Would Scotland be broke by now?

So what? It's the most sought after commodity in the world, after water and food. Gold ain't gonna fill yer petrol tank. It doesn't spoil and at some point, the price will no doubt rocket again. Scotland could easily borrow money at a competitive rate...whatever "money" is...feck it, China could give us a nice credit line, like it does for the USA.

Cap in hand to the IMF more like.

Velasquez an economics expert, who'd've thought?

Answer quite simply is, of course not.



Gordon Brown would have saved them, as he once saved the world.

Economics? In a world of fiat money, try "voodoo".

Credo...credit...credibility...

As Confucius said, "Air, Water, Food, Fuel - feck yeez."

Scotland was running a loss before the oil price halving so losing billions in tax revenue just makes the deficit a lot larger. It wouldn't be broke *yet* as it still would be part of the UK until the actual separation date which was 2016 or so. But if oil is anything like the current price then yes Scotland would have been in the really deep sh*t as soon as that day came, as it's a large % of the GDP and it has tanked. The SNP just made up numbers and lied and predicted a silly future high oil figure to try and convince the gullible they'd be "rich". When in reality even that was optimistic to just break even, never mind somehow be better off. Reality has shown what a pile of lies that was.

The worrying thing for Scotland is the easy oil is gone and what is left is expensive to get out of the ground so at these sorts of prices it's just not economic to do so. The oil companies don't exist to make losses and may just wind things down, so rather than a less profitable pie, there may just be no pie. Thats what the news is about today.

So in short, it looks like voting No has saved Scotland from a very nasty economic shock, if Scotland had voted Yes there would be a lot of "buyers regret" right now, you can be sure.
Not that any nationalist is ever likely to wake up and smell the coffee, the usual response is everyone else is wrong, they are right!

The usual response to any bad news  is that its all Westminster's fault,
good news is of course down to the SNP Govt.

Sounds like its time for England to vote for Independence from Britain. We can't afford to be carrying passengers.

No because the english parliament would bail them out...Like they did with the irish economy...Reasons being that they are one of their biggest trading partners.

will they be paying of all the oil rig workers in aberdeen , as it seems recently they have been taken a lot of workers on

The seed has been placed as far as parts of the UK having their own powers/laws etc. It's only a matter of time before the English take control of their own powers/laws.

.....Norway similar size to Scotland, one of the richest countries in the world. One of Scotland's issue about going independent was their share of of the biggest national debts in the world. Tragic for the Scots when you look at from that perspective....what could have been (if they had been independent 40 odd years ago)......But says it all really......you can't go independent because your are part of a nutjob economy

We did not go Interdependent because the people did not want it ,that was when oil was $100+ a barrel .

fck all to do with debt ,or anything else ,people wanted to remain British,end of .

The entire case for indy was built on greed and gain at others expense and the good people seen it for what it was .

yessers should be thanking us and apologising for being morons .

A lucky escape for the Scots and they should remember it when prices boom again and the SNP push for another referendum.

It would be really interesting now if there had been a "YES" vote to see exactly how much the Scots would having to be cutting services to survive.

They wouldn't be able to risking cutting health care. With oil prices plummeting they will be deep frying even more food.

Thing about the oil is we should be seeing the price of fuel well under a quid ,if this happens the economy will really pick up big time ,the gov can still take its cut so why is the price being fixed and kept inflated ?

we need to be asking ,should be no more than 80p a litre at these prices ,but thats just a  rough guesstimate

150 litres in a barrel (£40),a barrel will make half that easily in petrol but it depends on grade of crude/brent .
brent is better i think and produces more but unsure ,we are being overcharged  atm .

how hard/expensive  is it to make petrol/diesel from crude ? as a producer we should have cheaper prices in uk but energy is a clusterfeck of price fixing and profiteering .

and taxing

What figures do you base that 80p a litre on?  How much would Govt need to cut tax to make that feasible and what cuts would it involve?

Even if oil cost nothing & refining it & distributing it was free, petrol would still be 64p a litre due to duty tax & vat,so its never gonna reach the levels you suggest ,blame successive govts not profiteering.

The problem is that it is becoming too dear to extract or at least some of it is.
Something will have to give in the not too distant future.
Better 25% of something than 50% of nothing as the old saying goes.

roughly the ones i put up 
the raw product is down from over $100 dollers a barrel to below 60
gov should take same percentage cut ,so should everyone else imo

dont forget at some point their will be no oil and the reliance on taxing it has to go

they cant just switch the same level of taxing to something else ,can they ....all the saving the planet by climate  taxes will go once the oil goes wont it

I'm surprised that Alias hasn't been on to thank us for voting NO.

deal with  him later ,save the best till last

a small brick tax could have  payed  dividends this year

If the price at pump has decreased, how come the bus fares haven't gone down?

The High bus fares bolster the profits of one of the SNP's main
paymasters so don't expect reductions anytime soon.
ps Norway apparently now owns about 2% of the world's stock markets
and the people are starting to ask when some of the wealth will trickle down to them