[Music] Scotland is changing what kind of country could we become let me show you come with me as I explore Scotland's powerful and inspiring we European neighbors one vision to the offer of a brighter future for Scotland Norway a country that many Scots would once have seen as a twin nation we have the same population much the same geography we share the oil and fish of the North Sea and parts of Scotland are closer to Norway than to London but over the last 200 years the paths have diverged over that time Norway has amassed the world's largest sovereign wealth fund with its oil and is regularly at the top of every international league table it's the world's best democracy it's the world's most equal nation so what has gotten to learn from Norway and might the paths of the twins once again converge equality starts in unexpected places here like the ubiquitous wooden weekend hot well we're here in lonoa which is one of three little islands only ten minutes from the centre of Oslo which is covered in lots of tiny huts they were given to working-class people way back in 1922 and they've been staying in those families ever since because people would give their eyeteeth before they give up houses here they're absolutely beautiful they're occupied really only for the summer months but those summer months are like jewels and people's lives they camp out here for two to three months at a time only going back for what they really have to go back for and this is actually typical of Norwegian life the hut is almost the permanent home for people it's the one they never change when the change for the living in the city and it's become a really focal part of keeping people saying keeping families together having something to live for at the weekend and it's sadly something Scott's just do not have I've come to see old friends Twitter and Ola Norman to hear more about Norway's hunting culture have you been here all summer yes from April the most lovely summer since 1947 yes yeah this is no September so how many months is that you've been here five months yeah half year home this is beautiful I mean do you know what I think we're sorry yes your Island for yeah thank you sir yeah um and it's it is like a little paradise here yes you know you're living in paradise yeah you know it's clear that easy access to land and a century equalizing income means most folk have a simple place to escape to after work and a higher quality of life all round when the government began to talk about this they said they were so glad for that working people from this place they draw and go out and have fresh air and everything they have something to do with the health so therefore they get the place for that most people who live here are they still the descendants yes among the most those are there because people in Scotland would be amazed that someone who comes from a working family could have a little Hut somewhere because that is impossible in Scotland really it's a lot of ups in every Norman ever helped have a heart may is saying almost yes mm-hmm somewhere in the mountain in the sea yeah when you come here what do you do fishing fixing that yes always something to do always something to do I I have a walk around the island every day every day with some girlfriends of mine we are the same age and we have been here always and we have we go every day this is quite a small but perfectly-formed Hut yeah you have four bedrooms upstairs one there was a teen person that hating right yeah the hot you cannot set a price on the hut we cannot that because if if they gave me ten millions from the heart for the heart what should i do them I don't have used for ten millions but I have used for the heart to be to family to friends and people and have a good life and a good time that's not mommy can you imagine living in a country where you don't and no one has hurts no no I can't can't imagine it yeah no I can't so do you think we could ever get you to come to visit in Scotland yeah yeah yes [Laughter] but the ancestors of Tudor and all that did visit Scotland a thousand years ago and the evidence that they stayed is carried in our DNA I've been studying DNA for the last 25 years of my life and I think it's really really interesting because we inherited from our ancestors so we can use DNA as a record of the past that's written inside every one of us dr. jim wilson from edinburgh university has made a detailed study of Scotland's DNA heritage when we look at a Scottish DNA we can see a quite a variety of influences and from many different sources do we see very strong evidence of links to Norway in Shetland in Orkney and to a lesser degree in Caithness and in the Western Isles and northwest coast round into Argyll to the islands of Argyll we see strong signatures particularly on the male side of the DNA of Scandinavian ancestry particularly Norse ancestry and this ties in very well with the history of these parts of Scotland the Norseman came to the Northern Isles around about 700 800 AD and they set up a polity there are yar Oldham the County Sutherland is named despite being one of the northernmost counties of Britain is named Sutherland because it's the southern land as viewed from Orkney so although these places are quite remote today they were of somewhat more importance back in that time over time more Scottish people moved there and many of the natives land was taken away and given to incoming lowland Scots and the population fuss hybridised resulting in the populations that we see today Norway takes democracy and press freedom very seriously unlike Scotland all papers are owned by companies based inside Norway and the state subsidizes the press in small remote towns and cities including paper's like the left-wing class encompass the class as someone who works in the media I've seen the rapid decline of newspaper circulation in Scotland so one of the most impressive things about Norway is state funding for the press Elizabeth Ida of Oslo Metropolitan University explains well let's start with the press support system just the state support newspapers they do actually and they support some newspapers more than others and that has to do I think with the idea of diversity and democracy diversity in two senses both that at least in the past it should be media from different political leanings but since we've done away with the party press now it would be more newspapers with different world views such as in Norway now we have for example two Christian leaning newspapers who we receive a lot of support we have one that's the agricultural inclined paper which receives a lot of support and we have one rather radical paper called the claw struggle which i think is rather unique in Europe for its roots in the Maoist movement but now a non sectarian android-based which also receives a lot of millions the system is rooted in the idea that a small nation cannot make alive such a big system of newspapers without support so it has very strong Democratic arguments to it and and it will be surprising to some people as well that that class struggle paper class and company is obviously a left-wing paper financed by a state which is run by a conservative-led government yeah and but this conservative-led government you can say no we have a rather centrist kind of policy system except that of course there is a rather right wing extreme right-wing party part of that government and they have questioned the press support system for a long time but there is a rather large consensus still that the system has to go on although it might come in a different shape because of the digitalization of newspapers nowadays it goes to very local newspapers as well because no way as you know even if we're not much more than 5 million we have very many small communities where people like to know what's going on and what the neighbors are doing and how the local industry is doing and so the diversity also is a geographical diversity the subscription paper of course Aftenposten it's the largest and also by way of print but that's interesting because Aftenposten has come down to 200,000 Wow our big papers The Scotsman and the Herald are on about twenty or thirty five thousand well you know Vega used to have more than 300 but that's like yesterday that's like ten I know your news yes is ten times better but our history is a history of being one of the most newspaper reading countries in the world I think maybe suppose or sidelined by Japan I read but we definitely have a sort of history of reading newspapers and listening to ready I mean very sort of media savvy people in a sense maybe it's time for a wee history lesson in 1814 the Danes went into the Napoleonic war behind the paulien big mistake he was beaten the Danes were beaten and they lost territory including Norway the Norwegian Prince hoped the country might be independent and summoned a hundred and twelve men to write a constitution it gave the vote to every male adult landowner and so many Norwegians owned land that 45% of those men got the vote overnight Norway was reluctantly forced into a union of crowns under the king of Sweden but it's radical Constitution meant the path to independence had already begun [Music] at the heart of Norway society is distorting the Norwegian Parliament [Music] Tatia were in the former second chamber of the Parliament but in a way the kind of most important thing seems to be not in this room at all it's in a vault downstairs this is the Constitution [Music] so a constitution marks the the year and the day we actually got to begin having a democracy we we got our own institutions we wrote down originally that we were going to be a sovereign country after several hundred years in a union with Denmark we also wrote down some basic human rights and that people at leasts men about 25 years old owning a certain amount of land of property or being businessmen or officials getting the right to vote for who they wanted to be the members of parliament so we actually celebrate the 17th of May the year when we crowned Danish Prince to be the king of a sovereign Norway and signed the Constitution [Applause] that constitution also effectively banned nobility yes we wrote down that Norway shouldn't have an ability even though some already had or we're noble there they could only continue to have their titles but their sons and daughters cannot air that title when you roll on what was happening in that long century up to independence with the Parliament even though we were under the union with Sweden we had her own Parliament and for that period of time up until independence we created her own parliament building but we also had this every every goin disputes with the king of Sweden in a way trying to figure out how to run our country without too much influence from the Swedish King what else did the Parliament spend money on before they built their own building they spent money on building the big University of Oslo which he can see down to roads they also spent money on building an asylum hospital and so on so they really chose to look out rather than building their own building first that's really fascinating actually so once it was established the Norwegian Parliament was having a lot of battles with the Swedish king and seem to be winning most of them yeah already from the beginning we actually were trying to stop the swedish king to get more influence over norwegian politics by having this constitutional conservatism you could say not changing anything from the original constitution but i would also like to mention two other important battles that we had the first one was the Battle of parliamentarianism which we had this breakthrough in 1884 when the Norwegian Parliament got through that there that a cabinet which were under the Swedish king had to meet in the Norwegian Parliament and in that way we for in in some ways actually had that the cabinet were vested in the Norwegian Parliament in a way so that must have been a clumsy period when had a Norwegian cabinet and a Swedish cabinet yeah and yet it was part of the process of pulling power away from the Swedish king and the Swedish the whole Swedish stays yes what was the other that one that you were mentioning the other I would like to mention is how Norwegian with the quite big Merchant Navy wanted to have a bigger influence on the foreign policy which was under the Swedish king at that time so so what they wanted was to establish different because consulates around the world this was of course not something that the Suites wanted so dad actually was the one that sparked the one event that sparked the disorder of the Union because they won that battle too and also because we have had good bombs even though we have had these quarrels and arguments and battles you could say so when the the Norwegian Parliament called for a referendum and you had this tremendous majority for going out of the union with Sweden of course this led the Swedish King having to accept more than 300,000 women signed that they wanted to go out of the union with Sweden and when you compare that to the only 368 House men actually voting in the referendum you see that it's massive massive engagement from the women throughout so why do you think there was such overwhelming belief that Norway could become an independent country because when it did I think it was the second poorest country in Europe very good question and even though I don't have the exact answer to that I would definitely guess that we had been a sovereign country in a way because we had our own institutions we had our own systems we had her own University it wasn't this huge dissonant what was lacking was a royal family or at least a head of state and after that you actually introduced proportional representation yes very early yeah to Britain in 1921 mmm so that's almost a hundred years of proportional representation yeah which means a hundred of compromise negotiation coalition all these things how that's not an impact in your society definitely now having nine different parties represented in the parliament consisting of only 169 members of course it has an impact of how you always had to negotiate but I think it has had more political impact than anything else have no witch has ever had any doubt that they would be a successful independent country looking at a numbers from the referendum it doesn't look like it and one of its biggest success stories is Norwegian public transport that are nine tram routes which cross Oslo and reach into the suburbs Edinburgh eat your heart out tickets are relatively cheap and it's another way of ensuring equality even professionals don't actually own cars folk like academic Nick Blondel we took the number 17 tram to Oslo University living in Everton yes right so you know British Transport so how do you rate this well so slow is very good very good there's a debate on whether the charm is like the way of the future or whether it's a thing of the past whether we should replace it with bosses which is a much more effective efficient way of transporting people you've got all these choices because you also have it as well as these trams you also have the underground train and there's even proposals to build a new tunnel to make more underground they have to build a new tunnel because it's it's totally overcrowded at the moment they cannot fit more trains into the existing system if they want to make it more efficient they have to build for the new tongue for the underground and for the trains and this is a course where Norway comes into its own because you are the great tunnel builders aren't you yes I know or rather in in two ways yes we build tunnels but it also takes a long time so it's been in the planning for at least a decade and it's probably going to take at least a decade more before it's finished really things take time within this system because we the base and we include people and best of interest in to the eventual outcome to make it more stable right gosh that's pretty impressive and in the meantime everyone will just be on crowded trams it took us 40 years to build an airport both the airport is how does this system help you in your daily life well without such an efficient system you would obviously have to have a car or depend on someone who had a car and I mean one of the downsides in Norway is a lack of sort of these public space like there's no access really so the public transport system also is kind of a place for socializing in a way which we don't so [Music] so we've arrived here at the University and we're joined by Ivan Bragg bear who's a senior lecturer in politics and by louise who is the new addition to the black bear family I'm very grateful to the two of you what we're trying to do here it may not be possible is to unwrap Norway we were cousins we are genetically linked I think there is a strong historical argument for pointing to an sort of relationship or a sense of familiarity between Scotland and and Norway the idea that both of us were when it's just an officee between us we were both small fairly a glatorian very patriotic nations if you like our word oriented economies depending on the open seas and at the same time subjugated to a stronger neighbor in the enumeration case it would be import Denmark and then later Sweden that we were sort of unwillingly if you like unionized with this historical argument could then be used to say that that we are constant so we are sort of we are we share so many similarities yet history or certain choices made in our history as has pushed us on two different different paths in cultural terms Norway is very much shaped by choices taken during our history which is made as different as a society from what Scotland has been able to become I think it's the safest conclusion Scotland could have become something similar as a society and I now if you like but then you would have needed a different trajectory different choices different ways of organizing their welfare state and the broader economy during the 20th century and in order to do so one needs full autonomy or or sovereignty Scotland didn't have that at the time which meant that you were very much affected by choice made in London in terms of how the economy should be organized and society and democracy should be it's as simple as that I think that our model emerged through specific historical choices milestones and and trajectories that Scotland simply couldn't take I reassure my honorable friends that we have confirmed that when we bring forward the vote on the final deal will ensure that Parliament is presented with the appropriate analysis to make an informant easy people take a fascination in Westminster simply due to its antiquity and it's sort of theatrical aspects and the sense of leadership that you know who's in charge and who will be sort of who will be here who'll be up against the wall in a way when when things go rough it's this order it's a fascinating play that unfolds and is also a form of democracy that we're being taught about at school as something that was historically important but it's not contemporary contemporarily updated and in that sense the Scottish emerging Democratic model is much much closer to the Scandinavian one Norway is in a kind of halfway house arrangement with the European Union I think a pool suggested only eighteen percent of Norwegians want to be full members of the EU why not it's a strange compromise in terms of historical identity with very much defined ourselves as divided from continental Europe if that sounds familiar the sort of the notion that we're we're different and if any of you add the simple observation that our independence is fairly recent although it's in there for a century now the idea was that we need our sovereignty we need to God our sovereignty but our economy has always been outward oriented international and European so we need to be part of that market too so the compromise was that we we tried to join the market whilst avoiding the political institutions involved so that is the compromise it's an uneasy one but the alternatives have been seen as no way and after all that serious thinking a little fun with language so Scotland and Norway they say have are very different countries different languages but are they I've got Matilda here who's going to prove a few things for me okay then mouse in Norwegian moose house shoes woman Kinmen which is like quayne which we say in the north of Scotland dirty Makita which is a bit like market in Glasgow for dirty the great one is what's a vacuum cleaner yes thank you so that's a steward Sucher and he Scott would understand that was straight over there well I think that's enough actually that's quite a lot in common thank you thank you well this is my favorite place in Oslo it's the National Gallery and only see the most incredible depictions of the way that's also a life was just before Norwegian independence and particularly here you see paintings by Korg and this was telling the Norwegian stories about themselves on the one hand of their Viking past an incredible capacity we had and on the other the terrible poverty being experienced by street children in Oslo under Swedish rule you know what's really impressive about all of this is that there's these epic pictures and portrayals of nature here massive mountains with all the undulation of physicality and people I've got to tell you my heart leaps to come into this place because it's not like Scotland where you have empty landscapes portrayed by nothing but the mouth of the gland the soul deer around which all the Glen's had been cleared of actual Scots this is a place where people landscape farms logging rivers everything who exists and that's because in actual history it always has and this picture it's so vivid you feel you're almost there [Music] [Music] Norway and Scotland both have big rivers and a massive potential for hydropower but Norway got off the mark almost half a century earlier than us because its new independent government didn't that landowners blocked the development of cheap energy for all [Music] I'm here at labral Falls one of the first hydro dams in the whole of Norway built around 1910 to hear more of the story from the curator of its Museum oleh Jakob chromic when they started building power stations we had just become independent from the union with Denmark and then Sweden and I think they wanted to make the power stations impressing just to make a point from for the new state with hydroelectric power we were going to build the country and here they brought in one of the most famous architects at the time this yeah sure but hydropower did more than just impress Norwegians it transformed the country keeping industry almost everywhere not just in Oslo keeping people on the land putting huge amounts of money into local councils which owned the hydro resource and let them build bridges schools tunnels and other infrastructure even in the most remote places Norway slogan is powered by nature it's not wrong they they had started earlier they started in the middle of the 19th century by building factories and placing all the factories by the waterfalls where they where the power was but then at the end of the century you started making hydroelectric power and sending it from one place to another this power station was actually built to to give power to determine but Drummond why are you sending it to Drummond because the dominant hasn't got any water force so they had to get power from other places so they bought waterfalls in the nearby area hostel did just the same so that this waterfall and this dam and this hydro complex here in Kongsberg basically was supplying Drammen yep down down the river yep and the thing that's significant too is that you needed to own the river the state needed to own the river before you could damn it do things with it yeah and and the state actually took back control from private owners foreigners started to get interested in Norwegian waterfalls and started to buy them and the government realized that if this continued they would lose to control so they started making laws to get the control back and were some of those people that had bought the rivers up with a British industrialist they were British and Swedish as far as I remember yeah and overall what is the impact of hydro in Norway because actually Norwegians don't really use or the oil and gas from your oil fields most things here are powered by hydro yeah well it meant everything if you look at if you go to the West Loma and the western coast you have large factories there which make for instance aluminium and they are placed there because of the waterfalls and you got cheap electricity and this was industry which was very power demanding and it was built by cheap electric power here everything is spread around the country it has been a point for the Norwegian government to have people living all over the country in small places and big places and to keep up the population everywhere now I think that's very good so what do you see in Scotland then well Oh obviously you are gathering in some places where very many people live and then you have vast landscapes where where it's empty [Music] stevonnie west of Oslo is Norway's third-largest city and it's oil capital the petroleum fund means every Norwegians benefited from oil exploration and that sense of national pride in their engineering achievements is reflected in this large sassy and popular oil museum this is the Tron platform the concrete deep water structure so it's the biggest thing that is moved on earth everybody seems fascinated by this exhibit what's the guide explaining the guide is explaining about the big catastrophe in 1980 when the Alexander chalen platform capsized in the North Sea it is the biggest accident working accident in Norway is history it's great in a way to say you're not giving us just the PR version of oil I mean there are accidents as well as spectacular engineering feats mmm yeah the oil industry it can be dangerous you know that as well so yeah I think it's natural to tell the story about it the first numbers here are the Norwegian petroleum fund and this is today's oil price $77 and it's how much that's produced every day it's about the society as well yes yeah it is and also how it affects the people oil isn't just an industrial process for Norway is it no it is the great value to our economy of course and we have built welfare state in Norway because of the oil do you know we haven't really got a big oil museum and Scotland and I kind of get the feeling that people are more proud of their industrial heritage and their oil production here in Norway do you think that's true yeah I heard that before I think it's true yeah I don't know why people in Scotland are not so proud of their industry but yeah but you are yeah we are but in the later years it's a bit turned upside down because of concern about climate and everything oil isn't that popular anymore oh yeah do you see that in the museum are people coming in saying actually why are you glorifying oil or what do they say yeah we don't try to glorify it we have an exhibition about energy and climate as well in the museum and we are going to make a new exhibition updated about energy and climate so we think it's important for us to have a concern about these things as well and that change towards renewables is already underway Stavanger is also the headquarters of Statoil the state-owned company that undertook most north sea exploration now called Ecuador to reflect its new green energy investments Erik varnas is its chief economist and senior vice-president when we decided the main frameworks around port the politics around the oil industry back in the early seventies there were some very visionary both the bureaucrats but also politicians that saw that if this grew and became big we need framework conditions where we make make sure that we have the right incentives at the same time also make sure that most of the value creation ends up in a Norwegian State the Norwegian state owns the resources right so we already in 1975 we introduced an income tax with a marginal rate of around 75% we still have that we have 78% marginal income tax rate on on oil and that was then it was also clear that in order to make that work it will have to be an income tax system that means that the government is also also taking an extreme risk when the price falls right I mean because you can deduct all your costs again this against the same tax rate as well so there was a period during the 70s and 80s when when this industry grew and they it was basically all about investments we hadn't got any of the revenues yet right so the deficits and and the net death of the Norwegian state as a consequence of that grew significantly but that was part of a conscious decision that we know if we're gonna have the income we need to take part of the course and do to take the risk then late 90s the the oil industry was starting to mature we had made the troll discovery and then the troll field which is an enormous giant gas the revenues became enormous and as a consequence I know of course of a 78 percent tax rate we have the direct ownership in the company called start oil and then also the direct direct direct ownership that they have in our licenses it was clear that public revenues were gonna explode and then in order to isolate the discussions on the state budget every year from the fact that they had so much money the Parliament decided itself that we need to put these money aside in a fund and then we only discuss how much we take out of the fund every year to balance the state budget and that's the mechanism of the petroleum wealth fund so all the revenues all the state revenues from oil which is then tax it's direct ownership is that our ghost into the fund in the bank central bank and then you transfer money back to the state budget if you need it to balance the budget and for a very long period I mean it was very small my mouth we didn't reduce the other taxes I mean I pay as much income taxes as anybody in the rest of the world Norwegians pay the same income taxes we have the world's highest gasoline prices and gasoline taxes we have a very relatively high v80 compared to the rest of Europe so so our system is as if we didn't have oil almost and then the Norwegian parliamentarians have allowed themselves to spend slightly slightly as you said a lot more in the public sector also because of the of course the security from the oil fund so we're running a public deficit if you like every year which is then financed by the returns of the fund that system has worked enormously well we as Economist's are a little bit worried about what that does when it becomes because now it has become extremely visible every Norwegian knows that you know we have 8,000 9,000 billion Norwegian Kroners about 1 1 trillion American dollars in the bank and you divide that by 5 million people and you get a lot of money so what does it do to our willingness to work through our understanding that we have to pay normal taxes etc and to the willingness to save those money for comment coming generations and then we see signals in the Norwegian economic policy debate that you know that some things might change here I don't know if you've followed much of the debate in in Britain and Scotland but when there was an independence referendum four years ago there was a lot made of how difficult it would be for Scotland to have oil because it would make our economy very volatile ups and downs and that we would find it very hard to exist like that as an independent country but you seem to have managed yes we are managed well of course the just the process of becoming independent it's a difficult process in my itself being so so integrated as you are to another country and what we are of course in Norway is also extremely vulnerable to the ups and downs of the of the expanded oil industry if you like it's not only to all companies but I mean most people work in the supply industry and of course then the mechanism of having a large public sector having a large petroleum wealth fund gives the Norwegian politicians a an instrument whereby they can compensate for some of those some of those variations and if you look at how the financial crisis hit Norway you can hardly notice and one of the reasons was of course we have this buffer that we could actually employ so it's bottomed but so you should but you need to have an acceptance where you have these automatic stabilizers caused by high taxes as well right I mean it's not only the oil industry's taxes but it's it's also all of us being being Norwegians paying relatively high taxes that works very well with a volatile market because the state carries part of the risks for us do you think it's too late for Scotland to have some similar kind of fund like this from the massive expansion of renewables that we're expecting to see yeah I think that's also one of the discussions here and I think I think it's relatively clear that we can never expect the same type of profitability on renewables as we did or do on oil and gas it's two very very different kinds of resources if you were to have a petroleum wealth fund or that type of fund energy fund it would have to be based on something else than renewables and then of maybe in in terms of the UK lolly gas industry the the only gas sector it might be so mature that you couldn't expect the same type book of profitability as as we've seen in ours sector we're a social democrat democracy we have very strong labor unions there are very strong traditions for for cooperation we've had very strong political systems handling changes and across the spectrum basically over between the Conservatives and the Social Democrats and we had a we lucked out I mean we had a strong industrial base partly driven by the hydroelectricity industry then the ship the shipping industry we have we one of where one of the words words largest shipping nations in terms of flags still and we had a shipbuilding industry and and we had spare capacity in that industry just one we needed it for the oil and gas industry right so we we transferred in some of these shipyards in to supply hubs for the oil and gas industry and they started building platforms instead of vessels we see large opportunities now and we get large opportunities now to develop both the new a new oil field in one of the one of the largest with American the Mariner field one of the largest industrial developments taking place in Scotland at the moment I think we have about 2,000 people involved now in the finishing of the of the platform that will produce oil for a very long period we're being able to opportunity for for offshore wind UK is our largest base for that offshore wind and in Scotland in particular now we're testing out the floating windmill so we have a big office in Aberdeen and and a lot of activities going out there so I hope that will continue some tough messages there about the need for a new independent country to tax fairly and think beyond oil but also something really significant even the energy rich Norwegians are coming to Scotland to develop their renewables our resources are that good Scotland has 85% of Britain's hydropower a quarter of Europe's title energy and a tenth of its wave power offshore wind could soon provide half our energy needs that's why Scottish Paris drop fossil fuels to concentrate solely on wind two-thirds of Scotland's energy needs were met by this renewables mix in 2017 way ahead of the UK average and we're not done yet the seats of the next green energy revolution are already being laid in the industrial city of drammen near Oslo and it's world-beating heat pump technology comes from Scotland and the facts are here that we're making the large heat pumps essentially a traditional Scottish engineering can you tell us what you're actually doing in Drammen it's so special oil and gas in Norway the the exports a trial and burning it themselves so in order to do the heating for the houses they have heat pumps in the case of Dromund they have a district heating scheme which is a network of pipes around the city under the pavements but they have to make the heat and a central energy station and to do that they use a large refrigeration system they we manufactured for them and that's basically harvesting heat from the seawater boosting it up in temperature and delivering into the pipes at 90 degrees we get three units of heat for every one unit of ale just to deter consume any of the other competition were probably 20 to 25 percent less heat output so they save money and they save the environment at the same time at the moment most of the buildings have gas and we could be harvesting the heat from our rivers those eight times as much heat in the river clyde as is required for the entire center of glasgow so that's a huge resource what's stopping us good question I think some of it is economics a lot of its policy and there's there's really no incentive for people to to stop burning gas and their buildings and they think it's it's cheap and convenient clearly our broader climate ambitions to decarbonize pretty much 100% within 20 25 years it's just not compatible we have to find a different way of doing it that comes down to policy to to really strongly encourage people to do that it just doesn't exist at the moment many people feel that Scotland missed the votes economically the first time Barnes with oil have we got a chance Scotland with renewables second time alone yes we do we have we have to take it or the the biggest mistake would be to miss the ball again you know we're sitting here as you know essentially doing stuff for the head of the world and we'll let it slip if we don't really grab it and make it absolutely central to our policy and Scotland to do clean heating it's not possible to do as part of the UK you've got to get to the crux of the problem and take the tough decisions and do it for everybody's benefit and that I think there's a better chance of having in Scotland when people say that Scotland is the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy are they right even more right than they realize this isn't about just being better for the global environment and it's not just a bit bit better for the local environment terms of pollution it's not just about being better for the economics of not buying so much fossil fuel from abroad it's about creating jobs locally and the number of jobs that we recreate if we tried to do what I say it's Rich's all of the center of Glasgow and Edinburgh and and pears and so on with far exceed the number of jobs in the oil and gas industry so can Scotland follow Norway's lead and use energy to support independence as they did 100 years ago is the Scottish case at all similar to Norway back in 1905 here's even black bear again small state nationalism comes in different slices in different forms and what you can say about the Scottish form of nationalism seen from the outside is that it's definitely now non-ethnic and it's non discriminatory its its civic in nature based upon the the willingness to give people voice and to define a different sort of model for society to pursues it's easy to to sympathize with that notion and it's also easy to see that it wouldn't necessarily need to any form of domino effect or sort of nationalist scares that the people tend to to point to in in European history the Scottish case is very close to the Pacific small state Civic outward oriented form of nationalism but that Norway has been characterized part historically and we also sort of in terms of nation-building we share the the admiration form some of the same traditions in in in our own history so Scottish nationalism is not is not dangerous phenomenon from that point of view we we seem to have missed the boat in the 18th century and the 19th but will we miss it again patients might be the word although it's an irritating notion that you need get patients at least what the the Norwegian case illustrate is that we needs order that the timing must be right in terms of actually obtaining independence and beyond the sort of the formal notion of Independence you need to develop a model if you like but is sustainable in economic terms and in terms of support and engagement from below this is something that works very well in Scandinavia too we have sort of the structures in place so you don't need to go around thinking about all the time what is it to be a Norwegian what is it to be egalitarian it's just embedded in the structure somehow and we've been very very lucky with choices made during our history and you will need to I think you'll need to do things incremental they build stone upon stone and then find that the timing is right in terms of obtaining independence one we think that brexit provides potentially a critical juncture for making the leap towards independence whatever your views in it do you think Scotland could become independent you never mind whether it's a good idea or not do you think Scotland has an economy and a con people are capable of running an independent country there's no such short coming on the Scottish side that would bar the road towards independence there are things too that needs to be things that need to be established obviously ranging from diplomatic service to to sort of full-fledged in domestic institutions and so on and divorce itself might be a complicated matter but beyond that there is I can I can't see any fundamental barrier towards Scotland becoming a successful States the path would be a well trodden one and of course if Scotland remains in a stifling stagnating constitutional grind there's the danger young folk will follow another well trodden path out of this country altogether TAS Ian Scott looked all over Scotland in vain for an affordable bit of land to call their own when they failed these two creatives headed east to Kongsberg a town of 23,000 people west of Oslo with its own powerful counsel Scotland has 32 councils Norway has 422 for the same population that means small town and island life in Norway is vital and viable so you guys are actually in a very good position to be able to see the difference between a Scottish normal and a Norwegian normal you know for example your house is pretty far they we're renting this place and this is considered to be almost like a hussar home is really important for them it would be crazy not to own your own house most homeowners are in their 20s in their first house yeah into Burton most parents go back to work after and the child is 1 years old and that's due to the big support and childcare so when you pay for a barn hugger or the kindergarten or nursery all you pay for after school care that's subsidized by the government and that's to make sure both parents have back out in the working environment you're involved very involved in arts funding do you have to kind of kill to get it it's very very generous I think I nearly fell off my my studio stool when I saw what you could apply for if they have a big strong feeling that it's part of the wealth and health of society so they put a lot of sight for artists to apply for funding could you expect here to have a job and a farm they hope they won their land they have animals livestock sometimes crops very often orchards and they'll also be a schoolteacher in the local school there is a very strong thing in the Norwich in culture of self-determination and that has come from generations back you know the farmers and fishermen if you don't fix the boat the boat won't sail and you won't eat and these still have that this town has only 23,000 Fork and it's managed by the community support council for this area yeah you really notice that there's a huge amount of people per is it possible to have a good career here and not leave for Oslo the amount of communication the amount of tunnels and bridges and ferries and superfast broadband it means that there are businesses that I know I have colleagues right up in the far north and they're busy making films making animations and they're getting on with really international business and they live in a tiny tone maybe 300 400 people there's no few landowners no no it's mostly farmers own the land grant community unlike as the majority of norway's land is owned by the people of Norway everything's very open so if you're interesting about land you think it's not nothing's going on with it you can click on the internet and find out exactly humans a very very quickly within 5 10 minutes and every belt lines goes on unique identification code which is fantastic so there's no hiding behind things there's no you know vagueness and so one gets used here so the thing everyone watching wants to know is are you gonna come back we kind of ended up here thought it maybe experiment said you know we'd really like to strengthen this code this connection we have with our neighbors but a very very innovative you know nation Scotland whether we're a nation of inventors and very creative people because we've never had any we've not owned anything and the only thing we own is up here so it mixes inventors engineers and with them almost the best in the world at it do you think from what you've seen about how an independent country actually works and thrives do you think Scotland can do it absolutely yeah it's I mean like yesterday just go on with it tweet it's waiting for you my colleagues just go they just don't understand how or why you know they just they're like why why why you know why you know and dependent already there's obviously a main set that's effective Scotland deeply you come here you can see like there's no deference you know we could do this easily Norway and Scotland the twin nations have gone on very different paths over recent centuries the Norwegians came out of a union with Denmark a century after Scotland - gone into one with Britain and the Norwegians have done pretty well on their own with independence coming in 1905 right from the beginning they had their own Constitution because land was owned so widely it meant that millions of Norwegians got the vote that peasants Parliament reshaped Norway completely as a thriving democracy from the early days they had hydroelectricity which kept the money in municipalities kept people on the land and brought industry to areas all over Norway not concentrated in one city and then of course it created a template for oil which was put into a sovereign wealth fund which is banked for the future of Norway's wealth in Scotland we missed that opportunity as part of the UK we had to watch while Margaret Thatcher spent the money on privatizations and frittered our future away the result is that Scotland oil rich and energy rich has become a place with chronic inequality with grinding poverty and with terrible health outcomes this surely can be different Scotland missed the boat on oil but it's not too late to have a second chance renewable energy gives a chance for the twin nations to combine once again for a future that cannot be dependent on oil or fossil fuels but only renewables in which Scotland is so rich and the technology which is already being developed here to exploit that for the whole world that's the potential and that surely is the destiny of Scotland the question is whether you think we can reach that destiny as part of the current constitutional set up or whether there is a far better future with independence [Music]
If you haven't done so already, you can find the previous installments here:
1- Faroe Islands - The Connected Nation
2- Iceland - The Extreme Nation
If you watch one political documentary this year, set aside 30 minutes of your Sunday for the Faroe Islands episode. It will banish any misconceptions about how 'small' countries can't be successful, as well as provide some hope for the future even if we can't achieve full independence.
The lack of the massive land owners sounds fucking brilliant, how well populated and connected could some of the highlands be with that kind of sensible land ownership system.
These documentaries are just inspiring. What we could do if we could start acting logically and sensibly with care and ethics...
Anyone who has been to countries like Denmark should immediately see that an independent Scotland could be like these places. It should straight away send a lightning bolt to your brain and make you think 'what the fuck are we doing back home?'.
It's almost painful seeing how much we have wasted our potential compared to these places.
Groundbreaking docu-series. Should be made compulsory viewing for ALL. Watch Yes run away with the polls
This is what Scotland could have been. Too bad two thirds of Scotland's oil have already been diverted to London and spent on pointless foreign wars. It's a tad bit too late now to set up a wealth fund. You should've had the balls to have taken action sooner. No point blaming the English. The Scots have no one to blame but themselves.