are called. With brexit and all. They must let the punters know how rich rUK is, no?

stu mac
McDuff

This is the kind of revelation that the SNP should be screaming from the rooftops so I am dismayed once again by their silence.

Tartanpigsy

“why change the rules now?”

The powers that be must be pretty confident there wont be a second indyref.’

Thats what I take from this.
Are our leaders really this inept or bribable, or have they deceived the deceivers?
Only time will tell

K1

They’ve impoverished us for centuries.

Within the first handful of years after the oil was discovered, that’s when they began the systematic destruction of Scotland’s industries and put a generation of Scots on the dole paid for, no doubt, by the revenues they had been raking in from our oil.

It’s sickening and imo a long term plan was hatched from the McCrone report forward to reduce further our population and maintain the illusion that the Scots were incapable of sustaining themselves. Their fear of our independence and any clamour for this, once the people knew what had really occurred would potentially set this in motion.

I believe with all my heart they have made sure that our health and wellbeing had to become the worst in Europe, take away people’s chances in life, destroy the industries that sustained them and create a generation to generation cycle of unemployment. The influx in the same period (the eighties) of heroin and the devastation and the legacy that too wrought, is imo partially responsible for the increased mental and physical problems along with alcoholism, which is often a refuge for those who are in fact very sensitive to the realities of their plight. It bred hopelessness, apathy and more saliently it trapped people in downward spirals.

In 2014, we dared to think differently about ourselves, we dared to believe we had a real opportunity to govern ourselves, to reject the UK status quo, which has always maintained Scotland as a backwater. This is why we are now getting increased levels of propaganda even on our tourism front, because we still dare to believe in ourselves.

We have never been so close folks, so near.

2014 woke Scotland up, we began talking amongst ourselves, the scales fell from our eyes. We just need to keep helping others to take the blinders off and see the potential, see the lies that have been told, see the possibilities for our future generations.

Weaponise our history, use it to our advantage…get folk reading the truth about Scotland, what we were and are even without the oil, this is a good start:

H J Paton’s, The Claim of Scotland

link to worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com

Gerry

@Ben
Net Fiscal Balance Report 2012-13 and 2013-14.pdf – a few years out of date obviously, but if you go to here in the report
link to finance-ni.gov.uk
it states
“For 2012-13 the estimated fiscal balance in NI was a deficit of £9.5 billion (29.1 per cent of GVA). The 2013-14 ‘fiscal deficit’ decreased to £9.2 billion (27.9 per cent of GVA)”

Some more details also on the next page.

Dave McEwan Hill

Rock at 8.57

Bullshit. The last thing we need is distraction like arguing about deficits or not in a Scottish economy that is trapped in an collapsing UK economy.

It has no relevance whatsoever as to how an independent Scottish economy would be run.

We all know they fiddle the figures. Sadly lots of people who should know better by now keep arguing with them about them when we should be concentrating on the huge potentials and the huge challenges wof an independent country

ben madigan

thanks gerry – I am no expert in anything to do with finance or banking – can hardly find my way round my own account.

I will certainly forward your link on to the interested parties who spoke to me and sincerely appreciate your help
Ben

Fraser Darling

“If you have any questions regarding HMRC Trade Statistics unit or the data we publish, or you cannot find what you are looking for on this site, contact our Customer Service team. Their details can be found in the Contact Us page.”

From link to uktradeinfo.com

Link to Contact Page link to uktradeinfo.com

colin alexander

O/T Received my copy of my entry on the Electoral Register from Glasgow City Council. Nationality: British.

I’m not happy that I’m being labelled British. I regard myself as Scottish, not British.

Anyone else feel this way? Can anything be done about this?

heedtracker

Rock says:
10 August, 2017 at 8:57 pm
If this is not front page headline news in The National tomorrow, it will have been proved beyond any reasonable doubt that its support for independence is fake.

Its only 70p Rock and as you say, it props a giant multinational media corp with hundreds of titles too, which is nice.

What aboutery this though Rock.

If you buy a NOT Scottish oil sector in the UK territorial waters, you can fill up your oil tankers, sail them off to anywhere in the world, and UK gov is so lazy fair, they dont even make proper records. They dont even give it UK place locator name.

Or, lets look at how UK gov liggers differentiate between UK territorial waters and the UK, Rock.

Make yourself useful and try to work out that teamGB conundrum. In teamGB, there’s 2 types of territory, the watery bits with all the oil, gas and fish but they’re not the UK, then there’s the hard rocky bit, with giant union jacks draped all over it now.

Cant imagine many other countries being so laissez faire about their territorial waters really. Imagine a Norway that let just anyone extract Norwegian hydrocarbons, sail off with them and not record them as from anywhere.

Good old planet toryboy. Sneaky shits to the last.

Me confused.

“Where oil is processed on rigs in the North Sea and dispatched directly to other countries, the oil does not enter the UK and therefore does not obtain any regional coding. The RTS methodology categorises this oil trade based on the location of the oil rig.”

K1

Yes. no.

Alex Clark

There are a number of reasons that the Norwegian government do far better than the UK in terms of it’s overall revenue from Oil and Gas in their sector.

The latest figures for total revenues for 2016 of 127.9 billion NOK are substantially less than those for 2015 at 232 billion NOK. In GBP terms that is £12.4 billion and £22.4 billion respectively and for 2016 was made up as follows in billion NOK:

Taxes 42,1
Environmental taxes and area fees 6,7
Net cash flow from SDFI 68,1
Statoil dividend 11,0
The net government cash flow 127,9

Statoil is 67% owned by the Norwegian government but another biggie is net cash from SDFI, this is a return on investment made by the state in their fields.

Today, the state has direct financial interests in 190 production licences, 43 producing fields and holdings in 17 joint ventures that own pipelines and onshore facilities.

None of that in the UK of course who don’t believe that the state should own or invest in any assets even if profitable. In fact if it’s profitable the UK would sell it into private hands. Pathetic.

Alex Clark

Sorry forgot the link for anybody that might want to read more.

link to norskpetroleum.no

heedtracker

Anyone else feel this way? Can anything be done about this?

Yes Colin, emigrate.

Cactus

Aweright ScotFact says ~

“Prior to December 2016, Oil Exports that shipped directly from the rigs were counted towards company HQs. The methodology has now been updated as stated above.

This change in methodology resulted in Scotland’s allocation within RTS of the ‘Mineral Fuels’ category for 2015 to climb from £588m to £6,825m…”

An you can take that to the bank!

It’s magic 😉

Liz g

Alex Clark @ 11.18
Question is ….how do we get our Politicians to run with this model after Indy ?
With so much wealth around we will need to be very careful not to allow the Westminster style of selling everything that’s not nailed down to their pals to take hold.
We will just be finding out the true extent of our resources,the vultures that will be circulating already know!
It’s not as if there are a load of trustworthy Politicians around….we know that at least three of our political parties state that their first loyalty is to Westminster,so they will take watchin.
Although I must admit I am so looking forward to worring about That!

Hamish100

Rock says:
10 August, 2017 at 8:57 pm
If this is not front page headline news in The National tomorrow, it will have been proved beyond any reasonable doubt that its support for independence is fake.

Cobblers. Rock you don’t read the National so what’s your problem? I’ll buy the National – I agree with some bits no doubt and disagree with others. As it should be.

Your a tom Gordon or a torquil but without the panache! Naw they don’t have it either. You are a fake.

Tom Tom Mcoot

Well done the UK for accsessingall that British oil ….that will do HMRC proud , and should help to keep UK personal and company tax rates low

Graeme Doig

Aye Colin

Score it out and write “Scottish” before you send it back. Don’t let anyone tell you your nationality. It’s not rocket science.

Same goes for the drivers license with uj on. Stick a saltire over the top.

Dont be a victim.

Robert Peffers

@colin alexander says: 10 August, 2017 at 11:08 pm:

” … I’m not happy that I’m being labelled British. I regard myself as Scottish, not British.”

Why is that, Colin? Don’t you actually live in the British Isles, then?

Has the Westminster Establishment, without telling we Scots, cut Scotland off from England, Wales and Ireland, (not to mention Man and the Channel Island Crown Protectorates), and sailed us off into either the North Sea or the Atlantic Ocean?

Last time I looked Scotland was still attached to the British Isles and hence her entire population are part of the population of the British Isles a.k.a. they are British.

Are you perhaps confusing Britain and the United Kingdom?

I have been Scottish, British and European all my life and hope to die still in that circumstance. What I sincerely hope to live long enough to be able to do is proudly claim I am NOT living in a Scotland governed as a the United Kingdom of Britain.

Thing is, Colin, I’m in my eighties now and I have never allowed the Westminster Establishment to brain wash me with their claims that they are, “THE British Government – because they do NOT govern the whole of Britain they remain “A”, British Government and, with a little bit more hard work, I hope soon to force them to admit they are not THE British Government and reduce them to being the Government of the Kingdom of England – or even better still – (with a reunified Ireland and a free Wales), just the Westminster Parliament of the COUNTRY of England.

Elmac

Why no National on August 10? Of the 4 oulets I tried in Ayr none had received any deliveries. The Tesco garage at Silverburn had none either. Is something afoot?

Apologies if this has been covered already.

Have to confess that addiction to crosswords/Sudoku forced my first purchase of a Daily Express for almost 3 years. No change there – still a disgusting biased rag masquerading as a newspaper. God do I feel dirty!

Cactus

When we vote Yes to an iScotland, the first song that will be played is Auld Lang Syne.

Big Phil

@ Cactus, only cos we dont yet know the words tae…” YA FECKIN DANCER” lol

heedtracker

The long German view,

link to independent.co.uk

“I was genuinely shocked by the state of some of the towns, and by the many people I met who felt neglected and who were now driven by resentment. It made me feel very German because I longingly thought of the bundesfinanzausgleich (equalisation payment mechanism), a system that aims at balancing the wealth of the Bundesländer and leads to a fairer distribution of funds throughout the country.”

Google translate’s pretty amazing too.

link to de.wikipedia.org

Cactus

Aweright Big Phil, aye and many more will be made too.

Here’s five possible entries for the iScotland day setlist:

1) The Proclaimers
2) Dougie MacLean
3) The Corries
4) Nazareth
5) AC/DC

What say?

Magic money rigs… s’like big gold bars sticking out of the ocean.

Cactus

I guess that’s the difference between rigs and trees…

Magic money trees don’t exist (only in fairy-tale la la land):
link to wingsoverscotland.com

Magic money rigs do exist, their value is solid liquid gas fuel.

“Same as it ever was, stop making sense”.

We’re on a road to iScotland.

Cactus

This is what happens when John Bull has the keys to our car:
link to youtube.com

Have a fantastic Friday folks.

Drive to the conditions.

Nana

link to randompublicjournal.com

‘Scotland’s new MPs have a historic opportunity to make our mark.’
link to archive.is

link to amnesty.org.uk

link to irishnews.com

Nana

link to aljazeera.com

It’s being rumoured that George Osborne and Tony Blair are to form a new Centrist Party, for crying out loud!
link to twitter.com

Money to burn
link to endpropaganda.wordpress.com

link to speyejoe2.wordpress.com

Nana

link to defenceconnect.com.au

link to newscientist.com

If U.S. Attacks North Korea First, Is That Self-Defense?
link to archive.is

link to yeswecan.scot

Smallaxe

Nana; Good Morning, it’s not too nice here today, windy and overcast. Thank you, for your links, they brighten every day up a bit.Kettle’s on! 🙂

Hamish100

Robert Peffers

Who are we?

If you wish to call yourself British Scots European that is your choice. If others just wish to call themselves Scottish only so be it. I’m sure most folk on here know the difference between the UK and the British isles. Unfortunately some English news outlets when saying British they mean England . That’s just the way it is. Go out and see Dunkirk – English only for the boats!

I’m sure they meant French Scots Irish Welsh Dutch Poles etcetera . Wee slip of the tongue? Or a mindset of superiority by the middle and ruling English classes.

Effijy

Watched ITV news last nigh covering the latest disastrous figures from NHS Tory England.

As there was no defending the stats as such, they tried to shield them by assuring that Scotland, Wales, and N.I.
are all struggling too?

Not a lie! They all are, due to Westminster cuts and mismanagement, but the story was denied a comparison
as it would show Scotland’s NHS fairing better that any other area.

Can’t have that in the UK Media. Can we?

Macart

Thanks Nana

Some interesting reading and listening there. 🙂

Hamish100

BBC Scotchland

We neeed more more money to clothe our children for school is the tack this morning. North Ayrshire labour pays £40 odd quid to the needy. Others over £100
I blame the snp government for the unfair society due to the economic debt that we are in, the decades of inequality etc. Oops that unionism for you.

starlaw

News on Radio Shortbread. The Grouse shooting this year will be a disaster, same old Scotland same old Tripe.

BBC also stating this is worth £150 million to Scotland. Where does all that money go?

scottieDog

Excellent piece here on ‘fake abundance’ of the uk. An economy run on private credit.
It’s one of the big reasons to get out…
link to renegadeinc.com

Nana

Good morning Smallaxe, it’s colder here and looking quite dark.

@Macart

The last four were sent to me and to be honest I just skimmed the defence one but thought some wingers might be interested.

I’m having to skim a lot right now as I’m trying to sort accommodation for my son.

Unfortunately I now have a little knowledge of the unbelievable hoops folks have to go through to get a visa extension. His would have been flatmate has had her’s denied. She is distraught as she’s just finished her masters and was going on to do a PHD so now has to ‘go home’
It is awful how the home office is treating people with delays and just basic stupidity.
Westminster turning the world away.

Ghillie

Artyhetty @ 9.17 pm

The BBC are camping out at Heriots?!

Much like Cromwell’s troops who trashed the chappel, stabling their horses there. Nae respect.

Oh the parallels and the irony!

I wondered where they’d gone. Well out of sight at least.

Mibbe they’re just hiding.

Near Bristo Sq was pretty public and an awfy easy location to raise a protest.

Mibbee Jingling Geordie Heriot will haunt them = )

Macart

@Nana

“I’m having to skim a lot right now as I’m trying to sort accommodation for my son.”

Yeah, doing a bit of that myself right now.

Pretty grim news about your son’s ‘would have been’ flatmate. After all that effort… to be uprooted at the last will be a helluva wrench.

The UKs dash to ignominy and isolation continues.

gus1940

There is much talk as to whether or not incomers from England should be allowed to vote in Indyref2.

A point that has never been made is that there are 2 distinct types of incomers as regards the likelihood of them voting YES.

The first is retirees:-

They sell up in England, buy a house in Scotland take advantage of our superior Scottish NHS, free prescriptions, bus passes and elderly care.

They have no committment to Scotland and its future, their children will almost certainly not live in Scotland or ever will. When they die their assets will for the most part return south of the border.

Meanwhile because of the crazy English House prices they will have caused house price inflation in the desirable areas in Scotland where they settle making house ownership for local native population a distant prospect.

It must be obvious that very few of said retirees have any interest in Scotland becoming Independent and that it would be a waste of time trying to convert them.

As a matter of moral justice I see no justification for these transients to be given a vote in Indyref2 as they have no real interest in the future of Scotland only in their own comfortable retirement.

The second category is permanent settlers:-

These are people who move to Scotland to take up a job or to start a business with a view to living here while bringing up a family who will probably remain in Scotland.
These people and their families obviously have an interest in Scotland’s future and if they don’t already support YES deserve a vote and it should be possible to convert them to the wisdom of voting YES.

I acknowledge that it would be impossible to split the 2 categories of incomers as regards voting rights but hope that in my clumsy way I have made a point worthy of discussion.

Ghillie

Robert Peffers @ 12.25 am

As someone who studied archaelogy many moons ago,and who found the Romans too modern and of little interest, may I please be exempted from accepting these visiting tourists to Scotland naming of my Country? How very cheeky of them! (However,love the food!)

I do not accept their naming of the whole of the collection of these isles as Briton.

Therefore I do not consider myself to be British in any shape or form = )

I guess this is a kind of ancient anarchism 🙂

Robert Peffers

@ScottieDog says: 10 August, 2017 at 4:19 pm:

“So my question, does this change the final figures in GERS.”

Why would the GERs figures represent anything whatsoever that is in any way an accurate statement about the Scottish economy? They quite simply are guesstimated figures picked out of the minds of Westminster Establishment employees specifically charged by the de facto parliament of the country of England with demonstrating that Scotland is dependent upon the people of England for subsidies?

There is documentary evidence contained in letters written by elected Scottish MPs, (Westminster cabinet ministers), to their English Masters), that state just that. GERS were designed by Westminster with the express purpose of demonstrating that Scotland was, “Too wee, too poor and thought by Westminster to be too bloody stupid to know any better”. Know what, Scottiedog, they were absolutely correct. A majority of the Scots were indeed too bloody stupid and it has taken a very long time and a very great deal of hard work by independence activists and, (mainly),the SNP to get those outside the SNP to begin to wake up to the truth that England is ripping off the rest of the United Kingdom.

Not only that but the whole truth being exposed is balanced upon a knife edge with that majority of stupid Scots unionist versus knowledgeable Scots independence voters in the balance.

It is a wrong conclusion, none the less, that we didn’t know such facts as the GERS figures were mince, what the McCrone Report contained or that Scotland has always subsidised the rest of the UK.

A minority of Scots have known the facts and have spent a lifetime trying to get the truth out to the rest of Scotland and just read through Wings and you will find that right here on Wings a plethora of posts saying, “The SNP/SG need to do something, (an unspecified something that they never specify), while the commenters are thus blaming the SNP/SG for the problem.

The fact is there are no sources of the true figures that are available to anyone outside the Westminster Establishment set-up and they control the media and thus the publishing of any meaningful information.

Capella

@ Ghillie – I thought the Romans used the term Britannia because the natives called themselves Pritani, a p-celtic word? The q-celts used cruithne. Just my understanding.

Ghillie

Gus 1940 @ 9.01 am

Ok, you make some interesting points there. And I did share your concerns. But simply put, we cannot know how anyone feels about the country they arrive in and how they may vote, with their personal interests to the fore, or what is most beneficial to their new home.

Think about it, it would’nt make sense for a retiree coming here from a country where they have to pay for their presciptions and suffer a struggling NHS and then be a turkey voting for Christmas and vote against the very Scottish Government that allows said retirees that reassurance and great quality of life here.

I know it does happen. But how daft of folk to move somewhere they think they will enjoy an easier time in their sunset years and then sabotage it?

Yup, I too am thinking of a certain lady who wrote for the notorious ‘Scotland in Union’ doing exactly that! And she may now have changed her mind!

But in fairness, ‘English for Independence’ are quite the opposite of that daft mindset and I would rather use the time we have before the next referendum to convince all newcomers to Scotland, short term and long term, that Independence for Scotland is the way forward for everyone in Scotland = )

Dave McEwan Hill

O/T a bit

This from Robert Fisk in the Independent

“There are still honourable Israelis who demand a state for the Palestinians; there are well-educated Saudis who object to the crazed Wahabism upon which their kingdom is founded; there are millions of Americans, from sea to shining sea, who do not believe that Iran is their enemy nor Saudi Arabia their friend. But the problem today in both East and West is that our governments are not our friends”

[…] the revelations yet again by Wings Over Scotland on how Scotland has somehow NOT been allocated its true wealth from its oil in 2014 and 2015 to the […]

Ghillie

Capella @9.19 am

Really !? Sh*t.

See, still too modern for me.

Nope, still don’t want to call myself British, nope.

Arms folded. Wee strop going on.

CACTUS SAY SOMETHING TO CHEER ME UP !!

Ghillie

Nana, heartfelt sorrow for your son’s friend’s difficulty in staying here.

This just feels so wrong!

We too have young friends struggling with the same red tape.
I can not bear the thought of them being thrown out of our Country.

And surely these cruel new rules are counter productive if the UK government is chasing away the very students the UK educated.

What happened to us all being citizens of Space Ship Earth?

Bill McLean

Capella, it was the Greek geographer Pythias of Massillia (Marseilles), the first recorded person from the Mediterranean to visit these islands, who named them “nisoi Bretanikoi”
(pronounced Neesee Vretaneekee). He was familiar with P Celtic and took “pretan” from that language – similar to modern Welsh. The Greek version translates as islands of the painted, tattooed or marked people.
Subsequently the Romans amended the Greek name to Britannia. Google helps. xcuse any errors.

galamcennalath

Every cloud has a silver lining!

” Conservatives will never win power again after Brexit ‘disaster’, former Tory government adviser says “

link to archive.is
[text only archive]

Yes but, recent history has shown us the London alternative is Labour who are a bunch of Tories anyway in all but name. Scotland needs to get rid of the Union, not just the official Tories.

Capella

@ Bill McLean @ Ghillie – thanks that reminds me where I read about the Pritani – Barry Cunliffe’s book “The Extraordinary voyage of Pytheas the Greek”. A good read.

galamcennalath

” An influential former British government adviser who has called for a new political movement to block Brexit said on Friday that two senior members of Prime Minister Theresa May’s government were sympathetic to his plans. “

link to archive.is

Lots of ‘buzz’ about an anti Brexit party/alliance. I wonder if anything will come to fruition?

Some people say it’s undemocratic to try to overturn the result of a referendum, and certainly we wouldn’t be wanting anyone challenging a YES result in IndyRef2!

England voted to leave the EU, so perhaps they should be left to get on with it!

However, we have had two referendums now where the winning option was achieved by telling packs of lies to the electorate in 2014 & 2016. Is a win based on deceit and false promises at all valid?

At a minimum, there needs to be new strict electoral law governing referendums to stop such fake democratic outcomes in the future.

Dr Jim

I was heartened to hear an Inglishman on the radio this morning telling me that Grouse shooting was part of the fabric of Scotland and that all the shooters who pay up to four thousand pounds a day to come and kill these birds don’t in fact do it for fun but for the altruistic reasons of land management to keep Scotland beautiful
These are the same folk who used to shoot Scottish people as part of their fabric

Grouse shooting they say brings in 150 million a year to the Scottish econonmy
The people who know what they’re talking about tell us re wilding and green tourism with cameras and binoculars would bring in around 1 and a half billion

I think we could afford a little less animal murdery land management with some of that cash
Or maybe the rest of us Scots could just shoot the folk who rip off our country with their Grouse shooting mince talk

I’ll take some of that fabric, but then again like them I’m biased

Robert Peffers

@Michael says: 10 August, 2017 at 4:54 pm:

“If this is completely the way it seems to be. The biggest failure is why is has no one in the Scottish Government picked it up? Why is it left to some random person to send it to Wings?”

Oh! For the love of, (pardon the pun), Mike!

I personally have been harping on about the fact that the UK government have taken every penny of oil & gas revenue since the first drop of oil & the first whiff of natural gas was extracted from the North Sea. However it was always reported as being extracted from, “Extra Regio Territory”, and that around 98% of that Extra Regio Territory is in what is internationally recognised as being from within Scottish legal jurisdiction.

I have posted that fact right here on Wings on numerous occasions. Guess what, Michael? Not too many Wingers even realised the significance of that fact and thus did not pass on the fact when they were out campaigning on Scottish doorsteps and the Scottish MSM and United Kingdom were certainly not telling Scots about it.

“It seems to me Scot Govt accept such changes in the way figures are presented without much or any investigation.”

Sheesh! Where the hell do you imagine I found out the truth about, “Extra Regio Territory”, or of the existence of the McCrone Report before succeeding Westminster governments buried the report deep in a Westminster vault.

The SNP have known, and attempted to inform Scots, for as long as I can remember – the trouble was, and is, that the Scottish general public, including many Wingers, have just refused to understand and listen. Furthermore, going by comments on Wings like this one from you, even committed activists, are still not listening and only now beginning to awake to the truth.

The SNP, and others, have been attempting to tell you the truth for a very long time. Will you be listening now?

If you doubt that as fact then here is some evidence that people really have been attempting to get the truth out for many, many years. Yet here you are still blaming those who were attempting to tell you the truth.

This is a link to one of a series of reports drawn up by a Scottish Forensic Accountant named Niall Aslen.

link to siol-nan-gaidheal.org

I’ve also been posting links to his work for a great number of years.

If my memory serves Niall originally titled his work, “The Great Lie”, and, if you googled that title, up would come Niall’s report. Then a strange thing happened.

When you Googled that title you got thousands of false trails to all sorts of other websites from all sorts of really strange organisations claiming all sorts of things were, “The Big Lie”, and Niall’s efforts were lost in the welter of other suddenly claimed big lies. Conspiracy Theorist? Who me? Aye! Richt!

So that, Michael, is the truth. The SNP, and other independence organisations, have known, and have been telling Scottish people the truth, for decades and the fact is the Scottish voters, and even independence activists like Wingers, are still, like you, blaming the messengers instead of the perpetrators.

Read back over the past few months on Wings and you will find I have highlighted where Wingers are posting more SNP BAAD and SG BAAD criticisms of the SNP than the Yoons are and I’ve had pelters for pointing that fact out here on Wings.

The stark truth is that the SNP and others have known and attempted to publicise the facts for decades and been silenced by the Establishment and the vast majority of even independence activists just refuse to listen to the truth.

We have pointed out that all Oil & Gas revenues go directly to the United Kingdom Treasury. As such they are NOT credited as Scottish raised revenue by Westminster. Instead they are reported as having been raised from, “United Kingdom Extra Regio Territory”, and thus have nothing to do with Scotland.

Even although around 98% of those Extra Regio Territories lie in waters that are under Scottish legal jurisdiction and, under an independent Scotland, would be Scottish natural assets.

Ghillie

Capella = )

Aye. That Barry Cunliff.

My Professor Dennis Harding’s arch nemisis. (Mibbee it wasn’t quite that dramatic but that’s what they lead us to believe)

Still had to read both their books for the exams though.

Back to business. Nope. Still not wearing it. Not British.

Heels dug in.

Capella

@ Ghillie – well then – have a read of the first chapter of Barry Cunliffe’s book “Britain Begins”. You can Look Inside on Amazon. It describes the early historians’ record of the Pritani.

link to tinyurl.com

Ghillie

Robert Peffers 10.21 am

Well said.

Mentioning the McCrone Report used to be met with ‘The what? Never heard of it’.

Not now.

Valerie

@Ben Madigan

NI does run a deficit. It is truly financially supported by rest of UK. London would cut them loose in a truce if there is a successful referendum on reunification.

I’m reading a good book on the subject, almost finished.

Kevin Meagher, Why Ireland will be Reunited, and how it will happen.

It’s modern, being finished last year. He sets out brief, relevant history, then more modern issues of economy, relationships etc.

I’ve found it easy to read.

Robert Peffers

@Andy-B says: 10 August, 2017 at 5:11 pm:

“WTF, is it any wonder that Westminster is desperate to keep Scotland in this dying union. I don’t know about anyone else but info makes me very angry indeed.”

Nah! The thing is why has it taken you so long to realise the SNP, SG and people like myself have been posting the truths for decades and even dedicated independence activists have just not been listening to our truths.

We knew and told people the GERS figures were mince – the people did not listen

We posted the information contained in the McCrone Report before Westminster buried it and again people did not listen.

We have highlighted that the Scottish per capita GDP is usually, year on year, higher than that of all other UK countries and indeed the UK as a whole and people have not listened.

The tragic fact is that even here today on Wings we have Wingers bleating, “Why have the SNP and SG not told us or done anything about it”.

Neither the SNP or the SG can legally do anything about it without the legal support of the majority of the legally sovereign people of Scotland and to date a recognisable, or legally recognised, majority of the people of Scotland has not been given to the SNP or SG.

We may, (just), have got to that stage but there has not been a specific referendum that returns that result in a manner the Westminster Establishment cannot shrug off or ignore.

They are though, very, very desperate that no such referendum will ever be held and if you cannot work out why they are so desperate then you really should be thinking about it right now.

heedtracker

The people who know what they’re talking about tell us re wilding and green tourism with cameras and binoculars would bring in around 1 and a half billion

Scottish Highlands are either a desert like environment, with all life being burned off by ghillies ever couple of years, or theyre vast plantations of alien species pines for paper. Anything else that can survive fire is either shot or poisoned,
before shooting season starts.

Scottish rivers that spring from the Highlands are dead now. Atlantic Salmon spawning have been fished to extinction. 12 thousand years of spawning runs in the fall and spring, gone in a decade or two.

That blood sports dude on BBC Scotland boosting up blood sports in Scotland this morn, is representing quite a lot of blood sportsmen and women who are in reality an environmental holocaust, for Scottish biodiversity.

They can do this because they own Scotland.

They know they are horrifically destructive, so the use their BBC Scotland gimps to lie us all about it all, as usual,

link to archive.is

“Scottish bird of prey colony hit by mass poisonings
RSPB and ornithologists express disgust after 12 red kites are found dead in Black Isle area, targeted with lethal toxins”

Highland landowners, blood sports dudes, their flunkies, would look at you like you were insane for expressing anything against killing all raptors in the Highlands. As soon as grouse spot a raptor, they don’t fly, meaning a lot angry wealthy blood sports dudes in your face.

And who wants that.

ben madigan

@ valerie re NI’s deficit. Nobody disputes NI has a deficit. It’s the size of it that is being queried. Thanks for the thumbs up about Kevin meagher’s book. I will certainly get a copy

Ben

Valerie

@Heedtracker 10.42

Your post would make me weep, that man abuses these beautiful lands.

This shooting of raptors is getting to be one huge pisstake by the shooters though. Have to say I’m sick to death reading it, and no one on the estates being held to account.

heedtracker

More beeb gimpery for a Friday, anyone? Wales this time. We’re not the only uk region plagued by tory media dingdongs.

link to dailypost.co.uk

Welsh speakers have reacted with fury after a BBC programme posed the question whether the language was a “hindrance” to the country.

But the discussion did not have anybody who could speak the language involved, with contributions from author Julian Ruck and Ruth Dawson, Wales Editor for the independent news and analysis website The Conversation.”

Gosh no one from the “other side” of a beeb gimp tv debate. Must be a Pacific Quay ligger on his hols.

Valerie

@ben madigan

Soz! Was just confirming I had up.on the NI figures via Kevin’s book.

I would quote them, but I’m not clever enough to retrieve it from the Kindle! Worth reading the Amazon reviews of Kevin’s book, as they cover it well, imo. Kevin writes regular pieces in a variety of stuff like Politics,co.UK, Business Insider etc

Peter McCulloch

Westminster in the 1970s lied about the real value of oil in the North Sea and also supressed the McCrone report.

No Westminster Government will ever come clean and reveal the true extent of North Sea oil wealth it has stolen from Scotland and its people.

We witnessed just how desperate Westminster was to hang on to Scotland during the 2014 indyref, with all the lies and scare stories they could dream up.

What Westminster will do is keep on lying and telling us
its much better for us to pool and share resources and continue being Governed from Westminster on the broad shoulders of the UK.

Smallaxe