Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

by JANE BRADLEY
Published on the
24 October
2014
00:00
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A ROW broke out last night over the long-term viability of Scotland’s oil reserves as the discovery of a new oil field off the Aberdeen coast sparked fresh claims of “scaremongering” by the No camp during the independence campaign.

The SNP said that the find, 150 miles east of Aberdeen in the UK Central North Sea area, demonstrated that the region’s oil industry had a “bright future ahead of it” and insisted it could have proved to be a key economic driver in an independent Scotland.

The party claimed that the latest discovery, made jointly by oil and gas explorers BP and GDF Suez, could be worth about £157 million a year at current ­prices, but experts warned that the final flow rate of the field was as yet unknown.

It is believed that the field is likely to yield about 50 million barrels of oil in its lifespan – compared to the nearby Alba field, discovered in the mid 1980s, which had estimated recoverable oil reserves of around 400 million barrels. Pro-independence campaigners called for Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander – who in the weeks before September’s vote highlighted figures showing that tax receipts from North Sea oil and gas had dropped by almost a fifth – to apologise for “misleading” the public.

• Leaders: New North Sea oilfield welcome

Mr Alexander said at the time that the fall had “serious consequences for the public finances of a separate Scotland”.

Maureen Watt, SNP MSP for Aberdeen South and North Kincardine, said: “This latest discovery highlights the ongoing great success of the oil and gas sector and underlines, as we have consistently said, that the North Sea has a bright future ahead of it.

“Danny Alexander and the No campaign’s oil and gas scaremongering now looks very foolish indeed. Mr Alexander should apologise for trying to mislead the people of Scotland.”

She added: “New technology that has the potential to extend the lifespan of oil and gas fields is proving hugely significant for jobs and Scotland’s economy and I am sure there will be more good news to come regarding viability of existing oil fields and more yet-to-be discovered fields.”

But the Unionist parties denied the SNP’s claims, saying that, on a long-term basis, the discovery “changes nothing”.

North East Conservative MSP Alex Johnstone said: “What the SNP knows perfectly well is future oil projections take into account discoveries like this. So today’s announcement is encouraging but, as far as forecasts go, it changes nothing.

• John McTernan: Turning referendum win into a defeat

“If anything, it proves oil can be a volatile and unpredictable industry which is why we’re so much better absorbing those changes within the wider UK.”

Supporters of independence took to Twitter to claim they had been “duped”, questioning the timing of yesterday’s announcement, which comes just over a month after Scotland voted to remain part of the UK.

“Ever had the feeling you’ve been cheated?” asked Partick West SNP councillor Kenny McLean.

But BP said it had released the information about the find – called “Vorlich” by BP and “Marconi” by French company GDF Suez – at the “earliest opportunity”, saying the timing was driven by when drilling was completed and the drilling rig moved off location. “That did not happen until 30 September,” said spokesman David Nicholas.

Mr Nicholas told The Scotsman that the field was “far smaller” than the big finds of the 1970s and early 1980s, but described it as a “good discovery” in the current climate.

“To be frank, it is too early to see the scale of the resource,” he said. “The discoveries we tend to find in the North Sea are far smaller now than in its youth in the 1970s and 1980s, but this is noteworthy in comparison with the other discoveries we make in the UK these days.”

• Andrew Whitaker: Can SNP surge withstand failure?

Initial testing has revealed the field could produce a maximum of the equivalent of 5,350 barrels of oil per day but BP said it was not yet clear whether that flow rate would continue.

“It is too early to say,” said Mr Nicholas. “That is a good flow rate, which is very promising, but the eventual flow rate depends on a range of factors.”

The find was welcomed by Oonagh Werngren, operations director at trade body Oil & Gas UK, who said the industry needs to improve its efficiency “as a matter of utmost importance” to compete in the global market.
“At a time when exploration in the UK Continental Shelf is facing severe investment and cost pressures, it is heartening to see two UK explorers apply their expertise to understand the risks of the CNS [central North Sea] and demonstrate that there are still significant economic plays to be developed within the basin,” she said.

“The UK Continental Shelf needs to secure substantial investment and increase exploration and this will come both through an improved fiscal regime and better technical understanding of the basin.”

In August, oil services tycoon Sir Ian Wood suggested there were only about 15 billion to 16.5 billion barrels of recoverable oil left in the North Sea.

SEE ALSO

• Keep up to date with all aspects of Scottish life with The Scotsman iPhone app, completely free to download and use.

• Joyce McMillan: Nationalism is not just for Scots

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by JOYCE MCMILLAN
Published on the
23 October
2014
22:14
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Westminster has embraced patriotic fervour to mask the problems it has failed to solve, writes Joyce McMillan

Bannockburn, Braveheart, the irrational passions of unleashed patriotic feeling – if there was one recurring theme in coverage of Scotland’s independence referendum from outside Scotland, it was the image of the woad-painted warrior with a St Andrew’s cross painted on his (on her) face, and eyes glazed in a roaring ecstasy of aggression.

The idea behind the coverage, of course, was that the politics of national identity always represents a poor, emotive substitute for a genuine debate about who holds economic power, what they do with it, and how far democratic governments should intervene in the interests of people.


• Keep up to date with all aspects of Scottish life with The Scotsman iPhone app, completely free to download and use.

Although the Braveheart imagery deployed by many journalists in covering the referendum was demonstrably – even laughably – wide of the mark in capturing the mood of this year’s Yes campaign, it remains true that even the most liberal, civic and inclusive forms of nationalism struggle to avoid the more seductive aspects of nationalism as a creed; the idea that simply by changing constitutional arrangements, a nation can effectively walk away from major structural problems affecting its society and economy, or immediately make them much easier to resolve.

Five weeks on from the referendum, though, what is increasingly striking about the politics of the continuing UK is that, far from providing a “rational” or “normal” alternative to Scotland’s long independence debate, Westminster politics itself now seems almost entirely obsessed by issues of national identity and security, as a substitute for any real focus on Britain’s current economic and social performance.

Readers of this newspaper will be aware of the famous Ipsos Mori survey, published in the summer of 2013, which showed that, on a whole range of subjects – including immigration and benefits – British public opinion had come adrift of reality to a truly alarming extent.

Yet in the past year, the tendency of Westminster politicians to reinforce these popular myths by using them as the basis for policy has, if anything, grown even more marked, under the rightward pressure exerted by Ukip. To listen to Westminster debates, at the moment, is to be subjected to an increasingly weird litany of pin-striped resentment against an ever-expanding list of external scapegoats and enemies, from the much-hated European Union, through a wide range of terrorists and dissidents, to greedy benefit claimants, and, of course, the rebellious Scots – now apparently to be put in our place through the introduction of “English votes for English laws”.

The discussion of this strange symbolic hitlist of issues often takes place in an atmosphere of the most heated patriotic fervour, including a set of assumptions about the evident superiority and blamelessness of British institutions that seems to belong to a long-gone era of imperial glory.

The reason for this lurch towards an emotive politics of identity and scapegoating is not far to seek, of course; it lies in the adoption, across almost the entire political spectrum at Westminster, of an economic orthodoxy which cannot offer any realistic prospect of a more just, prosperous or sustainable life for most of the people of Britain.

This week, the Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang published a devastating critique of the present government’s economic strategy, and of the “fairytales” on which it is based; the myth that the present deficit was caused by excessive public spending during the Labour era, the myth that the present government’s 1930s-style austerity policies are both necessary to reduce the deficit and effective in doing so, the myth that the government’s economic strategy is delivering a “job-rich” recovery, and the myth that that recovery is now the strongest in Europe. The first three of these propositions are demonstrably false, given the abysmal pay and conditions of most of the “jobs” being created; the last is true only if you accept crude definitions of national wealth which do not take account of the still-declining incomes of 90 per cent of the population.

Yet not only do the Conservatives continue to perpetuate these myths, as one might expect. The Labour Party, too – as the country’s official party of opposition – seems to have made some kind of strategic decision not to oppose the broad thrust of them, although they may dispute some details. And it is this reluctance to oppose and expose a failed economic orthodoxy – a failure which lies almost entirely at the door of the post-1994 Labour Party – that largely accounts for the political impasse in which the UK now finds itself. It was this failure which drove hundreds of thousands of Scottish social democrats, in the recent referendum, to make a historic compromise with Alex Salmond’s carefully nuanced form of Scottish nationalism; it was not difficult, given the current mood at Westminster, to conclude that the Scottish national project had a higher chance of taking a progressive path than the current UK national project, such as it is.

What is perhaps even more significant, in the long term, is the extent to which this Labour failure to offer a viable and vivid centre-left alternative has driven many despairing English voters towards a party of nostalgic dissent whose policies might well be described as farcical, were they not now being taken so seriously by so many.

Just how Nigel Farage would actually go about removing from our society all the hundreds of thousands of EU citizens who play such a vital part in our economy, I have no idea; nor does anyone seem interested in pressing him on it.

I’m afraid, though, that I do know who is responsible for the fact that I am even having to think about this kind of future. I accuse a generation of Westminster politicians who, out of sheer cowardice in the face of sensational media coverage, have allowed a series of vicious lies and untruths to take root in the minds of British people – lies about benefit claimants, about migrants, about Europe, and about the real problems facing our economy.

And above all, I accuse the Labour Party, which could have told an entirely different story about the 2008 crash, its causes, and the remedies that might actually help us all; but which, in Professor Chang’s words, has simply failed to meet the country’s desperate need for a counter-narrative – one that might change the terms of debate, at last.

I wonder if we refused to pay this scandalous amount , £1.7 bill , maybe we wouldn't need a referendum on Europe .Don't you get the feeling some don't want us either.

and "they" would only seem to need this extra dosh because "they" want to spend more and more and more when the constituent countries and economies shout otherwise

the partisan among us might comment, "just like the labour party", but more pertinent is the perpetual cauchemar that "brussels" doesn't give a toss as they are accountable to none but themselves

We have a fantastic, hard working Tory MP in our constituency. However, it is very hard to vote in support of her when all that her party offer is a Referendum (but will we ever get one?) on staying in the EU.

When I read articles like the following, I tend strongly towards wanting to vote UKIP and definitely want 'OUT of the EU' altogether. Why? Well, UKIP are currently the only party who want us 'out of the EU'.

From the Independent:

David Cameron to challenge EU’s demand for extra £1.7bn

More ammunition for Ukip in next month's Rochester and Strood by-election
NIGEL MORRIS Author Biography DEPUTY POLITICAL EDITOR Thursday 23 October 2014

David Cameron is heading for a fresh showdown with Brussels after Britain was instructed to contribute another £1.7bn to the European Union budget.

The surprise demand for extra cash will fuel anger on the Conservative backbenches and will be used by Ukip as ammunition in next month's Rochester and Strood by-election.

The €2.1bn surcharge - which is due on December 1 - is being levied because the UK economy has fared more strongly than other member states since 1995.

The Prime Minister signalled his determination to challenge the extra fee. He met Mark Rutte, his Dutch counterpart, tonight during an EU leaders' summit in Brussels to discuss tactics. The Netherlands has also been told to make an extra payment to the Union's coffers.

A Downing Street source told the Financial Times: “It's not acceptable to just change the fees for previous years and demand them back at a moment's notice.”

The source added: “The European Commission was not expecting this money and does not need this money and we will work with other countries similarly affected to do all we can to challenge this.”

The surcharge has arisen from changes in the way the EU calculates member states' gross national income. According to preliminary calculations, Germany, France and Poland will all receive rebates.

Patrizio Fiorilli, a Commission spokesman, said: “Britain's contribution reflects an increase in wealth, just as in Britain you pay more to the Inland Revenue if your earnings go up.”

Mr Cameron yesterday urged his fellow leaders to resist a new request from the European Parliament's demands to increase spending across the Union.

The EU , The great leveler , or how to drag us down to third world status .

Not all, only the trogs .. the elite will do very nicely.

The future under the tories ,




Under the KIPPERs, get your blackskirts out.

Under Hazyone, Leave the country.

Under the Duvet me Fred.

Under the thumb me Fred.

Excelent cartoon by the way, best for a long time, made me laugh.

Nicked from golly's thread on afn.

What a gift to ukip.

1.7billion we have to pay the EU?????

I have the feeling that if this ISIL INVADED Brussels and formed it's caliphate or whatever, that they would have little had opposition and could have made a go of it .Is it any worse .Just jesting of course.

Update - Labour and Conservatives tied
by Ben Tobin in Politics
Fri October 24, 2014 6 a.m. BST

Latest YouGov / The Sun results 23nd Oct - Con 34%, Lab 34%, LD 6%, UKIP 15%;

Tory standards under IDS.

Anger as neurological patients told to "get better" 2 23/10/2014
Thousands of people with progressive and degenerative diseases are being denied disability benefits and being told they will "get better," charities revealed today.


Inquiries by five charities found that 35% of these patients are getting employment support allowance - but have been categorised as likely to be able to take up work.

The report has been produced by the MS Society, Parkinson's UK, the Motor Neurone Disease Association, the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society and the Cystic Fibrosis Trust.

The figures come from a response to a freedom of information request, giving the assessments for some 22,000 people.

About 20% were deemed fit for work while about a third were placed on the employment support allowance work-related activity group - suggesting that assessors believed they could eventually return to work.

Steve Ford, of Parkinson's UK, said: "These latest figures are an utter disgrace and serve to underline just how little the Government cares for those with progressive conditions, like Parkinson's.

"To set up a system which tells people who've had to give up work because of a debilitating, progressive condition that they'll recover, is humiliating and nothing short of a farce.

"These nonsensical decisions are a prime example of how benefits assessors lack even the most basic levels of understanding of the conditions they are looking at."

UKIP 13% ahead at Rochester!


When is Wavy U-bend Dave doing his tour there?

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UKIP 13% ahead at Rochester!


When is Wavy U-bend Dave doing his tour there?

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Fred iv'e not done the Maths but I think if we weren't in the EU, we could probably pay everyone here £200 a week , plus overtime .