ALTHOUGH I generally agree with Dr Ralph Houston’s sentiments in the Long Letter of January 27, there are a couple of points I would see from a different angle.
Would the SNP lose its reason for existing if Scotland became independent? As Dr Houston points out, there is a lot that will need to be done in setting up an independent country, and whatever party is in power in the first few years will certainly set the tone and style of government for generations to come.
The SNP have certainly come a long way in recent years both at local and national levels and you could also add in international levels as well. Gone are the days when prospective candidates hoped to hold on to their deposit and had few policies other than independence. It is these policies that the electorate judge them on.
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Dr Houston in his third point thinks that we cannot rely on oil and that Westminster will not yield oil. Both facts are not factually correct. Under international law/maritime law, the oil and gas fields are mainly in Scottish territorial waters. Not to mention that there are oil fields in the Clyde and there could also be oil on the mainland (certainly there was some tests done in the 1970s along the Ayrshire coast and I would assume the Kintyre peninsula).
It is of course a misconception that oil is only used for the automotive industry and is only turned into petrol and diesel. There are a number of gasses including butane, propane and acetylene which most people will readily come across. Then there are the lubricating oils used in industry (as Dr Houston asserts, we will need to build up our industries); farms wouldn’t survive without fertilisers; then there are the nylons, polyesters, synthetic rubbers, plastics and acrylics, dyes and paints which we couldn’t survive without today.
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It was estimated that in 2018 Scotland had about 250 years of oil reserves (at the then extraction rate). Obviously, that can be extended by a large percentage by how much you extract at any time and what usage it will be put to. When coupled with a Norway-style oil fund, this puts a future independent Scotland in a very strong position, and that goes for any Scottish currency for generations to come if the oil reserves are looked after properly and managed.
It is for this main reason that Westminster doesn’t want Scotland to become independent and it is this very reason that if we do become independent, the rUK will certainly have to drop out of the G7 countries and most likely the G20 nations. A lot of their prestigious projects like HS1 and HS2 will take forever to pay off, they won’t be able to pay for the upkeep of Trident and then who knows how much Covid is going to cost Westminster. The Scottish economy could, with the right management, be one of the stronger European ones.
Alexander Potts
Kilmarnock
DR Ralph Houston is promulgating the notion that Greece being a member of the euro was bad for it, as if that somehow caused its fiscal misfortune. To believe this ignores that Greece’s problems were substantially caused by two factors: failure to collect properly due taxes while simultaneously embarking on a social programme it couldn’t afford.
If there is an advantage to having your “own currency” it must surely be to set your own interest rates to attract investment and inflate the currency to fund pet projects, neither of which are sound fiscal policy. Rather than working against Greece, being in the euro that came to its rescue was a blessing. What irked the Greeks was the country being rightly “encouraged” to get its fiscal act together – the piper had to be paid.
Yes, Scotland will need its own currency, certainly in the short term during a transition period after which alternatives may be considered, However, this would not be a problem, as the 60 other territories that seceded from Westminster control discovered.
Jim Taylor
Edinburgh
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