Stemming the tide

Youngest child: Daddy! I can't sleep. Will you tell me a story?
Daddy: Of course. Love to.
[Pause]
YC: Come on then.
Daddy: Hang on. I'm trying to find Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
YC: Oh no, please. Not that one. It gives me the creeps in more ways than I have time to explain.
Daddy: To be fair, I know what you mean. So. What's it to be?
YC: Well, I did say "tell" not "read". Would you tell me a story? Remember it. Maybe even make it up. At least embellish on one half-remembered from your own childhood. Like a proper parent.
[Pause]
YC: Well?
Daddy: Em...ok. I don't see why not.
[Pause]
YC: Well?
Daddy: Hang on. I'm thinking.
[Pause]
Daddy: Did you have one in mind?
YC: Can it be ANY story in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD?
Daddy: Of course it can.
YC: Oh BRILLIANT! My most favourite story in the whole wide world is the one about that man. That man from a land by the sea. That powerful man. Powerful, but not as powerful as he thought he was or wanted others to think he was. That man who was so puffed up and carried away with his own sense of self-importance that he lost touch with reality. He was so silly that he thought he could stop things from happening when he couldn't stop them at all. He thought he was so powerful that he could stop things over which he simply had no control. Not just no control, in fact. Not even any influence. But still, he said he would stop them. Insisted that he could, and would, stop them.  And when he did say he would stop those things, and when he did try, everyone could see how silly he was and they laughed and laughed at him. Laughed and laughed.
Daddy: Ah! I like that one too. But do you know? The funny thing is that actually King Canute didn't think he could stop the sea. He knew that he couldn't. He was commanding it to stop so as to show his courtiers that there were limits to what even a King could command.
[Pause]
YC: No. Not that silly, deluded man from a land by the sea who everyone knows isn't as powerful as he thinks and who threatens to do things he simply doesn't have the power to do. The other one. Carwyn Jones.

Hold fast, comrades, in the face of the coming onslaught

Ruth Davidson really did drill down forensically to the nub of things when she announced, presumably to a stunned and sombre audience:

"The SNP simply cannot guarantee that we'd still get Dr Who after independence."

(It was that "simply" that was particularly devastating. Plain-talking, exasperated Ruth telling it like it is.)

Well she's right. That fat liar Salmond simply cannot guarantee that we'd still get Dr. Who after independence. Or that we'd still get the Clangers after independence. Or that we won't stop getting Dr. Who anyway. It's happened before. Or of course that we won't be invaded by actual Daleks. Or actual Clangers.

However, I still think we can do better than Ruth's sad counsel of despair. It's back to deductive versus inductive reasoning. They "get Dr Who" in Angola, Botswana, Myanmar, Uruguay and elsewhere. The BBC wants the world to see its programming. Hence the World Service. Britain wants to project soft power. We own part of the bloody BBC.

So, on balance, I think we'll get Dr Who. I also think we won't get invaded by actual Daleks. However, I am prepared to accept that neither outcome is guaranteed.

And so, then, it comes to this: courage. Courage, my friends. There will be many dark and difficult days like these ahead, as the ruthless British state unleashes its mighty arsenal against us. Take heart that it feels compelled to deploy its big guns, like the "You simply cannot guarantee that we'd still get Dr Who after independence" argument, so early in the campaign. Look, and see. Have hope. For they falter! They falter!

Unexpected comedy hypnotism - tickets still available

I still think that George Galloway's bravura performance before the US Senate Sub-Committee on Investigations, facing down the turncoat Norm Coleman , was one of the most engrossing, exhilarating and ultimately gratifying exchanges between two human beings that I will ever see. I'd certainly have paid money to be in the room. On the other hand, I grew up in Dundee and I remember George. I'd not, even it was him paying me, sit in a hall listening to him explain his reasons for opposing Scottish independence. However, I may have misunderstood his offering. If his "Just Say Naw Tour" is in fact not an exercise in pompous, self-regarding windbaggery but a series of evenings of "comedy hypnotism" (and from the URL at Groupon, it seems that it is), and if you can still get two tickets at half price (and it seems that you can), then I  just might actually think about it.

Creation myth

God: There you go.
Norway: Oh. Ok.
[Pause]
Thanks.
[Pause]
God: Is that all?
Norway: What do you mean?
God: What do you mean "What do you mean?"? I mean that a bit of thanks might be  nice, for all that lot.
Norway: Allright, I know. I said thanks. I'm particularly grateful that you've blessed us with the bounty of a lot of whatever is going to be left over from the anaerobic decomposition of buried dead organisms...
God: Oil.
Norway: Right. Oil. Though I'm not sure what people are going to do with that, to be honest.
God: They'll think of something.
Norway: Really?
God: I think it might burn really well.
Norway: Oh. Ok. But...is that it?

Why did the banks become Scottish only after they failed?

Here's one for you. What do Andy Murray, HBOS and RBS have in common? Answer: it can appear to a cynic that whether they're Scottish or British depends on how well they're doing at the time. With Andy, listening to the BBC from time to time can be a bit irritiating but it's more amusing than anything else. But the banks? That's a more serious issue altogether.

The banks were wholly regulated from London. 90% of RBS and HBoS UK employees were based outwith Scotland. 90% of employers' income tax was paid to Westminster, and not counted as Scottish or Scottish Government revenue. 90% of the banks' national insurance contributions were paid to Westminster and not counted as Scottish. 80% of the losses of RBS were generated from the bank's London based operations. RBS paid £16 billion in corporate taxes to the UK government from 1998 to 2007. None of this was counted as Scottish Government revenue.

So if all the Government revenues associated with the banking operations in the boom years were added to the UK balance sheet, why should all the losses in the bust years suddenly become only Scotland's problem?

Bailouts are not matters of altruism but reflect the harm that will be done to a country (loss of employment and so on) if an enterprise fails. The location of headquarters has nothing to do with it. The name of a company or its historic origins have even less to do with it. Barclays was bailed out to the tune of £552.32bn (at backdated exchange rates) by the US Federal Reserve and £6bn by the Qatari Government. Or to put it another way, foreign governments bailed out Barclays to the tune of more than twelve times more money than the UK Government’s capital support for RBS (£45bn).

As an independent country, our contribution to bailing out the banks would have been roughly the same amount as we paid as part of the UK – about 10%.
 
For more, see the Business for Scotland analysis here and here.

What do the mibbees think?

There was lots of really interesting stuff about general attitudes in the Wings over Scotland poll. One part was about the views of people who said they were certain to vote (8 or more on a scale of 10) in the referendum but had not yet made their minds up which way: in other words, the so far undecided. What effect had the independence campaign had on them, so far? Had it made them more likely to vote yes, or no, or made no difference?

REACTION TO THE CAMPAIGN SO FAR
(Full sample)

Much more Yes: 4
Slightly more Yes: 32
No change: 54
Slightly more No: 8
Much more No: 2

There was fascinating analysis of what the don't-yet-knows think about various things that would explain why they're tending, by nearly 4:1, to Yes. The (as ever) readable analysis is spread over a few posts here , here , here , here , here , here , here and here. The raw data can be downloaded here .

Long-term thinking

Everyone agrees that an oil fund would be a good idea, in principle. But an oil fund is something to build over many decades, to leave something for our children and theirs. The occasional fluctuation in price, month to month, is irrelevant. If only we could somehow form some idea of what oil prices are likely to do, long term. How on earth can we know what is going to happen, over decades, to the price of a vital, finite resource for which the modern world thirsts?

Update: as at 10 October 2013,  Brent Crude was trading at just over $111 a barrel. Check the current price here.