17:07 Wednesday 17th September 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire
CHRIS MANN: Last minute campaigning is taking place all over Scotland, ahead of tomorrow’s historic vote on independence. The leading figures on both sides of the debate are making their final pitches to voters in rallies today. So just what will the consequences either way be on things like jobs, economic growth, and of course the pound? Our business reporter Adam Kirtley told me.
ADAM KIRTLEY: Just to put this into some sort of context Chris, the Scottish population is roughly a tenth of the UK population, and the GDP per capita is roughly the same, a little bit less if you don’t include oil, a little bit more than the rest of the UK is you do include oil, but around twenty and a half thousand pounds per person. So therefore, the Scottish economy is roughly ten per cent of the UK economy. So if that goes, that reduces our economy, those of us left down here, but it also means that Scotland is much smaller, and it’s on its own. So the ‘Yes” campaign are saying don’t fret, that’s fine, we are self sufficient in food, because of fish and because of our farming. We have a huge whisky industry, we’ve got a tourist industry, and of course we’ve got liquid black gold, oil. That’s the ‘Yes’ campaign saying the economy will be fine. Don’t scare us, you horrible ‘No’ people. The ‘No Better Together’ campaign people say no way. Your economy is too small. It will rely much more for its income on oil than the rest of the UK economy does. Therefore, if oil isn’t as plentiful as you are predicting, or if the price of oil falls, you’re going to stuffed. So that’s where we are in the macro-economy . But of course you then start delving into the detail, and you can argue the toss either way, and it all gets very interesting.
CHRIS MANN: So what about all that oil and gas? The SNP have said for years, ‘Scotland’s oil.’
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