Will Westminster MP's sanction the Vow

[Charles Bannerman]

 

 

 

.... predominantly the English Parliament, with the inclusion of a small number of MPs representing the peripheral nations in the Union, and its English constituency MPs should control the Union and dictate to all parts of it. 

 

I'm actually more concerned with predominantly the Central Belt parliament, with the inclusion of a small number of MSPs representing the peripheral areas of Scotland, and its Central Belt constituency and list MSPs controlling Scotland and dictating all parts of it.

 

The SNP seem to be very good at shouting about the lack of powers devolved to Edinburgh whilst at the same time doung everything they can to centralise what they have in Edinburgh.

(On the other hand, the SNP are simply just very good at shouting.....)

[+Fraz]

I hear what you're saying but you feel WM represents the Highlands better than Holyrood? While not the full answer surely at least a step in the right direction?

.... predominantly the English Parliament, with the inclusion of a small number of MPs representing the peripheral nations in the Union, and its English constituency MPs should control the Union and dictate to all parts of it.

I'm actually more concerned with predominantly the Central Belt parliament, with the inclusion of a small number of MSPs representing the peripheral areas of Scotland, and its Central Belt constituency and list MSPs controlling Scotland and dictating all parts of it.

The SNP seem to be very good at shouting about the lack of powers devolved to Edinburgh whilst at the same time doung everything they can to centralise what they have in Edinburgh.

(On the other hand, the SNP are simply just very good at shouting.....)

[Charles Bannerman]

Fraz.... the manner in which the Highlands have been treated throughout history by the Lowland Scots is, to understate things, "not good". With Westminster, the Highlands are at least one of several peripheral areas whilst with Holyrood it's a case of "them" and "us". Also, "them" (they) at Holyrood are largely a bunch of second raters, lightweights and jumped up Cooncillors, many of whom are there not because they have been voted for as individuals by the electorate but because they have been sufficiently obedient, compliant and brown nosed party apparatchiks to get themselves placed on a "list".

Now I have no great time for politicians of any affiliation or in any assembly but what we have seen at Holyrood has been especially poor - as demonstrated either by how they were either outmanoeuvred by somebody like Salmond for so long or were firmly in his back pocket.

[Scarlet Pimple]

Will oil be  less important as time goes along?

 

Well, last Saturday I read that Scotland has now so many wind farms that the energy produced by them can now supply the needs of every  home in Scotland! That's something else. 

 

That sure raised my eyebrows because here in B.C, a Province of Canada which is 1.5 times the size of France, we don't appear to have any , or at least very few, wind farms either onshore or offshore.  Which I think is ridiculous. Scotland also has energy being generated by incoming waves on the West Coast whereas we don't appear to have heard of that out in B.C.

 

As a matter of fact I was idly listening to a talk show on the radio this afternoon sitting in my car and this subject came up and the people who were opining were saying the same thing  that we SHOUILD be getting away from oil and into this type of energy?

A sentiment that makes perfect sense to me on different levels, the monetary aspect, the saving of resources, the lack of destruction to the environment and no need to store mining deposits at all.---i.e. totally clean enery which is renewable  for decades

[Scarlet Pimple]

Oh , I forgot to mention thermal energy also which is going to become more and more important with every new large building   around.
Cheers guys. Maybe Scotsmen and Scots women are actually more bright after all than Red Neck Canajins?
What do youse yins think?....eh?

[Alex MacLeod]

 

 

 

 

The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries consisting of Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi, UAE and Venezuela.

So "Scotland's Oil" - which is conspicuous by its absence from that Opec list under the title of "UK" - is a pretty minor player on the oil scene then?

 

 

Who has ever said otherwise.....so your point is just what exactly?

 

My point is that Salmond and chums spent half the referendum campaign bigging up this declining resource which Alex M now tells us isn't even big enough to allow export to take place and hence for us to have a seat at the top table in terms of calling the oil shots world wide.

Clearly dependence on this kind of situation would have increased 12 fold should it have, back in September, come to apply not to a population of 60 million, but just to 5 million who would have had no say whatsoever in market conditions relating to an asset which the SNP claims is crucial.

 

No Charles I didn't tell you that. This top table you refer to is not inhabited by many outside the main Arab states. It is no more than a middle east cartel and none of the other countries, including the UK want to be part of it. Perhaps you should educate yourself before making such stupid statements. As to the exporting. We do export but we also choose to refine and process in the UK and export the products of oil. There's more money to be made that way. From that crude we produce a large percentage of the worlds plastics and synthetic rubber. we produce synthetic alcohol and other spirits, oil additives for the motor industry, bitumens, petroleum spirits and benzenes, aircraft grade kerosenes. diestuffs and paint additives and many more. All of those go to the manufacture of many other products and all are sold all over the world. Might surprise you to know Charles that there is a lot more to oil than the stuff in your car. A car, incidentally, where 75% of the components and fittings would have come from crude oil derivitives. But then you probably know all this anyway Mr Windupmerchant.

[+Fraz]

I remember Mr B teaching me about fractional distillation. That's something to do with making different uses of oil is it not?

[Charles Bannerman]

As to the exporting. We do export but we also choose to refine and process in the UK and export the products of oil. There's more money to be made that way. From that crude we produce a large percentage of the worlds plastics and synthetic rubber. we produce synthetic alcohol and other spirits, oil additives for the motor industry, bitumens, petroleum spirits and benzenes, aircraft grade kerosenes. diestuffs and paint additives and many more. All of those go to the manufacture of many other products and all are sold all over the world. Might surprise you to know Charles that there is a lot more to oil than the stuff in your car. A car, incidentally, where 75% of the components and fittings would have come from crude oil derivitives. But then you probably know all this anyway Mr Windupmerchant.

 

Alex.... you are beginning to sound like the John Cleese voiceover in a video I used to use during 36 years of teaching this kind of stuff and a lot more to Fraz and others up to Advanced Higher level.

The bottom line is - we were fed a whole lot of guff about oil by Yes Scotland during the referendum campaign and that is the retrospective issue which should be attracting attention rather than the imagined deficiencies of the Smith Commission report - be that in the eyes of the wider Yes movement or of the four suspended bookburners.

(On which subject, I can exclusively reveal that the bookburners will be spending their SNP suspension along with several other "45ers" as members of the Imperial Japanese Army who are still trying to expel the American invaders from Iwo Jima  )

Anyway... to return to oil. In recent months the backside has fallen out of the price and there are sufficient concerns about the longevity of the North Sea for the (Westminster) government to have to support it with extra tax breaks. Even if the price does recover somewhat in a few months' time, it is clear that revenues are going to be even further adrift of what Yes Scotland were "vowing" during that eternal campaign. Not that Yes Scotland would have worried, since on the "you have to be lucky all of the time whereas we only have to be lucky once" principle, Scotland's constitutional future would have been past the point of no return had a Yes vote been achieved on the basis of that particular piece of disingenuous nonsense.

The big con of the referendum campaign was not the pledge to provide more devolution, which is being delvered, but the Yes Scotland claims about oil revenues which are now being relentlessly exposed as a complete fabrication.

[Charles Bannerman]

 

 

Logically, if there isn't much oil left, then the smaller the country and population it has to help fund, one way or another, the longer it is going to be useful..

 

So you just want to give it all to an independent Shetland then? It will last for ages that way!!!

 

Maybe you could also reconcile this quote from a letter from Alex Salmond to Danny Alexander in July (my bold text):  

 

"As you will be aware, the Scottish Government has published detailed forecasts for North Sea tax revenues in future years.  These projections are based on robust assumptions.  They use industry expectations of future North Sea production and investment and the assumption that oil prices remain constant at $110 in cash terms."

 

With this from today's Financial Times..       

 

"With an oil price at around the $70 mark, at least 1.5m b/d of projects scheduled for 2016 are at risk, Energy Aspects estimates. (Let’s keep in mind the oil price has now fallen almost $5 below this level in the past few days alone to five-year lows.) Well over 1m b/d of projects scheduled for 2017 are also in the line of fire. The numbers for 2018 remain unclear."

 

Bank of America is projecting $50 per barrel and there have been widespread suggestions that this problem is going to persist for some time due to lack of demand - and that OPEC is in danger of becoming toothless. So little doubt here that Salmond was well and truly back on the pork pies again during the referendum campaign.

As for the Scottish electorate, I can imagine that members of the so-called "45" with any realism are now sitting at home thanking their lucky stars that common sense prevailed and they lost!  

And in the face of all this, Oddquine is still trying to tell us that the smaller the population base dependent on oil as a natural resource, the better.

So are we therefore to understand that an economy representing 5 million people would be better placed to withstand the shock of meltdown like this than one of 60 million?

In an earlier post, she also tried to tell us that the SNP have always treated oil as "a bonus".

So was I just dreaming when I thought that the SNP had campaigned for years on the slogan "It's Scotland's Oil?

 

The bottom line - SNP/YesScotland fed us a pile of porkies during the referendum campaign, so lay off the Smith Commission which delivered, three days early, a raft of proposals which will go a very long way towards satisfying the silent majority which doesn't have the deafult position of striving to spread dissent and division by jumping up on an SNP soapbox.

 

PS - I'm back in Dingwall tomorrow so shall have another look at that celebrated window. I don't suppose it will be bearing the slogan "Day #84 and still no end to falling oil prices. Fact!"  

Edited December 11, 2014 by Charles Bannerman

[Alex MacLeod]

Charles you may have been a decent teacher but political and financial journalist you are certainly not. I like the way you've used the typical redtop journalistic approach in choosing the paragraph you quote. Without the paragraph above and below it it can be made to look totally different to the actual story.

 

http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart

 

Big news Charles. The price is, at this moment, at its lowest for five years. Wait a minute though. Where was it five years and nine months ago. And guess what. It went back up. If you use the cursor on the linked chart you'll see the price in November at just over $65. In December its just under $69. Signs of an upturn maybe?

Do you honestly think the people who control the oil market are going to allow themselves to suffer. The Arabs are pissed off at American shale oil production so the create a price fall to shut down the shale oil producers then the price goes back up and its the Arabs who reap the benefits again.

 

Here's a line from USA Today that should please many Charles:- Low prices could also make new oil extraction technologies, such as fracking, less profitable.

Edited December 11, 2014 by Alex MacLeod

[Scarlet Pimple]

I think you are right in your post #60, Alex --this is likely to be  a temporary blip.

 

High time that Canada switches over to windmills and wave-driven hydro operations.

 

Currently we have five foot waves on top of five foot swells in the storms coming in off the Pacific. And flooding overnight is now an option.

 

Global warming is alive and well.

[Charles Bannerman]

 

http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart

 

Quite an interesting chart which makes Salmond's $110 assertion look even more vacuous than it did in his original letter to Alexander.

Alex... I do realise that the SNP has a long history of unsubstantiated claims that black is white, but the unavoidable reality is that, within an increasingly unpredictable and unstable world oil environment, the North Sea is yesterday's story. "Mature field" I believe is the appropriate euphemism.

[The Mantis]

 

The bottom line - SNP/YesScotland fed us a pile of porkies during the referendum campaign

 

While the No campaign was completely kosher 

[Charles Bannerman]

 

 

 

The bottom line - SNP/YesScotland fed us a pile of porkies during the referendum campaign

 

While the No campaign was completely kosher 

 

Oh well, in the wake of the Smith Commission delivering what some of the September 18th minority were guaranteed to moan about irrespective, it's good to see this failure to deny that the Yes campaign was "not altogether genuine"  in its attempts to con the electorate into its one-off, irreversible objective.

[The Mantis]

The famous Bannerman 'half-hour edit' is even less effective than 'whataboutery'.

It can be our little secret Charles 

[Charles Bannerman]

The famous Bannerman 'half-hour edit' is even less effective than 'whataboutery'.

It can be our little secret Charles 

Yes, very nice if you are a moderator and can hence scrutinise the techniques which ordinary punters use construct their posts. I would have thought that after all these years in the classroom, you would have a better grip of the issue of placing privileged information in the public domain.

The manner in which I compose and develop my posts is my business and nobody else's. It's the final product which is relevant.  Posters' means of reaching that end should not have to be the subject of comment from individuals who are appointed to perform a task on this forum and not to use their privileged position to attempt to score cheap points.

[Scarlet Pimple]

Gentlemen of the Jury

 

When will  the rules change to allow for handbags at dawn instead of the ruthless pain attendant upon plain old rolled cold steel?

[The Mantis]

The famous Bannerman 'half-hour edit' is even less effective than 'whataboutery'.

It can be our little secret Charles 

Yes, very nice if you are a moderator and can hence scrutinise the techniques which ordinary punters use construct their posts. I would have thought that after all these years in the classroom, you would have a better grip of the issue of placing privileged information in the public domain.

The manner in which I compose and develop my posts is my business and nobody else's. It's the final product which is relevant.  Posters' means of reaching that end should not have to be the subject of comment from individuals who are appointed to perform a task on this forum and not to use their privileged position to attempt to score cheap points.

Seriously Charles: get over yourself. This is a subject which you claim 'bores the arse' off you but you still post obsessively, and make a serious reply, twice, to a lame joke about 'kosher' and 'pork'.

Now as to the so-called abuse of privilege: you quote my post, I get an email. It's in the user settings. I'm a user.

So I get an email saying you've replied to one of my posts at 1424, and telling me what your reply was, but when I look for the post, it's gone, but there's another one at 1444. So the first post has been in the public domain for say 20 minutes. Sounds fair enough to me. If you don't want things to be seen, write them properly the first time.

[Charles Bannerman]

 

 This is a subject which you claim 'bores the arse' off you but you still post obsessively,

 

There are plenty of unwelcome developments which "bore the arse" off a lot of people but they still feel obliged to oppose these on the strength of their fundamental undesirability. In similar terms, I was bored to the teeth with the referendum but felt obliged to oppose Yessism.

Unfortunately some members of the 45 minority just don't seem to understand the meaning of the two simple words "YOU LOST" so continue to bore the arse of us with the post-Smith Commission whingeing which has joined death and taxes on the list of life's certainties.

So, much as I would prefer to get on with my life without having to concern myself with this tedious nonsense, the obligation to defend the Union and oppose Separatism regrettably persists.

 

(And I suppose Nat-bating can be quite funny at times  )

 

PS - I hope I am allowed the edit I have just made in order to sort out the quote at the top?

Edited December 12, 2014 by Charles Bannerman

[Scotty]

Yes, very nice if you are a moderator and can hence scrutinise the techniques which ordinary punters use construct their posts. I would have thought that after all these years in the classroom, you would have a better grip of the issue of placing privileged information in the public domain.

The manner in which I compose and develop my posts is my business and nobody else's. It's the final product which is relevant.  Posters' means of reaching that end should not have to be the subject of comment from individuals who are appointed to perform a task on this forum and not to use their privileged position to attempt to score cheap points.

 

There was no abuse of privilege here and an apology is warranted for any suggestion of impropriety in the management of this website.

 

I would also point out that the act of posting on here is by default putting the information in the public domain yourself whether you later edit or delete it .... just like so many twitter trolls who get in trouble then try to erase history by deleting their posts. THEY put that stuff in the public domain, not the reader who may comment on it later (or the police who arrest them later despite the deletions).  

 

 

FOR THE RECORD

 

EVERYONE can see the time when a post is edited ... it shows under your post just like the one above even to users who are not logged in. This is not a privilege given to moderators only and they cannot stop their own posts from showing as edited either.

 

As Mantis pointed out, check the notifications settings in your profile. There are plenty of options to stay informed and if you post to a topic where someone has a notification set to email them when there is a post or when they are quoted (as in this case) then it is sent IMMEDIATELY the posting is made. If you then decide to delete your comment or to edit it, thats fine, but the email was still sent when you first posted your comments into the public domain and a reply on that basis is not abuse of privilege. 

Edited December 12, 2014 by Scotty
just to show even admins dont get to hide their editing status in this great conspiracy theory

[Charles Bannerman]

 

 

 

There was no abuse of privilege here and an apology is warranted for any suggestion of impropriety in the management of this website.

 

 

Fair dos Scotty and therefore profound apologies to Mantis. I wasn't aware that anything more than the last edit was visible to ordinary injuns. As it happens the way I construct posts is to batter out a quick draft and then do serial edits and saves to correct the errors. In fact I can then compund the situation since from time to time, purely for academic interest, I use my own posts to experiment with alternative sentence construction. A full record of my edits must therefore look pretty lengthy!

[+DoofersDad]

Sounds like a lengthier process than the publiciation of the Smith Commission Report!

[+DoofersDad]

Out of interest, did anyone on this site make any submissions to the Smith Commission?

Yes.

 

I made the point that it was more important to get any changes to devolved powers right than get them quickly and that therefore the Commission should not allow itself to be bullied into meeting unrealistic timetables. 

 

I also made the point that the referendum was about independence and nothing else.  There has been no democratic test of the appetitie of the electorate for further devolved powers.  I therefore requested that any proposed legislation to make significant changes to the legislation should be put to the electorate in a referendum.

 

Interestingly I recieved no acknowledgement of my submission.

[+DoofersDad]

Charles you may have been a decent teacher but political and financial journalist you are certainly not. I like the way you've used the typical redtop journalistic approach in choosing the paragraph you quote. Without the paragraph above and below it it can be made to look totally different to the actual story.

 

http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart

 

Big news Charles. The price is, at this moment, at its lowest for five years. Wait a minute though. Where was it five years and nine months ago. And guess what. It went back up. If you use the cursor on the linked chart you'll see the price in November at just over $65. In December its just under $69. Signs of an upturn maybe?

Do you honestly think the people who control the oil market are going to allow themselves to suffer. The Arabs are pissed off at American shale oil production so the create a price fall to shut down the shale oil producers then the price goes back up and its the Arabs who reap the benefits again.

 

Here's a line from USA Today that should please many Charles:- Low prices could also make new oil extraction technologies, such as fracking, less profitable.

OPEC have considerably less power than they once did but they do still have the advantage that they have reserves which are cheap to exploit and can therefore force prices down.  What they no longer have is the power to force prices up to previous levels.  What the American fracking has shown us is that oil can be extracted in large quantities by that method at a price which is competetive at prices which have been paid in recent years.  This is why prices have fallen. 

 

OPEC could theoretically up production and drop prices to squeeze the frackers but only at the cost of rapidly depleting their reserves whilst significantly reducing their profits.  That would not be a sensible long term option.  If they try to increase prices both the Americans and the Russians will undercut them.  All the signs are that oil prices will not be bouncing up to the kind of level the SNP were suggesting in the referendum campaign.  Had we made the mistake of voting "YES" in September, an independent Scotland would be facing a very uncertain economic future indeed.

[IBM]

 

Out of interest, did anyone on this site make any submissions to the Smith Commission?

Yes.

 

I made the point that it was more important to get any changes to devolved powers right than get them quickly and that therefore the Commission should not allow itself to be bullied into meeting unrealistic timetables. 

 

It was the three musketeers that stated the timetable for the delivery of all the extra power that they promised, they should not have made promises that they could not keep before the next General Election!

 

I also made the point that the referendum was about independence and nothing else.  There has been no democratic test of the appetitie of the electorate for further devolved powers.  I therefore requested that any proposed legislation to make significant changes to the legislation should be put to the electorate in a referendum.

 

Another referendum CB would enjoy that  

 

Interestingly I recieved no acknowledgement of my submission.

 

Now that's no surprise.