From the New Zealand Herald.
It was a document that could have changed the course of Scottish history. Nineteen pages long, written by Scottish economist Gavin McCrone, presented to the Cabinet office in April 1975 and subsequently buried in a Westminster vault for 30 years.
McCrone's paper, written for Ted Heath's Tory Government and only just released under the Freedom of Information Act, revealed how North Sea oil could have made an independent Scotland as rich as Switzerland.
Earlier this week, Chancellor Gordon Brown underlined the vital revenue stream that North Sea oil still is in the context of British politics.
In his pre-Budget report, Brown extracted an extra £6.5 billion (NZ$16 billion) in tax from North Sea oil and gas producers, to be taken over the next three years. Imagine then, what the oil could have done for a Scotland which chose independence in the mid-1970s and claimed ownership.
Thirty years ago, McCrone's conclusions shocked his political masters. An independent Scotland's Budget surpluses, wrote McCrone, would be so large as to be "embarrassing". Scotland's currency "would become the hardest in Europe with the exception of the Norwegian kronor".
Scotland would be in a position to lend heavily to England, a situation that could last "for a very long time".
3 comments:
Never mind. The Scots have still got bags of influence without it.
In for a penny in for a pound I say. I see a lot more people who believe that now is the time, but I remain sceptical. Even my Mum, is sounding nationalistic these days. I think on balance, Scotland does pretty well in their arrangement with the Union.
Nice choice of posting for today.
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