RANDOM THOUGHTS

This from the Facebook Page of YES to an Independent Scotland:

I do believe that the "No" campaign might have been trying to mislead us as I recently found some strange anomalies in their argument during a recent trip to Belgium and France.

1) I sailed to Zeebrugge on a ship that was called the "Pride of York". It was built in Govan, but was owned by P&O not the MoD. The NO people told me that Govan can only survive if it gets MoD contracts, but they apparently build ship for other people too.

2) I travelled from Belgium to France on a motorway and there were no border controls, just a sign. The NO people said Scotland and England would have border passport checks. Could they be lying about this too?

3) I visited Brugge which is in a small country called Belgium with a population of ~11 million. They use the Euro for currency, but they seemed to have a vibrant economy and I didn't see any closed shops unlike my hometown of Ayr where they use the Pound and have lots of closed shops.

4) On the way into Brugge I saw lots of Wind Turbines, but the city was full of tourists. The No people tell me that tourists hate wind turbines and that wind turbines destroy tourism. This didn't seem to be the case in Belgium.

5) When in Belgium I visited a WW1 cemetery where the vast majority of graves were of soldiers from Scottish regiments. I read that 1 in 4 Scots soldiers died in WW1 where as 1 in 10 was the average fatality rate for other UK soldiers. This seemed strange as the "No" people tell me we are "Better Together", but it seems that we suffered 60% more fatalities than we should have done if we had the same fatality rate as the rest of the UK.

I am now confused and suspect that I may have been deceived by the "Better Together" campaign and the British media.

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According to the Daily Mail: 

"Now, as the shifting sands of UK oil duty settle into place, the industry is expecting several years of lacklustre investment to give way to a mini-boom."

"Barring unforeseen disasters, the life of Britain's most valuable natural resource may yet last decades longer than ever seemed possible."

"Nearly 40 years after production began in 1975, there are about 20bn barrels of oil left under the North Sea. A hefty chunk of Britain's finances will depend on the oil industry's success in finding and extracting them."

Alex Salmond told the Andrew Marr Show that the industry forecast for the next 40 years was for a greater income than the last 40 years. 

Eddy Mair retorted with..."ah, but it won't last forever".

... What can you say to that, except "Good old dependable BBC. They may put you down but they never let you down".

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Johann Lamont has been criticised by Labour MPs over her plans for further devolution of powers to the Scottish Parliament.

MPs claim that they were not consulted about the plans and one MP described them as ‘barking’. Scotland on Sunday also claimed that Lamont hadn't  bothered to discuss her proposals with Ed Balls.

Why is it that Johann never seems to manage to pull all the parts of the party, of which she is supposedly leader, together, before she makes monumental changes to Labour Party policy, apparently working from notes made of the back of a fag packet? Who is advising this woman?