eternumviti
Insufficient privileges to reply.
Sea boundaries, interim joint development zones and the division of remaining oil/gas assets etc will be agreed accordingly should Scotland vote to leave the Union. This will guarantee a certain level of revenue as long as oil and gas remain relevant. We wouldn't be 'here' though if Thatcher had created a sovereign wealth fund as significant monies would have been on tap to help Scotland's transition to independence.
As I've mentioned several times, SNP/Greens are ideologically opposed to the extraction and use of fossil fuels.
The whole issue of a sovereign wealth fund aka Norway is probably moot. Norway is a very different, and infinitely less populous country.
An unsettled country like Ukraine is nowhere near meeting EU entry requirements, yet the direction of travel is clear. A settled country like Scotland is in a much stronger position and is more than capable of negotiating with a benign EU to secure membership. To think otherwise is to underestimate the Scots (and the EU).
I wouldn't dream of underestimating the EU. Or the Scots. But the EU, as we are smugly and oft reminded, is 'rules based'. Scotland doesn't come within a country mile of meeting those rules-based criteria.
I suppose, of course, that the EU could partake of a little creative accounting (aka cooking of the books) as it did with Greece, but then Scotland doesn't exactly possess Greece's legacy as the cradle of western civilisation, a nice gong for the EU - with all of its entirely synthetic claim to be the modern standard-bearer of that cultural legacy - to have scored.
As for borders, high-tech solutions employed in Northern Ireland will just be copied and pasted. I'm sure you will agree that this is a credible and workable solution.
Oh, now you really are having a larf, though I did wonder who would be the first to come out with it.
The EU, I'll remind you, rapidly shut down promising early discussions of technological border solutions in the WA talks, and have steadfastly refused to countenance them ever since. It doesn't take the mind of a great philosopher to see right through that to the fact that to acknowledge tech solutions would make a complete mockery of its overtly protectionist nature. Virtually the entire issue of complex, black pen and paper-based border checks a quarter of the way through the 21st century is a sham.
No word yet from all the tech experts on here, foremost amongst them TonyL, who have shot me down every time I've mentioned it. Funny, that.
It's a shame you introduced the Farage deflection as it has taken the thread in a bit of an unfortunate direction.
Is it? I think that the response has been interesting, amusing, and entirely predictable. The teeth always show.