Winter gales are
nothing new on Sliabh Mannan. On those parts of the moor where the
soil is heavy clay, tree roots tend to spread along the surface
rather than penetrate downwards. It is never a great surprise when I
go out to walk my dog after a gale to find some woodland giant blown
over intact, with its root system now forming a vertical wall at the
windward end.
Having no great depth
of root might be seen as a metaphor for the Scottish economy. We are
heavily dependent upon a fairly restricted range of industries,
notably oil and finance. When times are good for these industries
they can be very good. Basking in the glow of high employment and
government revenues from profits taxes, it is tempting for
non-economists to be seduced by propaganda assuring them that
Scotland is one of the richest countries in the world and could be a
Utopian society if only we were independent.
Following the financial
crash of 2008 we now see the oil price crash of 2014-15 and the
announcement of redundancies in the oil industry. Nevertheless the
Scottish government continues to demand a form of Devo-Max under
which we should become dependent upon our own highly volatile
taxation resources rather than insulated from economic gales by a
continuation of the present UK funding arrangements.
It seems to me that
members of the Scottish government would benefit from taking a trip
out to Sliabh Mannan and learning the lesson of our fallen trees.
