Norway gratefully took the gift of vast sums of money, upgraded its infrastructure and set about putting away money into two funds to look after the future. A future when the oil might run out, or the world would move on from oil and find other ways to fuel its economies.
Scotland, on the other hand, generously gave all her money to her next door neighbour, because Scots were too wee, stupid and poor to make any sensible decisions, and they spent it on making Scottish people unemployed, building a lavish motorway system and a variety of other grandiose projects (new underground lines, Crossrail, and so on, all in and around their capital), building up the City of London to be the biggest and, some say, most corrupt financial centre in the world, and of course buying nuclear weapons from their friends in America.
And because they wanted to give Scotland something back for all that lovely oil money ...and because the nuclear weapons were pretty damned dangerous and very unpopular and no one wanted them in their back yard... they put them just a few miles away from Scotland's largest centre of population, creating a few hundred jobs to make up for the million or so they had got rid of by closing factories, mills, mines and shipyards.
They were also able to buy a lot of favour from their friends by getting a job as America's patsy and going to war against anyone their transAtlantic friends didn't like.
And so it went on, everyone was happy... until just the other day Norway (with all it's pensions and social security funded and it's international investments being worth more than 1% of the total investment in the whole wide world) hit a land mark.
Every single one of Norway's population of just over 5 million men, women and children, became a millionaire in their own currency of the Kroner. The fund is THAT big.
This excited Scots who decided to inquire how much their oil fund (for they didn't expect two) was worth.
Still, not a bunch to let ourselves be discouraged, we can at least say in all honesty that Norwegians don't have the honour of having weapons of mass destruction, with the power to take out whole suburbs of Moscow (as long as they get permission from the USA) only a few miles away from Oslo.
So... nah nah nah nah nah, Norway!
++++++++++++++++
Had to add this...
Sorry Tris I've come across this over on Twitter. It seems just about everyone has nothing else to talk about tonight. LOL
ReplyDeletehttp://twitpic.com/dry17e
The man is too terrified to come to Scotland with or without his massive entourage to debate with Alex Salmond. Now he has to turn to Putin to ask him to provide help and assistance to defeat Alex Salmond. Whatever happened to the old "I'll fight with every fibre of my body to keep Scotland in the union!"
Good lord.
DeleteIs that what the Russian ship was doing in Scottish waters and why it took a day and a half from the English navy, such as it is, to get it's weary arse to the north of Scotland.
Still, I guess Cameron and Putin have a lot in common. Both intolerant, self serving dictators at heart.
Why don't they get Russia to bomb us into submission.
A nuke on Edinburgh would get rid of Salmond, and no decent hardworking English people need be hurt. Well not southerners anyway.
I'm still trying to get my head around this one. Twitter has been non stop all night over this, puns by the barrel load.
DeleteNow that this news has finally been broken it surely blows any chance of Better Together winning in September. As for Cameron he, in my view, has finally blown any chance of retaining Scotland within the UK. Mind you I have always thought that this would be Cameron's long term goal anyway. Sure he'll lose our oil revenue but with all that fracking now coming on line I don't think he's so worried hence all these articles where Cameron regularly undermines Better Together.
Going fishing for the king of fish.
DeleteOf course the Tories might like to lose Scotland from the point of view that at least for a while they would have an easier ride in England, but they couldn't afford to lose the money... and the embarrassment of being in charge when the wheels fell off would be a terrible stain on their history...
DeleteFracking may of course make up for the money, but the shame... I'm not sure.
If the SNP make this clear then maybe Niko will consider voting for them. As we know, Niko favours parties of the rich.
ReplyDeleteof course the SNP won't maltreat foreigners like his party. Nor, as a leadership candidate for his party said, will they say "We weren't set up as some sort of charity to help the poorest in society – the long-term unemployed, the benefit dependent, the drug addicted, the homeless." (Tom Harris MP 2011)
Niko claims to have Jewish ancestors. Surely this sort of rhetoric, once used against Jews, will frighten him "Object to mass immigration from the EU? Join the Romaphobe club!"
Oh wait, that was Tom Harris again
Niko's party introduced the Bedroom tax
Niko's Party started the abolition of social security and the NHS and the move towards only private provision
Niko's Party started the demonisatiion of the poor. MPs and Lords from his Party worked with the Tories to continue their work
Niko's Party refused to vote against tax cuts for the very rich, saying that they did so because they didn't like who had put foreard the motion
No wonder Niko wouldn't vote SNP, since Niko supports a Party that loves the rich, hates the poor, the sick, the foreign, he would have no common ground with the SNP
I asked if he had no principles, I asked the wrong question, I should have asked if he had any shame. I doubt it
Down to you Niko...
DeleteDo you support all these things that Harris said.
He's a horrid little right wing bag of Toryism isn't he?
Like that Smart bloke who would rather have a hundred years of Tory rule than an independent left wing Scotland... no wonder though, he's loaded.
(1) I am not jewish but do have a genetically inherited
Deletedisease/disability which under nataionalist rule 1933
would of led my family into the nationalist gas chamber
(lest we forget what nationalists do)
(2) Labour did not introduce the bedroom tax
that was the torys and we note the snp steadfastly
refuse with malice a forethought do do anything to help
those affected.
The rest are the fault of the labour party entrenching
Thatcherite social and economic policys in the uk
and is why a left the labour party.
economic policys the snp under Alex Salmond believe to
have ' no problem with ' alex himself said.
and no i do not agree with allowing people
(most who are hard working and decent)
coming here from other nations and taking jobs from the citizens of the uk
Niko
DeleteI take it you don't keep up with the news. In England and Wales, NICE, which sets which treatments are to be available in the NHS, has decided to restrict new treatments to those that are "socially useful". IE if the person treated has little likelihood of "contributing to society" then they will not get it>
That is your UK state
You continue to smear the SNP because of a shared word
Do you count the following as also part of the German Gov't from 1933 to 45, The National Westminster Bank, the National Express Bus Company, the National Executive of the Labour Party, the UK National Measurement Office. the National Council for Voluntary Organisations.
As relevant to the cheap, baseless, false smear that you make.
The Nazis were racist, holding to a false idea of "Aryan" (who are in fact Iranians) type. THe SNP are a multi-faith, multi-belief party. You are typing shit
Labour DID introduce the bedroom tax (as well as all those other measures that the poor and sick are suffering under). They introduced it as part of the Local Housing Allowance in 2008
The SNP voted £20 milllion pounds to help those suffering from the Bedroom Tax. Labour voted against it
As to the last, apart from your UKIP bollocks as the end. That is deliberately misinterpreting a standard rhetorical form
If I said "I have no problem with Niko's crap that he writes, as much as the ungrammatical and badly spelled way he writes it" would you really believe I have no issue with WHAT you say, only with how you express it. No you would not.
That is the form Alex Salmond used and it does your side no credit to be childish about it
You want to keep foreigners out. Admit it to yourself, join UKIP as you so clearly want to do
By the way, if you are looking as to who invented Concentration Camps, that was the British.
DeleteYeah can't add much to that Anon. Except that the £20 million the government voted to help people with bedroom tax was the maximum allowed under UK law for a devolved administration to undermine the rule of Westminster.
DeleteIt is true that Labour urged them to exceed it, surely not understanding (having never been in government under a hostile regime in London) that if they did exceed it, Westminster could overrule them and take the money and possibly the government's power in that field, away.
I'd quite like to be a millionaire.
ReplyDeleteEven in Norwegian kroner.
Is that a bad thing?
I would probably give quite a lump of it away to educate children, or provide medicines to those that needed them, nor find either of these things odd. Perhaps their newspapers are more, err, engaged with determining right from wrong?
Our current Westminster leadership seems beholden elsewhere.
Your post of a couple of days ago, about who we attack as a society: the weak, the poor and the vulnerable rather than the rich and the mendacious, might alter a lot if we were all millionaires.
If the poor were the rich, and the rich were just us, well....
I think Iain Banks had a lot to say about a post scarcity society.
There is more than a potential to make the 'Culture' a reality in Scotland when we already see it elsewhere.
douglas clark
PS: I have no idea how you post here just with your name or summat! The options, the options! are beyond a simple man's comprehension.
Viva Norge!
(Ed: Is that right? Viva?)
Hey Douglas: In French it's Vive la Norvège; in Norwegian: Lenge leve Norge and in Latin it's Vivat Norway...
ReplyDeleteAs for commenting under your name... I'm not sure what you're typing on but, beneath here on a PC, it says "Comment as" and there's a drop down... Go to Name/URL and type in your name...
That should work :)
The thinking is of course that the Norwegians (rich though they seem to us) aren't actually getting any of that money to spend, so they aren't really suddenly millionaires. Their government has put the money away for them, invested all over the world...
By contrast the UKOK government has pissed it up a wall...
Probably sending some now to Mr Putin to cover his expenses for dealing with Mr Salmond. How was it the KGB dealt with people again?
Just as well police Scotland have given Mr Salmond some protection.
He should remind Putin that he has nuclear weapons
on his territory. :) :) :)
Wingland has been disabled. What the....! Best, Tom
ReplyDeleteIt's back online now.
DeleteThanks Tom... I noticed that last night. It did occur to me that perhaps the KGB don't mess around like MIwhatever!
DeleteRelieved to hear he's back with us...
I love teh comment on Wings which says that KGB now stands for Keep Great Britain!
DeleteWell as you probably know by now, When Westminster speak of oil to the rest of the world or the EU its a magnificent asset. However when Westminster speak of oil to Scots it a crippling drawback ready to run out at any minute.
ReplyDeleteNow Cameron has enlisted the FSB to scupper the independence referendum, we'll soon have Vladimir Putin showing up on the Waverley steamship with his karate suit on Hi-Karating every nationalsit he can find.
On a more serious note though, these turn of events shows just what a lowlife piece of sh*te Cameron really is, it also shows me that Westminster are running scared of Scottish independence...GOOD.!
Yes. I was interested to see that he has already entered into talks with his enemy in Spain... the one he sent a gunship to deal with.
DeleteThey appear to have reached an agreement. If I were Gibraltarian I'd be very worried. I can imagine the spiv doing a deal. I mean which does he want to keep more, Scotland (with oil) or Gibraltar (with monkeys)?