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White hell
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
It was surely one of the most bizarre political speeches of recent times and went unreported in the press. Wait till you hear this.
Last Monday in Edinburgh the secretary of state for climate change, one Edward Davey, stood up in front of 600 delegates at the Scottish renewables conference to announce that should Scotland become independent there was a greater chance of them being unable to flog all of the electricity that Mr Salmond’s 5,000-strong army of wind turbines would be supplying by then, or at least not at a reasonable price.
Here’s his theory. The entire political scene will have changed, new sources of supply coming in from all over the shop and, here’s the rub, a smaller volume of consumers paying the add-on tariff for non-fossil fuels. So maybe, just maybe, Scotland’s electricity would not be competitive.
Of course it’s easy to dismiss such ludicrous posturing as just sabre rattling for the No lobby, and indeed I suspect that there was a good deal of that going on, but let’s not be too simplistic in our evaluations. Even without the party posturing the man might have a point worth pondering.
Let me run that past you again. This English character was seriously suggesting that he felt that Ireland would provide a more stable supply to England than Scotland. That we should live to see this day.
Later, discussing the speech with other delegates, they mused on the prospect of a presumably forever socialist Scotland living alongside a presumably forever Tory England and the wild suggestion was mooted that there might be a certain amount of tension, which again might lead to a lack of support for Scotland’s lecky.
I know it all sounds daft. It is. But these are the times we live in.
There was one part of the speech that really gave me the shivers. Speaking of Scotland’s customers to the south Mr Davey referred to them as the United Kingdom. Except of course it won’t be. It will be the New United Kingdom. New because then it won’t include Scotland. You wonder what the union jack is going to look like without the blue bit. And you wonder what Barlanark will look like without so much money.
To be fair to Mr Davey, he did back-track a bittie. Here’s what he said: ‘I am absolutely not saying that Scotland would not be able to compete, but it would be far harder for them to keep prices competitive.’
Sleep well, gentle reader. We live in bizarre times,
