Summary
OH dear, Sir Sean. Why was it so important to secure that knighthood from the British state in the first place? If you really are scunnered by the duplicity of British civil servants over North Sea oil, if you think all attempts to promote Scotland abroad, this side of independence, are "a joke", if you really do believe your fellow countrymen have no alternative but to "take to the streets", why bend a good Scots knee to a British Queen? Some of us have managed to turn down the offer of royal baubles, on grounds of simple principle.
I listened to Scotland's greatest living actor fulminating on BBC Radio 4's Document programme this week about what one of our readers calls the "great oil robbery" of the 1970s. Since SNP researchers first unearthed a paper in the national archives, written by the Scottish Office's chief economist, Dr Gavin, McCrone in 1974, arguing that, with oil and independence, Scotland could have enjoyed a large - nay "chronic" - balance of payments surplus and one of the strongest currencies in Europe, a bandwagon has rolled, claiming to have exposed all the "lies and myths" orchestrated by the British state to deny Scotland its rightful inheritance.See the full content of this document
Extract
Scots Were Never Deceived Over the True Value of Oil
As a Labour Party researcher from 1976 to 1979, I was a bit player in some of the later chapters of this old story. However, when I listen to today's interpretation of what I lived through then, what I hear above the political clamour are the assiduous sounds of history being rewr...
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