Interesting!!

[RATTER15]

https://www.facebook.com/AntiEUNet/videos/1060884617318047/

[fiction-factory]

I'd be interested to see the calculation of how £10 billion savings per annum x 14 years becomes 1.5 trillion when his 'multiplier' comes into play

[Gromit]

The National Debt in 2030 will not be £1.5 Trillion, and we could not pay it off.

[ToraToraTora]

....Norway has that much and more in credit....Would anyone like to guess if Norway are in the EU?

[Gromit]

Norway didn't squander its oil revenenues like the UK has.

[Gromit]

// Norway has that much [£1.5 Trillion] and more in credit //

// Norway didn't squander its oil revenues //

Sadly, we are both wrong. Norway does not have a huge surplus, and it did squander its oil riches...

// First, the oil fund is a mathematical artifice. At three-quarters of a trillion dollars, the Norwegian Oil Fund appears to provide plenty for a country with scarcely 5 million citizens. Yet the country has accumulated a foreign debt that, at $657 billion, is almost as massive. Subtracting the debt from the fund’s $740 billion leaves a balance of only $83 billion. In other words, there is a treasure chest, but it is almost empty: Njord’s prize for future generations is only a little more than 10 percent of its putative value. //

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/dec/25/vitenberg-norways-mythical-oil-wealth/

[ToraToraTora]

Fair enough gromit, thanks for the research.

[-Talbot-]

I wonder who was in charge of squandering our oil revenues?

[ToraToraTora]

we say "squander" and I suppose that is correct as a lot of it is spent on WSS but it's not like there's a choice is there? yes we can make savings but where ever we cut induces howls from some quarter or other.

[Gromit]

// At their mid-80s peak, oil and gas revenues were worth more than 3% of national income. According to the chief economist at PricewaterhouseCoopers, John Hawksworth, had all this money been set aside and invested in ultra-safe assets it would have been worth £450bn by 2008. He admits that is a very conservative estimate: Sukhdev Johal, professor of accounting at Queen Mary University of London, thinks the total might well have been £850bn by now. //

So what happened to the money? It was used to fund tax cuts for the rich and super rich by Nigel Lawson in the 1980s and 90s.