Peter Rhodes on energy, wildfires and what made the Iron Lady smile?
In the 1980s you couldn't set foot inside Scotland without seeing nationalist posters or handbills of a grinning Margaret Thatcher with the caption: “No wonder she's laughing – she's got Scotland's oil.”
Expect more of the same following this week's go-ahead for a £3.5 billion electricity “superhighway” which will carry renewable power from north-east Scotland to the north of England. So the Scots get the ugly windfarms and pylons but we get the clean, green electricity. If I were Scottish I might just be looking out that old tub of blue face paint from our Braveheart days.
If it's any consolation (and it probably isn't), every good thing extracted from Scotland and sent South could theoretically benefit about 750,000 Scots. They're the Scots who choose to live in England.
