Dear Editor

Sovereign Funds

I have just returned from a visit to Norway, to near Stavanger to be precise. As well as being a family occasion it was also a chance to compare and contrast, made all the more relevant by the geographical and climatic similarities between Rogaland and my home in Wester Ross. In fact the overwhelming impression was straightforward. There domestic and municipal, unfortunately in our case including health infrastructures, was both pervasive and functioning in contrast to ours, which is, shall we say, patchy, fractured and increasingly fragile.

But the Norwegians I met did not simply accept the position, in which they find themselves as the Europeans after the Luxembourgois and the Swiss with the third highest GDP per head, noting too that the UK is seventeen, the lowest in North-West Europe, and Ireland, “impoverished” Eire is fourth. They are aware, not least of from where that wealth now comes in greatest part. It is no longer oil or gas but the Sovereign Fund, built from that hydrocarbon revenue.

Scotland had in the 1980s to follow a path not too dissimilar to Norway’s. But it failed to do so because it was not in itself strong enough to prevent the surplus from hydrocarbons in our sub-sea territory from being expropriated, carried south effectively to the City of London and being “splaffed” in a mix of governmental and privateering fashions by the Thatcher regime and it acolytes.

However, fate has dealt us a second chance and, whilst it increasingly seems we are being set up by “Down-South” for the same treatment, the previous mistake must not be made. We in Scotland have three resources England already desperately and/or increasingly need, even to the point of self-preservation. The alternative is economic and therefore social implosion. Two are obvious. They are energy, green and non-green, off- and on-shore, it matters little in their eyes, and water. But the third is less so. It is the space to park the productive but NIMBY hardware Surrey and the Chilterns need but do not want.

It means Scotland has choices. The first is to allow exploitation at all, yes or no. It is a problem but one which Norway seems to have resolved. The second, if yes, is what, where and how much. Again there appears to have been Norwegian resolution. And the third is, once available, in what circumstances, for whom and at what price, with again clarity exemplified by our Norse neighbours. Moreover, these choices are not dependent on independence, as good as that might be. They need only be the product of will, of Scots will-power. The question is do we as a folk have it?

Sincerely

Ian Campbell Whittle

Tigh na Tilleadh

201 Polbain

Achiltibuie

IV26 2YW