I AM sitting here, at home, watching 1972 happening all over again.
A rudderless Conservative party, lost in its own self-belief, out of touch with ordinary people, selling increasing numbers of strikes and demonstrations against their policies as nothing but the work of “left-wing” trouble-makers through the usual outlets at the Daily Mail and Torygraph. The party of “tax cuts” to reboot the economy, yet by 1973 the IMF needed to step in to stop Sterling crashing and bash some sense into the heads of the Conservative Cabinet.
That time round the Conservative and Labour governments of the 1970s had to rely on the discoveries of oil and gas in the North Sea and future sales extraction licences to finance their disastrous economic policies and bring the UK back form the brink.
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Here we are in 2022 and it is Groundhog Day again, a Conservative party that has fallen to greed and backhanders for their chums, some unaccounted-for £37 billion in PPE alone before looking into the over-priced contracts awarded to the likes of Capita (Tory donors) for IT projects that never worked or are still not fit for purpose.
The billions of pounds of overspend on everything from London Crossrail, HS2, defence projects, £6 billion minimum to get the Type 45s for the Royal Navy to work, the light armour replacement for the Army – billions spent and it still doesn’t work – and the RAF spending £5.7 billion so the Typhoon (designed as a pure interceptor) could carry out fighter bomber roles as the Tornadoes were scrapped to save “money” on operating costs (an airframe still in use with the Luftwaffe and Italian Air Force and still considered one of the best multi-role aircraft ever designed.
Yet once more the Conservatives and their media allies, including the BBC, continue to flog the dead horse that “Britons” do not work hard enough, ignoring the reality for most families that if mum and dad don’t work at least one job each (if not more), they are reliant on low-wage benefits which subsidise low wages (increasing profit margins for the owners) or are reliant fully on benefits and food banks to put a meal on the table.
So what will save “Britain” this time round?
Once again the “City” and the Conservatives look to Scotland pulling their chestnuts out of the fire. This time it is not oil or gas but the vast and largely untapped resources of renewable energy supplies which exist in Scotland.
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The big energy companies like Shell and BP understand this, which is why Shell, for example, has been pouring millions of pounds into renewable research and development in Scotland whether it is batteries, pump storage, hydrogen cell production or tidal.
Putin’s war has only accelerated the investment in renewables across Europe but Scotland, with 24% of Europe’s total renewable resources in wind and tidal, is where it is going while the Unionists at Holyrood bang on about a couple of ferries to deflect our attention from what is actually happening.
By the way, the two ferries should be looked at as a future investment for Scotland’s shipbuilding, as 60% of ships built after 2025 will be propelled by liquefied natural gas.
So I ask the switherers on Scottish independence to look long and hard at their reasons for staying with the UK in 2014 and ask: am I you willing to have a Westminster government pawn Scotland’s renewable resources to get out of this current slow car crash, as it did with oil and gas in the 1970s?
Peter Thomson
via email
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