Alex Salmond, Scotland's nationalist first minister, may have felt things were going well. He has been polishing his plans to show Scots that they can be richer, and escape Westminster's austerity, by choosing independence in the referendum in September 2014. On November 15th En-Ouest, an Aberdeen-based British oil firm, announced that it was going to spend £4 billion ($6 billion) bringing a 14om-barrel oilfield into production in 2016, just in time (assuming a Yes vote) to start paying taxes to a newly sovereign Scotland.
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