Now the Union strikes back: Poll puts No campaign in the lead as Scottish separatists suffer a series of hammer blows on Salmond's Black Wednesday. Daily Mail

  SNP leader was accused of lying about oil reserves by industry members 

  Insurance giant Standard Life said it would move south days after Yes vote 

  Poll found 53% of Scots would vote against splitting up the United Kingdom

  Will ease panic on Sunday that put the Yes campaign ahead  

  Leading oilman also dismissed Mr Salmond's energy-rich future as 'fantasy'

Scottish separatists suffered a series of hammer blows yesterday in the battle for the future of Britain.

On what was being dubbed Alex Salmond’s Black Wednesday, the SNP leader was accused of lying about oil reserves, a poll put the No camp back in the lead and big firms admitted they were considering moving to England.

The poll found 53 per cent of Scots would say No in next week’s referendum on independence. The Survation survey put the Yes camp on 47 per cent. One in ten are yet to decide.

Mr Salmond’s vision of an energy-rich future was dismissed as a fantasy by a leading Scottish oilman and BP and Shell also came out against independence.

Bank of England Governor Mark Carney piled on the pressure by warning that Edinburgh would have to set aside around £130billion to guarantee savers’ bank deposits.

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Further Reading

Exposed, Alex Salmond's great oil wealth fantasy: Experts attack claims that an independent Scotland could become rich on its oil and gas resources

Alex Salmond’s biggest lie, that an independent Scotland could float onward and upward on the strength its oil and gas resources, has finally been nailed.

The greatest authority on Scottish oil, Sir Ian Wood – together with the bosses of BP and Shell – has exposed it as pure fantasy.

Wood, founder of Scotland’s world-leading oil services firm Wood Group, has accused the Scottish Nationalists of misleading voters with ‘highly inaccurate forecasts, false promises and misleading information’.

His intervention, along with that of Bob Dudley of BP and Ben van Beurden of Shell, delivers a devastating blow to claims being made by Salmond and his acolytes that North Sea oil, augmented by unexploited opportunities using relatively new ‘fracking’ techniques, could turn Scotland into the next Norway.

The slogan ‘It’s Scotland’s Oil’ has, in the four decades since the first North Sea crude was brought ashore, been the most powerful weapon in the armoury of the SNP.

Nationalists like to compare Scotland to Norway because the Nordic nation has become rich on its oil and gas revenues, and has built up investment funds of more than £460billion on the back of its energy bonanza.

But the bitter truth is that an independent Scottish economy based on North Sea oil riches is a canard. Even on the most optimistic projections, with the exploration companies using the most modern techniques to frack for oil and gas deep below the oceans, the UK and Scotland’s energy boom is over.

Scotland’s fateful choice The case for union is overwhelming. The path of separation is a fool’s errand, The Financial Times

The United Kingdom ranks as one of the most successful marriages in history. England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have survived ancient hatreds, tribal rivalry and war. Each nation has been enriched by a journey of enlightenment, empire, shared energy and enterprise.

In eight days’ time, this splendid mess of a union, to quote Simon Schama, the British historian, risks being separated into its national parts. Scotland will vote in a referendum to decide whether to stay in the UK or sunder bonds stretching back to 1707. Opinion polls suggest the result is too close to call, a prospect which has alarmed financial markets, wrongfooted allies and sent a complacent coalition government scrambling to find a last-minute sweetener to win over the Scots.

Empires and nation states are not immune to break-up, but there is little precedent for a hitherto stable modern democracy splitting apart in peacetime, in the middle of an economic recovery. This is not the time for recrimination. For the moment, it is enough for this newspaper to declare that the path of separation is a fool’s errand, one fraught with danger and uncertainty.

Scotland is a proud and vibrant nation. Scots have contributed disproportionately to the union. They have played a leading role in arts, commerce, literature, the military, politics and sport. But a vote in favour of secession would be an irreversible act with profound consequences, not merely for 5m Scots but also for the other 58m citizens of England, Wales and Northern Ireland (including 750,000 Scots living and working outside Scotland who under the terms of the referendum have no say on the future of their country).

The act of separation would diminish the UK in every international body, notably the EU. It would raise complex – and still unanswered – questions about the common defence of the British Isles, the future of the currency and political arrangements for the rest of the UK. Above all, a Yes vote would ignore the lessons of the 20th century, a chapter in European history indelibly scarred by narrow nationalism.

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Watch the ELIM100 Centenary Film Teaser of the film coming this Autumn. #Elim100 @Elim100org

Watch the ELIM100 Centenary Film Teaser of the film coming this Autumn. #Elim100 @Elim100org: Celebrate 100 Years of Elim at www.elim100.org

Ann McKechin: Alex Salmond and the SNP's tax policies will create more inequality in an independent Scotland, Daily Record

Sep 09, 2014 11:238 OPINION BY ANNMCKECHIN

ANN McKECHIN puts forward her view that the economic policies of the SNP will only drive an even greater divide between the have and have-nots should Scotland vote Yes.

SCOTLAND'S future will be decided in just a few days’ time when voters across the country go to the polls.

It’s clear that voters want change – they want to see more jobs paying decent wages and offering security; they want affordable housing; they want a social care system that is fit for purpose; and they want an energy market that works for consumers not the profits of big energy.

The Scottish National Party has been keen to persuade voters that breaking off from the rest of the UK would create a ‘northern light’ for social justice – a Scotland that is more just, more humane and more socially democratic. But their message is deliberately high in emotion but lacking in substance.

However, a Scotland which followed the policies outlined in the SNP’s white paper and ended the system of pooling and sharing resources across the UK would quickly find income and wealth would be more unequally distributed than in the country they wish to break up. SNP tax policies will astonish all those used to hearing the claim that, from the day after independence, it would recreate the social democratic state that London has left behind.

Let’s look at the recent evidence. The SNP has refused to commit an independent Scotland to Labour’s proposal for a 50p top rate of tax. It has also refused to support a new top band of council tax. The First Minister keeps telling top business leaders that he is not planning to change the rates of income tax or business from those that apply currently across the UK.

Independent Scotland won't pay back debt, Alex Salmond says

First Minister reportedly taunted the Westminster government over whether an independent Scotland should take on its share of the national debt, saying: “What are they going to do – invade?”

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Why don't we tell the Scots to shove off! In a personal view (which the Mail disagrees with) SIMON HEFFER says what we fear many English people think, Daily Mail

Alex Salmond's offensive comparison of Scots voting for independence to the ending of apartheid and blacks being given the vote in South Africa took the rank dishonesty of the nationalists’ campaign to a new low yesterday.

Mandela went to prison for his beliefs, something that doesn’t appear to have happened to any Scottish Nationalists.

And, far from being victims of a cruel and unjust system, they have been encouraged to participate in the political process, and to live in a Union replete with opportunities — unlike millions in South Africa who were excluded from politics and advancement simply because they were the wrong race.

It was equally offensive to see Mr Salmond embracing immigrants from Eastern Europe and telling them that their intention to vote ‘Yes’ would be the culmination of their own long walk to freedom.

They chose to come to Scotland not because independence promises an extra layer of liberty, but because of the hard won, wide-ranging freedoms already available throughout the UK, and bestowed upon the Scots as they are bestowed upon every other Briton. 

Enough, frankly, is enough. We have long tolerated Mr Salmond’s mendacity, and his twisted loathing of the English, largely because many felt he would be the loser of this fight and should be indulged.

So when he dropped hints that the NHS would be privatised if there wasn’t a ‘Yes’ vote, or made up the rules about Scotland’s continuing membership of the EU as he went along, or exaggerated the wealth from Scottish oil revenues, we felt slightly patronising towards the old rogue, assuring ourselves of his inevitable humiliation in the September 18 vote.

Now that humiliation appears less certain, and the arrogant dishonesty is so overwhelming, it is time to tell him what some of us really think.

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Don't rip our family apart': At last, the PM gets passionate about the Union and warns there will be NO going back if Yes vote wins. Daily Mail

  EXCLUSIVE: PM issues rallying cry for the 'special alchemy of the UK'

  Together, he says, the nation fills the rest of the world with 'awe and envy'

  Plea came after heated debate as just eight days remain before polls open

  Three banks warned of calamity as Bank of England rejected plan for sterling

  Alex Salmond prompted anger with comparisons to post-Apartheid vote

David Cameron today issues a highly personal plea to the people of Scotland not to ‘rip apart’ the United Kingdom.

Writing in the Daily Mail, the Prime Minister tells Scots that the rest of the UK ‘desperately wants you to stay’.

But he warns there will be no second chances after next week’s referendum: ‘If the UK breaks apart, it breaks apart for ever.’

With opinion polls suggesting the referendum is now too close to call, Mr Salmond dismissed Westminster’s promises about more powers. ‘This is the day the No campaign finally disintegrated and fell apart at the seams,’ the first minister said. ‘Together, David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg are the most distrusted Westminster politicians ever – and their collective presence in Scotland will be another massive boost for the Yes campaign.

‘The message of this extraordinary, last-minute reaction is that the Westminster elite are in a state of absolute panic as the ground in Scotland shifts under their feet.’

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What bright spark thought bullying and patronising us Scots was the way to win our votes? Daily Mail

These are dark times to be a Scot, a Unionist and a ‘No’ voter. After the referendum polls finally flipped in favour of a ‘Yes’ vote at the weekend, we should be in no doubt: it’s a real possibility that in just nine days’ time the United Kingdom will be voted out of existence.

As that sad prospect grows more likely, Alex Salmond’s cocky smirk spreads ever wider and there’s an arrogance to the separatists that manifests itself in withering contempt for the views, arguments and emotions of the many people like me who want to stay British. There’s an extra chill in the Scottish air this autumn.

At times, I feel like a stranger in a strange land. In Stirling — my peaceful, semi-rural hometown, which sits halfway between Edinburgh and Glasgow — posters put up by the Better Together campaign have had the word ‘Scum’ scrawled across them, or been ripped down altogether.

Relationships with friends, colleagues, even family members, have become strained in this bruising climate.

It’s one thing to have to tolerate abuse from the other side — the organised mobbing, hectoring and egg-throwing that forced the former Labour Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy to call off his tour making the case for a united Britain was only the most visible example.

Equally, there’s no point denying the SNP-led Yes campaign has done its job well, mixing energy and passion with cynical but effective attacks on all aspects of Britain and, especially, Westminster.

What’s harder to take than any of this is the feeling that the campaign to save the Union — probably the most important political fight of our lifetimes — has been a lame, misjudged and overly negative affair.

Take last week, when Better Together launched a series of posters aimed at persuading the 10 per cent or so of voters who remain undecided to stick with the UK.

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