22/08/2014 Scotland Decides

We will have more for you in one hour.

Now on BBC News, Scotland Decides, Review of the Week, with James Cook.

Hello and welcome to our look back at the

past seven days of the referendum campaign trail in Scotland.

A leading figure in the oil industry says the Scottish

Government is overstating the remaining wealth in the North Sea.

The row over currency continues with arguments about whether

and how an independent Scotland could use the pound.

And what has this internet craze got to do with the referendum?

Hello and welcome to Scotland Decides:

The campaign has continued to focus on the practicalities

We'll come to currency in a moment, but first, a respected figure in the

oil industry, Sir Ian Wood, said the Scottish Government was overstating

the amount of oil and gas left in the North Sea, and therefore was far

too optimistic about the amount of tax revenue it would bring to the

I do not think it is my job to say to anybody and to influence anybody

about how to vote at I feel it is my responsibility, especially as my

great when children in Scotland will grow up here. If we are to make this

decision, we must make it on the right facts and there is a big hole

right now in terms of the estimate of the amount of oil and gas and how

The subject dominated the final First Minister's Questions

before the vote, with the Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont

Most operators would feel more confident if Scotland was to remain

part of the UK, he said. So I asked the First Minister, why was he drawn

to say that if the interests of our children and the generations to

But Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond insisted

his forecasts were based on industry figures, quoted by Sir Ian Wood,

which suggested between 12 and 24 billion barrels of oil would still

His reply to Ms Lamont was laden with sarcasm.

This poor country with a great curse of 15 billion barrels of oil! Every

other country in the world would give their eyes teeth for such a

substance shall source. `` eyeteeth. `` substantial source.

Earlier in the week, Mr Salmond had taken his campaign to

Arbroath in Angus, where Scottish nobels signed a Declaration of

It felt like a change of tack for the Yes campaign,

stressing the heart, appealing to the sense of Scotland as a different

And that theme was taken up by Professor Joseph Stiglitz, a

Nobel prize`winning economist, who advises the Scottish government.

He said what he called the two parts of the United Kingdom were already

However, Professor Stiglitz also said he believed the rest of the UK

would form a formal currency union with an independent Scotland.

It was a position backed by his fellow advisor to

the Scottish Government, the businessman Crawford Beveridge.

I have never gone into a negotiation where I declared what I would be

happy to settle for instead of what I wanted to get. So I think it

reasonable that the government has to come out with something different

until we are certain we cannot do the best thing for Scotland.

But campaigners against independence continued to insist they were not

bluffing and would not enter into a formal currency union with

The success of a currency union, argued the Scottish Secretary,

It is about political disintegration. If we are to be

independent, we need to be aptly independent and we should not tying

ourselves to the currency of the Central Bank `` we need to be

There was a different perspective from a free

market think tank, which argued that Scotland could thrive if it kept

The Adam Smith Institute said economies which use

the US dollar without a lender of last resort, such as Panama, had

But the chairman of Britain's biggest bank said shunning

the benefits of the status quo would be a "giant

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Douglas Flint of HSBC,

said doubts over currency could prompt capital flight, or

in other words, savers withdrawing their money from Scottish banks.

Now, time for our weekly look at the latest polling.

And the poll of polls suggests no change since last week.

The No campaign remains on 57%, when don't knows are excluded.

That's according to an average of half a dozen polls taken in July

and August, calculated by the What Scotland Thinks website.

Let's take a look at some of the other stories making the news,

A former Director General of the BBC described plans for broadcasting

in an independent Scotland as "make`believe".

Lord Birt's comments in the Guardian were echoed by the No campaign,

which said breaking up the BBC would be bad for Scotland

The Yes campaign said an independent Scotland would keep BBC programmes,

The Australian Prime Minister dipped his toes in the shark`infested

Tony Abbott told the Times it was "hard to see how the world would be

Alex Salmond said independence from Britain didn't seem to have

Scotland's foremost historian, Professor Tom Devine,

surprised many by announcing he was backing a "Yes" vote.

In an interview with The Observer, Sir Tom said he had switched

from No to Yes because Scotland had preserved the British idea

of state`supported fairness and compassion, with England moving

The Scottish Government this week argued that a No vote

in the referendum would put the NHS in Scotland at "serious risk".

But the opposition parties say it amounts to nothing more than

an attempt to frighten people into voting Yes.

The NHS is a life`saving service, highly prized by the public. In

Scotland, the NHS is under Holyrood's control but the way in

which public services like health funded is directly linked to the

amount of money that is spent on the same services in England. In

Parliament, the Health Secretary predicted spending cuts to the NHS

if England `` in England with a squeeze on Scottish finances as a

result. A No vote would be putting our health service at serious risk,

reduced budgets as a consequence of privatisation, and austerity South

of the border. Yes campaigners say independence would allow us to

protect the NHS from cuts and privatisation but the Better

Together campaign say we have the power to do so already and the SNP

has boasted of that previously. In the chamber, Conservatives said NHS

spending in England was riding, Labour accused ministers of

scaremongering. `` arising. I want the Cabinet Secretary to focus on

his day job and sort out waiting lists, a social care crisis and a

lack of GPs, instead of supporting the most scandalous deceit of this

referendum campaign. Nationalists say the real scandal is Labour in

Scotland is not echoing their warnings on the NHS. In whose hands

the health service is safest is now a major issue in the referendum

Campaigners for Scottish independence said more than

a million people had signed a declaration in favour of a

The announcement that Yes Scotland had reached their target of a

million signatures four weeks before the vote was made in Edinburgh at an

Just over four million people are eligible to vote in the referendum

on the yes/no question, should Scotland be an independent country?

Campaigners against independence said their rivals had simply

On Twitter, this remark, voters explained why they were going for

independence. A Scottish actor said because, we can have a say in our

future. Macro ``... own challenge with a special twist.

I would like to nominate Alistair Darling and Alex Salmond to do their

You have 24 hours! The challenge was very worst! Go for

You have 24 hours! The challenge was on for the main figures in the

Scottish independence referendum debate and let's see who took it

one of their team was fighting an incurable disease. Alex Salmond says

he will do it also, time and place to be confirmed. For now, you can

find more analysis online at our find more analysis online at our

website. For now, that's it from the review of the week, I will be back

at the same time next week. In a moment a look

at how the financial markets in Europe closed the day, but

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