Benyon wellies in to the EU

First the good news - no cut to the number of days Scottish fishing boats can put to sea next year, thanks to Richard 'Wellington' Benyon, UK Fisheries Minister. There's still a possibility of a cut in the cod quota, which would lead to more shameful discards, depending on talks with Norway, however there is now more optimism that a sensible outcome will be achieved in January. Here's hoping.

Now the bad news - Scottish oil revenue forecasts have halved in the last eighteen months. The black gold is in danger of running out, which would deal a hammer blow to the SNP's plans for Scotland to be an independent socialist utopia within Europe. First of all, the EU might not want us if we don't have as much oil as we thought we did. Secondly, the SNP's spending plans will send us into big deficit country without big oil revenues and, thirdly, their idea of stashing away some of the oil money into a fund, although very sensible, will exacerbate the deficit problem unless accompanied by a reduction in spending, something the left-leaning SNP are reluctant to do. Of course the SNP have reacted by disputing the figures. Well they would, wouldn't they!