Past time we stopped fuelling the crooked City

Sir, – Ireland has just announced that it will establish a sovereign wealth fund – using their current huge budget surpluses – forecast to rise to over £16 billion next year.

In this way, Ireland will follow the example of Australia – another former British colony – and Norway, who have used oil revenues and other windfall wealth to build and renew their infrastructure and insure their future national needs against more difficult economic circumstances.

Scotland, 50 years after North Sea oil revenues began flowing to Norway and, in Scotland’s case, Westminster and the corrupt, hedge fund and oligarch–ridden City of London, has no hope of a sovereign wealth fund.

Instead, we have endured 20 years of austerity and deliberate poverty directed by Westminster (Labour and Tory) – policies openly and repeatedly condemned by the United Nations. Other horror lies in the creaking UK rail infrastructure (Network Rail) and – in England’s case – advanced privatisation (and consequent collapse) of the NHS and water services in particular.

The oil revenues which cushioned Norway throughout Covid, allowing that nation to lend economic and medical support to other countries throughout the pandemic, are still building their strategic sovereign wealth fund.

No wonder Ireland has decided to use its current wealth from hi-tech foreign investment to do the same.

Meanwhile, as the asset-stripping continues in Scotland – rich in oil and sustainable energy sources, a world leader in many hi-tech industries, especially EU-supported research into wave, tidal and green hydrogen, with a massive surplus in food and drink exports – such revenues are still feeding the rotten, gaping maws of Westminster and the City of London, otherwise known as the world money laundering centre.

Therefore, while Ireland is to be congratulated on such enviable prosperity and strategic planning, her news today is surely also painful and galling – as Scotland considers what might have been.

That is, until and unless we are inspired, at last, to follow her example of independence.

The North Sea oil bonanza began 50 years ago.