NORWAY and Scotland are very similar countries. They are better skiers than us and get more snow. But in terms of population and size we have a lot in common. We are each blessed with a similar amount of North Sea oil.
But the Norwegians, being independent, have been able to use the oil money to help their people, not just now but in the future.
As well as having one of the most equal and fair societies in the world, they have one of the most secure futures.
Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global – the money they save from their oil sales – is now valued at $600billion, according to the Financial Times newspaper.
That is one per cent of all the equity in the entire world.
The oil fund was only established in 1996 – that’s when Scotland was being told the oil was running out. The anti-independence parties are still saying that, even though the oil companies themselves say Scotland’s share of North Sea oil is good for another 30 years.
The only place Scotland’s oil is running to is the London Treasury.
If we could keep our oil revenue, we could sort out many of our problems associated with poverty and inequality. As Norway has done. Official statistics show that Scots could be £1600 a year better off if we got to keep the money that currently goes south.
Don’t believe anyone who tells you Scotland is subsidised and couldn’t survive as an independent country.
If that was the case, why have governments in London been so desperate to hang on to us?
An honour fit for a true hero
WILLIAM WALLACE was a key figure in Scots history, whose memory was kept alive for centuries by all sorts of people – whatever their politics.
Keir Hardie, the founder of the Labour Party, was an admirer because Wallace fought for, and with, the common people. Striking miners and radical weavers in 19th-century Scotland carried banners bearing his name. He was a folk hero.
Even Tories like writer Sir Walter Scott thought Wallace was important. Scott was a unionist but keen to promote our culture inside Britain because he felt it was under threat. Scott and the others didn’t think remembering Wallace, Bruce,Bannockburn and the like was anti-English.
They understood that, without Wallace, we might not be living in a distinctive nation. There would be no union because without the Wars of Independence we might not have had a Scotland to enter into it.
She would be a northern extension of England, Scotlandshire if you like, with no distinctive institutions.
So I was disappointed that only SNP MSPs turned up at the opening of an exhibition about Wallace at Holyrood last week. Special Delivery: The William Wallace Letters is the work of the National Records of Scotland. It shows two very rare and fragile letters personally linked to Wallace, which have survived for more than 700 years.
One was written to the German port of Lubeck by Wallace, then Guardian of Scotland, saying Scotland was open for business after he defeated the English army at Stirling Bridge.
The Lubeck letter has been lent by the German town. Why did the Lib Dems, Tories and Labour not turn up? They keep telling us they are proud to be Scottish and British and harangue anyone who doesn’t join in their veneration of the Union Flag.
I wish they demonstrated the same enthusiasm for one of the greatest-ever Scots.
Agyness is on song
AGYNESS Deyn is an unusual choice to play Chris Guthrie in the film version of Sunset Song, the classic novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon.
She is a model, not a trained actress, so might find Doric a bit of a challenge.
She said her pal Christopher Kane, the Lanarkshire designer, jokingly said she’d better not muck it up – though with Peter Mullen playing opposite her, she’ll have lots of good advice.
With Brave using real Scots voices, audiences have high expectations.
I’m thrilled the movie is being made. Director Terence Davies has struggled for years to get funding. It’s a masterpiece but like so much Scottish literature never makes it to the screen.