Norway gets so many things spectacularly right. Unlike the way we wasted the income from North Sea oil and gas, they decided to invest all the income.
They now sit on 500 billions equivalent, meaning each of the 4 million Norwegian men, women and children is worth 125,000 in invested cash and each benefits annually from the interest that earns.
Had we done that with the North Sea output, each of us would possibly be worth £16,000 and get the interest from that each year. Instead our national debt is £41,400 per taxpayer/wage earner on which we each pay £1400 interest every year.
Which government would you wish we'd had over the last half century?
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They now sit on 500 billions equivalent, meaning each of the 4 million Norwegian men, women and children is worth 125,000 in invested cash and each benefits annually from the interest that earns.
Had we done that with the North Sea output, each of us would possibly be worth £16,000 and get the interest from that each year. Instead our national debt is £41,400 per taxpayer/wage earner on which we each pay £1400 interest every year.
Which government would you wish we'd had over the last half century?
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C
Cyclezee
Guest
The other thing that is making this flight so pleasant is we got allocated seats at no extra cost.
The plane is only half full so we can sit where we want in very reasonable comfort like a human being rather being treated like cattle.
Big lessons her for the other budget airlines.
The plane is only half full so we can sit where we want in very reasonable comfort like a human being rather being treated like cattle.
Big lessons her for the other budget airlines.
Sounds like flying in the 1960s and early 1970s John, when it was still a pleasure. Unlike the unpleasant aspects of so much of today's flying.
Sadly the airports today remain a miserable experience, though for a wide variety of reasons.
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Sadly the airports today remain a miserable experience, though for a wide variety of reasons.
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Ah, but then you'd have to strip out the loss of the exchequer income (the Norwegians put theirs into a trust whereas we used ours to pay our expenses), which might have led to different outcomes affecting the final figure. Plus no point in saving if it means many will be too dead to enjoy the interest payments! So maybe we've actually had some good things the Norwegians haven't.
But yes I know how you feel.
True Jonathan, the outcome figures are an approximation, but I very much doubt the Norwegians really missed out on much. From what I can see they've always been the winners of the two of us over the last half century, their decisions on their EU relationship being especially sensible for keeping internal unity.
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I guess Norway may also have been in a somewhat different position if it chose to invade several countries and develop an economy based mainly on financial services as opposed to producing high tech stuff over the past forty odd years
Very much my point, plus the ways we squandered that North Sea income. Such things as three aircraft carriers built for the 1980s, all three now decommissioned and only one ever seeing any genuine but questionable action. We really have almost nothing to show for all that income we spent.
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