O/T DUP still not playing ball..

[KerrAvon]

The UK and Norway were instrumental in extracting oil from the North Sea .

Norway's sovereign wealth fund has just reached $1 trillion US dollars , the UK's profits went errr to a smaller pool of fish shall we say , the usual suspects running with a neoliberal ticket .

Just one example of neoliberalism .

No, Norway's oil wealth went to a far smaller pool of fish. The UK and Norway have extracted broadly similar amounts of oil, but Norway has a population of around 5 million - well under a tenth of that of the UK. In addition, Norway did not have to deal with the structural problems of the type that the Tories inherited in 1979.

[sawmiller]

Would like to see some facts about this. I have Norwegian friends and worked there in my late ***** for two years in their forests. My understanding is that they were a country of relative paupers before the oil, with nothing like the infrastructure that we had. Geographically, their country is far larger than ours, and yet even the more remote places have very good roads, railways, bus services, cycleways, hospitals, schools etc... To cover all of that ground is not cheap, and they are maintained to a pretty good standard. They have a far flatter, less class divided society where to stand out is frowned upon. Some of the difference really is fundamentally cultural, and their mainstream politics would be called communist over here right now. In short, it's a complicated picture, as is so often the case