WHAT goes around, comes around – my thoughts on "oil-rich Arab" countries looking over Princes Street, wondering if it's a good place to invest some of the billions of extra, windfall, dollars piling up in their oil funds now that the price of the black gold tops $100 a barrel.
Yet only 40 short years ago, a matter of months before exploration of the Continental Shelf was codified, and placed under the legal jurisdiction of Scots Law by the Geneva Convention, Abu Dhabi, one of the Arab countries said to be interested in P
rinces Street, was under British control. Oil had been discovered, but the financial benefits to the UK government of were cut short when Britain was ousted from the Gulf.
The small statelet left behind was poor, with few facilities in health and education and a shortage of housing and employment. In 1971, sovereign and independent, Abu Dhabi helped form the United Arab Emirates, and began to see the benefits of being an independent small country with oil reserves.
In 1971 also, the "It's Scotland's Oil" campaign was getting into its stride. It aimed to inform Scots that they too could control the exploration and exploitation of the natural resource agreed by international treaty to fall within the territorial limits of Scotland's law, just as the reserves beneath the sands of the UAE, or the seas off Norway would be controlled by their governments, whether democratic or dynastic.
The not-quite two million citizens of the very new administration in Abu Dhabi negotiated terms and taxes with the same international oil companies prospecting in the Norwegian and Scottish sectors of the North Sea, and used the money to transform their small country by investing in state of the art infrastructure, education and health services.
Scots were assured by MPs on both sides of the House of Commons that nationalists like me were talking nonsense, that the oil companies would bamboozle Scots negotiators and that we were dead lucky to have the Westminster government to negotiate for us, and that the oil would run dry in about 30 years anyway. On this last point, the Wilson, Callaghan and Thatcher governments told the same big lie, and poo-pooed the idea that we should do as the other new-oil economies and establish an Oil Fund so that we'd still have oil providing for us as reserves run down.
Abu Dhabi did, and today its Investment Authority Fund is worth around £440 billion. The fund, like Norway's, is now being used for foreign investment. Domestic investment has provided top quality health, housing and other facilities in both countries and both sovereign states now have the readies to invest in whichever part of the global market suits their requirements.
Scotland, during the same four decades, has had the benefit of being British, and leaving such stuff to Westminster. Our housing shortage is the same as it was in 1978, our infrastructure has deteriorated shamefully due to a shortage of investment, about a quarter of the adult population has difficulty with basic literacy and numeracy, and one child in three is born into poverty.
I wonder if Abu Dhabi now regrets losing the protection of Westminster? And just in case an unreconstructed unionist party hack tries to persuade you against seeing Scotland's choices in a new light, Kuwait and Scotland produce about the same amount of oil . . . Kuwait's fund matches Abu Dhabi's. Due to the $100 a barrel price, Norway's fund will rise to around £250bn next year. Scotland still doesn't have an oil fund, but we do have Westminster.
Focus is all wrongTHE only film featuring in the Oscars I'm likely to see is the biopic on Edith Piaf, yet I've probably had more opportunity to learn about the minute detail of which starlet's sleeping with which producer, which seasoned screen goddess is sleeping with which producer (not the same one, thankfully), which actresses are pregnant, and that James McAvoy's omission from the list of nominees for Best Actor is not just a travesty of justice and artistic taste, but inexplicable to boot.
All of these facts gleaned from the acres of news stories and TV coverage are unrelated, but are essential talking points for cool, groovy, where it's at, people such is the success of the marketing, public relations and fashion companies who run the whole tacky show.
Does anyone discuss the trends in film-making, or social changes influenced by films, for example? Wouldn't that be more likely to entice bums on to seats?
Sober judgementWITHOUT passing any comment on Michael Martin's ability in the chair of the House of Commons, it seems only fair to recall my memories of a Speaker who, unlike Speaker Martin, wore a full-bottomed wig.
Learner MPs like me were tipped off by the old lags to watch the wig, as its angle indicated its wearer's state of sobriety.
The full article contains 826 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
