Off topic but...
On the subject of Independence do you not worry about whether Scotland can afford it or not ?
I can't help thinking these last few years (price of oil fluctuating + Covid ) might of bankrupted your country had you gained independence or at
the very least led to a sizeable decrease in living standards.
It's a complex question. I have no doubt it would be challenging to start with. I'm assuming it would have been particularly challenging for us during COVID if we had gone recently independent. Borrowing would likely have been more expensive etc. But you can't predict these things and just have to bite the bullet.
The oil thing - it's no doubt in decline in the North Sea. I work in the industry. We all know it, half of us have lost our jobs already. Scotland is nowhere near as reliant on it as people think though. When the price crashed in 2015, tax revenues from it plummeted, but GDP actually carried on growing. The onshore economy was growing fast enough to counter the decline in oil. Scotland is wealthier than all other parts of the UK apart from London, the SE, and sometimes the East of England.
I'm not an economist, and you can read one saying one thing and another saying the opposite. So I look at the basic fundamentals. Look at similar countries around us - Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland etc. Every single one of them is considerably wealthier than Scotland but very similar in terms of climate, resources, development etc. So what is holding Scotland back? The life is being drained out of it by London. All our talent gets sucked away. The same applies to most of England. There seems to be absolutely no desire for proper change there though so needs must.
