Day trip to Aberdeen.

I'm not a huge fan of pasting Cameron's face up and expecting those voting no to be so repelled they'd change to voting yes. Cameron is just a guy, if he wasn't a politician he'd be a banker or some sort of fund manager shuffling other people's cash about and skimming off 10% plus bonuses. Minus his Eton education he'd be a Marks & Spencer's-suited area manager for a distribution company or for, well, Marks & Spencers.

What I'm saying is, he's just a man. Minus his risible politics, he might not even be that odious.

Its what he represents that I find particularly repellent, any bugger who tells me I'm 'flailing about in a panicked frenzy' needs to crawl out from behind their magic shield of faux indignation and look at reality.

He heads up a parliament which over the years has taken the proceeds from one of Scotland's most valuable resources and pissed it up the walls of a crumbling empire - and he's got the brass neck to tell us in September we should vote no and continue to allow it to happen. Its not just oil either...

"Scotch whisky exports hit a record £4.27bn last year, accounting for around a quarter of the UK’s food and drink sales overseas."

... everything Scotland does in terms of trade is absorbed by Westminster - a parliament where your vote does not count & which spends less money in Scotland than is sent to it by Scottish tax payers - so it can use the proceeds to further shore up its wobbly stature on the world stage.

Its difficult to resist putting the boot in to Cameron when he came to Aberdeen to try and sell us the idea that while with independence oil would be a burden - but with union it would represent a £200 billion bonanza for the UK:

Whit?!?

In the face of such duplicity, its easier to understand the reaction some have to the notion.

The image above is from Twitter, I'm don't know who created it so don't know who to credit. There will be those who would dismiss it has childish/abusive/puerile/unhelpful/really very funny (delete app.) But is it any more so than Cameron attempting to convince people here that an independent Scotland needs the 'broad shoulders and deep pockets' of the UK to fully realise the 'bonanza' gurgling beneath Scotland's seabed?

It bothers me (only very slightly mind) that people are moved to vote yes because a procession of Tories (and other politicians dressed up as Tories) come to Scotland. We should be voting yes for positive reasons. It seems anything positive about Scotland and its abilities & potential has been wrung out of the country through years of misinformation and lies from Westminster -  aided and abetted by a media with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo - the BBC being the most guilty.

I can't quite decide what frustrates me more; Cameron, Osborne or Carmichael telling us what we can't have, what we can't do and that it'll will never work or the people who lap it up then go on The Radio Show Formerly Known As Call Kaye (#TRSFKACK) to regurgitate the nonsense.

We always bang on about Norway but there's a bloody good reason for it - it is broadly speaking very similar to Scotland in terms of population and resources but polls apart from from what Scotland has become. Over at Derek Bateman's blog some telling information can be found:

"If you look at Norway’s oil fund, the annual interest payments and dividends are around £14 billion profit on investment already made, which would still be there if the wells ran dry tomorrow. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts that Britain’s revenues from North Sea oil this year will be less than half that."

Norway set up its oil fund - A.K.A The Government Pension Fund Global - in 1990, 24 years ago. Industry experts predict Scotland's oil reserves will last for another 30 to 40 years:

"Although the oil and gas is tougher to extract, the reserves are substantial - between 15 billion and 24 billion barrels of oil equivalent - meaning possibly another 30 to 40 years of production. And there could be new discoveries such as the fields west of Shetland."

The quote above comes from BBC online news - no friend of Scottish independence so is probably a low estimate.  Even now, if Norway stopped sooking oil out of the ground, it would still be bringing in around £14 billion from its investments - on average twice what the UK treasury inefficiently sucks out of Scotland's oil industry every year while still drilling.

Meanwhile, potentially, there is still a full 40 years of oil production available for an independent Scotland to build an oil fund for when it does run out. Remember - as oil becomes more scarce, the value will rise, not as some would have us all believe - fall.

So, the notion that we should vote no to protect Scotland's oil industry is - and I'm going to swear here - fucking ridiculous, the absolute opposite is true. You'll be agreeing to let them chuck the next forty years worth of Oil & Gas revenue down a bottomless well. The UK isn't a castle, its an old car and when an old car starts costing you more money to keep on the road than its worth; you get rid of the old banger.