I REMEMBER watching The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil and naively thinking that could never happen with Scotland’s oil. We have been outmanoeuvred and hoodwinked by UK Governments. They concealed the truth about the extent of the oil wealth using their Official Secrets Act and we are continually deceived by them indicating we were subsidised by England when the opposite is true.
As George Kerevan points out in his article (We didn’t learn our lesson with oil… Now Scotland is paying the price, September 21) the same thing is already happening with our huge renewable energy potential. Currently SSE’s profit margin takes priority over the potential benefits of using a Scottish construction facility just 17 miles from the new Seagreen wind farm.
READ MORE: George Kerevan: We didn’t learn our lesson with oil ... now Scotland is paying the price
With SSE’s ownership transfer to a Swiss holding company it should be renamed “Swiss and Southern Energy”. Their degree of loyalty should be reflected by Scottish customers and shareholders leaving them in droves.
Whether or not the Scottish Government could have prevented this with current powers, once the Internal Market Bill is passed the UK Government will take full control of future procurement, with minimal chance of any public ownership. They won’t want Scotland to benefit too much in case it gives us the belief we could be independent.
With Scottish independence and our own domestic currency, our central bank could finance such renewables projects, increasing Scottish resources while creating well-paid jobs for people who will spend money in Scotland producing a multiplying knock-on effect, further benefitting our economy. We, not privatised companies, would benefit from the value of the energy generated. With public ownership Norway achieved revenue per barrel of oil equivalent of almost three times that achieved by the UK’s privatised industry while building up Norwegian industries including ship building, while ours, if not deliberately at least incompetently, were allowed to decline and close.
We must achieve Scottish independence as soon as possible to avoid losing the potential opportunities and benefits from our huge renewables potential.
Jim Stamper
Bearsden
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