Variety is the spice of life

James at the Two Doctors blog is unhappy with Nationalist complaints about the "conniving English" preventing Scotland from enjoying the benefits of North Sea oil in the 1970s. The grounds for his annoyance is that oil production has peaked, ie. it's the past, and we should instead be talking about renewables, which are the future.

Of course, James is spectacularly (and probably willfully) missing the point on a number of levels. The SNP - it should go without saying - have said absolutely nothing about "the English" (conniving or otherwise). But they are rightly infuriated by the mindset and actions of so many members of the United Kingdom civil service - who by definition are supposed to act in the best interests of the whole UK, Scotland included. It was they who adopted the them and us colonial attitude - we must prevent 'them' from gaining political autonomy so that 'we' (southern England?) don't lose access to the oil funds. And it was they who consciously embarked on a shameless campaign of deception to achieve this goal.

It may seem an odd thing to say, James, but this actually isn't about the future - it's about the past. You need to understand the past in order to understand how you ended up in your current position, and to learn from that. And I'm seriously confused as to why he thinks it's not possible to take at least take a passing interest in history while still moving forward with a renewable energy programme at the same time. Humans are designed to multi-task - or is James' entire life composed of "wind farms, wind farms, wind farms. No thankyou, mother, I don't want dinner, I must maintain my concentration on wind farms".