Dave Plowman (News) wrote
Rod Speed wrote

And the windfall of North Sea oil should have been used to modernise
them.

That would have been pouring that money down a rat hole.

Called investing for the future.

Called pouring that money down a rat hole.

None of those industrys were ever going to be viable again.

Engineering?

It wasn’t engineering in general that died in the
arse there, as the oil and gas industry there shows.

Strange. The most successful country
in Europe is based around that.

Yes, the can still do cars too, Scotland can't
no matter how much had been poured into
that now defunct scottish industry. Scotland
just isnt big enough to do what Germany
does with cars and doesn’t have the associated
industrys that are necessary for that either.

The oil and gas industry is tho.

For the multinationals who run it, yes.

Just as true of the industrys that were never going
to survive, no matter how much money from the
oil and gas was poured into them stupidly.

But the 'financial services' lot just wanted to make a fast buck.

Sure, but those dead industrys were never going to be viable again.

There will always be a demand for manufactured goods.

Yes, but once China got a clue and noticed that communism
was never going to fly and decided to take advantage of their
MUCH lower labor costs, manufacturing goods in Scotland
was never going to fly again, no matter how much of the oil
and gas revenue had been poured into those factorys.

Yes, manufacturing was very viable in Britain for a very long
time after the Industrial Revolution was invented, but once
that had spread out to the rest of the world and places like
China had decided to get into manufacturing goods, that
was the time when Scottish manufacturing had passed its
useby date and there was no way that pouring any of the
oil and gas money into that would make any difference
to that.

Yes, there are still some specialist areas which are still
viable, but they are tiny niche markets, nothing like the
old manufacturing operations that have gone forever now.

Later causing the biggest depression in living memory.

That's overstated, there are still some around
that lived thru the much worse one that that.

Debatable.

Nope, on the social security safetynet alone.

Its even arguable whether the current heroin
trade etc is actually any worse than the previous
problem alcohol abuse seen in the great depression.