Rhys

pmsl AJ

KSA-Cossie

iTrader: (4)

Good find aj.

C4llyT

Good point Mr Kowalski

Mr S1

iTrader: (2)

FPMSL !!! thing that I can't get is the thread starter has a load of Polish stuff in his sig !!! WTF is all that about ???

C4llyT

Poles are more liked by the English than Jocks

Andy_R

iTrader: (3)

Us Scots are bad with our dislike of England (not necesarly the English people) but England!
What other nation has such a dislike for thier old friends, that they gather on mass to address the haggis & piss in the water before its piped off to the alud enemy as drinking water.

ricky_2006

scottish are the fucking worse for hating the english.

go and eat some haggis

"drink some tea" - is that wot u gna say lol, i couldnt give a fuck tbh

simhopper

i am english but are you really that dumb

where the fook do you think most of the oil(fuel) come from

if scotland ever got independance you cunts would have a large increase in tax to cover this

as much as i think the scots are a bunch of useless drunks,the english are a load of dumb fooks,no fookin wonder the poles are shaggin you all!

carfixz

absolute pish, tho you have managed to plunder billions from us in north sea oil revenue

dazoriginal

cheerie

mechanic28

iTrader: (5)

then when the oil runs out from scotland we wil give you your independence then start refining the oil in the falkland island which we own

S1rst

@ this thread.

Andy_R

iTrader: (3)

Is that only after the "Ok!" has come from Brussels?

mechanic28

iTrader: (5)

of course

Csm

Im not racist ....................

I hate every cunt

In all honesty there are some seriously wanker replies on this topic tho and a few have hit the nail on the head from both sides of the border

Rab

You rang?

RichardPON

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5afCwO8JxP4

Barry_GTi

Hahahaha Pon, was thinking about that earlier but couldn't remember the exact phrases!!!

NEO™®©

right....................read the whole damn thread and was gonna bang it in the bin as all i see is bitching from either side of the border, last chance all get along or this thread goes in the bin!!!

Iain Mac

The fact that we are to get free prescriptions in Scotland is neither here nor there for England as it doesn't cost you a penny. We get a block grant from Westminster - which is a fraction of the oil wealth pouring into the Treasury - and we then decide how to spend it. Our politicos have decided that free prescriptions for all and fully paid police pay-rises are a better use for our money than some of the madcap things yours decide to support but that's your money they are pissing away on your behalf. We'll spend our money, you spend yours.

For those who still think that Scotland depends in any way on England, why not have a look at the Cabinet papers from the Governments (of any political flavour) that have been released over the last few years under the 30 year rule. Just type the words into Google and take your pick. Remember that these are Cabinet papers prepared by and for some of the most well-informed people on the subject in the world. Then compare and contrast with what they said in public and which some of you have taken to be 100% true.

Here are just a few examples from a wide range of media sources and from 2005/6 - and the revelations just keep coming. I've highlighted what I think are the main interesting points to have a look at.

Remember, it's easy to have an opinion, it's a lot harder to do some research and learn the facts.


The Independent December 2005
How black gold was hijacked: North sea oil and the betrayal of Scotland

In 1975, the Government faced a dilemma: how to exploit the potential of its new oil fields without fuelling demands for Scottish independence. So it buried the evidence

By Ben Russell and Paul Kelbie
Friday, 9 December 2005

It was a document that could have changed the course of Scottish history. Nineteen pages long, Written in an elegant, understated academic hand by the leading Scottish economist Gavin McCrone, presented to the Cabinet office in April 1975 and subsequently buried in a Westminster vault for thirty years. It revealed how North Sea oil could have made an independent Scotland as prosperous as Switzerland.

The Freedom of Information Act has yielded many insights and revelations into the working of the British government, but none so vivid as the contents of Professor McCrone's paper, written on request in the dog days of Ted Heath's Tory government and only just unearthed under the FOI rules.

Earlier this week, the 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, Mr Brown extracted an extra Ł6.5b in tax from North Sea oil and gas producers, to be taken over the next three years. Economists like the Liberal Democrats' Treasury spokesman Vince Cable say that high oil prices have already bailed out the Treasury to the tune of Ł1 billion this year.

Imagine then, what the oil could have done for a Scotland which chose independence in the mid 1970s and claimed ownership of the reserves.

Thirty years ago, Professor McCrone answered that very question and his conclusions shocked his political masters.

Although BP first discovered the giant Forties oilfield in 1970 - which by 1977 was producing 500,000 barrels of oil a day, equivalent to a quarter of Nigeria's entire daily production - the real rush for "black gold" had only begun around 1973, when the Yom Kippur War caused a crisis in the Middle East and forced prices up to around $16 a barrel.

By the time the oil companies realised that North Sea drilling was not only cost-effective but highly lucrative, and the British government realised it was sitting on a gold mine, the Scottish nationalists had already laid claim to the oil.

The "It's Scotland's Oil" campaign began in 1972. If only they had seen the professor's research.

An independent Scotland's budget surpluses as a result of the oil boom, wrote Professor McCrone, would be so large as to be "embarrassing".

Scotland's currency "would become the hardest in Europe, with the exception perhaps of the Norwegian Kronor." From being poorer than their southern neighbours, Scots would quite possibly become richer. Scotland would be in a position to lend heavily to England and "this situation could last for a very long time into the future."

In short, the oil would put the British boot, after centuries of resentment, firmly on the foot standing north of the border.

Within days of its receipt at Westminster in 1974, Professor McCrone's document was judged as incendiary and classified as secret. It would be sat upon for the next thirty years.

The mandarins demanded that Professor McCrone's 19-page analysis be given "only a most restricted circulation in the Scottish Office because of the extreme sensitivity of the subject." The subject was sensitive alright.

This is a story of Whitehall betrayal that will satisfy the pre-conceptions of the most extreme Scottish anglophobe.

It was the comparison with Norway that particularly worried the Westminster politicians. In the mid 1970s of course, Norway was fully independent and about to take advantage of an oil boom that has generated undreamed-of prosperity to the present day.

In Scotland, the situation was somewhat different, and potentially explosive.

National pride had been hugely galvanised by the appearance of the Scotland Football Team in the 1974 World Cup, a competition for which the England side had failed to qualify.

But economically, the outlook was bleak. Heavy manufacturing, which had been the heart and soul of the Scottish economy for generations, was in deep trouble.

Between 1970 and 1974 the number of coal mines in Scotland fell by a third, while steel production plunged by a fifth.

Shipbuilding, the mainstay of the Clyde, was in particular trouble. After the Heath government refused to bail out four yards in Upper Clyde in 1971, trade unionists staged a work-in and occupied the yards.

Some 70,000 people marched calling for government help and a 48-hour strike by other workers brought out more than 100,000 in support.

Meanwhile, in politics, the nationalists were riding high as never before. The 1970 general election saw the SNP poll just 11.4 per cent of the vote and one seat. But in February 1974 they scored 21.9 per cent and won seven seats. Within eight months, by the October election of that year, their support had risen to the all-time high of 30.4 per cent of the vote, and 11 seats.

The party was also nipping at the heels of Labour in 34 other Labour-held seats. This was the high tide of Scottish nationalism.

Previously unheard of would-be terrorist cells began to emerge: The "Scottish Legion", "Jacobites", "Border Clan", 'Tartan Army" and the "100 Organisation", which took its name from the famous historic Declaration of Arbroath, stating: "So long as 100 of us remain alive we will never submit to English rule."

American companies based in Aberdeen became nervous that a Scottish breakaway, socialist in outlook, was threatening their interests. Pressure was exerted on the government to control the situation.

Professor McCrone's report, in such volatile circumstances, would almost certainly have provoked a turning point in the history of the United Kingdom.

Billy Wolfe, who was leader of the SNP at the time and the man credited with developing the nationalists as a clearly defined left-of-centre political party, is in no doubt of what the McCrone findings could have meant.

"If that information had been published before the October 1974 election," said Mr Wolfe, "we would have won Scotland and it would be a much wealthier and happier place.

"A whole lot of economic factors would be a lot different, especially in the fishing, steel and shipbuilding industries. It would have been a tremendous boost for Scotland."

Tam Dalyell, who served as Labour MP in West Lothian for 43 years, agrees that the document could have led to independence. "In my view it might have done," he said. "It could have tipped the balance it a number of seats including mine. Oil was very much a totemic issue. It was new and it was dramatic. Politics at that time was very different. In 1974 my majority went from around 6,000 in February to around 2,000 after the October general election.

"It was most unpleasant. People were saying 'it's our oil'."

By the mid 1970s, international convention had already agreed that the North Sea north of the 55th parallel was under Scottish jurisdiction. That meant around 90 per cent of the UK's oil and gas reserves fell within Scottish waters. Such was the fear of the rise of Scottish nationalism that the document remained secret under the governments of Callaghan, Thatcher, Major and even Tony Blair.

Its very existence only emerged when Scottish National Party researchers, thought to be acting on a tip off from a former official, placed a carefully-worded request under the freedom of information legislation.

Next week the Scottish Executive is due to publish the annual Government Expenditure and Revenue in Scotland analysis, which charts expenditure north of the border.

Statistics for 2002- 03 showed expenditure per head of Ł6,579 in Scotland compared with Ł5,453 in England. It also showed that Scotland received Ł9.3 billion more than it took in taxes. It is an old English nationalist refrain that the Scots are both over-subsidised and over-represented in the British Parliament.

In response to the first of those charges, for the first time in thirty years the Scots now, in the form of Professor McClone's suppressed report, have hard evidence to suggest that it could have been Scotland, not England, sending money across the border. Yesterday Alex Salmond, the SNP leader, made it clear that the 31-year-old McClone papers were not just a dusty history lesson, but would form a central part of their campaigning for the future.

He said: "The impact of this would have been dynamite. It would have had great influence.

"I was astonished by how direct the paper was, and appalled at the extent of what has been hidden from the people. McCrone was saying that an independent Scotland would be Europe's Switzerland. The Labour party were saying that it would be like Bangladesh.

"This is hugely important. But it was not just important then. It is important now. Gordon Brown's black hole is being filled by black oil."

At the time of Professor McCrone's report to the cabinet office, the SNP claimed that North Sea Oil would yield Ł800 million a year for the government by 1980.

Professor McCrone's main criticism of their analysis was that their forecasts were "far too low". He put the sum at about Ł3 billion.

Scottish independence had become a mortal threat to the British exchequer. "The importance of North Sea oil" wrote, the Professor, "is that it raises just this issue in a more acute form than at any time."


The BBC December 2005

SNP seizes on North Sea oil memo

Documents released by the Cabinet Office under the 30-year rule have been seized on by Nationalists.

A 1975 memo by Sir Kenneth Berrill, head of the central policy review staff, said Scotland could "go it alone" on the profits of North Sea oil.

SNP leader Alex Salmond said it showed "the extent of Whitehall's duplicity".

He said the memo admitted that a UK government would have to divert huge resources to Scotland for it to be as well off as under independence.

The memo follows the release in October of a secret report written in 1974 which said that Scotland's oil revenues could have made a case for repealing the Act of Union.

The advice, prepared for ministers by economist Gavin McCrone, indicated that Scotland would prosper on the profits of North Sea oil.

The latest document was written by Sir Kenneth Berrill in reply to a Foreign Office memo which said the future of the Union was "by no means secure" and that devolution should be used to buy off calls for independence.

Sir Kenneth warned that increasing public spending for Scotland could anger deprived parts of England.

And he said it would be hard to fight the SNP's economic case for independence because "on fairly reasonable assumptions about the profits to be made from North Sea oil, Scotland could go it alone quite comfortably".

The SNP said other documents showed "most cynical" attempts to counter nationalist sentiment by exploiting tensions between mainland Scotland and Orkney and Shetland.

Mr Salmond said: "These latest devastating revelations demonstrate the full extent of Whitehall's duplicity and trickery in its desperate desire to cheat Scotland out of her oil and gas wealth."

"These latest secret documents confirm that UK policy towards oil in Scotland has always been motivated by smash-and-grab tactics.

"The focus is to grab as much of Scotland's riches as possible for Westminster and smash any claim by Scotland to a share of her own wealth."

He added: "The duplicity is quite extraordinary and the language of the most senior people in government regards Scotland as a colonial property to be divided and ruled by Westminster.

"The relevance for the politics of today is perfectly clear. Westminster is still engaged in smash-and-grab tactics, as the chancellor's recent oil tax announcement illustrates."


The BBC January 2006 (Note Denis Healey's quote which I have highlighted)

Official papers which were previously secret have shown how ministers were advised to delay devolution to maintain control of North Sea oil revenues.

The 1970s documents warned that if devolution increased calls for independence, the loss of oil income might leave the UK virtually bankrupt.

The documents are highlighted in the BBC Radio Four series Document.

Prominent Scottish National Party supporter Sir Sean Connery has called for an inquiry into the affair.

Harold Wilson's Labour government came into power in 1974 promising a referendum on devolution for Scotland.

The same election saw major advances for the Scottish National Party, fighting under the slogan It's Scotland's Oil.

A senior Whitehall civil servant wrote: "Progress towards devolution should be delayed for as long as possible, consistent with honouring the government's commitment to move down the devolution route and containing the SNP lobby in parliament."

Another official warned in 1975 of the impact on the rest of Britain's economy if Scotland moved to independence and took control of North Sea oil.

He said: "The Scots have really got us over a barrel here. The prospects for a separate English, Welsh and Ulster economy on the same assumption must look pretty grim."

A referendum on devolution was eventually called in 1979.

A slim majority of people in Scotland voted in favour but not enough to pass the threshold of 40% of the entire electorate required by legislation.

Sir Sean suggested the result of the vote could have been different if Scots had known the full truth about their oil reserves.

The former Bond star has called for an inquiry into the affair

"This is genuine evidence of what I consider collusion by people who are not in the position to make that decision.

"The depth of it, the cynicism of it, is appalling. There should be a genuine inquiry and it should be exposed."

Lord Healey, then Labour Chancellor Denis Healey, said: "The real tragedy for us would have been Scotland run by the Scot Nats because they had no interest in the rest of Britain."

Papers released at the end of last year by the Cabinet Office under the 30-year rule revealed a 1975 memo by Sir Kenneth Berrill, head of the central policy review staff, saying that Scotland could "go it alone" on the profits of North Sea oil.

SNP leader Alex Salmond said in December that it showed "the extent of Whitehall's duplicity".

He said the note admitted that a UK government would have to divert huge resources to Scotland for it to be as well off as under independence.


The Times January 31, 2006

Mandarins hid Scots’ oil wealth
By Angus Macleod, Scottish Political Editor

WHITEHALL was gripped with fear in the 1970s that independence for Scotland, with the resultant loss of oil revenue to the Treasury, would plunge the rest of Britain into an economic crisis, according to previously secret documents just released.

Indeed, so great was the concern that senior Labour ministers at the time, including Denis Healey, who was the Chancellor, and the late Roy Jenkins, then Home Secretary, pleaded with Cabinet colleagues to put the brake on government plans for devolution.

While the prospects for the rest of Britain without oil were described as “grim”, the Treasury privately acknowledged that those for Scotland were so strong that Scots could have been one third better off than the English within a few years of separating from the rest of Britain. The revelations are contained in documents released under the 30-year rule from the Public Record Office at Kew and last night they led Sir Sean Connery, the long-time Scottish National Party supporter, to call for an inquiry into what he said was “collusion” to deny Scotland its proper share of oil revenues.

The documents show that in 1974 senior civil servants advised the incoming Labour Government to delay its promised devolution referendum in Scotland in order to prevent the destabilisation of the British economy. The advice was given against the background of a major electoral surge by the SNP that year on the back of its campaigning slogan “It’s Scotland’s Oil”. The SNP argued that an independent Scotland was economically viable and secured 11 seats at Westminster.

The SNP’s electoral breakthrough created a feeling that Scottish independence was inevitable and sent shockwaves through Whitehall. It led one senior civil servant to tell incoming Labour ministers: “Progress towards devolution should be delayed for as long as possible, consistent with honouring the Government’s commitment to move down the devolution route and containing the SNP lobby in Parliament. The longer this can be played the better.”

Senior civil servants were alarmed that, if people in Scotland learnt the true worth of the North Sea reserves, it might prove the first step towards full independence.

The papers make clear that the Treasury was in no doubt that the SNP’s sums were correct — if anything, the Nationalists had underestimated how wealthy Scotland would be if it decided to go it alone.

One Treasury official gave warning of the impact on the rest of the British economy if Scotland moved towards independence and took control of North Sea oil. “The Scots have really got us over a barrel here,” he wrote. Another Treasury official predicted: “It is conceivable that income per head in Scotland could be 25 per cent or 30 per cent higher than that prevailing in England during the 1980s given independence.”

A referendum in Scotland was eventually held in March 1979 and while a slim majority of Scots voted for a Scottish Assembly, there were not enough “yes” votes to overcome the threshold of 40 per cent of the electorate that had been set by MPs in the Commons.

NORTH SEA GOLD
# Discovered in the early 1960s, it came on line in 1971. Rising prices in the 1980s made exploitation economically feasible
# Most belongs to Britain and Norway, some to Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany
# British reserves were valued at Ł63.4 billion at the end of 2004 — an increase of 22.9 per cent since 2003. Since 1994 their nominal value has more than doubled from Ł28.5 bn
# In 1999 production peaked at 6 million barrels a day


Scotland on Sunday - January 2006

North Sea oil calmed UK’s crisis-ridden waters
January 1, 2006

DID North Sea oil save Britain from disaster? Or was it a resource wrongfully plundered and pillaged 30 years ago?

How easily we have forgotten how near to meltdown the British economy has been in our lifetimes. Not the ERM crisis of September 1992 that did for the Major government; this was a blip compared with the crisis of 1975 that did for the Labour government of the time.

Cabinet papers released last week under the 30-year rule reveal two haunting truths about this period. The first is how near we came to a serious financial meltdown. The second is the acute sensitivity to the SNP challenge and the implications that it carried for the control of the North Sea oilfields. For it was this asset that was, in the words of a 1975 Foreign Office memo, a “rainbow spanning the sombre horizon”. It was nothing less than the lifeline that led Britain, helped by an emergency IMF loan the following year, to eventual stability and prosperity.

Rossco

Foook me that must be the longest post ever!

Iain Mac

It may well be but hopefully it answers just some of the bullshit "facts" that have been trotted out in this thread and elsewhere about how poor we are, how dependent we are, how we glass people in the street for fun (some of us - I'm ashamed to say - do, but so do some of you), etc etc.

It really pisses me off when otherwise intelligent people will swallow every line they are fed and take it all as true without asking any questions, seeking other corroboration, or even just asking if it sounds true.

Just ask yourself, if Scotland is such a drain on England, why are you so desperate to hold on to us? A good example is the fact that the devolution referendum in the 70s needed a 40% vote in favour, even though most MPs at the time couldn't command that level of turnout in their own constituencies. Why do you think that was? Read the articles above and see if you get any other good questions to ask.

James-W

Not seen one of ginge's post then about the hood?
Also, who gives a fook!?
The thread starter is fucking pathetic though.

15D

Time for a cultural interlude.......

some poetry my thinks......


erhem.....


I love to go a wandering


Along the Cliffs of Dover


And if I meet an Englishman



I'll push the bastard over

Altratz

I never had problems with the scots before this year i was fortunate to get a ticket forthe rugby world cup final in Paris!

To my horror and total disgust it turns out the Scots with tickets and around the town were all proudly supporting the Boks!

so my first question is why not wear your home nations strip and be proud instead of just trying to support a team that has nothing and no meaning to you at all?

and the second is if you hate us so much why dont you break away and be independant so we dont have to keep proping up your economy!

As far as im concerned your just a small county that unfortunately we have to look after so dont get pissed off about your monopoly money when there are obviously far bigger issues caused by you lot!

aduz

oh boo hoo pick your dummy up no one gives a fuck about your monopoly money,face it you'll always live in a insignificant shit hole called scotland, no wonder your sad

CossieRich

iTrader: (1)

who gives a shit. go back to school

foreigneRS

can't believe that nobody has yet mentioned Golden Brown - a scottish bloke in charge in england

Lambchop

iTrader: (1)

i think thats out of order mate

p17fld

What do you call a Scots woman with one leg?
Eileen

Iain Mac

Why would you EXPECT us to support one of our sporting rivals over another? Should Germany support England because (we collectively) beat them twice? Maybe France, Belgium, Netherlands etc should support you because (we collectively) saved them twice?

Still the horseshit about England "propping up our economy" and "looking after" us - did you read any of the bits I quoted?

And while personally I'd love Scotland AND England to be independent nations, too many of my countrymen have fallen for the same lies as you.

Oh yes, and even when we do convince the fearties, Parliamentary arithmetic means we aren't allowed to go independent unless the English agree - not with 59 seats out of over 600, and the English ones knowing they would depend on Scottish aid to keep YOUR economy going!!

Iain Mac

That's another benefit you get of having us in the Union - you get Scotsmen to run your country, your economy and your military along with I don't know what else.

Get over it or we'll start talking about what Maggie T did to Scotland when she had 10 of the 72 Scottish seats and why, even now, the Tories only have one Scottish seat at Westminster.

Altratz

Altratz wrote:
I never had problems with the scots before this year i was fortunate to get a ticket forthe rugby world cup final in Paris!

To my horror and total disgust it turns out the Scots with tickets and around the town were all proudly supporting the Boks!

so my first question is why not wear your home nations strip and be proud instead of just trying to support a team that has nothing and no meaning to you at all?


Why would you EXPECT us to support one of our sporting rivals over another? Should Germany support England because (we collectively) beat them twice? Maybe France, Belgium, Netherlands etc should support you because (we collectively) saved them twice?

Well perhaps its because i have always enjoyed the home nations doing well in anything they have turned there hands too!!! if the final had been Scotland v South Africa id have been rooting for you! but you lot obviously feel so much different about the situation so unfortunatley ill take the same dim witted view as the the majority of your country men and support the opposition whoever they maybe!

charlie luciano

iTrader: (3)

I would imagine this has something to do with the old braveheart days, it was the same during the world cup at football with many jocks donning german shirts which I think is absouloutely outrageous, as a kid I would always support teams from the british isles that included the jocks unless they were playing England of course but now I always want the jocks to lose which they seem to be good at Gazza's goal springs to mind but hey ho if they want to support foriegn teams I guess thats their funeral



Luciano

joel_winders

Fuck Scotland the only good thing to come out of that place is the M74

Lambchop

iTrader: (1)

http://www2006.org/top20/inventions/

suppose you dont like watching tv eh?

Turbocabbie

Funny how thats on a pro-scottish site when the answer is not that simple. Many people can lay claim to this !!

On December 2, 1922, in Sorbonne, France, Edwin Belin, an Englishman, who held the patent for the transmission of photographs by wire as well as fiber optics and radar, demonstrated a mechanical scanning device that was an early precursor to modern television. Belin’s machine took flashes of light and directed them at a selenium element connected to an electronic device that produced sound waves. These sound waves could be received in another location and remodulated into flashes of light on a mirror.

Scottish inventor, John Logie Baird, first publicly demonstrated television on 26 January 1926, in his small laboratory in the Soho district of London. In order to tackle the problem of television, John Logie Baird chose a system which employed mechanical scanning. There were various methods available to achieve this, and Baird selected a system which used the Nipkow disc as being the most promising. Invented by Paul Nipkow in 1884, this disc had a series of apertures cut into it, which could then be used to scan an image.

The Americans will tell you it was Philo Taylor Farnsworth . The Russians and RCA will tell you it was Vladimir Zworykin. Like all complex devices, the television has many contributing inventors.

Lambchop

iTrader: (1)

ask anyone with half a clue and John logie Baird will be the name

rauri

guy we are missing the bigger picture here,we are being over-run with poles and soon to follow romanians and we are arguing with our neighbours







we will both be minority races in britain soon (the welsh dont count )

J9BBY

Wikipedia never lies;

On John Logie Baird.

"He built what was to become the world's first working television set by purchasing an old hatbox and a pair of scissors, some darning needles, a few bicycle light lenses, a used tea chest, and a great deal of sealing wax and glue.

There is a working model of the Baird televisor in the London Science Museum."